Dog we have never seen before and have no 1 страница

No, son,I wanted to correct him, some strange

knowledge of is sad. But I just pulled my maga-

zine higher over my face, following the advice of

the immortal Richard Milhous Nixon: plausible

deniability. The jet engines whined and the plane

taxied down the runway, drowning out Marley’s

dirge. I pictured him down below in the dark hold,

alone, scared, confused, stoned, not even able to

fully stand up. I imagined the roaring engines,

which in Marley’s warped mind might be just an-

other thunderous assault by random lightning

bolts determined to take him out. The poor guy. I

wasn’t willing to admit he was mine, but I knew I

would be spending the whole flight worrying

about him.

The airplane was barely off the ground when I

heard another little crash, and this time it was

Conor who said, “Oops.” I looked down and then,

Marley & Me

once again, stared straight into my magazine.

Plausible deniability. After several seconds, I

furtively glanced around. When I was pretty sure

no one was staring, I leaned forward and whis-

pered into Jenny’s ear: “Don’t look now, but the

crickets are loose.”

C H A P T E R 2 2

In the Land of Pencils

❉

We settled into a rambling house on two

acres perched on the side of a steep hill.

Or perhaps it was a small mountain; the locals

seemed to disagree on this point. Our property

had a meadow where we could pick wild raspber-

ries, a woods where I could chop logs to my heart’s

content, and a small, spring-fed creek where the

kids and Marley soon found they could get excep-

tionally muddy. There was a fireplace and endless

garden possibilities and a white-steepled church

on the next hill, visible from our kitchen window

when the leaves dropped in the fall.

Our new home even came with a neighbor right

out of Central Casting, an orange-bearded bear of

a man who lived in a 1790s stone farmhouse and

on Sundays enjoyed sitting on his back porch and

shooting his rifle into the woods just for fun, much

John Grogan

to Marley’s unnerved dismay. On our first day in

our new house, he walked over with a bottle of

homemade wild-cherry wine and a basket of the

biggest blackberries I had ever seen. He intro-

duced himself as Digger. As we surmised from the

nickname, Digger made his living as an excavator.

If we had any holes we needed dug or earth we

wanted moved, he instructed, we were to just give

a shout and he’d swing by with one of his big ma-

chines. “And if you hit a deer with your car, come

get me,” he said with a wink. “We’ll butcher it up

and split the meat before the game officer knows a

thing.” No doubt about it, we weren’t in Boca

anymore.

There was only one thing missing from our new

bucolic existence. Minutes after we pulled into the

driveway of our new house, Conor looked up at

me, big tears rolling out of his eyes, and declared:

“I thought there were going to be pencils in Pen-

cilvania.” For our boys, now ages seven and five,

this was a near deal breaker. Given the name of

the state we were adopting, both of them arrived

fully expecting to see bright yellow writing imple-

ments hanging like berries from every tree and

shrub, there for the plucking. They were crushed

to learn otherwise.

What our property lacked in school supplies, it

made up for in skunks, opossums, woodchucks,

Marley & Me

and poison ivy, which flourished along the edge of

our woods and snaked up the trees, giving me hives

just to look at it. One morning I glanced out the

kitchen window as I fumbled with the coffeemaker

and there staring back at me was a magnificent

eight-point buck. Another morning a family of

wild turkeys gobbled its way across the backyard.

As Marley and I walked through the woods down

the hill from our house one Saturday, we came

upon a mink trapper laying snares. A mink trap-

per! Almost in my backyard! What the Bocahontas

set would have given for that connection.

Living in the country was at once peaceful,

charming—and just a little lonely. The Pennsylva-

nia Dutch were polite but cautious of outsiders.

And we were definitely outsiders. After South

Florida’s legion crowds and lines, I should have

been ecstatic about the solitude. Instead, at least in

the early months, I found myself darkly ruminat-

ing over our decision to move to a place where so

few others apparently wanted to live.

Marley, on the other hand, had no such misgiv-

ings. Except for the crack of Digger’s gun going

off, the new country lifestyle fit him splendidly.

For a dog with more energy than sense, what

wasn’t to like? He raced across the lawn, crashed

through the brambles, splashed through the creek.

His life’s mission was to catch one of the countless

John Grogan

rabbits that considered my garden their own per-

sonal salad bar. He would spot a rabbit munching

the lettuce and barrel off down the hill in hot pur-

suit, ears flapping behind him, paws pounding the

ground, his bark filling the air. He was about as

stealthy as a marching band and never got closer

than a dozen feet before his intended prey scam-

pered off into the woods to safety. True to his

trademark, he remained eternally optimistic that

success waited just around the bend. He would

loop back, tail wagging, not discouraged in the

least, and five minutes later do it all over again.

Fortunately, he was no better at sneaking up on

the skunks.

Autumn came and with it a whole new mischie-

vous game: Attack the Leaf Pile. In Florida, trees

did not shed their leaves in the fall, and Marley

was positively convinced the foliage drifting down

from the skies now was a gift meant just for him.

As I raked the orange and yellow leaves into giant

heaps, Marley would sit and watch patiently, bid-

ing his time, waiting until just the right moment to

strike. Only after I had gathered a mighty tower-

ing pile would he slink forward, crouched low.

Every few steps, he would stop, front paw raised,

to sniff the air like a lion on the Serengeti stalking

an unsuspecting gazelle. Then, just as I leaned on

Marley & Me

my rake to admire my handiwork, he would lunge,

charging across the lawn in a series of bounding

leaps, flying for the last several feet and landing in

a giant belly flop in the middle of the pile, where

he growled and rolled and flailed and scratched

and snapped, and, for reasons not clear to me,

fiercely chased his tail, not stopping until my neat

leaf pile was scattered across the lawn again. Then

he would sit up amid his handiwork, the shredded

remains of leaves clinging to his fur, and give me a

self-satisfied look, as if his contribution were an

integral part of the leaf-gathering process.

Our first Christmas in Pennsylvania was supposed

to be white. Jenny and I had had to do a sales job

on Patrick and Conor to convince them that leav-

ing their home and friends in Florida was for the

best, and one of the big selling points was the

promise of snow. Not just any kind of snow, but

deep, fluffy, made-for-postcards snow, the kind

that fell from the sky in big silent flakes, piled into

drifts, and was of just the right consistency for

shaping into snowmen. And snow for Christmas

Day, well, that was best of all, the Holy Grail of

northern winter experiences. We wantonly spun a

Currier and Ives image for them of waking up on

John Grogan

Christmas morning to a starkly white landscape,

unblemished except for the solitary tracks of

Santa’s sleigh outside our front door.

In the week leading up to the big day, the three

of them sat in the window together for hours,

their eyes glued on the leaden sky as if they could

will it to open and discharge its load. “Come on,

snow!” the kids chanted. They had never seen it;

Jenny and I hadn’t seen it for the last quarter of

our lives. We wanted snow, but the clouds would

not give it up. A few days before Christmas, the

whole family piled into the minivan and drove to a

farm a half mile away where we cut a spruce tree

and enjoyed a free hayride and hot apple cider

around a bonfire. It was the kind of classic north-

ern holiday moment we had missed in Florida, but

one thing was absent. Where was the damn snow?

Jenny and I were beginning to regret how reck-

lessly we had hyped the inevitable first snowfall.

As we hauled our fresh-cut tree home, the sweet

scent of its sap filling the van, the kids complained

about getting gypped. First no pencils, now no

snow; what else had their parents lied to them

about?

Christmas morning found a brand-new tobog-

gan beneath the tree and enough snow gear to

outfit an excursion to Antarctica, but the view out

our windows remained all bare branches, dor-

Marley & Me

mant lawns, and brown cornfields. I built a cheery

fire in the fireplace and told the children to be pa-

tient. The snow would come when the snow

would come.

New Year’s arrived and still it did not come.

Even Marley seemed antsy, pacing and gazing out

the windows, whimpering softly, as if he too felt

he had been sold a bill of goods. The kids re-

turned to school after the holiday, and still noth-

ing. At the breakfast table they gazed sullenly at

me, the father who had betrayed them. I began

making lame excuses, saying things like “Maybe

little boys and girls in some other place need the

snow more than we do.”

“Yeah, right, Dad,” Patrick said.

Three weeks into the new year, the snow finally

rescued me from my purgatory of guilt. It came

during the night after everyone was asleep, and

Patrick was the first to sound the alarm, running

into our bedroom at dawn and yanking open the

blinds. “Look! Look!” he squealed. “It’s here!”

Jenny and I sat up in bed to behold our vindica-

tion. A white blanket covered the hillsides and

cornfields and pine trees and rooftops, stretching

to the horizon. “Of course, it’s here,” I answered

nonchalantly. “What did I tell you?”

The snow was nearly a foot deep and still com-

ing down. Soon Conor and Colleen came chugging

John Grogan

down the hall, thumbs in mouths, blankies trailing

behind them. Marley was up and stretching, bang-

ing his tail into everything, sensing the excite-

ment. I turned to Jenny and said, “I guess going

back to sleep isn’t an option,” and when she con-

firmed it was not, I turned to the kids and

shouted, “Okay, snow bunnies, let’s suit up!”

For the next half hour we wrestled with zippers

and leggings and buckles and hoods and gloves. By

the time we were done, the kids looked like mum-

mies and our kitchen like the staging area for the

Winter Olympics. And competing in the Goof on

Ice Downhill Competition, Large Canine Divi-

sion, was... Marley the Dog. I opened the front

door and before anyone else could step out, Mar-

ley blasted past us, knocking the well-bundled

Colleen over in the process. The instant his paws

hit the strange white stuff— Ah, wet! Ah, cold! —

he had second thoughts and attempted an abrupt

about-face. As anyone who has ever driven a car in

snow knows, sudden braking coupled with tight

U-turns is never a good idea.

Marley went into a full skid, his rear end spin-

ning out in front of him. He dropped down on one

flank briefly before bouncing upright again just in

time to somersault down the front porch steps and

headfirst into a snowdrift. When he popped back

Marley & Me

up a second later, he looked like a giant powdered

doughnut. Except for a black nose and two brown

eyes, he was completely dusted in white. The

Abominable Snowdog. Marley did not know what

to make of this foreign substance. He jammed his

nose deep into it and let loose a violent sneeze. He

snapped at it and rubbed his face in it. Then, as if

an invisible hand reached down from the heavens

and jabbed him with a giant shot of adrenaline, he

took off at full throttle, racing around the yard in

a series of giant, loping leaps interrupted every

several feet by a random somersault or nosedive.

Snow was almost as much fun as raiding the

neighbors’ trash.

To follow Marley’s tracks in the snow was to be-

gin to understand his warped mind. His path was

filled with abrupt twists and turns and about-

faces, with erratic loops and figure-eights, with

corkscrews and triple lutzes, as though he were

following some bizarre algorithm that only he

could understand. Soon the kids were taking his

lead, spinning and rolling and frolicking, snow

packing into every crease and crevice of their out-

erwear. Jenny came out with buttered toast, mugs

of hot cocoa, and an announcement: school was

canceled. I knew there was no way I was getting

my little two-wheel-drive Nissan out the driveway

John Grogan

anytime soon, let alone up and down the un-

plowed mountain roads, and I declared an official

snow day for me, too.

I scraped the snow away from the stone circle I

had built that fall for backyard campfires and soon

had a crackling blaze going. The kids glided

screaming down the hill in the toboggan, past the

campfire and to the edge of the woods, Marley

chasing behind them. I looked at Jenny and asked,

“If someone had told you a year ago that your kids

would be sledding right out their back door, would

you have believed them?”

“Not a chance,” she said, then wound up and

unleashed a snowball that thumped me in the

chest. The snow was in her hair, a blush in her

cheeks, her breath rising in a cloud above her.

“Come here and kiss me,” I said.

Later, as the kids warmed themselves by the

fire, I decided to try a run on the toboggan, some-

thing I hadn’t done since I was a teenager. “Care to

join me?” I asked Jenny.

“Sorry, Jean Claude, you’re on your own,” she

said.

I positioned the toboggan at the top of the hill

and lay back on it, propped up on my elbows, my

feet tucked inside its nose. I began rocking to get

moving. Not often did Marley have the opportu-

nity to look down at me, and having me prone like

Marley & Me

that was tantamount to an invitation. He sidled up

to me and sniffed my face. “What do you want?” I

asked, and that was all the welcome he needed. He

clambered aboard, straddling me and dropping

onto my chest. “Get off me, you big lug!” I

screamed. But it was too late. We were already

creeping forward, gathering speed as we began

our descent.

“Bon voyage!” Jenny yelled behind us.

Off we went, snow flying, Marley plastered on

top of me, licking me lustily all over my face as we

careered down the slope. With our combined

weight, we had considerably more momentum

than the kids had, and we barreled past the point

where their tracks petered out. “Hold on, Mar-

ley!” I screamed. “We’re going into the woods!”

We shot past a large walnut tree, then between

two wild cherry trees, miraculously avoiding all

unyielding objects as we crashed through the un-

derbrush, brambles tearing at us. It suddenly oc-

curred to me that just up ahead was the bank

leading down several feet to the creek, still un-

frozen. I tried to kick my feet out to use as brakes,

but they were stuck. The bank was steep, nearly a

sheer drop-off, and we were going over. I had time

only to wrap my arms around Marley, squeeze my

eyes shut, and yell, “Whoaaaaaa!”

Our toboggan shot over the bank and dropped

John Grogan

out from beneath us. I felt like I was in one of

those classic cartoon moments, suspended in

midair for an endless second before falling to ru-

inous injury. Only in this cartoon I was welded to a

madly salivating Labrador retriever. We clung to

each other as we crash-landed into a snowbank

with a soft poof and, hanging half off the tobog-

gan, slid to the water’s edge. I opened my eyes and

took stock of my condition. I could wiggle my toes

and fingers and rotate my neck; nothing was bro-

ken. Marley was up and prancing around me, ea-

ger to do it all over again. I stood up with a groan

and, brushing myself off, said, “I’m getting too

old for this stuff.” In the months ahead it would

become increasingly obvious that Marley was, too.

Sometime toward the end of that first winter in

Pennsylvania I began to notice Marley had moved

quietly out of middle age and into retirement. He

had turned nine that December, and ever so

slightly he was slowing down. He still had his

bursts of unbridled, adrenaline-pumped energy,

as he did on the day of the first snowfall, but they

were briefer now and farther apart. He was con-

tent to snooze most of the day, and on walks he

tired before I did, a first in our relationship. One

late-winter day, the temperature above freezing

Marley & Me

and the scent of spring thaw in the air, I walked

him down our hill and up the next one, even

steeper than ours, where the white church perched

on the crest beside an old cemetery filled with

Civil War veterans. It was a walk I took often and

one that even the previous fall Marley had made

without visible effort, despite the angle of the

climb, which always got us both panting. This

time, though, he was falling behind. I coaxed him

along, calling out words of encouragement, but it

was like watching a toy slowly wind down as its

battery went dead. Marley just did not have the

oomph needed to make it to the top. I stopped to

let him rest before continuing, something I had

never had to do before. “You’re not going soft on

me, are you?” I asked, leaning over and stroking

his face with my gloved hands. He looked up at

me, his eyes bright, his nose wet, not at all con-

cerned about his flagging energy. He had a con-

tented but tuckered-out look on his face, as

though life got no better than this, sitting along

the side of a country road on a crisp late-winter’s

day with your master at your side. “If you think

I’m carrying you,” I said, “forget it.”

The sun bathed over him, and I noticed just

how much gray had crept into his tawny face. Be-

cause his fur was so light, the effect was subtle but

undeniable. His whole muzzle and a good part of

John Grogan

his brow had turned from buff to white. Without

us quite realizing it, our eternal puppy had be-

come a senior citizen.

That’s not to say he was any better behaved.

Marley was still up to all his old antics, simply at a

more leisurely pace. He still stole food off the

children’s plates. He still flipped open the lid of

the kitchen trash can with his nose and rummaged

inside. He still strained at his leash. Still swallowed

a wide assortment of household objects. Still

drank out of the bathtub and trailed water from

his gullet. And when the skies darkened and thun-

der rumbled, he still panicked and, if alone,

turned destructive. One day we arrived home to

find Marley in a lather and Conor’s mattress

splayed open down to the coils.

Over the years, we had become philosophical

about the damage, which had become much less

frequent now that we were away from Florida’s

daily storm patterns. In a dog’s life, some plaster

would fall, some cushions would open, some rugs

would shred. Like any relationship, this one had

its costs. They were costs we came to accept and

balance against the joy and amusement and pro-

tection and companionship he gave us. We could

have bought a small yacht with what we spent on

our dog and all the things he destroyed. Then

again, how many yachts wait by the door all day

Marley & Me

for your return? How many live for the moment

they can climb in your lap or ride down the hill

with you on a toboggan, licking your face?

Marley had earned his place in our family. Like a

quirky but beloved uncle, he was what he was. He

would never be Lassie or Benji or Old Yeller; he

would never reach Westminster or even the county

fair. We knew that now. We accepted him for the

dog he was, and loved him all the more for it.

“You old geezer,” I said to him on the side of

the road that late-winter day, scruffing his neck.

Our goal, the cemetery, was still a steep climb

ahead. But just as in life, I was figuring out, the

destination was less important than the journey. I

dropped to one knee, running my hands down his

sides, and said, “Let’s just sit here for a while.”

When he was ready, we turned back down the hill

and poked our way home.

C H A P T E R 2 3

Poultry on Parade

❉

That spring we decided to try our hand at ani-

mal husbandry. We owned two acres in the

country now; it only seemed right to share it with

a farm animal or two. Besides, I was editor of Or-

ganic Gardening, a magazine that had long cele-

brated the incorporation of animals—and their

manure—into a healthy, well-balanced garden. “A

cow would be fun,” Jenny suggested.

“A cow?” I asked. “Are you crazy? We don’t

even have a barn; how can we have a cow? Where

do you suggest we keep it, in the garage next to

the minivan?”

“How about sheep?” she said. “Sheep are

cute.” I shot her my well-practiced you’re-not-

being-practical look.

“A goat? Goats are adorable.”

In the end we settled on poultry. For any gar-

John Grogan

dener who has sworn off chemical pesticides and

fertilizers, chickens made a lot of sense. They

were inexpensive and relatively low-maintenance.

They needed only a small coop and a few cups of

cracked corn each morning to be happy. Not only

did they provide fresh eggs, but, when let loose to

roam, they spent their days studiously scouring

the property, eating bugs and grubs, devouring

ticks, scratching up the soil like efficient little ro-

totillers, and fertilizing with their high-nitrogen

droppings as they went. Each evening at dusk they

returned to their coop on their own. What wasn’t

to like? A chicken was an organic gardener’s best

friend. Chickens made perfect sense. Besides, as

Jenny pointed out, they passed the cuteness test.

Chickens it was. Jenny had become friendly

with a mom from school who lived on a farm and

said she’d be happy to give us some chicks from

the next clutch of eggs to hatch. I told Digger

about our plans, and he agreed a few hens around

the place made sense. Digger had a large coop of

his own in which he kept a flock of chickens for

both eggs and meat.

“Just one word of warning,” he said, folding his

meaty arms across his chest. “Whatever you do,

don’t let the kids name them. Once you name ’em,

they’re no longer poultry, they’re pets.”

Marley & Me

“Right,” I said. Chicken farming, I knew, had

no room for sentimentality. Hens could live fifteen

years or more but only produced eggs in their first

couple of years. When they stopped laying, it was

time for the stewing pot. That was just part of

managing a flock.

Digger looked hard at me, as if divining what I

was up against, and added, “Once you name

them, it’s all over.”

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “No names.”

The next evening I pulled into the driveway

from work, and the three kids raced out of the

house to greet me, each cradling a newborn chick.

Jenny was behind them with a fourth in her hands.

Her friend, Donna, had brought the baby birds

over that afternoon. They were barely a day old

and peered up at me with cocked heads as if to

ask, “Are you my mama?”

Patrick was the first to break the news. “I

named mine Feathers!” he proclaimed.

“Mine is Tweety,” said Conor.

“My wicka Wuffy,” Colleen chimed in.

I shot Jenny a quizzical look.

“Fluffy,” Jenny said. “She named her chicken

Fluffy.”

“Jenny,” I protested. “What did Digger tell us?

These are farm animals, not pets.”

John Grogan

“Oh, get real, Farmer John,” she said. “You

know as well as I do that you could never hurt one

of these. Just look at how cute they are.”

“Jenny,” I said, the frustration rising in my

voice.

“By the way,” she said, holding up the fourth

chick in her hands, “meet Shirley.”

Feathers, Tweety, Fluffy, and Shirley took up

residence in a box on the kitchen counter, a light-

bulb dangling above them for warmth. They ate

and they pooped and they ate some more—and

grew at a breathtaking pace. Several weeks after

we brought the birds home, something jolted me

awake before dawn. I sat up in bed and listened.

From downstairs came a weak, sickly call. It was

croaky and hoarse, more like a tubercular cough

than a proclamation of dominance. It sounded

again: Cock-a-doodle-do! A few seconds ticked

past and then came an equally sickly, but distinct,

reply: Rook-ru-rook-ru-roo!

I shook Jenny and, when she opened her eyes,

asked: “When Donna brought the chicks over, you

did ask her to check to make sure they were hens,

right?”

“You mean you can do that?” she asked, and

rolled back over, sound asleep.

It’s called sexing. Farmers who know what they

are doing can inspect a newborn chicken and de-

Marley & Me

termine, with about 80 percent accuracy, whether

it is male or female. At the farm store, sexed

chicks command a premium price. The cheaper

option is to buy “straight run” birds of unknown

gender. You take your chances with straight run,

the idea being that the males will be slaughtered

young for meat and the hens will be kept to lay

eggs. Playing the straight-run gamble, of course,

assumes you have what it takes to kill, gut, and

pluck any excess males you might end up with. As

anyone who has ever raised chickens knows, two

roosters in a flock is one rooster too many.

As it turned out, Donna had not attempted to

sex our four chicks, and three of our four “laying

hens” were males. We had on our kitchen counter

the poultry equivalent of Boys Town U.S.A. The

thing about roosters is they’re never content to

play second chair to any other rooster. If you had

equal numbers of roosters and hens, you might

think they would pair off into happy little Ozzie

and Harriet–style couples. But you would be

wrong. The males will fight endlessly, bloodying

one another gruesomely, to determine who will

dominate the roost. Winner takes all.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-24