Rose in a Storm (24 page)

Rose remembered that night, too. Sam noticed that Rose behaved strangely up near the pole barn, where she often paused, sniffed the ground, her ruff rising up.

J
UST AFTER DAWN
, Rose was in the habit of going into the pantry, where the wild dog slept near the woodstove, and sniffing him awake. He was slow to rouse and would stretch his stiff legs and forepaws, then stand and lap up some water. Then he and Rose would slip out the dog door before Sam was ready to head out and do chores. Since the storm, Sam now spent some time in the mornings on the computer, always muttering about red tape, forms, and regulations for claiming insurance and grants.

Rose had no idea what he was doing, or why, but had adapted to the new, slightly later schedule. This was when she and the wild dog went for their walk around the farmhouse and in the fields nearby.

S
AM NOTICED
that since the storm, Rose spent more time by herself than she had before, out in the barn, or on the path. She was often with Flash, who was too frail to chase after sheep but who loved to sit with her in the barn or watch her from the pasture gate while she worked. The two often spent the
evenings together, either by the woodstove, where the heat made her leg more comfortable, or in Katie’s old sewing room.

Flash took pills for worms and parasites, for arthritis and heart disease, and for his aching joints. But he had recovered amazingly well from his previous wretched condition and settled happily into life on a farm again, even if he couldn’t work.

Flash loved sleeping in the dark and musty corners of old barns, and stayed close to the woodstove on cold nights. He had taken over the old black sofa, which he sometimes deigned to share with Sam. He loved the morning and evening servings of kibble, and he sensed that Sam had formed a strong attachment to him.

S
AM SENSED IT
too. If Rose was Sam’s working dog, then Flash became something of a pet. Rose hated to leave the farm, and sometimes got sick in trucks—upset by the motion, to which she was especially sensitive. In Flash, Sam had a companion for the endless riding around that came with country life. Sam could see that Flash enjoyed this, and it became his new work. Sam took Flash everywhere he went, and Rose would often look up as the truck rolled off down the hill, Flash’s head sticking out the window, taking in the smells and sights of the dens, caves, and woods where he had lived for so long.

A
S FOR
R
OSE
, she sensed that the wild dog’s company made Sam happier, more cheerful. This was work that she could not do. Rose sometimes felt possessive or territorial, but envy was not known to her. She understood the wild dog’s need to work, and Sam’s need for him.

One morning, a crisp, early summer day with mist coming up in the pasture and over the hills beyond, Rose came into the pantry and Flash was not there. She knew he wasn’t in the house—she couldn’t smell or hear him.

She did hear the sheep calling out, though not in alarm. They seemed confused, the way they were when something was out of the ordinary. It could mean the appearance of a groundhog, a fox, an airplane, a skunk.

She went out through the swinging dog door into the cool sunny morning, so different from the snow and ice of the big storm. Rose looked up toward the pole barn, where the sheep were, and paused. After a moment, she started running, streaking across the rear of the farm to the pasture gate, slipping under it and up alongside the big barn, gathering speed as she went, pumping up the hill. She didn’t see him until she got closer, although she already knew he was there.

Up by the side of the pole barn, lying on his side, was Flash.

From some distance away, Rose could hear the wheeze in his breath, his faint heartbeat. He was laboring badly, his tongue hanging from one side of his mouth. He must have gotten up sometime during the night, crept out the door, and come up into the pasture. He would not have chosen to die inside a house.

Instead he chose to die with the sheep, as any farm dog might.

When she reached him, Rose sniffed his tail, then his side, then touched his nose. She could hear the weak pumping of blood in his veins, the labored breathing, the rattle in his throat.

She had known, of course, well before she reached him.

It was not a bad feeling. She saw an image of the emaciated
old dog seeking sanctuary as the blizzard approached. He was different now.

She had seen the wild dog settle in happily at the farm, attaching himself to Sam in a way she never could, curling up each night on his fluffy dog bed, living his last days in comfort and surrounded by affection. She saw how content he had been.

She knew he was blind in one eye, nearly deaf, and lame in two legs, and that his knees and joints were sore and swollen. She smelled the blood connection, and felt it, too; the two had been joined in the most powerful way ever since the storm.

All of the animals on the farm gazed up, some uneasily, at the odd sight of the two dogs together beside the pole barn, one smelling so distinctly of death.

A few flies already buzzed around Flash, and Rose looked up to see vultures circling high in the air. There were scavengers on the ground, too, out of sight—foxes, coyotes, and birds and raccoons. Once his spirit left, Rose had no interest in his decaying body. The scavengers could have him.

She sat down next to her father, who opened his eyes, and whose breath was a throaty wheeze. His eyes were glazed, out of focus, and his hind legs were splayed, one of them twitching in spasm.

The sheep were now watching, anxious. An impulse to go get Sam flashed through her mind, but she looked at Flash and she felt
his
instincts: He wanted to be alone, with her, with the sheep, in the pasture.

It was over for him. Rose felt no grief, just a responsibility to be with him on this passage.

R
OSE DID NOT LEAVE
Flash’s side that morning.

Up on this hill, the sun burning off the mist, the two dogs
fused in their own particular fantasy. The other animals turned away. It was alien to them, unsettling, this scene. The old dog needed to be touched, known, and Rose lay down next to him, and put her nose against his.

This was a crossing for each of them.

The old dog was leaving, and Rose would be living a different kind of life without him. If she did not exactly know grief, she did know loss.

For Flash, this was a journey into the unknown. Rose knew how far she could take him, because she had been there once before. She closed her eyes, and he closed his, and they both entered another space, one quieter than any the wild dog had known, just as Rose had experienced it during the storm.

It was a place of absolute stillness and peace.

They crossed a smooth expanse of water, still and shimmering. They crossed to another shore. Again, there were the blue lights as far as both could see, the countless lights on the far side of the stream.

They both saw they were with the spirits of dogs.

Rose saw the old dog find this place of ease and quiet. She was not there, she was only guiding him. He walked alongside her, slowly, and at first with some pain. But soon that seemed to ease, and his gait smoothed out and his pace quickened, and before long, when they came to the point she could not go past, he simply glided on ahead of her.

He turned to her, their eyes met, and then he turned away and did not look back.

And then she lost him, gone in the seas of blue lights, colors, and the mist into which he seemed to melt.

And just like that, he was gone.

Rose opened her eyes and looked out at the pasture, and
felt the wind. She raised her nose in the air, catching the stories the wind brought, and knew all she needed to know.

She saw that the old dog’s eyes were open, but he had stopped breathing; his spirit had whirled up into the sky. She sniffed his snout, and then his forehead, and then sat back up and looked out over the sheep, and the farm.

The sheep called softly to one another, and looked away.

And she heard a door slam down below. Rose saw Sam coming up the hill, a shovel in one hand. She’d heard him earlier calling for Flash, seen him looking out the window. He too must have known what the dog was doing up in the pasture, why he had gone there. Sam had left them alone until he saw the birds circling overhead.

And she saw now that he was looking down at the ground, his face oddly contorted.

She came slowly down to meet him, to walk with him back up the hill.

It was all she could do.

It was enough.

T
HE FARM
was well into the dog days.

Sam had decided to breed Rose, and she was pregnant. The sire was a purebred border collie from Manchester, Vermont. She was calm and ripe, as Sam liked to put it, and he was like a proud and expectant dad.

Rose’s pups, he told his friends, had to be special dogs. Other farmers should have them, and Sam wasn’t shy about thinking about the money they might bring. The vet said $2,000 a pup would not be unreasonable, perhaps even more, given Rose’s spreading reputation. For Sam, for any farmer,
that was serious money. Her work in the storm had already become local legend, and some people had even driven by the farm to get a look at her. Sam usually shooed them off.

Sam meant to keep one of the males for himself. To help out on the farm, to ride with him into town. He missed Flash more than he would have imagined or admitted to anyone.

Rose was, in fact, different, although Sam could not say precisely how. Sam thought she seemed somehow calmer, more contemplative, if you could use such a word to describe a dog.

Something about her seemed more settled, almost peaceful, apart from her limp, a reminder of those awful days in the storm. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know, Sam thought.

A
S THE SUMMER PROGRESSED
, Rose’s belly began to swell. With each day that passed she was growing quieter and rounder. She lazed in the hot days of summer in a way she never had before.

One afternoon, when Sam had gone off in the truck and the farm shimmered in the hazy sun, the animals settled and quiet, Rose felt something stir inside of her. Slowly she made her way down the hill, away from the sheep onto the path, and out to Katie’s stump.

She took her time, pausing to smell rabbit holes and scat and listen to mice and chipmunks and bees. She felt a sense of great expectancy.

Rose loved these walks through the woods, the mishmash of smells and sounds and colors that awakened her, and sharpened her senses. The stories of her world were dancing in her head. She could hardly keep up with them, and she felt like spinning for joy.

She felt strong, alive.

And she felt, for the first time in her consciousness, light and free.

And not alone.

When she got to the stump, she lay down.

There was a long pause, and Rose imagined Katie. The two listened to the sound of the creek rushing through the forest, the leaves rustling in the breeze, the birds in the trees, the animals running along the ground and in burrows. They smelled flowers and took in the news of the wind, the changing shadows.

Tell me, Katie asked, was there really a wolf?

Rose glanced up into Katie’s eyes, and the two looked into each other’s souls. Rose did not understand the words, but tilted her head to try to catch the tone, and picked up the wonder, the admiration, the love.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Jennifer Hershey for her extraordinary hard work and vision in shaping this challenging book and assisting my return to fiction. And Jen Smith.

I also thank Bruce Tracy, Andy Barzvi, Richard Abate, Emma Span, Jane Richter, Brian McLendon, Courtney Moran, Elizabeth Stein, and Maria Wulf.

I appreciate my wonderful dogs—Rose, Izzy, Lenore, and Frieda—who inspire my work and my photography every day.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J
ON
K
ATZ
has written nineteen books—seven novels and twelve works of nonfiction—including
Soul of a Dog, Izzy & Lenore, Dog Days, A Good Dog
, and
The Dogs of Bedlam Farm
. He has written for
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal
, Slate,
Rolling Stone, Wired
, and the
AKC Gazette
. He has worked for CBS News,
The Boston Globe, The Washington Post
, and
The Philadelphia Inquirer
. Katz is also a photographer, and the author of a children’s book,
Meet the Dogs of Bedlam Farm
. He lives on Bedlam Farm in upstate New York with the artist Maria Wulf; his dogs, Rose, Izzy, Lenore, and Frieda; his donkeys, Lulu and Fanny; and his barn cats, Mother and Minnie.

www.bedlamfarm.com