The Road From Gap Creek: A Novel Hardcover Read online

  A young dog, however smart it is, has an instinct to hunt. If a rabbit runs out of hiding, a dog will go after it. That’s what it will do as natural as water running downhill. Troy was afraid she’d get lost and called her back, and every time she give up the chase and come back to him. But when we got near the branch with our arms full of holly and turkey’s paw, something run out of the brush and Old Pat dashed after it. It didn’t run like a rabbit does but kind of bobbed along. I just got a glimpse of it disappearing through some honeysuckle vines and what I seen was a wide white stripe down its back with black fur and a bushy tail.

  “My God, it’s a polecat,” I hollered.

  “Come back, Old Pat. Come back here,” Troy yelled.

  But Old Pat had already gone through the brush, following the skunk, if it was a skunk. Brush had growed up all along the branch there.

  “Here, here,” Troy called, and slapped his knee like he done to make Old Pat jump up on his britches. And he whistled too, like he did sometimes to call her. I called too, but it didn’t seem to do no good. If it was a polecat, I didn’t want to get too close. I told Troy we should circle around and see what it was. There was a stirring in the leaves down there.

  “Here, Old Pat, here,” Troy called again. It was an overcast day and kind of gloomy in the thicket and we couldn’t see much at all. The banks along the branch was deep in rotting leaves and there was sink holes all along the stream, some deep as a cellar. Old Pat whimpered and whined, and when we seen her she was standing along the rim of a sinkhole pawing the ground. Whatever she was chasing had jumped down into that sinkhole.

  “Come here, Pat,” Troy called.

  I imagined later that I heard something, a kind of hiss or whiz, a sprinkle of a spray. But I’m not sure I did. But we both smelled it, that awful smell a skunk throws out, like the scent of burnt rubber or the bitterest coffee grounds, except a hundred times stronger. “Oh my God,” I said.

  And Old Pat pulled back from the rim of the sink hole like she’d been pushed by a terrible wind. And when she run to us the smell on her coat burned my nose. It was a stink so bad you felt it would give you a headache or make you throw up. Old Pat come running toward us and we all hurried back up the hill through the yellow pines and by the holly tree to the open pasture. The stink seemed to follow us, and by the time we got close to the house Mama was already out on the porch. She’d smelled the polecat from inside the kitchen and come out to see where the stench was coming from.

  “Did a polecat spray you?” she called.

  We told her no, but Old Pat may have got hit.

  “Get a tow sack and rub that dog with turpentine,” she said. “Do it at the barn and don’t get any in her eyes or mouth.”

  I don’t think much of the skunk’s spray had actually touched Old Pat’s fur, but she still smelled to high heaven, or deep hell. At the barn we rubbed her all over with turpentine and then it was a lot better. But we smelled the burnt-rubber stink on her for weeks, all through Christmas and into the new year.

  I RECKON IT was the next spring when Troy was sent by Papa to nail fence wire up on the far side of the pasture where fallen limbs had knocked the wire loose. It was cool in the morning and he wore his coat when he took the bag of steeples and the hammer to work his way around the pasture fence to fasten the barbed wire to the posts again. Papa and Velmer was working on a house down at the lake then and Papa said Troy was big enough to look after the place by hisself. Of course Old Pat went with him.

  But that evening when Troy come back for supper the dog wasn’t with him. “Where is Old Pat?” I said.

  Troy said she’d run off while he was working, chasing a rabbit or maybe a possum through the pine thicket and had never come back.

  “Which way did she run?” I said.

  “Toward the river.”

  Troy said he’d better look for his dog and I told him to wait until I’d scattered corn for the chickens and gathered eggs and I’d go with him. It wasn’t like Old Pat to run off after a rabbit and not come back. Since she wasn’t a nose dog, she’d only run after an animal as long as it was in sight. And then after a few minutes she’d show up again, a little out of breath and tickled with her adventure.

  Me and Troy started out toward the river and Mama called after us that supper would be ready in a few minutes. Just then Papa drove into the yard and when we told him we was going to look for Old Pat he said not to bother. “That dog will show up at feeding time.”

  “A dog can always find its way home,” Velmer said.

  But we went anyway, walking along the edge of the pasture to the bottomland and along the birch trees by the river. Troy called out for Old Pat from time to time. We seen a muskrat slipping into the water. Wild mustard growed along the edge of the field and soon it would be time to pick it for creasy greens. Coming back, we took the trail over the Squirrel Hill to the barn, but we never seen any sign of Old Pat.

  “She’ll come back,” I said. But there was a chill in the air as we eat supper and I washed the dishes. Troy was so sad he didn’t say nothing. I thought he was going to cry. Papa told him dogs always come home after they’ve been running around. But I know we was thinking that a young dog like Pat could get in all kinds of trouble. She could have been caught in a steel trap some trapper had left or been shot by a hunter or been killed by a pack of wild dogs. She could have been hit by a car or truck since she was foolish about running cars.

  After supper Troy kept going out on the porch to see if Old Pat had come back to her house, the house he’d made out of rough pine planks. But the doghouse was empty. I don’t reckon he slept much that night, for once I heard him get up and take the flashlight and go out on the porch to look in the doghouse.

  Next morning there was gloom all over the house because Troy looked so sad. There was nothing we could say to cheer him up because the dog had not come back during the night. A heavy frost whitened the ground and it was only then that Troy remembered he’d took off his jacket the day before and left it hanging on the fence at the other end of the pasture. He’d got so concerned about Old Pat that he’d forgot about his coat.

  There was an old coat of Velmer’s in the closet that was about wore out, and Troy put that on to go after his good coat. I went with him to bring the old coat back while he worked on the fence where he had got to the day before. It was so cold our breath turned to smoke as we walked across the frosty pasture. I told Troy that maybe he could get him another dog if Old Pat was lost.

  “Don’t want another dog,” Troy said.

  As we come around the hill I seen Troy’s coat where he’d folded it across the top strand of barbed wire. It looked a little like a body draped there. Frost made the wool glitter.

  “That coat is going to be cold and damp,” I said.

  As we got closer something stirred in the grass beneath where the coat hung. At first I thought it must be a wild animal, a groundhog or fox. But then it jumped up when it heard us and I seen it was Old Pat. She run and jumped right up on Troy. He hugged her and she yelped.

  I looked at the ground under the jacket and there was a bed flattened out in the grass where Old Pat had slept all night, guarding Troy’s jacket and waiting for him to return. She’d been doing her duty as a guard dog. It was the first time I seen how she took responsibility for things, which a German shepherd will do.

  I NEVER SEEN a dog that loved to swim more than Old Pat. Any time we walked down to the river she liked to jump in to cool off, or chase a duck that was setting on the water. You wouldn’t think a dog with such a bristly coat would like the water so much, but she did. Velmer or Troy or me would throw a stick into the river and she’d go paddling after it and bring it to the bank. Nobody ever had to teach her to swim. The first time she seen the river she waded out and started swimming. I reckon she was born that way.

  That was trouble for us if we wanted to go fishing. If you took Old Pat with you fishing in the Lemmon’s Hole or Bee Gum Hole or over at the Johnson Shoals on Bob�
�s Creek, she’d plunge into the water first thing and scare all the fish away. We liked to fish on a day after it rained and turned the water dishwater cloudy, when the fields was too wet to work in anyway. That was a good time to dig a can of worms out by the barn or below the hog pen. It was exciting to walk down to the river, listening to the roar of the falls on the swollen creek.

  But first time we took Pat with us she hopped right into the river and swum around and yelped with delight and we had to wait fifteen or twenty minutes to start fishing to let the trout come out of hiding. “No!” Troy called to his dog when she started back toward the river. “No!” Pat was less than a year old then and she was confused. For she liked attention and approval. Before that, when she jumped into the river, we throwed sticks for her to catch and bring back to the bank. And here Troy was scolding her for even getting into the water.

  “Call her back and point to the fishing poles,” I said.

  “She won’t understand,” Velmer said. “All she knows is we come to the river.”

  “Call her back,” I said to Troy.

  “Here, Pat, here, Old Pat,” Troy called and slapped the knees of his britches.

  Pat come swimming to the edge and climbed out on the bank. Knowing she’d shake herself and spray water from her fur, we all backed away. When she’d stopped shivering off the water Troy pointed to his fishing pole and said, “Bad dog! Don’t go near the water. Bad dog! Stay out of the river.”

  I don’t know if Old Pat understood exactly what he was saying, but you could see she got her feelings hurt. She was used to being praised for going out into the river. And here she was being blamed. Troy pointed again to his fishing pole and said, “Bad dog! Bad dog!”

  Old Pat was a sensitive dog. She was so surprised and hurt by Troy’s words she slunk off up the bank and whined and laid down under the hazelnut bushes and watched us, panting and whimpering a little. We waited a few more minutes and baited our hooks and throwed them in the water. It was a good day for fishing for Troy soon caught a horny head about eight inches long. I caught a trout a little longer, just long enough to keep. After a while Velmer’s pole bent over almost to the water and what he pulled out was so long I thought at first it was a trout, but it was long and round and kind of yellow brown with an ugly snuffle on its face. It was a hog sucker, over a foot long I guess. Velmer took it off the hook and throwed it up into the bushes. “Fisherman’s luck, a wet ass and a hungry gut,” he said.

  But then Troy’s pole started whipping down and back and forth at the tip and he pulled out of the muddy water a rainbow trout all silvery and flashing its pink and green. It was at least a foot long and jumped around so lively he had trouble holding it to get the hook out. Velmer broke off a limb with a fork in it and hooked the limb through the trout’s gills and stuck the end of the limb in the bank so the trout would stay alive in the water till we started home. There was a big smile on Troy’s lips. Catching such a nice trout is a thrill to anybody but especially to a boy twelve years old.

  “Where there’s one trout there’ll be another,” Velmer said. “I bet that trout has got a mate at least as big.” Troy rebaited his hook and throwed it back out into the Lemmon’s Hole. Just then we heard a rustling in the leaves above us and turned to see Old Pat chasing something down the bank. She must have got over her pout for her ears was pricked up. Whatever she was following went this way and that way. I thought at first it must be a mouse, but then I seen a fiery red water dog with black spots race out of the weeds and into the water. Old Pat jumped right into the river after it, but of course she couldn’t catch a salamander that must have crawled away into the mud.

  “Bad dog!” Troy shouted. “Bad dog!”

  Old Pat come back out of the water looking sheepish and ashamed. “Bad dog!” Troy said.

  Velmer broke a switch off a birch tree and hit it on his britches leg.

  “Won’t do no good to whip her,” Troy said.

  “Got to teach that dog a lesson,” Velmer said.

  “Don’t you whip my dog,” Troy said.

  Old Pat seen the switch and slunk off up the bank. She was a smart dog and knowed she’d done wrong. I don’t think she’d learned the lesson the first time when Troy called her a bad dog. But she’d learned it the second time, because after that she stayed up on the bank, under the hazelnut bushes until we finished fishing. From then on any time she seen a fishing pole at the river she stayed out of the water. You never heard of such a smart dog as Old Pat.

  THAT SUMMER WE went swimming every Saturday or Sunday afternoon. If it hadn’t rained too much and the river was clear it was the perfect place to go swimming. The river was cold, but in hot weather it felt good, and once you got in after a while you didn’t notice the cold when your skin got cold. There was two ways to go into the cold river. You could wade out a little at a time into deeper water and get used to it gradually. Or dive in and take the shock instantly. The boys seemed to prefer to plunge in and the girls to ease in. Effie come with us and Fay and Lorrie too sometimes, and a bunch of boys. I think the boys come partly to see me in my bathing suit. I had a new white bathing suit that I thought was especially pretty.

  Because our house was close to the river, everybody left their bathing suits on our clothesline to dry and then they would change in one of our bedrooms. Sometimes the boys would change out behind the barn. Pat soon knowed everybody’s bathing suit and I could say to her, “Go get my bathing suit,” and she’d run and grab my suit out of its clothespins and bring it to me. But she knowed everybody else’s suit also and Fay and Lorrie and all the others enjoyed sending her to get their suits. It become a kind of game, sending Old Pat to get your suit off the line.

  One time, when it was just about the hottest day of the summer, we got our suits on and walked down to the Bee Gum Hole because it seemed deeper and colder than the Lemmon’s Hole. The Bee Gum Hole is right at the bend of the river where Bob’s Creek pours its cold spring-fed water into the river. One of Velmer’s buddies brought an inner tube and we had a wonderful time holding on to it and riding down through the Jim Lee Shoals and then coming back to the pool and starting again. I reckon the pool was at least ten feet deep, for you could sink down way over your head, and sometimes you felt a fish brush past you. We was splashing and hollering and having water fights and having a good time when Old Pat swum out to me and started clawing me.

  “You get away!” I said. I thought she was trying to drown me. “You go away!” I said, and backed away. But she kept paddling and pushing at me.

  “That dog is trying to drown me,” I said. I backed into the shallow place near where the creek run into the river, and Pat followed me. “Bad dog,” I said. I had red marks where she’d scratched me.

  Just then, over the sound of the shoals and everybody’s laughter and splashing, there was this terrible crash in the sky and I looked up in time to see the saw-teeth of lightning zap the top of an oak tree high above the river. The top of the tree broke off in steam and dropped right into the Bee Gum Hole where I’d been swimming when Old Pat started pushing me to the bank. If I’d stayed there the tree would have killed me.

  We’d been so busy hollering and having fun we hadn’t even noticed the thundercloud coming up over the Cicero Mountain. The day was so hot there had to be an electrical storm. Everybody was splashing out of the water and nobody had been hit by the tree. I was trembling I was so shocked. And I didn’t pay no attention when Old Pat shook water out of her fur.

  “A dog will draw lightning,” Velmer said.

  Troy pointed up the hill and told Old Pat to run away, to run ahead, and she did. But how did she know lightning was going to strike that tree and that it would fall into the pool? She had some kind of instinct for knowing things I never did understand.

  LIKE I SAID before, as she got older Old Pat had quit yelping at cars and running after trucks unless there was something unusual or unusually loud about the car or truck. She was too smart a dog to waste her time that way. Her ears w
ould prick up when she heard a car coming, or she’d stand at the edge of the yard and watch it go by, like she was making sure nothing strange or dangerous come into the yard where Velmer and Mama had set out a row of boxwoods. After all, she was a police dog, bred to look out for things and guard her owners.

  But one day, when Old Pat must have been about two years old, a dump truck come up the river road. It made so much noise you could hear it way off, moaning and groaning up the hill. It must have lost its muffler, for it roared and popped in an ugly way. Old Pat run out to the edge of the porch to watch it coming and I stood on the porch to see what was making such a racket. Mama come out of the kitchen too, and Troy, who’d been setting on the living room floor drawing a picture, come out with his pencil still in his hand.

  The truck was painted brown and had lettering on the door like it belonged to the county or the state. It must have been loaded with gravel or sand, for it whined along slow with an awful drumming and popping sound. The noise was so loud it made Old Pat nervous and curious. She run out closer to the road, and when the truck passed she stepped out into the road to see it better.

  Because we’d been so busy watching the truck none of us seen the car behind the truck. Old Pat wasn’t looking back and just as she stepped into the road the car’s bumper hit her. The blood froze in my veins and a jolt went through my bones, and I reckon I must have screamed. Mama gasped and Troy run toward the road. The car knocked Old Pat off to the side of the road with a terrible thud and went on.

  By the time I got to the edge of the road Old Pat was just laying there like she’d blacked out or was dead. Blood come out of her nose and her eyes was closed. “They kilt her,” Troy said, and put his hand on her shoulder.

  “No, she ain’t dead,” I said, for I seen her eyes open. Troy rubbed her back, which was all covered with dirt. Old Pat was breathing and she stirred a little.

  “Watch out she don’t bite you,” Mama said.

  “Old Pat won’t bite me,” Troy said. “She’s bad hurt.”