It was a dark and stormy night.

Granted, it was October in Eugene, so that shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise. The center of the barn was lit up with a couple generator-powered floodlights, the power having gone out the day before during the first wave of wind and rain that signaled the beginning of another bleak Oregon winter. At the center of the spotlight lay Carol, a tired old mare about to squeeze out her 6th foal. Lord knows why, but Man was there, taking the whole thing in despite Carol’s propensity to pop her babies right out. He just wanted to make sure nothing bad happened.

And then it did. Not to Carol, nor to the foal soon to be named Tim. That went down as it always did. Pop, buckle, stumble, shiver. Baby horse is out and walking.

Instead, trouble lay sprawled in a shallow hole in the northwest corner of the barn, behind moldy boxes of vet records and the recently retired “U Pick Berries” signs. That’s where Mom lay, panting, groaning, dying. We didn’t know. We were just a bellyful of pups waiting to get out. But our anticipation was part of what was killing her, our squirms and kicks only worsening the rupture in her gut. As soon as the first of us, George I think it was, breached the exit, she let out a yelp so deeply pained I can still hear it to this day, sending George clamoring out and the rest of us back, deeper into her bleeding belly.

Man heard this anguished yowl and came running. At her last checkup, the vet blindly calculated that Mom wasn’t due until early November at the earliest, so he’d let his attention settle on Carol. But the moment Man saw her, eyes wet and desperate, legs trembling, a sole pup squirming in the dirt beside her, he knew it was serious. Lightly resting his hand on her face, he smiled at her and reassured her.

“You can do this, Lucy. You’re a strong, brave girl.”

It was Mom’s first litter. She didn’t know if this pain was normal. If her sense that she was vanishing just as her pups were coming into the world was simply a cruel but passing part of giving birth.

“Lucy, you are so amazing. You just need to relax. You just need to know it’s going to be over soon.” This was Man’s first litter as well. He’d read up on it only enough to know that what was playing out in front of him wasn’t what was supposed to happen. George writhed on the ground alone, covered in nastiness, his umbilical cord still attached. Man cleaned him off with the handkerchief he kept in his back pocket, and clipped the cord with his pocketknife. Behind him, Carol let out a soft nicker, as her new foal attached himself to her nipple.

Man leaned into Mom’s muzzle and whispered to her. “You and Carol are going to have to have joint birthday parties for your babies. I hope you’re OK with that.”  Mom closed her eyes, and cried. Then she pushed one last time.  

_______

Man and Lady became our new collective Mom. They named me Steve. In addition to me, there were George, and Joan, who both followed me out during Mom’s last push. There were two others, but they died along with Mom. Man didn’t give them names. Thing One and Thing Two he called them. I’m glad he never named them. That’s creepy. They buried Mom behind the barn, marked by a small cross, her worn green collar hanging off one side, her favorite leash dangling from the other.

We didn’t ever get to know Joan very well. A guy that Man knew from town had a little girl who wanted a puppy that first Christmas. He told Man he preferred a girl dog since he didn’t want to have to explain “the whole dick and balls thing” to his daughter before it was completely necessary. So only a month into my life, Joan was gone, Mom, Thing One and Thing Two were dead, and the only relation I had left was George.

Now dogs, just like most every other creature, learn the basics from their parents. Survival skills, hygiene, how to represent your breed in the best light. As a baby, you watch and explore, each day becoming more independent, learning and evolving until you become you. George and I had to wing it. During the first few weeks of our lives, Man and Lady kept us alive. They fed us bottles, kept us warm, and with a strategically placed belly push, helped us piss and poop. After we figured out basic life skills, though, we were pretty much on our own. We sniffed at and peered into every area of the main house, tripping and flopping through our new world, oversized paws on our wobbly legs. When the time was right, we were allowed a taste of the outdoors as well, where we met the rest of our farm family.

Man’s farm had horses: Carol, baby Tim, his older brother Harvey, and their sister Vicki. There were also some chickens: a rooster named Mel, and three hens, Teri, Madeline, and Cloris. And Lenny the rabbit.

You want to know what life on a farm is like for an animal? Skip Orwell’s Animal Farm, and read Charlotte’s Web. That’s pretty close. We all lived together, but the place was big enough that we didn’t cross paths much. It was a strawberry farm, so not much was ever asked of us. Most of the animals were basically just there for show, come picking time.

We spent most of our days following Man and Lady around all day long. It was winter, the farm having entered its dormant, back to nature period, so each of them had plenty of time to do what they pleased. Each morning, woken by an internal alarm left over from his days working a real farm, Man would silently slip out from under a well-worn down comforter, quickly tucking his side back under so the night’s accumulated warmth would keep Lady in her slumber until the grey skies lit themselves enough to wake her. George and I had already staked our claims to the foot of their bed by then, and as we perked up at the sensation of Man’s movement, he put his finger to his lips, and quietly motioned for us to follow him out into the hall and down the stairs. We were only two months old at the time, still puppies, but Man had our full attention whenever he focused his gaze upon us. The sudden judgmental narrowing of his eyes carried more power than any force or words.

After quietly scampering down the eighteen steps, we trailed Man into the living room, where he’d change into clothes he’d set out the night before. Looking into a hallway mirror, he’d spit into his hands and tamp down any hairs that might be astray.

“That’s one of the advantages of working on a farm, boys.” He’d look down at us, glad to have someone upon whom he could impart some wisdom. “Looking presentable means little more than simply wearing pants.”

In the kitchen, he’d turn on the stove to start some water boiling, grab our bowls from the floor, and head over to the mudroom that separated the kitchen from the back door of the house, where he parcel out a cup of kibbles into two bowls, glaring at us again with an arched eyebrow until our senses were somewhat restored before setting them down on the floor. As we ravaged our meal, Man brought out two mugs, spooning in one scoop of grounds each from a tin of Folgers, filling his from the now whistling kettle. Then he’d settle into his seat in a two-person breakfast nook near the mudroom door, turn on a cheap radio that still needed batteries should the power go out, and listened to Morning Edition on NPR.

Our appetites quenched and bellies full, George and I would waddle out through a cracked door and down the back steps to quickly relieve ourselves on the closest patch of grass, and hoof it up the stairs and back inside, our pink paws still sensitive to the rain-soaked soil. Back inside the kitchen, George would wander over to a corner of the room to settle into a pile of old family quilts Lady had laid out for us, while I made my way over to Man, nudging his pant leg with my nose until he lifted me up and set me on his lap. For the next hour we’d all sit and listen to Bob Edwards tell us the news of the day, with the occasional local newsbreak to inform us that it was still raining and would continue to do so for the next four months.

Lady would eventually come down, dressed in her home uniform of khakis and a Patagonia fleece, where she would re-heat the water, and, after giving each of us a kiss on the top of the head, pour herself her own cup of coffee and slide into her seat across from Man.

“You look beautiful,” Man would pronounce, looking at Lady as if she’d just walked down the aisle.

“You look amazing,” Lady would reply, reaching across the table and grabbing his hand.

This was morning. Every day.

Simple. Beautiful. Amazing.

_______

During the winter, we would tag along as Man and Lady logged the first few hours after breakfast as actual farmers. That meant heading to the barn to check in on Carol and her foals, then feeding the chickens and seeing if any of the hens had blessed them with a rare egg. Lenny was paid a visit, the door to the miniature bunny castle Man had crafted for him left ajar so he could venture out, but with the rain, he preferred to stay tucked away in a corner, burrowed so deeply in a fort of hay that all that remained visible was a shivering pair of custard brown ears. After Man and Lady escorted George and I back into the house, they donned the appropriate level of rain gear, and ventured out to check the fences bordering the farm. It was something Man’s father had taught him to do, and despite the fact that this was by no means the same farm his father once oversaw, Man felt it still the mark and duty of a true farmer to survey his land each morning.

For over 20 years, Man’s father ran the property as a full, working farm, with cows to be milked, hay to be grown, baled, and sold, and illegal immigrants to be told what to do. When he was killed at the 1980 Oregon State Fair during a showcase of a new John Deere tractor (a model that proved it could indeed plow through anything, including innocent men standing in line for corn dogs), his family was compensated with an undisclosed sum, a payment large enough to send his widowed wife to Florida and give his 20 year-old only son, and the daughter-in-law he’d never meet, a chance to keep the farm, while ditching the farming. The cows were given away, the illegal immigrants told the INS had just visited, and all but a small parcel was sold off to the neighboring farm. The remaining ten acres were given a year to rest, and after returning from their honeymoon, Man and Lady opened “The Berry Good Berry Farm.”

Berry farming is still work. There’s maintaining the soil, there’s keeping the latest pests and diseases at bay, there’s culling the underperforming plants and breeding the stronger ones. In terms of time and money investment, however, it’s a fairly straightforward operation, especially when you open your gates and let the public do the picking. Plus, Man retained one of his father’s best workers, a tiny man named Hec, who would arrive at the beginning of Spring and take care of most of the remaining farming duties, living in a small structure next to the barn that may or may not have once been a tool shed. All this left Man and Lady with a lot of time to pursue their other interests.

With the fences checked, and their raincoats hung to dry, Man and Lady would fix themselves another cup of Folgers, give each other a long kiss and head their separate ways, Man whistling for us to follow as he trudged up the stairs to what was once his childhood bedroom, while Lady, packing a lunch and a thermos, ran out the back door, dodging raindrops on her way to the abandoned hay barn. In their respective havens, they surrounded themselves with the things they loved best.

Man would say that his Record Room started the summer of 1982, when upon listening to a cassette tape of Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska,” he became so fed up with the low but, to his ears, deafening hiss permeating what should have been solemn quiet moments in the song “Atlantic City,” that he threw his tape player out the window and vowed to only listen to vinyl from that day forward. The truth, however, was that it began fifteen years earlier, when a then 7 year-old Man (“Boy”?) laid a dull plate of black onto his father’s portable record player, moved the delicate needle to the edge of it, and heard the jangling first notes of The Animals “Bus Stop.” No matter the start date, what George and I felt when we first entered his Record Room was nothing less than awe.

First, there was the smell. A dog’s nose is a sensitive instrument, able to pick apart minute threads of a scent to find the most relevant and interesting. So when Man opened the door that first time, we both scampered back a few paces as the intense musty scent of vinyl overwhelmed our tiny nostrils. Eyes watering, George and I quickly regained our balance and cautiously followed Man inside to find the source of the odor. Albums, thousands upon thousands of them, lined floor-to-ceiling shelves on each wall of the room. Like a lion enraptured with its potential prey, Man’s pupils slightly glazed over in anticipation as he entered this sacred space. For Man, this space, and the music within, afforded him both a launching pad of possibility, as well as a refuge of predictability.

“Don’t tell you-know-who,” Man whispered to us, that first time we followed him upstairs, “but this, boys, is my one true love.” He then proceeded to give us a tour, explaining the difference between an album and a single, the soulless-ness of digital music, and the reasoning behind why his albums were sorted not by genre or name, but by the date when they were released.

“It’s the same way my dad used to store hay. The oldest in front, the more recently cut behind them. It just makes sense.”

Man then proceeded to pull out the first in line, up in the top shelf on the North side of the room, his arched fingertips cautiously holding up a tattered sleeve inscribed with the faded words “Banner Records”.

“1926. Irving Kaufman. ‘Tonight You Belong to Me.’ It was my Grandma’s. She played it all the time, but she kept immaculate care of her precious platters.”

George gradually fell asleep as Man, now talking more to himself than to us, moved down the line of shelves, pulling different albums out to expound on its place in history, or play a sample. Coltrane segued into Hendrix which inspired Bowie which turned into Dylan. Each album sparked an urgent need to queue up another, the frenzy of free association only interrupted by brief but solemn moments of silent, deep appreciation for the music being played at that particular moment. The madcap conductor of his own vast symphony of songs, he pieced together his days from an eclectic assortment of instruments and voices. Every day was different, and every day was wonderful.

While Man filled the house with the sounds of The Zombies, Lou Reed, and Otis Redding, Lady was doing something else entirely out in the old hay barn. We had stayed inside with Man through most of January, as rain maintained its monotonous reign over the skies of Western Oregon. With the first week of February, however, came a rare break in form, with five continuous days of clear, unfiltered blue sky. After the morning ritual, coffee cups filled and kisses exchanged, we were now given an option.

“Boys, you want to come with me? It’ll be fun!” She patted her leg and headed out the door. We glanced over at Man, checking on the legitimacy of the offer.

“Go ahead, fellas. I’m feeling a little Bitches Brew today, and I’m not sure your ears could deal.” A slight lift of his head released us and we ran through the mudroom and took a giant leap on to the strangely dry grass. We hustled up to Lady who had stopped to give Tim a few scratches on the ear. The horses had their space in the barn, as well as a pasture outside, where they could gallop, saunter, and whatever else horses did. It was on the other side of this pasture where the hay barn sat, a similar sized but lesser version of the main barn, in that its priorities had simply been to keep dry the recently harvested hay. On the pasture side the only blemish in the rust red siding was a bale-sized opening near the back, the final destination of a chute that sent hay out for Carol and her foals. Huge sliding doors faced the road, scaled for the bigger trucks that used to load palates of hay to take away to their own farms. Fortunately, Man had rigged a garage door opener to do the heavy lifting, so all Lady had to do was press a button and with a mechanized grunt, the doors slowly slid open.

“Welcome to my studio!” Lady opened her arms like a game show host, revealing her magnificent, absurd world. Equal parts Salvador Dali and Willy Wonka, Lady had re-imagined and re-constructed as many of the leftover pieces of farm paraphernalia she could unearth from the farm’s working years. Old milking hoses and tubes were welded together to create a shining forest of steel trees, adorned with leaves of rusted and kicked buckets and pails. Horse bits and bridles had been twisted into an intricate nest of baling wire to produce a hallucinatory portrait of Man. Tractor wheels were laid on their side, their deep treads interlocked and calibrated, so when powered by the tractor’s old battery, served as an enormous, fully functional timepiece. George and I timidly tiptoed through the oddities, now casting a wary eye towards Lady as well. How could someone so seemingly normal create something so strange like these?

“Don’t be scared, boys. I made these ages ago. “ She sat down and took us both in her lap. “Right after we took over the farm actually. They were going to sell off everything, but I thought I could do something fun with it. I was going through a Calder/di Suvero stage. I liked the idea that what was once a defined thing, be it a tractor, a chicken coop, a fence post, could suddenly transform into something else. Something beautiful, something new. It makes you look at everything differently. It makes you realize not only that there was an inherent beauty in everything. But that nothing is what it is. Alter your perspective, put on a different filter, and everything around you gets cooler, stranger, and much more interesting.”

George and I crept around the sculptures, shooting each other looks every few seconds to make sure the other had been gobbled alive by one of them.

“But these days, I’m all minimalism. I’ve traded the welding torch for the much more refined, but just as dangerous instrument… the pencil”

Reaching into the inside pocket of her jacket, she pulled a yellow #2 pencil and let us smell it. George trotted over and started to gnaw on it, but Lady pulled it away and tapped his shiny black nose with it.

“Make things, boys. It doesn’t matter what it is. Just make things. It gives you purpose, it sets you free, and most importantly, it shows that you have indeed set a foot on this silly planet.” She walked over to an old drawing table where a giant pad of paper lay open to a clean white sheet. Putting pencil to paper, she sped it around in eight different spots and held up this:

“I call it, ‘Two Puppies Thinking Their Owner Is Nuts.’ Pretty good likeness, no?”

Both George and I immediately started wagging our tails.

 “Hah!” Lady laughed and looked at us with a shaking head. “This may sound nuts, boys, but I swear, sometimes it’s like you two totally understand everything I’m saying. It’s kinda crazy.”

She wasn’t nuts, and it was crazy. We actually were understanding everything she was saying.

_______

As meteorologists dusted off their “Party Cloudy” and “Mostly Sunny” icons, George and I began to find ourselves on our own, either out exploring the area of the farm in which we were allowed to roam, or on the one living room couch temporarily zoned for canines. All of this was our farm now, Man explained, and with he and Lady immersed in their daily rituals most of the day, we should make ourselves at home. Our ever-inquisitive noses led to discoveries both mysterious and banal, from a lost hairbrush behind the icebox (“Your mother’s.” Lady said to Man. “I can tell by the smell of Aqua Net and bourbon”) to a secret nest, hidden underneath a thick rhododendron bush behind the house, filled with Man’s socks and the haunting scent of our Mom. We chased around the chickens until they began to turn and chase us back. Outside, we found squirrels and crows, mole holes and garbage cans, horse manure and chicken feed. Inside we found the attic and the basement, picture frames and bookshelves, the liquor cabinet and the food cupboard. And one day, in the middle of all the exploring, we found our voices.

Mothers and fathers vividly remember their children’s first words. Be it “mama,” “dada,” or “nuts”- as Man says his first word to his mother was – they live on as the beginning of a life of language, a life in which speaking becomes the universal bridge connecting you to others, your weapon to get by in life. My first word couldn’t have been a more fitting choice for the road that speaking would eventually take me down.

“Really?”

We were outside the barn, George attempting to dig under the fence so he could go run with the horses, while I jumped up and laid my front paws on Lenny’s cage, hoping to convince him to hop. All he’d ever done was cower in the corner, and I needed some convincing he was a real rabbit. Clawing on the tightly-woven screen, my efforts only served to terrorize the rabbit even more, escalating his fear to the level where, head buried in the corner of his cage, butt aimed directly at my face, he shit himself. Before I knew it, with a muffled, moist rat-a-tat-tat, a seemingly endless barrage of poop pellets hurtled towards me, and I could do nothing but duck for cover.

And speak.

“Really?”

I can’t really describe the sensation of talking for the first time. It was as if a switch had been turned on. In an instant, everything I had seen Man and Lady do, and everything I’d heard them say while doing it, became my natural instincts as well. It felt strange not to say something.

“Did you see that?” I turned to George. At my first utterance, he had stopped pawing at the ground and now sat there, nose covered in dirt, blankly staring at me. I couldn’t tell if he was scared of me, proud of me, or just completely freaked out.

“Can you talk too?” Stepping slowly, I moved towards George, his lack of reactions now beginning to frighten me. “Tell me you can talk to.”

I needed to be close to him, needed to bury my head in his neck. I was terrified, by the rattle of words coming through my throat, by the needle-prick of my brain every time a new thought made its way to my mouth. I lowered my head as I reached him, and leaned into his chest, resting my ear under his chin.

“I’m glad it’s not just me.” George whispered. His voice was deeper than mine, more confident. I stepped back and looked up at him. He raised an eyebrow like Lady would do whenever she came to a crossroads with one of her paintings. What happens next? Was her work done, or was this only the beginning?

“So…now what?” We each chose our words sparingly, hesitant to commit to this newfound ability for fear that saying too much would set us down a road on which there was no going back.

Tim had wandered over and was peering through the lower rung of the fence, confused at this new source of human tone. He nipped at George’s tail, his rubbery lips blowing dust and dirt into his fur. George suddenly turned.

 “Tim! Stop that!” The fence rattled as a startled Tim slammed his head into the rung’s worn wood. With a bewildered shake of the neck, he turned and trotted off to more sensible things inside the barn.

I laughed, a new sensation erupting from my chest, up through my neck, less akin to a human laugh, but more like someone desperately in need of a Heimlich maneuver. Hearing it, George began to laugh as well. To any unknowing passers by, we were two large pups gagging on their respective bones. To us, however, we were just two brothers profoundly grateful to have a sympathetic partner, a fellow curiosity.

_______

We continued to only speak during the days, only outside, and only to each other. With Man weaving his way from the early years of John Coltrane to the later years of John Lennon, and Lady embarking on an extended series of line drawings she was calling “The Expressions of Mankind,” we had the outside to ourselves. With the rest of the farm still off limits to us, our main hangout became inside the barn, where we’d trade the things we each knew and understood, and ruminated on the majority of the world that remained a mystery. Every day, George offered up newfound facts (“Man has a wiener like us. Lady has a hole down there.” “Avoid mouse traps.” “That thing that’s always following us is just our shadow.”), while I usually offered up some theories and guesses as to why things were the way they were.

“We’re freaks.”

“We are?” George was nosing through a pile of old wooden crates that Man had set aside for repairing over the winter, but wouldn’t get to until the day before picking season. “No, we’re not.”

“We are.” I leapt from hay bale to hay bale, trying to reach the barn’s loft. “Dogs don’t talk. Dogs bark.”

“I know that.” George has smelled something good, and unfortunately for Man, was doing more damage to the already fragile crates to find its source.

The bales weren’t piled high enough, so I scouted the area for another way up. I’d seen Man use the ladder in the corner, so I jumped down to try my hand at it.

“I had thought we might be angels, you know, sent from God to show humans…something, then I thought maybe we were devils, sent by Satan as a sign of…something.” I tried climbing the ladder but couldn’t coordinate my big paws up the first set of steps. “But I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re just freaks. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Here we go!” George had unearthed his prize: a what-looked-to-be several years old rat carcass. He proudly held the decaying corpse by the tail, but quickly flung it away as the taste of moldy rotten rat body hit his taste buds. Spitting and sneezing, he looked up at me. “So what do freaks do?”

“The smart ones keep it to themselves, I guess.”

He loped over to a bucket of water Man put out for the horses and sloppily lapped up a few drinks, his wet lips then licking his fur to get any lingering taste of rat death out of his mouth.

Eyes watering, muzzle dripping, tongue darting out for fresh air, George looked at me bluntly.

“So…secret freaks?”

I nodded.

“Secret freaks.”

Our secrecy lasted two weeks.

_______

It was the Friday night before Easter. The power was out again, a spring storm taking out most of rural Eugene and leaving Man and Lady to entertain themselves by looking at old photo albums by candlelight. As evidenced by the pictures inside these endless series of books, their lives up until this point consisted mainly of life on the farm, a yearly trip to Astoria on the Oregon coast, and one highly-documented trip to Paris right after they were married, almost 30 years ago. These oldest photos, fading with the years, lived in a well-worn book, the cover of which Lady had painstakingly crafted using random detritus from each of the places they visited: a napkin from Les Deux Magots, a candy wrapper from Fouquet, a rubbing from the walls of Notre Dame, a swatch of lace from the flea market of Les Puces. This book was their bible, pages to visit when they sought a reminder that a heaven existed. So they set it between them, and with George and I nestled into blankets that covered each of their laps, they returned once again to this magnificent place.

“Versailles,” whispered Lady, as she stared at a youthful, invigorated version of herself posed, arms open, before an almost infinite expanse of curated lakes, trees, lawn, and sky. On the next page, a robust, mischievous Man mimicked the pose of the statue of Louis XIV behind him. Below that, the two of them carefully stood, balanced in the middle of a boat, their eyes wide with joy, their hands locked with profound trust. I couldn’t help myself.

“You look beautiful,” I whispered.

To which George added the natural counterpart, “You look amazing.”

The minute the words came out of our mouths, George and I looked at each other, terrorized.

The freaks were outed. My muscles tensed. I saw George set himself into a crouch, ready to take off at our impending rejection.

 The page in front of us turned and landed with what seemed like a loud thud, as any other sound in the room had instantly disappeared. And instead of gazing at the stunning views from Montmarte, or the cramped back staircases of the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore, Man and Lady simply stopped, stared at each other for a moment, and slowly lifted our tense and terrified bodies up to their faces.

“Um, did you just say something, boys?” Man held me a few inches away from his face, his stare identical to the astonished wonderment in the photo of him first taking in Venus Di Milo.

I looked at George. He cocked his head, shrugged his shoulders.

“Yes.” I murmured. Man’s grip on my belly was tight, but not tense. I couldn’t what he was feeling. “Sorry?”

There was a long silence. George and I stared at each other, neither of us secure enough in our positions in the family to want to bear witness to the judgment being made against us.

“Well…fuck.” Man burst out laughing, and Lady soon followed, their growing snorts and cackles at once both frightening and reassuring.

“Oh my God! What else can you say?” Lady picked up George, tears winding through the creases in her cheeks. “Can you say my name?”

“Lady.”

“And you’re Man,” I added, my voice rising in confidence.

They were gone. Hysterics. At one point Man stood up to try and compose himself, but immediately tipped back over on to the couch in tears after I uttered an innocent, “Shit.”

Following a few failed starts at composure, Man and Lady, eyes red and chests still lightly heaving, crouched down in front of the couch where George and I lay, and gave us a look of such pride and love and devotion, they could have been dogs themselves.

Resting his thick hands on each of our heads, Man stared into George’s eyes, and then mine. “Your mom would be so proud.”

_______

And that was it. No calls to the local TV station. No special treatment. We were back to being pups. Granted, pups that watched everything from Sesame Street to The Simpsons, pups who now listened to Fresh Air with Terry Gross, pups who, before being fully house-trained, thoroughly perused The Eugene Register-Guard right before pooing on it. With Man and Lady now fully on board, every day we could say more, understand more, and, ultimately, feel more. But they also continued to treat us just as we truly felt inside, as your every day, run-of-the-mill pups that ate dog food, slept on the end of the bed, and chased the chickens until they were on the verge of a heart attack.

As winter turned into spring, which in Eugene happens around the same time spring is turning into summer in every other part of the country, Man and Lady stayed holed up in their respective spaces, doing what made them happy. And more and more, George and I began to go our separate ways as well, George heading out to the barn to be with Lady, while I sat with Man and waded through his music.

Nestled on an old sofa left over from his parent’s living room, I became the audience Man had always craved, an empty but eager vessel into whom he could impart the deeply important minutiae that he’d previously stored in his ears and mind. He broke music into a singular family tree, the branches of his entire library fostered by the singular, impenetrable roots of the bluesman Robert Johnson. From Mr. Johnson sprung everything. In any song, from The Beatles “Yesterday” to Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” to Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman,” Man could (and would) lift the needle from the record and point out the “Mr. J” in the song. We made it through one note on my introduction to Led Zeppelin before Man pointed to the record player and yelled, “There he is!” The ghost of an old bluesman seemed to haunt every song ever recorded.

Each day unfolded differently, depending on Man’s mood. Rainy days could either be met with silent, uninterrupted listenings of albums like Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” or Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon,” or with a heavily DJ’d set of heavily-caffeinated singles from artists like The Isley Brothers, The Sonics, or the B-52s. On sunny days, Man would open the windows to the Record Room wide, and spend his day creating a live mix for his wife in the hay barn down the way, blending the songs he knew she loved (say, “Iko Iko” by The Dixie Cups) the songs he felt she should love (like “My Reverie” by the doo wop group The Larks) and songs he knew that would make her smile (see “Boris The Spider” by The Who.) For Man, music was equal parts inspiration, game, therapist, and lover. And while he himself never created any music of his own, what he did with the music that he loved was his entirely. Every day, he created stories, no two ever the same, a song by song choose your own adventure where one minute you could be so happy you could cry, and the next you could be having your 19th nervous breakdown. The more I listened, the more I knew, and I began to treasure the split second glances, the halted breaths, when a song came on that I knew, and Man and my eyes momentarily locked and grew wide together. The music felt unique, exclusive, and private, despite the fact that it had most likely been shared by millions of others who encountered the same songs. Afterwards, no matter where we were or who we were with, we’d be able to catch each other’s attention ever so briefly, and with the mere mention of a particular phrase, or hum of a chorus, re-live that pure feeling of joy. I loved that about music. I loved that about sharing it with Man.

Out in the barn, George was growing restless. The more pieces he watched Lady create, the more he felt he needed to make something as well. Lady liked to talk about the need for inspiration, that the most powerful art came from a deep connection to whatever was being created. It didn’t have to be serious, or profound, but it required dedication. Even the simplest pieces of art required that the artist fully believed it needed to be created. If not, she’d say, then you may as well just put away the crayons. As it happened, George had his inspiration lying right in front of him.

Back when she was creating the series of trees from the old milking equipment, she’d planned to adorn them with a collection of birds fashioned from various nuts, bolts, and other debris laying around the barn. In a box of Man’s father’s old books, she’d discovered a vintage copy of the Audubon Society’s Field Guide to North American Birds, and lugged it to the barn to use for reference when trying to recreate a blue jay from a calcified paintbrush and a can of rusted nails. Having now moved on to simpler projects, she’d set the book on the ground in front of the dog beds that George and I would sit in to watch her work. George would gently nose though it, admiring the world of birds beyond the chickens, finches, and stray pigeons we’d encountered around the farm.

“I want to draw these.” George told Lady one day, as he studied the painting of the boobies and gannets of the Northeast coast.

“OK, George. Why?” Lady strolled over to him and looked over his shoulder at the picture. “And please don’t say its because one of those birds is called a ‘Boobie.’”

“No.” Geroge stared intently at the birds. “I want to draw them because I know I can’t.”

Lady crouched down next to him and pushed her nose into the hair on the top of his head. Despite how much we’d grown, it was still possible to extract a the fading scent of puppy still lingering in our fur.

“George, I think that’s the best reason to draw something I’ve ever heard.”

He knew exactly what he wanted to do, and it was perfect. It was his own version of The Audubon Society’s Field Guide to North American Birds, but in the style of Lady’s new minimalist drawings. He called it The Audubon Society’s Field Guide to North American Birds, As Seen From A Distance. Taking a pen in his mouth, he would make the classic curved “V” shape of a bird flying in the distance, and then would undertake the much more difficult task of labeling it with the common and scientific name of a bird from the book. Lady offered to do the writing part for him, but he refused, saying that was the most challenging, and thus most rewarding, part. The walls of the barn were quickly covered with framed pictures of the same “V” shaped profile, the true beauty of the Louisiana Heron and Red-cockaded Woodpecker and Olive Sparrow left to the imaginations of the viewer. Over the next few years, he would do over 1500 of them, the entire catalog of North American birds, as seen from a distance.

_______

Every year in early April, Hec would arrive from wherever he spent his winters, and start tending to the rows of strawberry plants that were just cautiously beginning to embrace the change of seasons. When the weather permitted, and that was rare, George and I were given permission to take leave of our art and music apprenticeships and start venturing out into the farm’s 25 acres, exploring life beyond the house and barn.

The land Man had kept after his father’s passing consisted of the plot they’d need for berry growing, room a personal vegetable garden, and, as he put it, “a proper trail for strolling and pondering.” That path, on which George and I began to walk on clear mornings when Man opened the front door, and on dry nights before bed, took us behind the house and alongside a row of red maple trees, out towards the creek that separated the farm from the neighboring farms. Along the course of the trail sat a small shack, “The Thinking Hut.” Man said his dad used to occasionally come out to this small, ramshackle one room hide-away after dinners to smoke a hand-rolled cigarette, and just look at his farm. He told Man that no matter how far away from everything you might find yourself, you still need somewhere to escape to. These days, it mainly served as Hec’s lunchroom, as well as a secret late-night make-out spot for various teenage neighbors.

After The Thinking Hut, you could take a path through the rows of strawberries back to the house and barn, or you could continue on, walking the northern and western perimeter of the farm, a newly installed barb-wire fence on your right, the rows of saplings of neighbor’s tree farm on the other side. It was never much too look at, so most mornings, I would head back to the Record Room, or hunt down out Hec out in the fields, while George kept walking, always with the same stick in his mouth. As the weeks and months passed and the weather got nicer, George did this more and more, wandering off on his own, never in anger or dismay, but just to walk around and look at things. It was a habit he picked up from Lady, this tendency to amble, stare at nothing in particular, talk to themselves. To an outsider it looked aimless, maybe even crazy. But it was just how they soaked in the world around them. And it made George a happier, more contented dog. 

One night, after passing the Thinking Hut, instead of veering off, I stayed alongside him, and we plodded through the muddy trail left by the previous night’s spring shower.  For a while, George kept on like I wasn’t there, pausing to sniff a freshly blooming daisy, pissing on a fencepost, flipping his stick up and trying to catch it mid-flight. Then, he stopped as we were rounding the southern-most corner of the farm, dropped his stick, and looked at me.

“We are freaks.”

I hadn’t thought about it again since we last talked in the barn months back. But it was clear that George had. I stared at him, instinctively leaning in to lick a piece of dirt from the corner of one of his eyes before taking a seat in the wet grass. “Yeah, but, I don’t know, at the end of the day we’re still dogs, right?”

“I guess.”

 “It’s not like we can drive a car, or ride a horse, or sit on a toilet and read a newspaper.”

George turned his head so I could lick under his ear. “True.” He didn’t seem convinced. He mindlessly scratched the dirt with a paw, and I could see his eyes wandering towards the barn. I switched to cleaning his other ear and continued.

“I mean, we do still technically speak ‘Dog’ after all. Remember when that delivery guy came by a few weeks ago with that Golden Retriever. We knew what to do. We sniffed her butt. We pawed at her. We barked the right barks.”

George pulled away. “I wonder what Mom would’ve thought.”

I followed his gaze to the barn. “Man said Mom would have been proud of us. So I guess she would have thought it was pretty awesome.”

“But we couldn’t have talked to her. She couldn’t speak, not like we can. We’d have been strangers to our own mom.”

I shook my head. “No. We would have been her pups. And she would have been our mom. It just works out.” I don’t know why I thought this, but I believed it wholeheartedly.

In the distance, we heard Man whistle for us to come to bed. George hesitantly grabbed his trusty stick and we started trotting home.

“So we’re freaks.” He muttered through his grip on his stick. “But in a good way?”

“Exactly.”

Temporarily appeased, George started into a sprint, aiming to beat me to Lady’s more roomy side of the bed. “You know what? I’m glad we can talk!” He was much faster than I was, my preference to lounge around on the couch and listen to music already catching up to me at only 9 months old.

“Why?” I huffed.

He dropped his stick and yelled back at me. “Because butts smell like shit!”

_______

Man said Hec spoke “Farm English.” Enough words and phrases to get through a harvest without ever being expected to carry on a conversation longer than two minutes. Even though they’d worked together for over 30 years, the most personal conversation Man and Hec had ever engaged in came in 1997 when Man tried to explain to him why he’d be gone for a few days.

“I’m going to the hospital because I have rocks in my penis,” Man explained, holding up a hose next to his waist, and dribbling a few pebbles he’d grabbed to complete the visual.

Hec had just pointed to the barn, signaling that there were extra hoses he could use if that one was broken.

“No, no. I have kidney stones. Inside my penis. It hurts when I pee.” Man groaned and grimaced as he mimicked urinating, complete with a fake dick shake and zip of the pants.  

Hec stared at Man, the facts finally registered, but the appropriate reaction remaining in question. So he just pursed his lips and nodded, gave Man the thumbs-up, and then bent down and gave Man’s penis a thumbs-up as well.

Man could never tell this story enough.

As master of the farm, Hec would spend most of his days alone, out in the fields, connecting to the land he spent seven months of his life with, whether sowing it, weeding it, fertilizing it, or, as George and I saw during our first spring on the farm, speaking to it. By the time we started trailing Hec into the different areas he was working in that day, he knew we could talk. He had laughed and shaken his head when we introduced ourselves, but after that, we were just a couple of curious pups to him, a relationship that suited each of us perfectly. George and I would trot along a few paces behind as Hec made his way to that day’s plot, stumbling over our still oversized paws, then spend the days racing each other down the trails that separated each row of bushes, wrestling in areas he pointed out as “seguro,” or simply watching him work as we ultimately succumbed to heavy eyes. It was during these times, sprawled next to each other, still panting, when we could listen in to the ongoing conversation Hec maintained with the ground he worked each day.

“I love you today, La Dadivosa.” Each morning, he addressed the fields around him with the same greeting. It turned out Hec spoke much more English than he let on, a skill he picked up not to better understand Man’s prostate, but to enhance his relationship with his true co-workers, the “English-speaking” soil and plants of Berry Good Berry Farm. These one-sided conversation were always sporadic and concise, a series of curious fortune cookie-like pronouncements, usually followed by a personal aside that gave you a glimpse of Hec’s twisted past.

“The fruit you bear is up to you, not some trucker-fucker of a wife.”

“Grow every day. Or find yourself ten feet under like your brother.”

“To feed someone is to care for them. To love someone is to be slowly murdered by them.”

One rare cloudless May afternoon, near the northern-most area of the farm, Hec was tending to a row of plants that were slow in finding their footing after a dark March and April. As George and I lay huffing in the leafy shadows provided by the nearby maple trees, unaccustomed to any extended period of direct sunlight, we overheard Hec whispering to a particularly ragged shrub.

“The sky is your heart. The soil is your soul. And when someone shits on you, use it to grow.”

Instantly, instinctively, I lifted my head up, as did George.

“Beautiful.” I said, to Hec, to George, to myself.

To which George understandably added, “Amazing.”

 “You live life, you learn life.” Hec looked up from his leafy patient, speaking to us for the first time since we met. “And you two,” his eyebrows slightly raised, a cautionary smile on his lips, “will learn more than most.”

_______

The strawberry-picking season is a brief one. Usually the Month of June and that’s it. Thanks to the wet spring, however, our first season was a longer one than most, lasting from early June deep into July. During that time, people swarmed the farm, lining up at the fence of the property at 6 am, while George and I were sent out to sniff for stragglers every night at 6 pm. It seemed Man and Lady’s farm was known for its certain variety of strawberry, the Tillamook, which was bigger and easier to pick than the more common Totem and Hood strawberries that neighborhood farms grew. They were a riskier berry, more temperamental, but Hec seemed to know how to keep them coming back year after year.

As with any place open to the public, the farm attracted its mix of regulars and first-timers, serious and curious, gregarious and recluse. They worked the rows of bushes that each day seemed to blossom with new rewards, filling up baskets, crates, and along the way, mouths. A few people showed up every day. There was Anna, 65, a sweet, chatty, truck of a woman, who tried to make a living making pies and jams during the summer with the berries she picked here, and, in the winter, sewing quilts from vintage fabric she’d find at Goodwill. There was Damon, a college-drop-out who’s parents thought he was an engineer up at Intel, but instead, made his money picking berries at different U-Pick farms in Eugene, then re-selling them to a collection of Portland’s top chefs and bakers. And then there was Günther, whose wife and 3 year-old son were killed by a drunk driver in Seattle a few years earlier, which in turn led him to a ramshackle old farmhouse about 20 miles south of here in an attempt to recuperate and revive.

We knew all this because people will tell a dog anything, especially a puppy, no mater how sad, sick, or damning it might be, mentally filling in our side of the conversation before we ever had the chance to show that they didn’t need to. It gave me one of my first insights into the mind of humans that, at the time, made me happy to be a dog. Sure, I could talk, but what would I say? The world these people have created seemed designed for pain, for lies, for compromise. As much as I grew to love them, I pitied them just as much.

After these long summer days of listening to the tortured stories of these people, George and I would nestle together each night, lick each other’s ears clean, and sleepily mutter a single, reassuring word to each other.

“Woof.”

“Woof.”

_______

August and September were unbearably hot. At least to an Oregonian. So, as was their routine, Man and Lady went to the coastal town of Astoria until the heat passed, leaving us in Hec’s hands, just as they did with Mom when she was around.

“I don’t think the fact that you can talk will get you around the ‘No Dogs’ rule at the house we rent.” Man stuffed the back of his old Volvo station wagon with two milk crates of albums he couldn’t live without, a portable record player, and the two small suitcases of clothes Lady had packed for them.

Lady slid her pads of drawing paper and a toolbox of drawing supplies into the backseat of the car. “We took your mom with us once, but she hated it. Too sandy. Too windy. She spent most of the time laying the back of the car, barking and whining at us, hoping each day was the last.”

“Your mother was not one for patience. If she decided she didn’t like something, that was it.” Man slammed the trunk shut, and gave us each a pat on the head.

“Plus, you guys can watch as much TV as you want!” Man had rigged the VCR to a more dog-friendly system where we could slide a movie in and out of the machine with a simple push of a snout. He’d put out a stack of he and Lady’s favorite movies for us to watch. “I can’t wait to see what you think of ‘Harold and Maude.’ It’s dark, but so funny. And Cat Stevens does the music!”

“Will you call?” I had gotten used to a nightly chat with Man about a song I liked, or an artist I wanted to hear.

“Hah!” He and Lady laughed. “Yeah, sure! We never really had anyone to call back to, but of course we’ll call.”

“You don’t have to. You know. We’ll be fine.” George made sure Man knew that I was the needy one. Man did.

Lady bent down and kissed the tops of our heads. “I love you, boys. Be good to Hec and to each other. And don’t watch too much TV. It’ll rot your brain.”

She opened the passenger door and settled in across from Man, who was adjusting the rearview mirror. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”

“Well, you sounded very convincing.” Man kissed her, started the engine, and headed out towards the main road, as George and I scooted inside to avoid the cloud of dust he left in his wake.

_______

Man had taken the American Film Institute’s list of top 100 comedies, a list he more or less agreed with, but revised it with certain favorites of his own. Woody Allen’s “goofy phase” of “Sleeper” and “Bananas,” were replaced by the later, less slapstick-y “Purple Rose of Cairo” and “Zelig.” Oldies like “His Girl Friday,” “Born Yesterday, and “A Day at The Races” gave way to “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Sixteen Candles,” and “Raising Arizona.” “The Lady Eve” was traded for “The Princess Bride.” “Woman Of The Year” for “Revenge Of The Nerds.”

We watched two a day, one on the morning, before our morning tag-a-long with Hec, and one at night, after our afternoon nap by the air conditioner. Sometimes Hec would join us, if he liked what was on the schedule. (He would request “falling down movies” and would always leave the Charlie Chapin movies eyes wet with tears.) Most times, however, he’d eat with us and head out to Help House to read his hidden stash of Tom Clancy novels, or just smoke a cigarette and look at the moon.  

Occasionally, mid-movie, George would get up and wander off. It was never in response to anything. He was just restless. With doors unlocked, and no one to miss us in the bed, he’d leave the house to walk around the property. He didn’t need the company of two-dimensional strangers, especially ones that weren’t going to talk back. That’s how he first came to meet The Cochrans.

Back when Man’s father was running the farm, the only neighbors around were Hank and Violet Cooper, an older couple to the east of them who grew and harvested corn on a parcel of land about the same size of the original hay farm. They had a daughter, Margaret, a few years older than Man, who mesmerized Man with her Tuesday Weld face, her Raquel Welch chest, and her stack of Elvis 45’s. The Cooper house lay about 100 yards from their farm house, and sometimes in the dead quiet of a winter night, Man could crack his window and hear the faint sounds of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” and dream that she was playing it for him. Unfortunately for Man, and for humanity in general, society’s rules maintained that all the best looking girls must fall prey to all the worst guys, and Margaret found the absolute worst in Jerry Cochran. The fact that he abused her, cheated on her, and got her pregnant the night before graduation somehow only solidified their bond. When Margaret’s parents asked Jerry about his plans with their daughter and grandchild, a shotgun in Hank Cooper’s hand casually aimed at Jerry’s groin made it apparent that he would marry her and start to take over the job of running the farm.

Jerry was no farmer, though. Despite the fading patches on his letterman’s jacket, a valid age on his license to buy liquor, and the crying wife and baby boy at home, he fought to hold on to his life as high school thug. He staggered through the days under the weight of the previous night’s damages, falling asleep under the tall stalks of corn and deferring his duties to his father-in-law, who quickly realized he was stuck with a worthless ass for a son. Inspired by Man’s decision to sell off most of their property a few years earlier, Hank Cooper contacted the same buyer and offered up a majority of his lot as well, with a subsequent plan to trade the remaining land and some of the profit he made off the sale to Jerry in return for his daughter and grandson. And even though Jerry initially accepted the deal, Margaret refused, enraged that the offer was even made (but oddly, not by the fact that it was so readily accepted.) So Hank and Violet Cooper packed up their newly purchased RV and pulled away to unreturned tears, surrendering their home, their daughter, and their only grandson to a man who’s most notable life skill was the ability to belch the lyrics to Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee.”

The Cochrans now consisted of two acres of land, with enough rows of corn to create a frightening “haunted” maze come Halloween, and enough hidden hunting blinds to summon and then destroy entire generations of pheasants. Jerry took an interest in his son only when the son took an interest in hunting, and had subsequently raised him as his prodigy in every way. The only thing that differed Todd Cochran from his father was his athletic prowess, tacking on “star quarterback” to the list of unbearable traits that defined him. Each time the two of them donned camouflage suits and makeup and headed into the backyard with their shotguns, Margaret would walk out the front door and stand at the fence between her property and ours and reminisce about the nights she used to tease the boy next door by playing Elvis love songs for him.

George had wandered over to the fence one hot night after hearing the sound of crying. He found a woman gazing expressionlessly at the upstairs windows of our house, wet hazel eyes sparkling in the last rays of a disappearing sun. At the sound of George’s leaden paws crunching the fallen leaves, she looked down and saw him now sitting, compassionately looking up at her.

 “Hi puppy! What’s your name?”

He said he trusted his instincts, that the pure tone of her voice and the eagerness and relief in her body language, instantly made him consider her honorable and good. So he answered.

“I’m George.”

She reacted almost exactly as Man and Lady had. At first, quiet confusion, and then, after getting down on her knees, an overwhelming sense of happiness, bordering on relief.

“So…George. You can talk?” She wished the fence would disappear, that she could take this pup in her arms forever.

“Weird, right?”

“Not at all. It’s amazing. I’m Margaret.” She reached through the fence and gently laid her hand on George’s head, the touch of his soft fur eliciting a soft sigh before she quickly pulled her hand back.

“Oh, God. I guess I should ask. Can I pet you?”

“Of course. It’s nice.”

But just as she reached back through the fence, a shotgun blast thundered forth from close range, sending George darting off towards home.

“Come back!” she yelled as George disappeared into a patch of long, un-mowed grass. “Please!”

After a minute of assuring silence, George crept back to the fence, where Margaret sat on the other side, smiling apologetically.

“I’m sorry. They usually stay on the other side of the property.” Her exhaustion overflowed from the puffiness under her eyes, her sunken shoulders, the cracks in her voice. “Its OK though. You’re safe.”

The bushes next to Margaret began to rustle and shake as the smell of blood poured into George’s nose.

“I should hope so with two armed men to protect you!”

Looking up, he saw that the bushes had transformed into an enormous man, dressed in the same pattern as the surrounding grass, his face painted to match his clothes. In one arm he held a still smoking shotgun, and in the other a bleeding, freshly-murdered pheasant. Behind him came a younger version of the first man, also with a shotgun, but in his other hand, a leash that wound its way down to the neck of a large black dog.

“Although, if this dog’s as shitty at being a guard dog as he is at being a hunting dog, you’re fucked.” The younger man gave the leash a jerk, and George watched as the metal spikes that encircled his neck dug in tighter. “Uh, mom, are you talking to a fucking dog?”

They’d both spotted George, despite his attempts to creep away unnoticed.

“In fact I was.” Margaret stood up and shook off the dirt from her long skirt on which she’d been kneeling. “George, this is my husband Jerry and my son Todd. And this is our dog, Lynyrd. Jerry, Todd, Lynyrd…this is George. George can talk.”

As her husband and son started laughing and berating her for her stupidity and insanity, George calculated his ties with Margaret. He didn’t owe her anything, but he also felt a desperate and fervent need to give her a break from her profound misery.

“Nice to meet you.”

The laughter quickly died away, but this time the silence felt imposing, terrifying, and extremely worrisome.

“Did you just fucking talk?”

Jerry stepped towards the fence, each step closer matched by a step in the opposite direction from George. “Answer me you fucking freak.”

George stayed silent as Todd let go of Lynyrd’s leash and slid his hand towards the handle of his gun. “What are you? Some sort of devil dog?”

“Alright, men.” Margaret started to take a step towards her husband and son. “The testosterone is flowing from all the guns and killing, but let’s all just calm…”

“Shut the fuck up, Mags.” Jerry put a hand behind his back and gave a signal to his son. Slowly, Todd lifted his gun, its barrel creeping towards being level with George’s slinking body.

“Run, George!” Margaret screamed, sending George sprinting across the yard and down into the hole we’d discovered on the backside of the house.

“I didn’t hear anything else they said, I was breathing too hard.” After sneaking out of the hole and back through the front door George retold the whole tale. “Just lots of screaming and yelling.”

I didn’t know what to say. Why would someone want to kill a dog just for talking? What was wrong with people? What was wrong with us?

“Promise me you’ll never go near that place again? Promise me, George.”

Eyes etched with confusion and fear, George promised.