brown dog conversation

the brown dog is snuffling around on the corner. he's a small lab, old enough he's beginning to thicken in the middle and walk a little stiffly. he sees us, sees guthrie at least, as we walk toward him. he eyes the lizard in guthrie's teeth and his eyes brighten. his ears slide up and back.

guthrie prances past without a glance but the brown dog watches intently. we cross the street and guthrie is nosing through a pile of leaves when we hear what sounds like a herd of children running up behind us. we turn and see the brown dog coming up at a fairly impressive gallop, ears and tongue flopping, tail wagging. he gets up next to us and guthrie turns his lizarded head away, lowers his body some. the dog leaps around, puppyish, trying to play. guthrie gets smaller and smaller until he is a speckled brown ball of hostility with a big red lizard sticking out either side. the dog's owner gives up and walks on ahead but the brown dog looks back over his shoulder at guthrie and his lizard a few times, waits, then walks on down the street at the urging of the woman on the other end of the leash.

but the dog is undaunted. he stares into piles of leaves, sniffs an iron railing, considers nearby steps. pretty soon we are walking right up next to him. he turns his nose toward guthrie and they both keep walking. the brown dog is taller than guthrie but he is walking with his head low, so his nose is inches away from the tail of the giant red lizard sticking out of guthrie's mouth. he leans toward guthrie just a bit, touches his nose to the very tip of the lizard tail. his mouth opens so slowly guthrie doesn't even see it. they keep walking. the brown dog scoots himself just an inch closer to guthrie, mouth open, so he's walking with his teeth hovering all above and below that red lizard tail.

the brown dog's jaws close just enough that guthrie knows he's there and then guthrie does what is completely unexpected to most folks, to those who don't know him, don't know that his ancestral job involved catching something and bringing it back to someone. he does something that so entirely baffles the brown dog that the poor dog doesn't know what to do. as the brown dog's teeth sink gently into the tip of the lizard's tail guthrie's jaws relax and the lizard slides out of his mouth. the brown dog is waiting for guthrie to pull, for them to play, to struggle over the magnificent red lizard. the dog's owner apologizes for her dog but i know he is trying to play. guthrie stands there, looking away from the dog and his lizard, then back again, confused as to why the dog is not tossing the lizard in the air. the dog makes an attempt to get guthrie's attention, leaps around a little, dragging the lizard across the sidewalk. guthrie waits.

the brown dog drops the lizard, still bewildered, and i pick it up. when i toss is up in the air a bit guthrie leaps like a shark and his jaws snap down on the soft middle of the lizard. the brown dog trots on home with a laughing woman on the other end of his leash.

bird

in the thunderstormy part of spring the baby birds fall out of nests like soft hailstones. they are just out of their eggs, all skin and closed eyes and pointy ends and there is so much nothing to them it's hard to imagine the wind moving them at all. tiny bags of pinkish gray huddled down into nests in threes and fours. but the wind does catch them. and i don't know how it figures out how to toss only one from the nest, leaving a handful of quietly sleeping others behind. i have seen three or four during a single walk and wish i could move them off the sidewalks and stoops, put them on the newly breathing ground and let them go back to what little of nature we have here in brooklyn.

then midway through summer i am weeding in the mint and lemon balm and am not surprised to find one of those thunderstormy birds splayed out next to the basement door. i pull back a mint plant and see webby wings. a needle beak sticks into the dirt. and here i do not feel that urge to move the poor thing off the sidewalk. he is resting there in good dirt, dirt full of fragrant mint that shades the small body. i finish my weeding and leave the beak and the wings and the small, small claw feet.

today the air is fall woodsmoke cool and the sky is thunderstormy again and i stand over the basement door pulling up mint and lemon balm. the roots are not so deep but they are all connected, plants clutching at each other underground, refusing to go. i pull so hard on one clump i nearly land in the already cold-flattened irises and i see a white pebble fly through the air. it lands in loose dirt where i've already pulled mint. i reach for it and see beak, eye sockets pressed like thumbprints into the smooth curve of the forehead. the top of the skull is so thin i can see clumps of dirt inside.

i think about the deer skull i didn’t take home this summer because it wasn’t ready yet. this skull sits in the palm of my gardening gloves and rocks back and forth when i breathe. it is so much smaller than i remember the bird being, so delicate i can’t think clearly about what to do but i know i will take it in the house. i know i will keep it. the invisible things in the ground have cleaned it so there is nothing but boniness. and maybe the most beautiful thing i have seen in a very long time is the nostril on the beak of this skull, a watermelon seed of nothing in all that white of beak. or even the tiny strand of bone along the bottom of the eye socket. a strand of my own hair is thicker. the eye sockets are so large you can almost see those fat, babybird eyes bulging out of them. it is perfect. i put it in a cup of warm water and soap. it rests upside down on the surface a while, lighter than the soap bubbles.

rush hour

this morning is one of those good, cool mornings full of jackets and sweaters and small girls in new wool tights. we are walking, the low dog and i, in the morning rush to work and school. people step out of little cafes with steaming coffees and their shoes clatter on the iron treads of the steps down into the subway. some of them still have real live folded paper copies of the times wedged under their arms.

the low dog strolls through the brightness with his lizard, charming the distracted and the sleepy and the grumpy, all. people shake off their subway personalities to coo and squeal and giggle. small children wave at him. adults wave at him. even at this hour people want to say how much they think he is too much. he ignores them, does not care.

we stop at an intersection a few blocks from home and stand next to a man and his little girl. the light is long and the girl is singing in her littlegirl voice. bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. now, if you know me you know i've considered scraping together all the couch change i can find to buy the rights to that song and then lock the thing away somewhere so i'll never have to hear its smarmy, pollyannaish carousel of treacle again. but her voice is so soft and so clear the song sheds most of its ugliness there for a second. she stares straight ahead, into the wide intersection. she is very serious about this song. she does not even see the low dog inches away from her left hand, staring, just like her, straight ahead.

i look up at her dad and am surprised to see him running his thumb across the face of his phone, checking a message, reading the news, ignoring his child. it seems to me if i can manage to find this moment charming then that man, her very own father, ought to be able to put his stupid phone away for now and focus his stupid self on his softly singing child. she falters with a word or two and he stares hard at the phone, then sings quietly cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudel. he asks if this is right and when she nods they sing it together. because i have been sick i hear three-color ponies. he trails off and she continues with bells and schnitzel and then pauses. he is squinting against the glare on his phone to read the next line of the song and then he sings, low but loud enough for her to hear, wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings. and now i feel bad for considering punching him earlier. his voice is like hers, quiet but clear and the few words drag all the geese i have ever seen up into the sky.

the light changes and we cross. the man, the little girl, the low dog and me. two boys climbing on a coin operated dinosaur call to the girl. guthrie turns his lizard-stuffed face to a man who begins to laugh and nudges a friend. maybe there are some geese flying overhead.

ten

this is something i suppose we've been expecting for a while. i mean, really, this is something we've seen coming on down the road since he was born. but it's one of those things like waiting for your child to hit puberty. some part of you secretly hopes the whole thing will never happen, but you know it will so the rest of you wishes you could just squeeze shut your eyes and hope that when you open them the child will be 23 or so. but transformation does not wait for us to be ready and so now we are seeing it firsthand.

the original supernatural nephew is ten. and ten is a milestone for everyone. however, it is far more important, far more dangerous and significant, if you are supernatural. this is the year any previously unknown powers settle in, make themselves known. for you the ability to see through walls might be pretty entertaining but for a ten year old boy it can be a little uncomfortable. and who wouldn't like having the ability to heal with just a touch? but you slap something like that on a ten year old and you've got an accidental infestation of reanimated mice or earthworms or mosquitoes. tell him to take out the trash and a chicken breast leaps from the bag, flapping the wing still attached to it. upsetting. potentially very messy.

for many children in the original supernatural's shoes, this is the year they become entirely human, give up the supernatural lifestyle. school gets harder. relationships get more complex. parents, who have never been particularly understandable before, become completely incomprehensible. and you would think that the ability to fly might be helpful somehow in managing these things but it is not. you would think being able to communicate with animals would help. but no. dogs know some math, certainly, but they're notoriously awful at long division and anything after that requiring such skills is beyond them. besides this, they do not seem to care. and while birds understand the scientific method just fine, their ability to explain it is extremely limited. i mean, it's a set of six steps easily represented in a flow chart but they just get so caught up in if-then statements they are worthless. squawking and flapping and screaming, "analyze the results. is the hypothesis true or false?" over and over. there is no help for a supernatural ten year old.

and all this sounds awful. why would any supernatural folks ever make it to adulthood with this misery? but ten is a magnificent year for those who can stand all the shifting. ten is the year of identity. we weren't thinking about it, really. we are so far away here in brooklyn. his parents have been busy with the beginning of school. the local aunt and uncle are still settling into a new home with their own supernatural child. and the grandparents didn't say a word. not a word. but they knew. i will try to explain.

the patriarch of the family, grandfather to both supernaturals, is a garage sale/flea market fiend. the original supernatural nephew, unable to escape this trait any more than he can escape the ability to fly, goes with his grandpa when he can and surveys piles of musty, rusted, broken things, looking for what is beautiful. there is no one in his family who doesn't love a flea market. this, too, is a special power. these two stand together, nearly sixty years apart, but with the same sharp eyes and chatty charm. you can't get something for nothing but these two come close more often than the rest of us.

and while the grandpa is looking at something, a watch, a pipe, some sort of sword, the child's eyes fall on something that catches his heart. i know what his face looks like, eyes wide and soft, mouth open a bit until he realizes it and snaps it shut. his head whips around to his grandpa. maybe he holds the briefcase up for his grandpa to see. maybe he just points at it, still so smitten he cant' pick it up. and the grandpa knows right away. he pretends he doesn't, tells the child no ten year old needs such a thing. then he waits. the supernatural nephew makes it very clear that he might die without this briefcase, that he has his own money. he will take the thing to school instead of his backpack. the grandpa waits. unlike the rest of us he has not forgotten the child will be ten soon. he has not forgotten this is the year of identity. the way the child expresses need for the old briefcase is what he's looking for. the child holds the briefcase to his chest, looks up at his grandpa, smiles. the woman selling things wasn't expecting this particular item to go home with a large eyed, serious ten year old boy and she smiles, too. the child's grandpa sighs and nods. the supernatural child slides coins over to the woman and takes what is now his.

i call him a few days later to ask him about the briefcase but we get distracted in our conversation (the rock postcard i sent him arrived with pieces broken off and he is furious with the irresponsibility of postal employees. we make plans for a possible thanksgiving in the catskills.) and i forget to ask. he does not mention it. i think it is because he knows. we have never spoken about it but he is, even as a ten year old, supernatural. he has to know. we have been sending him things over the years, strange musical instruments, ancient helmets and shields, survival backpacks, things he might need for his future life. there is no way to predict how he will rescue, how he will protect, what he will do. there is only knowing that's what's out there for him.

what is best about this is we don't know where that briefcase belongs. will it be part of his mild mannered alter ego or will it be part of his heroic self? all we can tell right now is what he told his local aunt while running a hand over the worn leather outside of the case with a flourish. "you can't," he said, opening the case to reveal a luxurious blue silken pocketed interior, "judge a book by its cover."

drug dealers

they are boys i have known a long time. three years which is, to them, an eternity. i think of them, these children, as mine. this is how we all see wild and ephemeral things. the bird outside our window every morning. the rabbits hopping across the front lawn at evening. deer in the woods off the road one over. we have to maintain a special balance to be able to see them without driving them away. i constantly misjudge this line. that's fine. if you have ever touched a real wild animal, had a bird perch, even for a moment, on your hand, you know it's worth however still you had to be for whatever measureless stretch of time.

1. i see the first child walking away from me down the hall just after the first bell. he strolls past the front desk security guard proudly displaying beads, colors, hat. these things say drug dealer. they say gang member. these are the things he is but he is also only a few minutes late for class. he is a student. i say his name and he turns and smiles. his eyes are a mess. his whole face is bloodshot. i motion to the hat and he takes it off. he turns back down the hall but when i say "the flag, too" he tucks the bandanna into his left pocket, out of sight. i am taller and am not practicing to be nonchalant so i catch up to him as he turns the corner. "why'd you come to school high?" i ask, although i already know. this is not our first visit about this subject. he looks up at me and his smile slides around all over his face. this is conversation, not confrontation. "i'm o.g., miss." the words ooze out of the smile. they are not true. there is nothing original about him. he is a walking stereotype of a drug dealer. as for the gangsta aspect, i know he has committed a string of felonies, has used weapons against others, but here in this place i know if i hauled off and smacked him hard across the side of his head he would not hit me back. he would apologize for whatever he thinks i might know that is worth slapping him over. this is not because i'm particularly fierce. this is because i am one of a number of women in the building who share the work of being his mother. so i don't slap him. my tired look says the same thing a slap would. i walk him to the stairwell and tell him to get to class. his face, his smile are less addled. "i'll be here every day," he says, swinging open the door to the stairs. "business is business."

2. the next child arrives to class late and we have the hat/phone/late conversation as he scoots into his seat. he is more impish than most sixteen year old boys and when i walk over to him, tired, glaring, and toss our current story on his desk, he pushes it back toward me gently and looks up with the face of an angel. "i read it already." he pulls out a folded copy of the story. i do not believe he read the assigned seven pages and i am right. he started and could not stop reading. he read the entire story all at once. he waits while i digest this information. he knows me well enough to look right at me, watch my eyes for a sign he's managed to make me cry. the other teacher in the room is asking questions and he raises his hand several times. and then after he does this, he answers those questions the teacher is asking. and he answers them brilliantly. i am leaning against the wall near his desk and watch him reach into a pocket for his phone. he glances at it, then quickly texts back. ordinarily this is when he would ask to go to the bathroom. he would be gone about five minutes and would hand someone in the bathroom something small in a plastic bag in exchange for some cash. instead he looks back toward the front of the room, turns his face to the discussion. i motion to him more than once about the phone. he smiles, nods toward the discussion, raises his hand. the child manages to text these little junkies back while raising his hand and answering questions.

i imagine his texts. why yes, i would like very much to sell you some drugs. however, i am currently very deep in the middle of an exhilarating discussion about a short story by the brilliant author mr. james baldwin and am not in a position to leave my literary companions. we are discussing the limited choices these two young men face and the ways they've attempted to escape the past and forge a new future. we are talking about harlem and heroin and jazz. i am sure you will understand if we postpone our scheduled meeting until after lunch. perhaps you'd like me to bring you a copy of the story. i think you'll agree it's far more brutal and lovely than heroin.

steam

warning: there's a pile of photos at the bottom.

when someone says jamboree you ought to always at least consider whether you can go. when you hear that there will be steam engines, you decide you can probably go and all that's left is to figure out what time. but when you find out the engines will be older than your grandparents used to be, you kiss the dog goodbye, put on your shoes and get in the car.

this is how we end up at hanford mills on a saturday morning, cool and sunny, with a few of the leaves already deciding on a new season, no matter what the calendar says. and there is little left to say about hanford mills during the antique steam engine jamboree except that if you didn't go it may stab at your heart a little to look at these pictures and see what you missed. there will be another september next year and during it another jamboree, but for this year, feast your eyes on the prettiest oil reservoirs you've ever seen and know these cogs and belts and gears, every spinning and whirring hunk of metal, has been hissing and humming and breathing longer than you.

and maybe the best thing about the mill is the herd of old guys, tinkerers, guys my grandma would have called real corkers. some of them have built their own machines and hover over them on the grass all around the mill. some of them are responsible for the care of, or at least information about, the larger, more intimidating dragons inside. it doesn't matter. these guys have the sorts of relationships with these machines that let them give you a lesson on history, physics and math all while making you think they're just visiting with you a little bit.

now, maybe the reason i like these guys is because all of them are, down deep, just different versions of a man i've heard stories from all my life. my own uncle jay can tell a story about anything and can make you believe you're right there breathing the same air as whoever he's telling you about. that man can tell you anything and make you want to hear it again. the way he laughs at something he knows he's going to tell you before he's got the words out will have you hanging on each word, waiting to get at the ones you know are making him laugh. maybe it is the way they sound like him, like everything they say is them confiding a secret, but i do know that when they talk about the pounds per square inch of steam pressure in an engine making things happen my eyes are wide and i am listening to how these machines live.

and maybe it's because so much of what we manufacture today is made to be disposable, made to ease into its own obsolescence without us even noticing, that i don't see as much prettiness in the shape of my laptop, in the way it is held together or in its rubbery feet. maybe a hundred years from now someone will weep over the beauty of the thing, how the keys are so elegant or how clever the clasp is and because i use it every day i just can't see all that loveliness. but i can see it in everything in the mill and i like to get up close to these machines when i can, see who made them and where, even if i can't quite figure out what each one of them does. i can see the perfect roundness of the wheels and gears, see the wood worn to something that is almost beyond wood in its softness.

as a child i would have wanted to live at this mill, steeped in the scents of sawdust and metal and oil, listening to water rush over the mill wheel and all those versions of my uncle jay, soft-voiced and laughing, explaining the whole world.

how to take a dog's temperature

a graphic and educational depiction of what can happen if the odds are against you.

first you decide whether you are person of faith or not. if you are, you do whatever supplicating is necessary to get the attention and favor of your god. you pray or fast or burn a lamb. then you ask for guidance and help on your mission. if you are not a person of faith, take stock of your life so far and consider that without some sort of miraculous intervention you will likely die and will surely be remembered for having been lost during a dog temperature taking accident. determine whether you are up to the task. it is absolutely okay to realize you are not ready to die.

go to the drugstore to get a thermometer. you do not recall the last time you purchased such a thing and you have no idea what kind to get. the clerk glares at you. tell her it's for your dog. tell her rectal, please, because that is what the vet said would give you the most accurate temperature. her glare intensifies and you know she thinks you are going to torture the poor animal. you are slightly bothered by the fact that she doesn't try to rescue the hapless thing since he is right there in the store with you. get some form of lubricant. vaseline. k-y. do not, no matter what your kinfolks may have said, use butter or lard. you do not want to risk losing butter as a thing you love because of this association and your dog already spends plenty of time licking his own butt without you adding seasoning to it. if you can find something with a flip-top, get that. walk home with your unsuspecting dog.

change into clothing you do not ever intend to wear again. this does not mean gym clothes or painting clothes. this means something you are willing to tear off your body and toss directly into a garbage can, if necessary. get a bath towel. this is to comfort the dog and create a work space, not to protect clothing you have already doomed.

sit on a couch with a table in reach. put the thermometer (out of its packaging and carrying case), lubricant (with flip top flipped) and latex gloves on the table. pick up the dog and put him on your lap. recall than when the vet does this, there's a muzzle for the dog, an (generally large and male) assistant holding the dog in a headlock, the vet and you all working to make this happen. realize this is not how things look now and call your husband to see if he knows where the muzzle is. when he does not know, sigh and put on gloves.

place the thermometer on your towel, which is spread over your lap, and pour more lubricant than necessary over it. pick up the thermometer in your left hand. wrap your right arm around your dog's neck, pulling his head gently toward you. lift the aggressively curled down tail up with any free fingers on your slippery, thermometer wielding left hand. realize you cannot see anything under the tail you have just lifted because the tail is in the way. peer around to the side. realize it is difficult to tell what is where from the side. lean as far to your left as you can, hoping to look under the tail. wonder why it sounds like there's a swarm of bees just above your right elbow. realize your dog is beginning his attempt to kill you. admire the recent dental work he had done as this is the first time you can see every single tooth he's got in that larger than you expected mouth. smile and breathe a little when you realize that although he has bitten down on you four or five times at this point, he does not have it in him to actually hurt you and he hasn't even left marks on your skin.

locate what you think, from where you sit, looks like the gateway to your dog's rectum. insert thermometer into this small, clenched space about an inch. be sort of impressed that it shoots out almost immediately and travels a fair distance across the couch. listen to that swarm of bees. it's getting louder and deeper, like a lion or a tiger or a helicopter about to crash. keeping your dog in your right arm grip, still holding the tail aloft, reach over with your gloved and, by now, very slippery left hand to grab the thermometer. reorient it to make sure you have the business end directed toward your dog's business end. try three more times to insert the thermometer and be proud of yourself that you're catching it sooner and sooner as it sails out of the backside of your dog. realize that putting a thumb on the outer end of the thermometer might keep the thing in place. insert thermometer for the fifth time. keep thumb steady. make a mental note to look into why your hands shake so much and wonder whether that will affect your dog's temperature.

notice that as soon as the thermometer is in place your dog stops struggling although he has achieved a facial expression of such incredible detached contempt you almost do not recognize him. look at the clock. watch the clock for three minutes. remove the thermometer, but do not yet release your dog. you will have to read the temperature to be sure you do not have to retake it. 102.5. although this is at the high end of normal, be aware that you and your dog just walked two miles and then wrestled a great deal. release your dog. destroy or clean and then put away all supplies. return to the couch. your dog will curl up beside you and go to sleep, having forgiven or forgotten all that transpired only minutes ago.