The Dogs know What’s Going On - Go Ahead, Ask One

By TRB

When I was a boy my father would take me to an island off the coast of Maine, where he would wear white suits and go to barbecues. He would introduce me to all these supposed cousins that seemed so grumpy, and frankly dressed like children. I was not an island boy. They hated me and my father's car which reminded them of places far away and my Dad was always shaking someone's hand and congratulating them for having a baby or something similar he didn't care about.

Word would get out that he was there and more supposed relatives would arrive by ferry from Blue Hill and they were always sticking their dirty fingers all over my hair or kissing me with stranger's lips and generally making me feel creepy.

One day my father introduced me to an old man who sold bait for a living. My father was very respectful of this person as he told me I would be spending the day with him. My Dad had some "business," to do on the island, which I was to discover later, consisted almost entirely of a community of his former girlfriends.

Meanwhile Brownie was headed somewhere and I wanted to follow him. So I did. Lenny wanted me to come back, saying he'd get in trouble with my father. But I would too so it wasn't a very good threat. For once I wanted to follow one of these dogs. We all knew what they did when they traveled in packs, that's why there were leash laws in my town. But there was something about the solitary dog I had been meaning to check in to for maybe two whole years, like back when I was five.

Lenny offered me a lobster dinner at this point, but I didn't like lobster. I was already lobstered out. So was my Dad. He would eat it if someone was unimaginative enough to serve it, but just to be polite. I noticed now that Brownie was moving faster with her nose to the ground, not looking at anything but the sidewalk. It seemed like she really was avoiding the eyes of others. Did she know about lease laws? But there were none on the island. Brownie turned into this grave yard that was full of my ancestors for more than 300 years. She promptly took a leak on one of their stones.

I was just coming out of this grave yard when a Jeep pulled up and a beautiful woman got out came over to me and said, you look just like your grandfather. I got into the Jeep and could see Brownie headed towards the ferry landing. I asked this woman whose name it turned out was Jean about Brownie. She told me he was Ned's dog and he met Ned every day when Ned got off work from his fish processing plant job and arrived at the ferry landing. Loyalty.

Jean asked me where I was supposed to be. I told her about Lenny and my father. This seemed to bother her. He left you with Lenny? She asked four or maybe five times. As she spoke the jeep's speed increased, so that suddenly we were traveling down a sand road at maybe 75 miles per hour. Her house, which was this pretty, white, and small having only four rooms, was right on the beach. She pulled an old trunk out from under her bed and started going through the photographs in it. I caught a glimpse of the photo of my father with his plane with the dirty picture. It seemed maybe everyone had one of these.

Then she handed me the photograph. It was like looking in a mirror. That's your grandfather she said. Good-looking like all of you --------------- men. She made some lemonade and talked to me. She had a light sprinkle of freckles on her arms and there was sand in her hair from the road. I thought she was the most marvelous human being I had seen in my life. And very smart. Women were always so much smarter than men. I couldn't understand where they found the patience to be around them.

Eleven more years and I was still in love with Jean. In fact, I had just come from her wedding in Blue Hill, Maine the night before. I was with my brother who was driving a brand new Corvette which my father had given to him because he liked him better than he liked me. I was driving behind my brother on these old roads deep in the woods and my intention was to roll the car I was in - on purpose. To see how many times I could make it turn over. Just two nights ago, I had rolled it three times. A window had broken, one side had pancaked. But I though it should be able to do better than that. It was a Renault Dauphine, the bug-like one they had built to compete with the Volkswagen Bug. It failed though. It simply didn't have quality electronics or mechanicals. Now I was strapped in it with every belt my brother could find and I was wearing a motorcycle helmet and I was upside-down in the air. I couldn’t count the number of rolls when it was all over and it took a long time. But my brother says I rolled it six times. So I figured eight, at least,

I crawled out of that car that night and it had been gutted. Literally ripped apart. And I don't know exactly what I was thinking. I was one angry adolescent boy, though. I had thoughts of Jean, I wished I was dead, I thought about Brownie and how he was most likely dead, replaced perhaps by another loyal dog meeting Ned every day at the ferry launch.
I can remember tearing up large clumps of the roadside and wondering about loyalty and thinking I needed some.

Oftentimes when I said something, Jean would say, "You're such a boy."

That was right on the target. I was, for so many years, such a boy.