My dog died when I was sixteen. She was sixteen, too. She was one of those mindlessly amiable teddybear dogs, no brains to speak of, but far kinder and more empathetic than any human could ever aspire to be. To me, she had always seemed old, and she had always been part of the substrate of my life, seemingly permanent, like my parents. It was inconceivable that she would suddenly disappear.
She died on a weekend when both of my parents were busy. Daddy was away at a conference and my mom had obligations with the League of Women Voters or the Sierra Club or something. We took Molly to the vet in the morning, we watched her die, we went home. Mom said, “Sorry, honey, I know you will miss her,” and took off.
And that left me alone in the house. I tried to read but could not concentrate. I walked from room to room, window to window. I ate a sandwich, went back for a bunch of crackers, made a third trip for some milk and cookies. I went out to the back yard and looked at my swing, a board hanging from the branch of an immense maple tree. It was my thinking spot. I spent hours on it, swooshing in great arcs, back and forth, while I worked out the ins and outs of teenage life. But that day I did not want to think. I did not want to swoop in arcs of memory. I wandered back into the house and tried listening to the radio for awhile, but quickly got fed up.
So I called up Danni. Danni lived about four houses away. I walked over quite often: up our long gravel driveway, out along the shoulder of the paved road, down her long gravel driveway. That was one way to get to her house. The other way, when the tide was out, was to walk along the beach.
She was glad I called. “Hey, farout, is that serendipity or coincidence or something?”
She sounded stoned.
“I was wondering if I could come over,” I said, flat, unemotional. Compared to Danni, I was a boring person.
“Yeah, sure, but, hey, can you borrow your parents’ car? It’s really important. I know where we can get some…” her voice dropped to a whisper, “…really good Columbian pot. Four finger lid, no seeds at all. I got some money.”
My first thought was that I could not borrow the car since no one was home to ask. And even if someone had been home, the answer would have been no. Daddy said he was tired of me bringing the car home with one hundred miles on the odometer and smelling like a Turkish bordello. That was his way of saying if you are going to smoke pot, be tactful about it. I wasn’t the kind of kid that stabbed my parents in the back. I didn’t steal their prescription medications, I came home by curfew, I didn’t skip out on school. I did smoke dope, but so did everyone, including many of their friends, so we had an unspoken agreement about that.
But the agreement about the car, at that point in time, was I couldn’t borrow it.
“So can you ask them?” Danni was full of enthusiasm. And I thought no, I can’t ask them, but Mom would not be home until four, and I could make sure we were back before then and I could make sure the car didn’t stink. She shouldn’t have left me home alone that day.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll be right over.”
We drove out to Harry’s house. Harry was about six years older than us. Looking back, I can type him: one of those guys who hangs with high school kids because he hadn’t grown up. Danni and I had mixed reactions to him. He wasn’t cute enough to interest us from a dating perspective—he was too dorky to be cool—but he did have his own house, so it was possible to hang out there with no fear of adult intervention. There was usually a bunch of teenagers at his place, even when he wasn’t home. We were hoping that he would be home that day because we were on a mission and we needed his help.
“He knows this dealer down in Olympia,” Danni explained. “He’s a really big dealer and very careful. He won’t sell to just anyone. We have to get Harry to front for us.”
I didn’t care. I concentrated on driving. I had my license, barely. The county roads were safe to drive on, but it took attention to manage the ever-twisting corners and ever-surging short steep hills. Harry lived up one of the many dirt roads into the woods. I slowed, turned and chugged up the hill, thinking that it would be bad to get a flat and be stuck up there.
Harry rented a cottage next to a hobby farm. The farmer had cleared an expanse of meadow and had a few cows, a horse and a donkey. His house was across the meadow, very neat and clean, next to the pretty barn. It was all very much a calendar art kind of place; there was even a windmill not too far across the fence from Harry’s yard. I parked next to Harry’s truck.
He appeared in the door, ginning and waving a joint. “Hey! Danni! Hey, Rachel!” Harry was short, fat, and had an enormous beard, very much a Hobbit. I think now that maybe he was high-functioning autistic, but no one knew about that back then. He was smart, read voraciously, talked continuously, but had poor social skills and could not manage to complete his college degree. I don’t know what he did for income.
Danni and I piled out of the car. Danni ran right up the steps to get close to the joint. Pretty soon she and Harry were having one of those conversations: “Far out pot! Really trippy! Man, this is good stuff!” and so on. I stood on the fringes like I always did. We got two or three tokes each before we were down to the roach. I remember that it was good dope: time definitely slowed down and details increased in importance. I became very aware of the donkey standing with his head hanging over the fence. He looked lonely. I said so and Harry said that the donkey wanted a carrot.
So we all piled into the kitchen to get carrots. I noticed the smell immediately.
“Yuck, Harry,” Danni complained. “Something really stinks.”
Harry told us the history of his garbage. He was a binge housekeeper. When the garbage built up inside the house to the point that there was no place to set down a can of pop, and no carpet to walk on without tripping, he’d do a big sweep and shove everything out the back door on to the porch. At some point during the winter the pile of garbage had grown so massive that Farmer John spotted it from his house. He came over; gave Harry a lecture on rats, raccoons and the responsibilities of renters; and supplied Harry with five large plastic garbage cans. Harry carried the trash cans up onto the back porch, took a shovel, and filled them all.
We forgot about the carrots. Harry asked us if we would help him get the garbage cans into the back of his truck. Well, we had to say yes since we had already asked him to drive us to Olympia, and he had agreed. The dump was on the way. So we trooped out the back door to examine the situation.
The garbage barrels had been exposed to several months of rain, followed by the warmth of spring and the heat of August. The combination of water, food, and heat had produced thriving colonies of mold: dank, slimy, and stinky beyond belief. Danni pulled her T-shirt up over her lower face. I seriously thought I might vomit. I wondered if new organisms might be evolving in that sludge, bacteria that would spread and wipe out mankind. Harry pulled another joint out of the pocket of his shirt.
I asked Harry how we were going to get the barrels into the truck since they were obviously too heavy to lift. We moved to the front yard to figure it out. It turned out that Harry had a plan. He had some flat thick boards, and thought he could back his truck up to the porch, lay a bridge of boards from the truck bed to the porch, and then we could manhandle the garbage cans across. The porch was higher than the truck bed, so it should be easy, he said.
Well, okay. I had my doubts, but kept them to myself. Danni looked frightened, but she wanted that really trippy Columbian pot from the big dealer in Olympia. Harry climbed in his truck, ground the gears, and jerked forward before remembering that he had to back up. He got the truck into reverse and shot back twenty foot or so, jammed the gears again, and drove bouncing across the lawn to the back yard. Danni and I trotted along behind.
He ended up with the front of the truck facing the porch in the cramped space between the steps and the fence. Danni and I climbed up on the porch to get out of the way. He reversed, did a five point turn, got the back of the truck aimed at us and stomped on the gas. Danni screamed, “Stop, stop, stop!” from her edge of the porch. I realized that he was not going to stop in time and jumped over the porch railing. Harry hit the steps with his bumper. We heard the engine die, and he climbed out.
“Am I close enough?” he asked.
“Ky-fucking-rist!” Danni hollered. Harry checked the back of the truck and nodded his satisfaction. He went off to the shed and emerged a few minutes later dragging two long planks.
We helped set the planks between the truck and the porch. I said I didn’t think two were enough, so he dragged over a couple more. Our four plank bridge looked sturdy enough to carry the weight of the garbage cans, but I was still dubious about the project.
But Harry was happy. He grabbed one can, and, making twisting movements, rolling the can on its bottom rim, he sashayed the can onto the ramp. He was right that the downhill slant was helpful; he was able to push the can down on to the truck bed and was able to manhandle it off the end of the planks.
Danni and I refused to help on the grounds that we were not strong enough. Harry, grunting and groaning, tackled the next can. He got a system of sorts going, but lacked judgment. We had to scream at him, “Go left, go right,” to make sure he didn’t miss the ramp. He wasn’t good at processing directions and sometimes our screams to go one way would result in him rocking the can the opposite way. In spite of this, he did manage to get all of the cans onto the truck.
He got dirty, of course. By the time he was done, both his t-shirt and his beard were besmirched with goo. He was proud of himself, though. Getting those heavy cans on the truck was a very manly task to perform in front of two young girls. One problem: the cans were grouped near the back of the truck. Harry had only pushed them the minimum distance off the end of the planks. I remember thinking about this at the time, but I didn’t say anything.
Now he had to maneuver the truck out of the cramped backyard. We stood on the porch to watch. Harry hopped in the cab and turned the engine on.
Danni called out a reminder, “Drive slow! Don’t upset the cans!”
Harry stuck his head out of the cab and yelled back, “What?”
Then he hit the gas, lurched forward about ten feet. The cans all rocked on their rims toward the back of the truck.
Danni screamed “Slow down!”
Harry stuck his head out the window again, hollered, “What?” and stood on his brakes. We watched as the cans clunked back onto their bottoms, then swayed toward the front of the truck. Then, in slow motion, one at a time, the cans tipped over. A tidal wave of slop surged up against the back of the cab, crested and reversed course. Danni and I shrieked and ran, jumping off opposite sides of the porch. I stopped about thirty feet away.
All of the cans were on their sides, rolling in the toxic waste. The smell was like a thousand rotting zombies. I half expected the garbage to climb out of the truck and start chasing us. Even the donkey was offended; he threw up his head, brayed loudly, and cantered away to the far side of the field.
Harry staggered out of the truck and beat a retreat around to the side yard. We gathered there, Danni laughing hysterically, Harry embarrassed, me appalled.
We ended up perched in a row on the front steps. Harry lit another joint and we agreed that the truck would be undrivable for a while. He and Danni started in on me: “Let’s go in your car, Rachel. We’ll help pay for gas.”
I could not conceive of driving all the way to Olympia. Olympia was an abstraction, as far away as the moon. But Danni was still on her quest.
“What if you sold me some of yours?” she asked Harry. “You got a whole lid, don’t you? I just need a couple of joints for now.”
They entered into negotiations. Harry was willing to give her a joint, but Danni wanted to pay. She didn’t want to owe him anything. Or at least, she didn’t want to owe him anything for pot. I didn’t listen.
I was just grateful for the breeze that blew toward the backyard. I breathed in and out, felt my lungs inflating, felt the fresh air cleansing my respiratory tract. I felt very alive. Then I remembered.
I had watched Molly take her last breath that morning.
I saw her side lift for one last breath—in, out—and then whatever was Molly left her body and disappeared.
The memory paralyzed me; suddenly I was seeing her soft furry body sprawled on the metal counter, her lifeless face, eyes still open. I heard myself asking, “Is she gone?” I watched my hand stroking her fur even though she could no longer feel my touch. Such a mystery, death.
I guess I had been in a silent reverie for quite awhile because Danni tapped me on the arm. “Are you OK, Rachel?”
“Huh? I was just thinking.” I came up for air.
Danni laughed. “You looked mad! You looked like you wanted to bite someone!”
I don’t know why I said it, maybe because it was out of character, but I answered, “I was wondering what it would be like to balance on top of that windmill.”
“What do you mean?” Danni asked.
“I mean I wonder if you could climb up there and then balance on the top, on your stomach, no hands. Like flying.”
We all stared at the top pf the windmill. The four support legs joined in a rounded knob about twenty five feet in the air, a couple of feet above the blades. A skimpy ladder for maintenance ran up one leg.
“I think I could really do it,” I said.
“Nah,” said Danni. “You can’t do that. You could climb up the ladder, and that would be cool.”
“I bet the view is real pretty from the top,” said Harry. “I bet you could see all the way across the Sound.”
I got up and walked to the fence. I felt like a robot, each muscle moving mechanically by deliberate thought: take one step, now take another. Everything required concentration: pushing down on the barbed wire, carefully easing myself through to the far side, the solitary walk to the windmill. I was stoned out of my head.
The windmill looked even taller from the standpoint of the base. I tilted my head back and gazed up for what was probably a long time. Danni and Harry just watched, didn’t yell encouragement or mockery. They were letting it be my choice.
I grabbed a rung of the ladder and began the climb step by step up into the blue of the sky. Halfway up I realized that I was not scared. I could feel a chilly wind coming from the water, blowing toward the house, thank goodness, blowing the smell off into the woods, where, no doubt, the deer would fall over dead from inhaling it.
I could see the donkey clear over by Farmer John’s house, his head up, watching me.
As I climbed higher the landscape around me became a patchwork: Farmer’s John’s yellow field; the dense dark green of Douglas fir in the commercial timberlands to the north; the riot of lime, yellow, rust, and just-plain-green of the maples and alders to the south toward the water; the ragged brown of the clearcut far to the west.
I climbed higher. Now I could see the water, a metallic blue, and, far away, the Cascade Range, a semitransparent ultramarine against the sky, made fragile by distance, as if torn out of tissue paper.
A few more rungs and I achieved the top. I was there, with my hands on the metal knob. The wind sparkled the sweat on my forehead, and I shivered in the chill. Below me the blades of the mill creaked and groaned, spinning lethargically. The dirty water of the tank was a long way down.
I leaned carefully forward, letting the knob sink into my gut. It was going to hurt, I realized. I lifted one leg first, in an awkward arabesque, still using my hands for balance, then lifted the other. The strain on the back of my legs was considerable, but the real problem was the steady penetration of my stomach by the metal knob. I did not feel like I was flying. I felt heavy, earthbound, stupidly fighting gravity. I couldn’t breathe.
I was tempted to quit with just my legs in the air, but I had climbed all the way up there, and I wanted my memory to be of all four limbs. I stuck my left arm out into the empty air, and then, shakily, the extended my right.
I could feel the air under my arms, under my legs, under my chin. Maybe it did feel a bit like flying after all. Flying with a cannonball stuck in my gut. Then I collapsed, hugging the top of the windmill like a spider.
“Hey, I got a picture of you up there!” Danni, jumping around. She had a camera; it had to be Harry’s.
I fished around with my feet until I felt the rungs of the ladder and transferred my weight off my stomach and onto the arches of my feet. It felt good, solid. Rung by rung, arch by arch, I climbed down. For some reason I didn’t feel high anymore. I felt cold and stale.
Back down on planet Earth, back at the house, Danni danced around waving the Polaroid shot. We huddled to look at the emerging picture. There I was silhouetted against the sky. I did not look graceful up there. I looked like I was falling onto the point of the windmill. Still, I had done it.
Danni and Harry slapped me on the back and hugged me. That’s when Harry’s watch got stuck in my hair. That’s what reminded me.
“Ow, ow, ow, be careful,” I shrieked. He had a hunk of my hair stuck in the metal of his wrist band. I held my hand to the sore place on my head.
“What time is it?” I asked. “I’m supposed to be home by four.”
“By four? You’re not going to make it. Its four-thirty.” Harry’s face was a cartoon of dismay.
“Four- thirty!” I felt the shock like the point of the windmill in my gut. “Oh, God, Danni, we got to go!”
I was still stoned, though. I was stoned enough that I had to slap all of my pockets and panic before I remembered that the keys were still in the car. I was stoned enough that I had to make a five point turn to get headed down the gravel track to the road. And I was stoned enough to be in agony over every inch of the drive home. I begrudged the few seconds it took to drop Danni off.
I entered my house with great trepidation, crippled with guilt, and conscious that I probably reeked of pot. But Mom, thank God, was not there. I ran upstairs, jumped into the shower, and scrubbed my hair and face. I was up in my bedroom, scrambling into clean clothes, when I heard the car in the drive: her friend dropping her off.
I trotted down stairs, trying to act natural, trying not to let my guilt show. Mom breezed in, arms full of bags. She was wearing her company outfit: flared pants, a long vest and a brightly printed blouse, middle-aged hip clothes. I usually sneered at her dress sense, but not that day. I watched while she dumped her packages on the couch.
Then she smiled and said, “I hope your day wasn’t too bad, Ray. I brought you something.”
A present? Another punch in the gut. She handed me a paper bag printed with a store’s logo. I held it for a long moment in silence. I was thinking that maybe I shouldn’t accept the gift, maybe I should tell her that I had used the car while she was gone, but she was smiling, and it was a smile of sympathy. So I opened the bag.
Inside was a framed picture of Molly. I pulled it out with shaky fingers. It was a good picture, too good, looked exactly like her: her kind, friendly brown eyes; her big confident smile; her soft mane of fluffy fur. She looked alive.
I started to cry. My mom hooked her arm around my shoulder and said, “I know you miss her, honey. We all do. We loved her, and we will miss her for a long time.” I turned my face against my mother’s shoulder and sobbed like a five year old.