Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog

The following is an excerpt from Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog
by Ted Kerasote
Published by Harcourt, Inc.
July 2007;$25.00US; 978-0-15-101270-1
Copyright © 2007 Ted Kerasote

Chapter 1

From the Wild

He came out of the night, appearing suddenly in my headlights, a big, golden dog, panting, his front paws tapping the ground in an anxious little dance. Behind him, tall cottonwoods in their April bloom. Behind the grove, the San Juan River, moving quickly, dark and swollen with spring melt.

It was nearly midnight, and we were looking for a place to throw down our sleeping bags before starting our river trip in the morning. Next to me in the cab of the pickup sat Benj Sinclair, at his feet a midden of road-food wrappers smeared with the scent of corn dogs, onion rings, and burritos. Round-cheeked, Buddha-bellied, thirty-nine years old, Benj had spent his early years in the Peace Corps, in West Africa, and had developed a stomach that could digest anything. Behind him in the jump seat was Kim Reynolds, an Outward Bound instructor from Colorado known for her grace in a kayak and her long braid of brunette hair, which held the faint odor of a healthy, thirty-two-year-old woman who had sweated in the desert and hadn’t used deodorant. Like Benj and me, she had eaten a dinner of pizza in Moab, Utah, a hundred miles up the road where we’d met her. Like us, she gave off the scents of garlic, onions, tomato sauce, basil, oregano, and anchovies.

In the car that pulled up next to us were Pam Weiss and Bennett Austin. They had driven from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to Moab in their own car, helped us rig the raft and shop for supplies, joined us for pizza, and, like us, wore neither perfume nor cologne. Pam was thirty-six, an Olympic ski racer, and Bennett, twenty-five, was trying to keep up with her. They had recently fallen in love and exuded a mixture of endorphins and pheromones.

People almost never describe other people in these terms -- noting first their smells -- for we’re primarily visual creatures and rely on our eyes for information. By contrast, the only really important sense-key for the big, golden dog, doing his little dance in the headlights, was our olfactory signatures, wafting to him as we opened the doors.

It was for this reason -- smell -- that I think he trotted directly to my door, leaned his head forward cautiously, and sniffed at my bare thigh. What mix of aromas went up his long snout at that very first moment of our meeting? What atavistic memories, what possibilities were triggered in his canine worldview as he untangled the mysteries of my sweat?

The big dog -- now appearing reddish in the interior light of the truck and without a collar -- took another reflective breath and studied me with excited consideration. Might it have been what I ate, and the subtle residue it left in my pores, that made him so interested in me? It was the only thing I could see (note my human use of “see” even while describing an olfactory
phenomenon) that differentiated me from my friends. Like them, I skied, biked, and climbed, and was single. I had just turned forty-one, a compact man with chestnut hair and bright brown eyes. But when I ate meat, it was that of wild animals, not domestic ones -- mostly elk and antelope along with the occasional grouse, duck, goose, and trout mixed in.

Was it their metabolized essence that intrigued him -- some whiff of what our Paleolithic ancestors had shared? Smell is our oldest sense. It was the olfactory tissue at the top of our primeval nerve cords that evolved into our cerebral hemispheres, where thought is lodged. Perhaps the dog -- a being who lived by his nose -- knew a lot more about our connection than I could possibly imagine.

His deep brown eyes looked at me with luminous appreciation and said, “You need a dog, and I’m it.”

Unsettled by his uncanny read of me -- I had been looking for a dog for over a year -- I gave him a cordial pat and replied, “Good dog.”

His tail beat steadily, and he didn’t move, his eyes still saying, “You need a dog.”

As we got out of the cars and began to unpack our gear, I lost track of him. There was his head, now a tail, there a rufous flank moving among bare legs and sandals.

I threw my pad and bag down on the sand under a cottonwood, slipped into its silky warmth, turned over, and found him digging a nest by my side. Industriously, he scooped out the sand with his front paws, casting it between his hind legs before turning, turning, turning, and settling to face me. In the starlight, I could see one brow go up, the other down.

Of course, “brows” isn’t really the correct term, since dogs sweat only through their paws and have no need of brows to keep perspiration out of their eyes, as we do. Yet, certain breeds of dogs have darker hair over their eyes, what might be called “brow markings,” and he had them.

The Hidatsa, a Native American tribe of the northern Great Plains, believe that these sorts of dogs, whom they call “Four-Eyes,” are especially gentle and have magical powers. Stanley Coren, the astute canine psychologist from the University of British Columbia, has also noted that these “four-eyed” dogs obtained their reputation for psychic powers “because their expressions were easier to read than those of other dogs. The contrasting-colored spots make the movements of the muscles over the eye much more visible.”

In the starlight, the dog lying next to me raised one brow while lowering the other, implying curiosity mixed with concern over whether I’d let him stay.

“Night,” I said, giving him a pat. Then I closed my eyes.

When I opened them in the morning, he was still curled in his nest, looking directly at me.

“Hey,” I said.

Up went one brow, down went the other.

“I am yours,” his eyes said.

I let out a breath, unprepared for how his sweet, faintly hound-dog face -- going from happiness to concern -- left a cut under my heart. I had been looking at litters of Samoyeds, balls of white fur with bright black mischievous eyes. The perfect breed for a winter person like myself, I thought. But I couldn’t quite make myself bring one home. I had also seriously considered Labrador Retrievers, taken by their exuberant personalities and knowing that such a robust, energetic dog could easily share my life in the outdoors as well as be the bird dog I believed I wanted. But no Lab pup had given me that undeniable heart tug that said, “We are a team.”

The right brow of the dog lying by me went down as he held my eye. His left brow went up, implying, “You delayed with good reason.”

“Maybe,” I said, feeling my desire for a pedigree dog giving way. “Maybe,” I said once more to the dog whose eyes coasted across mine, returned, and lingered. He did have the looks of a reddish yellow Lab, I thought, at least from certain angles.

At the sound of my voice, he levered his head under my arm and brought his nose close to mine. Surprisingly, he didn’t try to lick me in that effusive gesture that many dogs use with someone they perceive as dominant to them, whether it be a person or another dog -- a relic, some believe, of young wolves soliciting food from their parents and other adult wolves. The adults, not having hands to carry provisions, bring back meat in their stomachs. The pups lick their mouths, and the adults regurgitate the partly digested meat. Pups who eventually become alphas abandon subordinate licking. Lower-ranking wolves continue to display the behavior to higher-ranking wolves, as do a great many domestic dogs to people. This dog’s self-possession gave me pause. Was he not licking me because he considered us peers? Or did my body language -- both of us being at the same level -- allow him to feel somewhat of an equal? He circumspectly smelled my breath, and I, in turn, smelled his. His smelled sweet.

Whatever he smelled on mine, he liked it. “I am yours,” his eyes said again.

Disconcerted by his certainty about me, I got up and moved off. I didn’t want to abandon my plans for finding a pup who was only six to eight weeks old and whom I could shape to my liking. The dog read my energy and didn’t follow me. Instead, he went to the others, greeting them with a wagging tail and wide laughs of his toothy mouth. “Good morning, good morning, did you sleep well?” he seemed to be saying.

But as I organized my gear, I couldn’t keep my eyes from him. Despite his ribs showing, he appeared fit and strong, and looked like he had been living outside for quite a while, his hair matted with sprigs of grass and twigs. He was maybe fifty-five pounds, not filled out yet, his fox-colored fur hanging in loose folds, waiting for the adult dog that would be. He had a ridge of darker fur along his spine, short golden plumes on the backs of his legs, and a tuxedo-like bib of raised fur on his chest -- just an outline of it -- scattered with white flecks. His ears were soft and flannel-like, and hung slightly below the point of his jaw. His nose was lustrous black, he had equally shiny lips, and his teeth gleamed. His tail was large and powerful.

Copyright © 2007 Ted Kerasote

History Lesson for Girls

The following is an excerpt from History Lesson for Girls
By Aurelie Sheehan
Published by Penguin; June 2007;$14.00US/$17.50CAN; 978-0-14-311190-0
Copyright © 2006 Aurelie Sheehan

Chapter One

One Day I saw them, our dream horses, and on that day I pulled over to the side of the road and cried. There they were, Appaloosas and roans and bays, and I thought I saw, squinting into the last bit of sunlight, a gray. All the horses moved together, a makeshift herd -- maybe they'd heard my car, or maybe it was a chill, the first winter breeze, almost imperceptible on a summer day. So many years later and now here they were in front of me. The horses trembled, shifted, and then became calm and separated out again, twelve or twenty of them, more than enough for the Alison and Kate Horse Training Company.

She saved me. That's the first thing you should know about Kate. It was the year we moved to Weston, the year my parents went haywire, the year my back started curving out of control as if it were the life of the party. She was five feet seven and had long brown hair bleached by the sun, and her father was an Egyptian emperor. Was he for real? Real enough for a small suburban dynasty. Real enough to pass on a legacy.

I think of Kate all the time. I think of her like I've got this little silver Egyptian cat in my pocket, a little silver talisman that won't go away. I think of her, and then I think of him, too, Tut Hamilton, sham shaman in suburbia. I can't forget him, any more than I can forget her.

The thing is, she saved me that year, and then it was my turn. That's what friendship is. That's how to make history.

I was thirteen when my parents and I moved to the fancy town of Weston from maligned and honorable Norwalk, two towns over. We were ready for anything, ready for the good things to start happening, and the first thing that went wrong was the blue room.

Mom wanted her studio to be blue, despite the fact that most painters prefer a room absent of color, a blank wall, a clean palette. She'd had a vision, you see, a dream of a blue room.

My father offered to paint the room for her, but she would choose the color, of course. She and I went to the paint store together.

"These men -- they're painting the world, creating color wheels, color contrasts, color inspirations -- without any real conception, no awareness at all, of what they're doing. They could be artists -- but no, no -- instead of using these glorious choices -- all the glory, all the opportunity, Alison -- they just sit around drinking coffee out of a thermos and painting houses
tan, tan, and tan again. How dreary . . . "

She continued talking as we got out of our Corolla (it also happened to be tan) and walked the short distance from the parking lot to the shopping center. I did hope she'd stop, or at least lower her voice, before we got to the store. She had a way of causing a commotion, despite her size. She was a tiny, fragile person, swathed in scarves and perfumes and charms.

Men of uncertain age and weight looked our way as we came in: Scheherazade and the too tall, too bony, too elbowy stalk, in a back brace, beside her.

My mother breezed by their troubling, huntery expressions, and we settled in before the paint chips. I'd just turned thirteen, my back was curved, and my parents were curved, too -- bohemians in Connecticut, the Land of Plenty. Either all the colors looked good to me or none of them did. Somehow it seemed that this, like everything else, could go either way.

Mom, however, was confident. She hummed with satisfaction, picking out various small, hopeful cards from the rack, cocking her head, pursing her lips -- rejecting one, then the other, until she came to her blue.

Today they've gotten hold of Weston and thrown up these monstrous vault homes, decorated with pillars and neo-this-and-that architectural details, but in 1975 the lovely colonials were what stood out, the historic touch. Some even had plaques near the doorways saying things like Paul Revere Slept Here in 1782 or In 1801, Here Stood Weston's First Mill. The split-levels such as ours, built in the aesthetically challenged sixties, were scattered like tawdry cousins among these statelier, storied homes. Still, moving to 12 Ramble Lane was a big step up for us, and my parents had attached hopes to the house, obvious as the taped-up notes left behind by the house's former owners ("Use 5-watt bulb MAX!" "Filter hose needs to be checked 2X year!"). Mom had torn down their notes impatiently the first day we moved in, replacing them with a sign of her own. Purple felt with silver letters, it hung on the door of her soon-to-be-blue room, her first real studio: "Artist at Work." She could turn it to face in or out, indicating whether she was "open" or "closed" -- a novel idea in a mother. Dad's office was in the basement (he had another at the university), but most of all he seemed keen on a certain green hillock in the backyard, where he could sit cross-legged and rumble with a middle-aged Om.

We were all dressed up now, decked out in zesty Marimekko. And although the first two weeks in Weston passed in a kind of misty, glorious disappointment, most of all we felt lucky to be there, in a town of lilacs and curving roads and studio doors that shut and hillocks and a barn.

Dad stood on the ladder. He'd painted all the edges first, near the ceiling and floors and windows and corners, and then he'd taken out the roller and started in on wide swaths of Prussian Wildflower.

"A bit dark, isn't it?"

"Well, it's what your mother wants. It'll lighten up as it dries, too, Allie Oop."

This cheerfulness was disconcerting. He'd been duped into thinking he could please my mother.

"It looks different from the little card."

"Goddammit," Dad said. A slop of paint had fallen to the floor.

The fact of the matter is, both my parents were fish out of water in Weston. Mom with her dreams of being a painter and Dad with his day job and his poetry books, including the award-winning one, all lined up on the mantel. They were attempting to piece together a life with art at its center and also (not that I was fully aware of this at the time) making choices based on what might be good for me, their daughter. Art geeks, adversaries, people who drove old cars: They weren't part of the PTA crowd, and they weren't swingers, either. Mainly they were simply my parents, and it was extraordinarily embarrassing, but seemed pretty natural, that they were so weird.

"Look, you can't tell anything from the card," he said. "Take a rag to that spot, would you, please?"

"Why do they have the cards, then?"

"To beguile the willing, Alison."

"Why would they do that? They would never do that."

"You don't think so? Think about the visceral and dark depths of the workingman's resentment, darling, and you might have another idea."

The son of Irish immigrants and bardic descendant of many a workingman, my father looked like he was a half second away from falling off the rickety old ladder -- either him or the tray of Prussian Wildflower.

"Do we have any more 7-Up?"

Dad concentrated on his next swab of the roller. His somewhat long and unkempt beard, a poet's beard, bobbed precariously close to the wall.

"Dad?"

He grunted. He smoothed the roller down, then over, making a reverse blue cloud in a white sky. "Try the garage."

Copyright © 2006 Aurelie Sheehan, used with permission from the publisher.

Aurelie Sheehan is the author of the short story collection Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant and the novel The Anxiety of Everyday Objects. The director of the creative writing program at the University of Arizona, she has received a Pushcart Prize, a Camargo Fellowship, and the Jack Kerouac Literary Award. She lives in Tucson with her husband and daughter. For more information, please visit www.aureliesheehan.com