Dawg!

Dawg!

  By

  Darrel Bird

  Copyright 2010 by Darrel Bird

  Dawg!

  He was just about a quarters worth of fur the day he was born, the runt out of a litter of mutts. Our neighbor’s dog, Missy, had six pups. One of the pups was all black on one side and had white running up his other side and across half his ear. The ear with the white hung over half way down and pointed to the front so it looked like he was pointing with that ear at everything he looked at.

  I went to visit the neighbor often, to play with the pups, until they were weaned. It happened though, that all the pups were taken except the one with the white ear, so I ended up taking him to keep the neighbor from putting him to sleep, as in permanent sleep. I never could figure why they called killing an animal ‘putting it to sleep’ anyhow. The neighbor said it was an accident that Missy got pregnant anyhow, and they weren’t about to keep no more dogs, and that was all there was to it. I brought the pup home, tucked inside my coat.

  “What did you bring that dawg home for?” Dad drew the word dawg out like he was peeling an apple in one long skein, and the name stuck. I was going to name him something decent like Sailor, because he went sailing around the place like his tail was on fire. He had long legs and he loved to run, but it just wasn’t to be, so Dawg it was.

  My dad, he took an equal quarters worth of hide off me for bringing the dog home with me, but in the end, I took my whopping and won the day, so Dawg became part of the scenery around our place. He began chasing the chickens when he was about six months old, and Dad threatened to shoot him, but Dawg seemed to sense when he had pushed Dad to the outer limits of toleration, and just before Dad went for the .22, he quit chasing the chickens.

  We, meaning me, my sister Elizabeth, Mom, and Dad, lived on a truck farm in the northern part of Arkansas, just south of the Red River in a little community called Sheep Skin Valley.

  The thick forests were dotted with white pine, oak, cedar, and hickory trees that stretched for miles, a truck farm ain’t exactly a complete living, so Dad took to logging in the spring and summer to put bread on the table.

  The truck farm barely kept us alive in the best years, and there weren’t no best years that I can remember.

  I turned 12 years old that February of 1958, and that spring Dad allowed as to how I was old enough to help him skid logs with the mules. When school let out for the summer that Friday afternoon in May, I was some relieved that I had no more of that foolishness to put up with until the fall rolled around again. Summer stretched out before me in a never ending wonder of it all.

  I went with Dad to town that Saturday, and on the way there he gave me a talk about the birds and the bees, which I never let on I already knew about. I just sat over there looking out the window, glancing over at Dad from time to time so he wouldn’t think I was ignoring him, and kept my mouth shut.

  I already had a crush on Julie Bates, who lived down the road apiece, and I reckon she had one on me at the same time. The problem with that was her dad kept a close eye on her, so we couldn’t get to each other.

  On Sunday of that week, we went down to the Culpepper Baptist church as was our habit, and Julie was there dressed in a dress that near knocked my eyes out. That Sunday, the church folk held a picnic out under the big oak trees that stood in the church yard. There were four long picnic tables some of the men had made and donated, and they were pretty well loaded down with food.

  The grown-ups got to visiting back and forth while we ate, and Julie sidled up to where I was pulled up by one of the big oaks, working on two chicken legs. I liked chicken legs, but didn’t care for the white meat, so I snatched them up before anybody could get at them. I figured that and a piece of corn bread would get me by till supper.

  “Hi Pokey,” Julie said as she sidled up beside me with her plate of just green beans and peas and a cup of fruit juice. I swear that girl was slated to blow away if it ever come a wind more than 20 miles an hour.

  “I wish you would quit calling me that, Julie. Why can’t you call me by my name?”

  “Well, I happen to like Pokey; that’s what we’ve called you all your life.”

  “Yeah, but my name is Jerry. That’s what my name is, and you know it.”

  I had been given that moniker by my Dad when I put my hand in a snake hole, got bit by a copperhead, and almost died. When everybody around the valley learned of it, the nickname stuck and I was too little to object to it much.

  Dad said it was just a miracle that I lived, and allowed as he was thankful to God for the miracle when it came testimony time at the church that following Sunday night when I got out of the hospital. Dad got so happy when he testified that night that he clapped both hands together and jumped two benches without touching the tops of either one of them.

  Then he went and gathered me up in his arms and said, “My Pokey, My Pokey.” There weren’t a dry eye in the house; they all went to weeping like somebody had died in a fire or some such. So you can see how I might have gotten stuck with the name there. I didn’t much care for all the fuss over me, and besides I was still sick from the copperhead bite, and didn’t care for being smothered out by folk, but I got patted and picked up by near everybody in that church house that night.

  “Are you going to the picnic this coming Wednesday?”

  “Naw, I got to help Dad skid logs this week.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  “Yeah, maybe next time, Julie.” I tell you when she looked at me with them green eyes, I near went limp.

  It was setting up to be a long hot summer come that Monday morning as Dad caught up our two mules, Jack and Bob, and brought them around to the front of the house. Dawg was ready to go too. We would have to walk in about three miles up a mountain trail to the stretch of timber the fallers had been cutting. We were to skid the logs out to the loading ramp, where the trucks could pick them up to take to the mill.

  By the time we got in to the felled trees that first day, we were feeling plumb tuckered. I had spent the winter in school and the mules had spent the winter at pasture. Dad was in the best shape of the lot of us, but he let us rest an hour before we started.

  After we rested, Dad pulled Jack and Bob over to a log. Jack and Bob were about the two best skid mules in that part of the country. He told me to set the tongs in the ends of the logs; he wouldn’t trust me with the mules. They were skid mules, and when they felt the pressure of the tongs in the logs, them mules would take off like they were shot out of a cannon. Dad said he was afraid they would hurt me.

  The tongs were heavy, but I lugged them over to the first log, spread the jaws and set the sharp teeth of the tongs onto the end of a goods sized Oak log. As soon as the mules felt it, they hit the traces. We skidded 13 big oak and hickory logs to the loading ramp by noon, and by that time I felt like I was going to go by the way of the grave for sure. I was wet with sweat, Dad was wet with sweat, and the mules were even wetter with sweat by the time Dad pulled the mules over to where our lunch of biscuits and bacon was.

  It was hotter than fire down in those hollows and on the sides of this hill’s and there weren’t more than a breath of air stirring.

  Our water was contained in a toe sack wrapped around a vinegar jug which Mom had stitched on for us. When you wetted the burlap sack, it kept the water real cool. Why they called it a toe sack is beyond my wisdom, it was just the way of things, that’s all. We took us a good drink and dad passed me a couple of biscuits with slices of thick bacon in the middle. Dad sat there chewing on his biscuit and Dawg laid there with his hind legs all splayed out and his nose laying on his front paws, watching every move we made.

  “That Dawg ain’t wuth killing son.” My dad remarked at the situation. When dad spoke there wasn’t no use disagreeing with him, so I
just kept chewing my biscuit with my eyes on them woods.

  Pretty soon, I caught Dad taking the bacon out his biscuit and tossing it to Dawg. Dawg inhaled the bacon, then he tossed the rest of the biscuit and he inhaled that. That’s the way my Dad was; he had a heart as big as a football field, and soft as a cloud, and he would do without lunch to see a dog got fed. He acted all rough, but he loved his neighbors, his family, and his God with a love that few men possess. I began to pick up on those things when I was about 10 years old.

  I also knew better than to mess with him too much. One time we was riding down the road and a feller had his mule