This was one of the first short stories I published in about 2004. It was published in Lily Literary Review.
My mother kept our ranch as English as possible: a replica of some shadowy memory she had of her childhood in rural England. The fenced-off, square pastures were irrigated from a dam that she had installed to stop the flow of Love Creek. Every year, the dreaded chore began, and the entire family was conscripted into labor. My sister and I built a small makeshift dike of sand, stone, and branches that retarded the flow of water, and my father, and sometimes one of my sister’s boyfriends who were always hanging around, followed my mother’s explicit orders by jamming boards and black plastic into a concrete frame constructed at the neck of the river. Then the water pooled into a sparkling pond of fish and water snakes, and the water was then pumped onto the pastures turning the grass an emerald green, in stark contrast to the neighbors dried fields. My mother hated brown hills and fields and saw no beauty in a Sonoran landscape. I, on the other hand, looked at the brown hills around Santa Cruz and formed words in my mind such as “sepia,” “ochre,” or “tawny as a lion’s back.”
In the Soquel Valley nestled in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the days in the summer began with a cool, light fog, which cleared-up by late morning. By the beach, the fog could linger all day, but up at the ranch, five miles from the surf and the tourists, the hot days began earlier. In the summer, my mornings lifted with the fog, and I lingered in bed reading until the mist cleared, and then as the blue loomed over the fog, I ran outside. The sun shone through the slivers of mist; the ranch was vivid and brilliant with English gardens and the rare colored birds that whirled- in attracted by the calls from the aviaries or the seed left on the fence posts. My small world was a frenzy of tones and smells: pink daphne, golden freesia, rusty roses that smelled of apricots. I would skip through the gardens and chicken yards then slip away with Rex to Love Creek or, even more secluded and inaccessible, Soquel Creek.
Love Creek Ranch was possessed with an energetic pulse of mystery and power. The secret, sensuous crevice of ferns and frogs through which Love Creek flowed; the cow fields sown with barley and vetch, rich and dangerous with striped snakes and hairy, hieroglyphic spiders; the huge, silent oaks with thick canopies of dusty, barbed leaves—densely green above and crispy brown below like a carpet of thick chips prickling my bare feet—all comprised a protective cradle that was more a mother or a nursemaid than my parents.
But the silent sentry of my earliest memories was Rex, king of beasts, our golden, sensitive Great Dane. We bought him somewhere deep in the San Lorenzo Valley—a narrow, moist valley that to my young, fanciful eyes seemed a home to leprechauns. Tantalizing four-leaf clovers nestled at the roots of oversized redwoods, and the roads dangerously and thrillingly twisted up the sides of hills redolent with shadow and the smell of peat. My mother grew car-sick and disgusted on such trips, as she was convinced that humans were only meant to inhabit flat, farmable land, and that anyone who would live in such a place was mentally deficient. For me, however, the trip to get Rex was full of delight and fairy tale. First, in Scott’s Valley, we passed “The Lost World,” a large compound hidden behind a high brick wall, above which towered the long necks of dinosaurs and the tops of exotic trees with twisted trunks. Then, we passed the improbable world of “Santa’s Village,” in the center of which Santa lived in a small cottage surrounded by lines of children on pilgrimage to his lap. Elves in smart, green, sharply scalloped tunics ran rides and games, while bored and demoralized reindeer plodded in circles pulling cart after cart of screaming children. For 25 cents dropped in a slot, scrawny, perpetually molting, colorless chickens performed tricks behind the walls of glass cages and won prizes of single grains of corn. In the car, my forehead pressed to the window, I stared with longing at these fantastic centers of canned delirium as we made our way from the flat, open valley into the teeming, shadowed secrets of the San Lorenzo valley. Somewhere outside one of the hobbit-like villages up the San Lorenzo River, we bought Rex. His mother was the biggest dog I had ever seen, and she was just the mother. The father must be huge. I couldn’t believe it. She lay like Cleopatra on a Nile barge. She was calm and unruffled by my toy pistol that I unthinkingly unsheathed from my carved leather belt holster and popped off in the living room to my instant regret and embarrassment. The puppies must have been somewhere, but I only remember her—her dignity and tranquility. For once, I was silent, reverent, and humble. I don’t remember bringing Rex home or his puppy hood; all I knew was that, suddenly, Rex became my guardian. Silent, watchful, alert, kind. In my twenties, when my college friends spoke of being “supportive,” I always thought of Rex. Rex was supportive, a sort of underpinning to every crazy scheme I had. For instance, Rex was with me when I stole my mother’s mother-of-pearl handled steak knife, made a makeshift sheath out of a hose, and stuffed them both into my belt. The young oak, bay, and poisonous buckeye trees became enemy Indians or soldiers whom I was stabbing with a quick unsheathing of my knife. As the game wore on, it became a weird art project as I carved symbols and runes (tattoos) into the hapless tree trunks. Unfortunately, the knife got lodged in the hose, and, of course, I had to bury the entire apparatus, lest my mother discover my theft. Rex never told anyone, and stood by in case the oak trees got the better of me. Standing guard over me appeared to be Rex’s preferred duty, but like a well-disciplined soldier, he would reflexively respond to my mother’s call. She could get Rex to do anything. I was skeptical. Rex didn’t know his own weight and power. He could get away with disobedience; he was just a dog. But Rex was observant and dutiful, and he learned to satisfy my mother’s exacting demands. Doreen would set up an obstacle course in our driveway turnaround: there were jumps, tunnels, walls. My mother would throw a stick, and using only hand signals and whistles, she would command Rex to jump, go under, scale walls and find the stick. He did not return immediately on obtaining the stick. First, he would check my mother for further commands, and she would communicate her convoluted plan in exacting code. First he must sit, then put the stick down, then come back to her, sit, lie down, stand, go back for the stick by a different route, and then bring it back via the tunnel or the jump. While I was proud of both Rex’s and my mother’s strange and frightening powers, I felt sorry for Rex. I wondered if my mother insisted on these arcane and horrendous calisthenics because she was English. I was not immune from my mother’s training, as much as I tried to hide in Love Creek, my sister and my mother would find me. My sister energetically conformed to my mother’s training, but I, I suppose, was a dreamer or a rebel and preferred to be “lazy.” I would be routed from my reveries in the creek bed, where I hopped from stone to stone and poked water skeeters. Reluctantly, I dragged my feet to the horse stables. There, after grooming the horse to my mother’s satisfaction, I lugged the saddle out of the barn and attempted to saddle and bridle my chronically pissed-off and recalcitrant Welsh Mountain Pony. He was as annoyed as I to be subjected to the forthcoming indignities, but he blamed me, and he watched me from the corner of his eye as I prepared him for the day’s dressage. Sometimes, he bit, kicked, or stamped me as I groomed him or tightened his girth, but usually he waited until I was on his back and truly helpless.
Out in the riding ring, my mother taught me a pattern to memorize. Letters marked the corners and sides of the ring. I would enter the center of the ring on the pony and bow to her, and then set off on the prescribed course. Walk to letter C and make a half circle, trot to D and do a figure eight (how many five year olds even know what a figure eight is?), canter to A and perform a “turn on the forehand” (absolutely impossible). Blue, my pony, waited until I felt relaxed and unaware, the reins a bit slack, and then bounced me off like a baseball bunt. The ground, miles away, rose to meet me. The air knocked from my stomach, and I couldn’t breathe, or I hit my head and saw stars; sometimes my arms and legs folded beneath me, and my bones seemed to bend. The highlight of the day would be when Blue, completely peeved, would make a dash for the apple tree in the corner of the field, run me under a branch, and knock me silly. Rex watched, his ears pulled up tight on the top of his head, his eyes worried. Rex was often torn between his blind obedience to my mother and his love for me. In the cold mornings before school, my mother would suddenly realize my hair had not been brushed for some time. She’d sit me down in front of the mirror in the bathroom, proudly ready to go in my Lennon sister imitation dress flowering around my knees, my patent leather shoes polished with Vaseline, and my blindingly white socks. Then she’d begin to yank the tangles out of my unmanageable, thick mop of red hair. I would start to cry. Rex would suddenly be at my side, ears up, eyes welling, plaintive whines escaping his mouth. My mother, infuriated, would command him to “go on.” Rex would walk to the open bathroom door, turn around, and sit and stare, turning his head from side to side as if to decipher my cries. His whines would turn to frantic, low, barks. “Shut up!” my mother would scream.
In final desperation, he would gingerly walk to my side, softly take my mother’s wrist between his teeth, and gently pull.
“Goooo on!” she screamed. He disappeared behind the doorframe and craned his head around to watch. Finally, Doreen slammed the bathroom door in Rex’s face. The door was wounded and scarred from Rex‘s paws.
Horses shows were the bane of my summer existence. I was shaken awake when it was still dark—unbelievable, that morning could be so black with white stars still coldly lingering in a morning sky. How was this morning? This was still night. And to have to catch my horse at this unholy hour and force him into a horse trailer only confirmed Blue’s suspicions that I was the enemy. In a dull sleepwalk, I prepared my tack and loaded my riding clothes: officious blue velvet blazers, canary-yellow flaring jodhpurs, polished English riding boots like a motorcycle cop’s, black, sharp riding whips called, for some atrocious reason, “crops.” Then, my legs aching with anxiety, we began a journey that could be as close as Graham Hill across town or as far away as Sacramento or Pebble Beach—across the world as far as I was concerned. I yearned for sleep like a mourner yearns for tears and prayed that Blue would not buck me off. Rex, who accompanied me on these ordeals, quietly rested his head on my knees as I shuddered or slept in the back seat of the truck.
Miraculously, I often placed in the competitions, as I was superbly trained for my age category. My sister excelled in several areas: stadium jumping, cross country jumping, programmed rides, dressage, but I, after one or two events, was set free to wander around the horse show grounds. Graham Hill Fairgrounds, on a mountain ridge between Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley, was adjacent to a huge park the magnitude of which left me breathless and disoriented: acres and acres of redwoods and fragrant bay trees whose savory leaves tasted of earth, danger, and something like the smell of pine. As my mother vigilantly watched my sister compete, I would curiously trek corners of the park, heading further and further into its tangled and compelling density. I had my favorite trails that looped back to the relative security and bustle of the horse show grounds, but sometimes I would strike off to conquer new territories—running away for good I pretended, then returning drawn by the siren call of hunger or thirst to the family truck and trailer. In the middle of one such adventure in an unknown, un-trailed, and scrubby section of Henry Cowell Park, I traversed up and down a small, dry ravine where a strange bulbous growth grew on the sides of the tree trunks. I was convinced it was an alien pod from which the spawn of some creature would eventually emerge. And on probing the woody knob with my pocketknife, I was intrigued to find a sort of tapioca-like, eggy substance that smelled of frogs. I had lost all sense of time and no connection to reality, when I turned around to see Rex standing behind me. I was always floored at the sudden sight of Rex—how he would appear like an apparition when I least expected. “Rex, where did you come from?” He merely walked up next to me and leaned on me smiling his toothy, tongue-out smile. I suddenly realized it was time to head back, so hand across Rex’s back, which was our characteristic way of walking, since Rex’s withers were just about at my shoulder level, we headed back. The trail forked, and Rex stopped at the fork as I continued on. He sat down, and his ears pulled up, his forehead pulled into profoundly worried wrinkles, as I blithely skipped down the trail. I called Rex repeatedly, but he refused to budge. I didn’t care where I went, so I walked back to Rex, threw my arm over him, and took his preferred path to the grounds and my parent’s truck. There are nearly two thousand acres in Henry Cowell Park, not including its connections to other enormous parks and the University of California Santa Cruz. In those days, and even today, much of the park remains naturalistic and empty of humans. I’m glad Rex brought me home, and I wonder how many little favors and rescues I have forgotten. How many acts of love and protection went unnoticed? I don’t know why Rex died, but I know my mother put him to sleep. Today, when I talk to her about it, she remembers how much she loved Rex, how incredibly intelligent he was , and how she cried to Dr. Stickles—our compassionate and wise veterinarian—so that he really pitied her. But Rex had to go. The nature of his infirmity was and still is obscure, and I saw very little sign of it except on one summer day when my mother decided it was time I learned to ride a bike.
Ordinarily, I loved to ride my bike. It was a beautiful, candy apple red miniature Shwinn cruiser with tassels on the handlebar. We had a driveway that climbed a hill for about a quarter of a mile up to Old San Jose Road—the ancient, back hills route from San Jose to points south. Apple trees lined our driveway, and the horse, cow, and sheep pastures were spread out like a green patchwork beyond the fruit trees. Standing up on my bike, I labored to the top of the driveway, a feat that took some time to build up the strength and stamina to accomplish. At the top, I turned around and soared down the hill toward the farmhouse. In my imagination, I was surrounded by a gang of like-minded criminals. We had huge swords drawn and were attacking the fortress of the evil queen. We were runaways, but we were returning to wreak revenge. Yes, I loved my bike, but I was not ready for the training wheels to come off.
I had already done my horseback riding lesson. Blue had been rubbed down and put away, and all the tack had been cleaned with golden, translucent glycerin soap bars. My fingers smelled of glycerin, and my boots were uncomfortable. They were my sister’s hand-me-downs and came up to the middle of my knees, making bending my knees nearly impossible. I was ready to be barefoot and in the creek. But my mother was on a rampage. My neighbor or a cousin or someone my age could ride a bike without training wheels, and it was decided that I should too.
If I could just run to the Blue Spruce tree and climb it before she caught me, I could sit up there until nightfall. She would forget about me and start thinking about cooking dinner. I started a bolt for my favorite climbing tree in the front yard.
“Grab her! Get her!” yelled my sister, her eyes glistening and wide with excitement. I tried to run, but my boots betrayed me. I couldn’t get beyond a few halting strides, and I fell, opening the ever- present scab on my knee. My sister got a screw driver, and the training wheels were removed.
Over and over, my mother put me on my bike and pushed me. The moment she let go, I tilted over like a slain tree. Timber, Crash. My sister was delighted, but gradually became bored and went into the house to eat half a loaf of homemade toast smeared with butter. I had no concentration or balance as long as I cried like a pitiful baby. To make matters worse, Rex started running in front of the bike. Everything that was not my stupid fault was Rex’s. “Goooo On!” my mother predictably screamed.
Rex would slink off a short distance, but reappear the moment she pushed and let go. Down I crashed again.
Finally, my mother ran up to Rex and hit him. I don’t remember where she hit him; I only remember he screamed and collapsed on the ground making a blubbering noise. His legs seem to have turned into jelly and his muscles had no tone.
I was horrified, demoralized, shaken. I would have felt an overwhelming rush of pity, but I was too shocked. Rex was like a God or an angel to me. My budding mysticism and sense of good were all tied up in my sure knowledge of his profound and abiding love for me. That he could be so wounded or weakened tore my soul to shreds.
“Oh, there’s something wrong with him.” My mother looked as if she had stepped into a steaming pile of something and stalked into the house. That was the last time I remember seeing Rex. Soon after that, he disappeared with little explanation.
I have had many dogs, but Rex was the first and only dog to whom I belonged. And together, Rex and I belonged to something larger still—an illogical, hidden world where the air is rich with the oxygen of trees; steep, ineffable valleys removed from the grudges of towns; riverbeds and creeks, a world away from the fenced-in pastures, irrigated by water taken from the throat of the earth.
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