The Tail of Brody and the Fourth of July

When I saw that the Fourth of July fell on a Thursday this year, I knew that we wouldn’t get a lot of blog traffic, but I also didn’t want us to just skip the week in case there were people still surfing the web, looking for some distractions.

But what to post? It didn’t seem like the kind of day to post writing advice and I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump so I don’t have any recommendations but, then, I thought of it. This is a writing-based blog so, how about a story set on the fourth?

The last week of June in 2008 my husband and I had been living in our new home for a little over a month. I’d grown up a cat person, mostly because that’s the best kind of pet to have in apartments. But my husband was always, always a dog person. And he’d been missing having a dog. But now we had a house to rent instead of an apartment and houses can have dogs. It was time to look for a pup.

One morning we decided to go to the shelter, just to look mind you. Just to look.

And there he was. Adorable. Floppy-eared, brown-eyed, sweet-faced. Waiting for us.

We were kind of stunned because it’s not often that you find an actual puppy at the shelter; they’re usually snatched up as soon as they’re available. But we knew, this was our puppy and we had to meet him.

When we got to meet him, he flopped on his back and gave us his belly and climbed into our laps, desperate to lick our faces, as if to say, “Finally! Finally you found me! I’ve been waiting for you!” Obviously, we were a match.

But Brody—as we would name him later—wasn’t available for adoption yet. We had to leave him, with tiny cracks in our hearts, and come back for him and hope that no one else would show up wanting to adopt him that morning because then we would have to submit to a random drawing and leave it up to The Fates. And they can be a trio of bitches if they want to be.

When the adoption day came there were a few people waiting to get inside to be the first come in first serve and we were more than a little anxious. I started asking around to see what pup people were there for.

“The black one,” a bespectacled girl answered.

“Yeah, the black one, us too,” a man cut in, drawing a glare from the girl. “I think we’re all here for the same dog.” He gestured to the other people waiting.

My heart sank. We were going to have to do a drawing.

When the doors opened I rushed to the counter with Brody’s ID number memorized.

“Anyone else for A773790?” the guy behind the counter called out. My stomach twisted as I waited for the others to say something. But then: nothing!

Turning, I furrowed my brow at the bespectacled girl, wondering why she wasn’t saying anything.

“Oh,” she said, understanding dawning on her. “You’re not here for the pug? The black pug?”

“No,” I said and my husband smiled. No one else was there for Brody.

On June 30, 2008, we took him home.

The thing with puppies though is you can’t take them out until they’ve had all their shots. So when the Fourth of July rolled around we knew we couldn’t take our new puppy out to the parade or the fair downtown*. But we still wanted to go.

We’d decided to crate-train Brody but I still had reservations about leaving him in a crate for any real amount of time when we weren’t home; I only wanted to crate train him so if we needed to put him in the crate for emergencies we could. I never intended to put him in a crate when we weren’t home. That’s what house breaking and training is for. But five days after coming home, he wasn’t house broken, so we couldn’t let him roam.

I decided to put his crate against the doorway leading into the kitchen, with the door facing into the kitchen so he would be able to have the whole kitchen to himself with a bed, pee pad, food and water, and the crate if he chose while we went out for just two hours to enjoy a little bit of the holiday. It was a big crate, too big for him at the time, because we knew he’d be over 50 pounds when he grew up we bought a crate for a 50 pound dog but at least I knew he couldn’t move it and get out of the kitchen.

Brody barked a little when we put him in the kitchen and didn’t stay with him, but he wagged his tail and set to sniffing every nook and cranny once he accepted we weren’t going to move the crate so he could follow us.

Off we went to enjoy the fair downtown.

I don’t even think we made it a full two hours. I was worried about leaving Brody alone for too long in his new home after living at the shelter.

When we got home and opened the door, we heard Brody yapping excitedly from the kitchen and his whip of a tail thumping on the linoleum floor.

But something was amiss.

There were things scattered on the floor in the living room.

A ball of yarn from the back room was unspooled and strewn across the floor. Papers were scattered. A lone shoe had made it out of a bedroom.

Someone had been in our home.

Our front door is mostly glass so we spun to inspect the panes, but they were all intact.

“You had to unlock the door to open it, right?” I asked my husband.

“Yeah,” he answered in a low tone, eyeing the doorway into the hallway. “Wait here.”

I watched as he went to make sure the back of the house was safe before I went to check on Brody—so relieved they hadn’t stolen him.

I could see him sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, goofy puppy smile on his face, and his tail still wagging. His crate was exactly as we’d left it: pressed against the wall and blocking the doorway so he couldn’t get out. It wasn’t shoved so I knew, I knew, Brody hadn’t gotten out. After all, he was still in the kitchen.

“All clear!” John called out to me from the back of the house.

“Okay,” I replied as I scooped up the unspooled yarn. I stared at the tangle of thread, wondering how it had made it from my knitting bag in the back bedroom to the living room floor.

A loud clatter interrupted my thoughts and I spun toward it.

Brody’s front paws were on top of his crate, claws gripping the metal frame as he pulled desperately, his back paws pedaling in the air, looking for something to push against.

“Wha—” My voice died as I watched my three-month-old puppy pull and wiggle and claw himself up and on top of his crate until he was able to sit on it, still smiling but obviously desperate to say hello to me. His tail banged against the metal grate as he waiting for me to recover.

“John,” I said, then, louder, “John get out here you have to see this!”

“What? What?” John ran into the dining room to see me still standing there, holding the yarn, staring. He turned to follow my stare to see Brody sitting proudly on the top of the crate.

Brody got to his feet and picked his way to the edge of the crate before jumping to the floor and raced over to us, so happy that we were home.

John bent to pick him up, holding the bundle of fur against his chest to stare him in the eye before turning to look at me.

“So,” I said, pausing. “He climbed up there, jumped down, then went through the house, having a great time and then…”

“Climbed back over to get back into the kitchen before we came home so he wouldn’t get caught,” John finished.

And that is how we knew, from the very first week, that Brody was too smart for his own good.

Brody is still clever with a big personality and has been immortalized in my Ash & Ruin Trilogy as the inspiration for Blue. I mean, a dog like that could only be fiction, right?

*Fun side note: Turned out the bespectacled girl and her roommate won the drawing for the black pug. How do I know? Because we ran into her on the 5th, at the vet, where they were having their tiny puppy treated for heatstroke because they couldn’t resist taking him to the very same fair we made sure not to take Brody to. Yes, the puppy is fine, but that’s a lesson learned, right?

Story in the Round – PART 2

I could feel the smoke warming my lungs and tickling my heart, seducing things from the depths of my soul that had not stirred in the last decade. Magic does that—it whispers promises of ease and power to us, makes us think we can be more than we are.

And on the Solstice, sometimes it speaks the truth. Things shift on a solstice, and it’s only natural that we follow the same pattern.

Even as I followed Danny reluctantly, I could feel the magic changing me. I could feel it lightening my steps, and I thought, against my will, of my mother floating over the earth, literally high on her power. The sticky heat on my skin turned cold, clammy, but the beat of the drums compelled me onward.

Outside the circle, I put my bag down on the grass beside Danny’s. He turned to me, his brown eyes glowing with the heat of the power now coursing through him, and offered me his hand. Behind him, the dancers swirled in a sun-pattern, opening a gateway for the power, even as the drumming grew ever louder. Velvet darkness crept across the sky, and when night fell, the magic would really take over.

Driven by the force of the dance, I put my hand in Danny’s. More heat caught fire, this time our own, and he pulled me into the circle of dancers. My body fell into a rhythm I knew in my bones as my heart started beating to the cadence of the drums. Danny knew the steps; the dance was something greater than us, as much a part of the summer night as the stars above and the fireflies skirting the woods. It made us a part of the night, too, our heat and sweat blending into the moisture of the night.

I noticed the stones only after we had done two circuits of the fire. Round and white, they would be nondescript if they were not so strangely placed, close to the fire as if they had been casually cast aside, but so close to the dancers that I had to wonder.

They said, after my mother died, that she had reached too deeply into the well of magical power that summer night so many years ago. But things reach out as much as we reach in, and small gateways as well as large open on solstice nights. I remembered what Danny said about fairies and wraiths, and I felt a spear of icy fear pierce the warm veil of the summer night.

We whirled past the stones, and I wondered if they had grown from the ground there, or if someone had placed them. They glowed amber in the firelight, pulsing in the flickering light as if they were alive. While the rest of us danced to the drums, the soul of these stones moved to another music, something none of the rest of us could hear.

When I saw a man and a woman step from the darkness between the stones, their eyes feral in the firelight, I stumbled.

Story in the Round – PART 1

Today we are beginning a new segments of posts, a very creative journey together, namely: A Story in the Round. Today I start the story, the first 500 words  of the introduction, and then leave off for the next Scribe to pick up. We’ll each add to the story until it comes to its natural conclusion. We’re not discussing where we each want to see where the story will go or what characters should arrive or do or whatever, it will be as much of a surprise to us as it will be to you, dear reader. So! Enjoy!

Southern summers were sticky, hot, and fierce. They held the kind of wet heat that you could never really prepare for. Short hair and short shorts didn’t do much to help, but I tried anyway. Now, walking through the field, the grass tickled my dewy skin, scratching and tickling all at once.

I hefted my backpack higher up on one shoulder, as I trudged up the hill, skirting around the fireflies that drifted just above the ground. The bonfire was tonight, and the drum circle. People would dance and sing and light the fire to breathe in the healing smoke. A new level of heat would be added to the night. The last time I’d danced around the bonfire my mother had been alive. The magic poured from her as she danced to the rhythm of the drums, her scarves swirling around her like a kaleidoscope come to life. Her bare feet skimmed the grass and for a moment, my ten-year-old self believed she was flying.

She died six months later – right before Winter Solstice. It was like some cruel cosmic joke.

I lost my magic with the death of my mother. How could magic be real if someone as beautiful and wonderful as my mother could die? Especially if I couldn’t bring her back, no matter how many spells I tried.

My father said she didn’t want to come back – that she would have found peace and moved on. And so should I. So, I walked away from magic, since it had obviously abandoned me.

Ten years later, I stood on top of that hill, and looked down at the celebration already started. The ground vibrated with the beat of the drums. The breeze carried voices back to me. The song was in a language I didn’t know, but was somehow familiar. There was power in those words and that power touched me, made my blood rush in my ears and pulled at my body to run to it.

“You ready for this?” Danny asked as he came up alongside me. I turned to look at him, pulling my eyes away from the celebration at the bottom of the valley. His brown eyes were alive with excitement. The power of the gathering was already filling him. It wasn’t filling me, not yet, but when I looked into his eyes, saw them alight with life and power, I knew I wanted to feel that too.

“I think so,” I finally answered with a strained smile.

“Then let’s go.” Danny nudged me with an elbow before starting down the slope leading to the bottom of the hill. “Oh,” he said over his shoulder, “remember to watch out for fairies and wraiths.” He grinned at the look on my face. I stumbled for a moment and had to swallow against the lump that had formed in my throat. Danny laughed and shook his head at me before turning away and hurrying down the hill. I had no idea if he was serious or not.