Excerpt 2 – Roots and Branches

Unlike today, life was so much simpler when I was a kid. Children today need iPods, cell phones, and $150 sneakers. All I needed was a dog, some gloves, a winter coat and a pair of waterproof boots and my weekend was set.

I was a child that loved being outside. When I think about my childhood I remember either being hot and itchy or cold and wet. When the weekend would arrive I would be up and out of the house early, especially if there was snow on the ground and a chance that the creeks and ponds would be frozen.

I would already be dressed, ready and wrapped up tight by the time my friends, Mark and Brian, arrived. They were two white brothers that lived about a mile away from us. Mark was two years older and Brian was my age and even in my class at school. Now that I am grown I can say that Mark was one of those kids that I wouldn’t have wanted my kids to play with. He was respectful, smart, and really good at fixing and rigging things. But just like Eddie Haskell, there was another side to him that showed up when there were no parents around.

From the fourth grade on up to whenever it was that girls came into the picture, I would spend my weekends, snow days, and summer breaks navigating and exploring a five-square mile area around my house. I knew every stream, farmhouse, pond, and path in or around Rectortown. The weather dictated our adventures. If it had just rained that meant the creeks and streams would be flooded, so we could have mile-long bottle races. The snow and freezing temperatures meant that we could risk our lives at “The Pond with the Island” chasing after the large mud turtles that were visible beneath the ice. We actually stood on the ice with sticks and rocks, cracking it, in order to scoot the turtle closer to the bank. How stupid we were. I am shocked that “The Pond with the Island” never swallowed one of us up. The summers were for miles and miles of bike rides, sneaking onto some stranger’s property to fish their ponds, chasing birds with our BB guns, and just plain old young boy mischief. It seems that most of the time my mother had no idea where I was. It contrasts so much with the way I am with my kids. I don’t let them out of my sight.

One summer the three of us were jumping our bikes over a stream not far from my house. My bike ended up getting stuck in a deep area of the stream. I couldn’t swim, plus it was my sister Joan’s bike, so I was resigned to the fact that I would just have to walk home and argue with Joan later. I told you earlier that Mark had another side to him and on this day it reared its ugly head. He jumped into the water and pulled my sister’s bike up to the road. He looked at me and said, “Okay. There is your bike. Now you owe me, nigger.”

My fuse was a lot longer back then than it is now. I was ten and had never been called a nigger before. So it was a strange and almost time-lapsed moment that has stuck with me. I didn’t even really understand how derogatory the word was at the time. I just knew that it was a word that white people were not supposed to use towards black people. I was stunned. I actually saw “The Line” as a ten year old. I wanted to make him bleed. But I didn’t. I got on Joan’s bike and rode home alone. The whole way all I heard was, “You owe me, nigger…nigger…nigger…nigger…nigger…

I wasn’t exactly alone. I had Fifi with me. She was a Border Collie, my best friend and always by my side. Oh and by the way, the next time I was called a nigger, it cost me three days off the school bus. And the last time a motherfucker called me a nigger, let’s just say police officers and hospital visits were involved.

As Fifi and I headed back home, I wondered if I should tell someone. I knew if I told my uncle John he would take me back and make me fight Mark. I figured my mother would feel that way too. I was embarrassed. That is what I felt as I pedaled home. I rode home with my dog and I was the one with my tail tucked between my legs. I wasn’t embarrassed because of what he said. I was embarrassed because he didn’t have to suffer any consequences for what he said. I think that embarrassment and the fact that I never told anyone about it is what made me fight so hard the next two times I was called a nigger to my face. Repression is a painful bitch and I know two white boys that would wholeheartedly agree.

Mark wasn’t all bad and he did come by later and apologize. I was young and more forgiving than I am now so it didn’t take but a few seconds for things to go back to normal.

But I never forgot it and the episode made me realize, once again, that my dog was my only true friend.

My thinking is very old fashioned when it comes to certain things. One of those things is my belief that children need a dog. My mother must have felt the same way because throughout my childhood there were not many times that my family did not have at least one dog.

My mom worked at a restaurant in Middleburg VA., when I was younger. One of the cooks used to give her a ride home in the evenings. He was a white guy and his name was Johnny. Ma was really fond of him and so were my sisters and I. He would always bring us something when he dropped my mother off. Usually it was candy, cakes or cookies. But one day he brought us a puppy. He was my favorite white person for sure after that.

I named the puppy Snoopy. He was a Border Collie and just as playful as ever. He was smart but also hard headed. For almost a year he followed me everywhere and would never listen when I told him to go back or stay. I remember that I was across the street in my Uncle Charles’ yard jumping bikes over a ramp with Mark, Brian and William Brown. The ramp wasn’t high enough to give us the desired jumping distance, so I crossed back over the street to get another cinderblock to increase the ramp height. I was barely up the embankment on the other side of the street before I could hear Snoopy’s nails clicking on the pavement. I reached the top just in enough time to yell at Snoopy to go back. But of course he didn’t listen and in almost an instant a car came flying around the curve and sped right over top of him. Right before my eyes. I heard a really loud pop as the car ran him down, and I am guessing that was either his neck or back snapping. I stood there frozen and in disbelief. The lady that was driving tried to avoid Snoopy but I think the swerve is what got him. Snoopy was left lying in the middle of the street motionless. I knew he was dead.

I scrambled back down the embankment, ran into the street without looking and knelt down beside him. I could hear his breath and could tell that he was still alive. For a split second I wanted to yell, “Someone call the ambulance!” But I didn’t. I just picked my dying friend up and out of the street and carried him home.

I carefully carried him to the front porch and screamed for my mother. She came to the door and saw that Snoopy wasn’t moving.

“What happened to the damn dog, Marc?” She asked in a way that made me feel like she was blaming me.

“He got hit by a car.” I said between my tears.

“How many times have I told you to stay out of the street? All day long crisscrossing back and forth across the road, you are lucky it wasn’t you that got hit!” She fussed.

My mother was a good fusser.

I don’t know when Snoopy died. It could have been as I carried him around the side of the house to the back porch. Or it could have been earlier or later. I don’t know. I just know that whenever it was, I was with him. I laid his broken body down on the back porch right outside of my bedroom door and covered him with a green horse blanket and just sat there. My uncle John would not be able to dig his grave until the next day, so I had to go to bed that night knowing that my dear friend was lying dead just outside the back door. It was not a good night.

Even though Snoopy was all that was on my mind that next morning, I didn’t pull the blanket back on him. I didn’t want to see him anymore. Not like that. I stayed away from the back porch all the way up until the hole was finished.

Snoopy’s funeral was held the evening after his death and it didn’t consist of hearses, flowers and preachers. It only consisted of me. The procession led from my grandmother’s back porch, under the clothes line, down the field and over “The Branch.” The funeral march did not stop until we were all alone at the bottom corner of our property. That little corner of our property was my family’s very own pet cemetery. Chopper was the first that I can remember being buried there. He was our Great Dane and was taller than I was at the time he died. If Chopper didn’t like someone that someone knew it. He didn’t like Mr. Payne and went after him one day. The next morning while sitting at the kitchen table getting ready for breakfast, we looked out of the kitchen window and saw Chopper lying in the snow with his eyes open and tongue hanging out. My family still believes that Mr. Payne poisoned Chopper while we slept.

I was careful not to touch Snoopy as I picked up his lifeless body. I kept his face covered as I lifted him up off the back porch and not even a strand of hair from his tail was visible beneath the blanket. But covering him up didn’t take him away. I knew what I was carrying. A friend.

His body was stiff and his legs stuck straight out. It was like carrying a large stuffed Scooby-Doo won at Kings Dominion. I walked down through the field and crossed over “The Branch.” As I headed up to the corner where the grave was dug, I noticed that there was a mound of red dirt with a shovel sticking out of it.

I walked over to the edge of the hole and looked down into it. My uncle John had laid blankets at the bottom of it. I was worried about that because even though Snoopy was heading back to from whence he came, I still didn’t want his body on the ground. Strangely, I remember not wanting him to be cold. I got down on my knees and gently placed him in his grave.

“Bye Snoopy.”

The first shovel full of dirt that I splashed over him felt and sounded wrong. So did the second, third and fourth but I managed to finish. And I made sure when I was done that his grave was perfect. There was no overgrown grass and extra dirt lying around the grave. It was as pristine as a fourth-grader could achieve and if it had of had a headstone it would have looked good enough to be a grave in a human cemetery.

I walked back towards the house with a gravedigger’s shovel on my shoulder, Snoopy’s collar in my hand, and the sound of his neck snapping bouncing around in my head. Now that Snoopy was in the ground, my physical load was lighter but my emotional one was growing heavier with each step. And my back hurt. You don’t realize how much space a dog takes up until it is gone. I skipped dinner and went to bed early that evening surrounded by so much emptiness that even the screams of the children playing right outside my bedroom window seemed miles away.

I woke up the next morning without my face being licked. I hated when Snoopy did that but on that morning I missed his cold wet nose like a new mother misses her baby on her first day back at work. I eventually ventured outside to find out what the day had in store for me. Nothing I found was enough to remove my friend from my thoughts. I remember that it was summertime when Snoopy died because it was still light outside when my mother and Johnny pulled up into the yard after work that day. My mother got out of the car with a huge grin on her face. It was a strange grin and let me know that she was giving something away.

It turns out that when my mother told Johnny about Snoopy’s death, and how sad we all were about it, he became really upset and decided to give us another puppy. Another Border Collie. Snoopy’s sister from the same litter. Her name was Fifi.

I kept Fifi close. I was not going to lose this one. I got her back when I was in the fourth grade and she stayed with me all the way past graduation. A bond was built between us that I still feel to this day. I think the bond is still so strong because I lost her once before I lost her forever. I suffered through her death twice, literally.

Not long after giving us Fifi, Johnny got killed in a car accident. He was thrown from his car and it rolled over on top of him. My mother was really upset about it. Really upset. It was too bad because Johnny never got to see the lifelong friendship that he began.

Fifi and I quickly became inseparable. Like Snoopy, she was the type of dog that followed me wherever I went; even deep into the woods and across the street, but she was smarter about it. She was more careful and almost seemed to look before she crossed the road. Sometimes I wonder if Snoopy warned her in her dreams the night before she came to us, “You are going to the White’s house in Rectortown? Sis, please, watch that curve, it’s a doosey.” And as funny as it seems she did just that. I can remember Jean and especially Joan almost getting hit by a car more times than Fifi.

Fifi survived the curve in the road and together we had many adventures that lasted from grade school well past my high school graduation. She was a good dog and only bit one person, a mean bicycle throwing bitch that lived down the street. The lady reminded me of the Wicked Witch and had it coming if you ask me. But other than that we had no incidents. She never ran away. She never chewed up stuff. She didn’t bark too much and when she did you knew to look.

Fifi avoided sickness all the way up until I was in the eleventh grade. That is when she started to scratch a lot. She was an indoor/outdoor kind of dog because we were indoor/outdoor kind of kids so it was not uncommon for me to pluck off a big fat tick from time to time. I enjoyed hearing them pop as I smashed them between two rocks. I hope that doesn’t make me a psychotic. When her hair started to fall out in large clumps, I started to get nervous. We took her to the vet and they gave us some medicine to put in her food. It didn’t work. And soon the bald areas on her back started to fill with raised blisters that oozed. I have to give it to Grandma, she spared no expense in trying to save Fifi for us, for me, but nothing worked. We didn’t know what was going on. The vet couldn’t tell us anything. Fifi was weakening and she looked to be suffering. I knew the end was near for her.

Our church sent us to the Lott Carey Youth Seminar held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. For my sisters and me, it was a time to have fun interacting and socializing with kids our age from up and down the east coast. For my grandmother it was the perfect time to put the dog to sleep.

I came home from Shaw and immediately noticed when I got out of the car that Fifi didn’t come running to see me. I was ten feet from the car with bags in hand when Grandma came out of the front door. I wonder what was going through her mind when she got up that morning knowing that we were all coming home to a dead dog.

“Where is Fifi?” I asked the question to myself but I already knew the answer.

When she came outside and saw my eyes scanning the yard, Grandma didn’t look at anyone but me and said, “Marc, I had to put her to sleep.”

I dropped my bags and hit the road. I didn’t know where I was headed; I just knew I didn’t want to be there. I knew I didn’t want everyone to see me cry. I was sixteen. I was tough and cool. I needed to be alone. I walked out of the driveway and headed up the street. I walked past the church. I walked past the corner. I walked past the basketball court and stopped at the school. I sat there alone on the front steps of my old elementary school and let the tears flow.

Time passed. Wounds began to heal. And life basically got back to normal. Well as normal as it could be considering the gaping hole that was left by the passing of my best friend.

It was summertime of 1987 when Grandma had Fifi put to sleep. Fast forward six or seven months to January 31, 1988. It was Super Bowl Sunday, my family was all crowded into my Aunt Sherry’s house. The women were in the kitchen. The men were in front of the television. The game was on. The house was loud, the kids were running and jumping and no one cared because the Skins were winning. All of the sudden I heard my cousin Kameelah scream. Everyone ran into the kitchen to see what was going on and there outside the screen door was none other than Fifi. Alive. I hesitated for a minute because just like Kameelah, I thought I was seeing some ghost-like spiritual type shit and I was completely freaked out. Sherry opened the door and Fifi came rushing in to me. I remember thinking, “She looks brand new.” All of her hair had grown back and the skin beneath it felt smooth and young. I couldn’t understand what was going on. None of us could. But sure enough it was Fifi, live and in the flesh.

I have to admit, for a while I really thought that my dog had come back from the dead. I remember all of us grandkids running down the road from Sherrry’s house to Grandma’s yelling and hollering because we were experiencing a miracle. It wasn’t until Grandma called the vet that we found out what really happened. It seems that the vet had too big of a heart. When Grandma brought Fifi in to be put to sleep the doctor couldn’t do it. He said that she still had so much life in her that it would have broken his heart to put her down. So instead, he nursed Fifi back to health. And he did a wonderful job at it. I don’t know if he had intentions on keeping Fifi for himself or if he had plans on returning her to us. I guess Fifi didn’t know either and she decided that she wasn’t sticking around to find out. The first chance she got, she escaped and made her way home from many miles away. Yes, my family has its very own Snoopy Come Home /Incredible Journey story.

The vet was very apologetic when Grandma called him and felt awfully ashamed by what he had done but he received nothing but a massive amount of appreciation from her. Appreciation and many many Bless you’s. Unknowingly, the vet extended the friendship of a boy and his dog. He gave me my buddy back. That act had to earn him some Heaven Points.

The good doctor gave Fifi and I four more years together and we made the most of them. But she eventually got sick again. The same hair loss. The same blistery skin. Everything was the same except this time she was very old. And this time, most importantly, I was prepared for her death.

It was like watching a movie that I had seen ten times before or reading a book again. I had been there before so I knew what each scene entailed and I knew how it was going to end. And when it did end, when she died, I remember that I wasn’t as sad as I was the first time.

I experienced a similar feeling when my mother died. Just like with Fifi, I knew my mother was going to be leaving us soon. She stayed with me when she came home from the hospital and I had time to witness the downslide firsthand. And strangely, knowing what was coming seemed to ease the shock. Don’t get me wrong, it was still my mama so the devastation was still there but the awareness that I had about what was coming made the collateral damage as minimal as could be considering the magnitude of the loss.