Here is a short story I wrote a few years ago. I hope you enjoy it. Yet Another Boy and His Dog Story At the ripe old age of seven my family moved to a brand new suburban housing development outside of Linworth, which was a suburb of Worthington, which was a suburb of Columbus, which was and is the capital of the Great State of Ohio. We were in the country. Maybe we didn’t live on a farm but we were close enough to several farms to catch the wafting scents of some particularly aromatic species of farm life. Oink. It really was a great place to grow up. Most of the time we had plenty of fresh country air sans the swine and bovine bouquet, lots of space for me to play and explore, and very few neighbors within shouting distance as the new subdivision grew slowly. Ever concerned for her only child and there being no real playmates immediately available, my mom decided I needed a dog. And I must give my sainted mum a great deal of well deserved credit here; this was surely one of the best things to ever come into my young life. As I remember it, mom and dad searched high and low for the right dog for their boy. They had tried the year before to provide me with the perfect canine chum but living in the city had proved fatal for my little puppy and it was months before they thought I might be ready to embrace another. They were right, I think, and the time was right, too. So one bright Saturday morning at breakfast in our new home, my dad said that we needed to eat quickly because we were going for ride. This was fine by me as I liked to go for rides. We drove out into the country and eventually pulled in the driveway of a clean, white clapboard house with a genuine red barn out back. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the barn as we walked up onto the porch and knocked on the front door. I had only seen pictures of barns in the story books and in my youthful imagination barns were places where animals lived and wonderful things happened. I could barely contain myself when our knock was answered by a man wearing real denim coveralls. I’d never before layed eyes on person wearing bona fide coveralls and I felt my tongue slip a little out of my mouth and onto my bottom lip as I grinned broadly while I shook hands with a real live farmer. It just didn’t get any better than this. Until, that is, we strolled back to the genuine red barn behind the house. Inside the big red barn, beside a large stack of bailed hay, there was what looked like another little red barn. When we got closer to the little barn I could tell it was more like a dog house and sure enough, out came a panting, wiggling, prancing, dancing, slobbering, brindle bundle of dog. My dad said that it was a great looking little Boxer. Well, he wasn’t so little to me. He was nearly as big as I was when he jumped up and put his oversized paws on my little boy chest and knocked me over. I could barely catch my breath from laughing so hard as he licked at my face and we rolled around on the hard-pack dirt floor of the real red barn. It was love at first lick. The smiling man in the real overalls told my dad that they had been calling the dog Brownie but that we could name him anything we wanted as long as we promised to take good care of him. But Brownie was the perfect name and Brownie it was forever. If there ever was a pair of creatures to be known as a dog and his boy, Brownie and I were surely them. We soon became inseparable. Instead of having to wait for other families to move into our new subdivision I had an ever-present buddy ready, willing and able to play and frolic any time, day or night. If I wanted to play army I simply put my plastic army helmet on Brownie’s big Boxer head and off we went; Brownie’s long, uncropped ears flapping merrily from the bottom of the small helmet as we set off to defeat the Nazis. We played together, hiked together, slept together; Brownie was my true confidant, he knew all of my little boy secrets and never told a soul. He was eminently trustworthy and faithful to a fault. I could not have asked for, or even wished for, a better friend. If Brownie had a bad side it was brought out by his inherent dislike for his sworn neighborhood enemies, the cats. Oh, yes. Meow. As the subdivision thrived and other young families moved in with more and more boys and girls with which I could play and more dogs with which Brownie could play – there came with this social potpourri of mutual playmates a small cadre of enemy ninja combatants: The dreaded cats. Oddly enough though, Brownie loved kittens, not to be confused with cats, and I do not mean he thought they tasted good. No, no – he sincerely enjoyed their company. He would lie out in the sun among these tiny cute felines and allow them to climb upon him as if he were a canine Gulliver taking an afternoon repose. They would slide down from his brow and drop from his muzzle, climb him again and slide again, over and over. I saw him lie still and content as kittens nursed from his floppy ears, the doggy equivalent of a fatherly smile upon his Boxer face. But there came a time, a reckoning, a maturing reality, a day on which a loveable, cuddly, soft and warm kitten became, in my beloved Boxer’s simple mind, a loathing, fearsome, clawing, hissing, supreme nemesis – a cat. Cats being cats and Boxers being dogs, Brownie would shoot out of our yard like a brindle rocket if a feline transgressor wandered too close to his private domain. He never did managed to do any harm to the neighborhood cats; not that he didn’t give it his level best, he simply could not catch them. And when he did manage to catch one unawares, their tiny ninja-like claws shot forth (swish, slash, swoop, arf!) and briskly reminded Brownie why he should not make these futile attempts. He would trot slowly home, head hanging, after these brief lapses and I would lovingly blot the blood from his nose until the bleeding stopped while I lectured him about the wisdom of loving all creatures great and small. One hot Saturday in September, while sitting outside on our front porch, I saw the neighbor’s lovely calico, Nelson, bursting around the corner of our next door neighbors house. Behind Nelson, panting in hot pursuit, was (yes, yes – Arf! Arf!) my Brownie. I stood and called after him, “Brownie! Get back here!” A fat lot of good that did. Then I watched in disbelief as Nelson charged into the ‘under construction’ storm drain opening across the street, Brownie following. I ran to the opening, got down on my hands and knees and called for my dog. I called and called his name. I could hear a distant clatter and bustle as I stared into the darkness of the large storm drain pipe but I could not convince Brownie to come out. Late that afternoon I saw Nelson amble into his owners garage, yawning and ready for his nap, but I did not see my dog. I went to all of the storm drain openings in the neighborhood and called for him, but I did hear or see any trace of him. Despite the assurances of my mom and dad, that night I cried myself to sleep, sure I would never see Brownie again. The next day, Sunday, I spent all day after church going from one storm drain opening to another, carrying Brownie’s feeding bowl full of fresh dog chow, shaking the bowl and crying his name. I cried again that night. Monday I had to go to school but my mom promised that she would look for Brownie while I was gone. When I got off the school bus that afternoon I quickly ran home to see if Brownie was there but mom shook her head no and gave me a hug. She said I should go and check the storm drains before it got dark and I did. My best friend Marty helped, but we did not find him. I cried again that night, too. Tuesday was the same and I slept with my tears again; Wednesday also brought no result. Thursday, mom and dad had a long sober talk with me and as I tried to fight back my tears they told me that I should not give up but that Brownie might be gone, that he might not come back. I knew this, of course, but I could not stop hoping. Brownie was no mere dog; he was my absolute best friend. But Friday was just like the rest of the week with no sight or sound from the storm drains. I was crushed. I steeled myself against the incoming tide of loss that my seven year old psyche could not deflect. By Saturday afternoon I lost all hope. It was Sunday again and my dog had been gone for over a week. I went to church with mom and dad and I could tell they were worried about me. I spent the time at church just trying not to cry. It was hard. After church mom brought the reverend over and he said he was sorry to hear about Brownie and that he would pray to God that I might find him. I tried to thank him but I could not speak. I kept my head down and just nodded, my seven year old soul afflicted with little boy grief. I do not remember the ride home. I went to my room and cried some more. Then I had an odd new thought. Didn’t the reverend say that he would pray to God for me to find my dog? I thought that that was what he had said. Wasn’t it? Maybe God would help me. Late in the afternoon I left home to check the storm drains one last time. I first walked across the street to the drain where I’d seen Brownie for the last time. I took a deep breath and sighed mightily before I got down on my hands and knees. I cannot say that I had any real hope but in my mind I thought again about what the reverend had said and looked into the opening of the storm drain. I blinked because of what I saw. I thought that maybe a tear was blurring my vision somehow. But, no; there were definitely two glowing yellow-green points of light far into the storm drain. Later in life I equated this to how the eyes of the little hooded alien creatures looked in that Star Wars movie – I can’t remember which one it was. I said into the storm drain, “Brownie?” and sure enough I heard his responsive whine and heard him struggling to come my way. The drain was not big enough for a Boxer to stand in so he had to crawl and it seemed like forever before he made it to the opening and all of a sudden I was reaching into the drain and he was whining and aaarf-ing and wiggling and licking and we were rolling in the street in front of our house. I laughed through tears and nearly choked trying to say his wonderful name over and over. As I looked into his big dark and knowing eyes it was like he said to me that he thought he had lost me forever and he was so happy to have me back. I knew exactly how he felt. It took a few weeks to get Brownie back into Boxer shape. I don’t know if God worked a miracle for me or not. I do know that something which seemed utterly hopeless to my seven year old mind became something on which hope could be firmly built. And Brownie was so thin and bruised and dirty I thought maybe he would never recover completely. But he did.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 16:29:17 +0000