Amazing Grace

It was the old story: she followed us home.
I was walking with Buster, the only dog left after Ginger, the beautiful red
setter, was stolen, when the dog came trotting from a parking lot as if she
had been expecting us.

I started advertising under "Lost and Found", contacted the local veterinarian
to see if she'd been a patient there. I didn't want to keep her. Gil did.

"You need her when you go off walking by yourself," he said, "She would
protect you."

People were afraid of her, all right. The garage worker wouldn't get out
when he returned our car. "I don't go around pit bulls," he said.

Pit bull? When I asked the vet later, she said, "There's a little pit bull in her."

And varying amounts of other breeds: large, muscular, mastiff-type body,
bull dog or bloodhound drooping jowls, flopped-down ears. She was
brown and white. Part of her nose, the insides of her ears, and the pads
on her huge feet were a delicate pink.

She was neither the most beautiful nor the brightest dog in the world. She
had the habit of jumping up on me, feet planted against my chest, jaws
drooling in her joy to see me, while I staggered to keep my balance. She
weighed about 80 pounds. She turned over the garbage can and scattered
the contents and, when I refused to let her in the house, contending it would
be like trying to live with an elephant, she began digging around the
foundation. I believe she thought that if she could dig under it, she would
come up inside the house.

I kept trying to find her owner, advertising, posting signs. I didn't want her,
but she wouldn't leave. I believed someone would eventually claim her, for
she appeared to be healthy and well-fed, not your typical stray. In the
meantime, I needed to call her something besides hey, you, dog!

I had been engaged in conversations with a preacher and his mother who
had started an antique store in Alabama. At one point the preacher told
me that even though I wasn't religious, he said: "I believe you have
grace."

I was pondering this idea when I looked at the dog. "Even though you
are big and ugly and people are afraid of you,' I told her, "Maybe you
have grace," and when she leapt up exuberantly and tried to reach my
shoulders, I said, "And I know you need some grace."

So the name stuck. We called her Grace.

She had been there about a week when Gil and I decided to take the dogs
to Moon Creek, about ten miles away in Alabama. It was a hot afternoon
and they could go in the water, which was always ice cold, and run
around in the woods above the creek.

This was the place where I had seen a whole corridor of trillium blooming
back in the spring, but this was August and hot. We waded a bit and cooled
off, then ambled around looking for cattails and watching the schools of
minnows, startling frogs that plopped and splashed, then dove to the bottom
to bury in the sand. .

When we were ready to go, only Buster followed us to the van. We walked
up the hill to the edge of the woods, whistling and calling. From the hill, we
could see much of the creek and the area around it, but Grace was not there.

I was walking along the edge of the woods calling loudly, "Grace! Grace!"
And I turned to look back down at the creek, still calling: "Grace! Grace!"
just yelling out a final "Grace!" when I saw them. A group of people
clustered at the edge of the creek. Some wore white robes. All the faces
were turned upward toward me. I stood there, feeling my face grow hot.
It seemed like a long time before one of the men detached from the group
and waded out into the creek, fully clothed. He was followed by a woman
wearing a robe.

I hurried back to where Gil was. "We better leave," I told him, "They're
having a baptizing down the creek."

That night I slept out in my van, preferring a cool breeze to air
conditioning. Before I went to sleep, I told myself: "I didn't want
that big ugly dog anyway." But during the night I roused, feeling
anxious, remembering the dog, and knew I would have to go look
for her in the morning.

When the morning sun struck the window at my head, Gil was sitting
beside me. "The dog came back," he said, "She's here."

Ten miles, and surely she had never rode from our house to that
creek before. Grace never left our yard again except to go with me.