Buster, The Drunkard's Dog

For three weeks of each month J. and B. were good
neighbors, the kind that are seldom seen or heard. Their
house could only be glimpsed from ours, but our gardens
adjoined, and we called back and forth across the fence
sometimes that summer.

They usually worked in the garden together, the literal
fruits of their labors abundant, the lush plants in neat rows.
Sometimes we traded, maybe peppers for green beans, or
beans for squash, and once B. gave me tomato plants she'd
started from seed. She'd sown them in an old washtub near
the shed where they kept a few tools, and she held out a
handful with bare roots, telling me to just put some dirt over
the roots until I could plant them. They were little spindly
things that didn't look as if they'd live, but we ate tomatoes
from them all summer.

I never saw J. and B. during the first week of the month. I
heard from another neighbor that was when J. got his social
security check, and we quickly learned how the money was
spent, for about mid-week we would hear him banging and
knocking the garden shed, demanding to be let out, his
hoarse calling and the dull thuds as if he were hitting the
walls with a two by four sometimes continuing into the night.

One day B. was in her garden trying to hoe with only one
arm, the other in a cast. She volunteered the cause: she'd
been standing in a chair, she said, trying to change a light
bulb when she fell. Another time a dark bruise spread
across her cheek to just under her eye, and she'd started
telling me about running into the edge of the door when J.
broke in to say that maybe next time she'd have sense
enough to turn on a light instead of wandering around
in the dark.

But I didn't question her then and seldom thought about
either of them when he wasn't yelling and pounding the
shed, for about midsummer we were having a greenhouse
built the length of one side of our house, 35 feet long by
10 feet wide. We would have some solar heat in the
drafty old farmhouse and grow tomatoes all winter, and
I, with four or five summers of gardening behind me, had
dreams of raising house plants and herbs and maybe
selling some as a sideline to the mail order book business
I had started.

Then one day we heard that B. was dead, J. arrested on
suspicion of having murdered her. An autopsy would be
performed and it could be a couple of weeks before the
exact cause of B.'s death could be determined. J. was
quoted as saying he couldn't remember what happened
that night.

He'd been locked up about a week before I connected
his absence with the dog that would lie in our yard every
day watching the men building the greenhouse. I thought
it lived nearby and simply liked being around people
while its owners were away during the day. Len, the
carpenter in charge of building the greenhouse, drew
my attention to it. He said it was a stray, he'd noticed
what I had not, that the dog was getting thinner, its ribs
beginning to show.

"You ought to keep him," he said, "there's nothing
wrong with him, look how clean his mouth is," and he
held the dog's mouth open, showing the pink inside.
"And he ain't blind in that eye," he waggled his fingers
toward the dog's blue eye and the dog blinked. His
other eye was brown. The dog ducked his head. He
liked the attention and was doing his best to appear
pleasing to us.

He was about half-grown, brown and white, a mix of
Australian shepherd and possibly beagle, and who
knew what else. I was touched by the idea of a dog that,
although he must have been slowly starving, had not asked
for anything except a place to be. When I fetched a bowl
of the food we'd bought for Gil's Irish setter, he wolfed it
down. After that, he stayed in our yard at night, too. Gil
asked me to name him and I suggested "Buster". I'd
known several Georgia boys called Buster for a nickname.
It seemed to suit.

He'd become Gil's dog, following him about the yard.
yearning after him for any word or touch, when we
heard that J. was at his sister's in the next town. The
sheriff had called her, told her to bring a little whiskey
when she came to pick him up, for he was in bad shape.

The autopsy showed that B. had also passed out drunk
that night, had vomited and aspirated, drowning in her
own vomit. She was only 47. I had thought she was in
her 60's.

J. finally came back home. When he passed our house
on his way to the store Buster walked with him, but
trotted back up our driveway when they returned,
leaving J. to walk on to his house with his groceries
alone. J. didn't seem to care. The dog had been put
out on the road near his house only a couple of weeks
before B. died, he said. His garden was overgrown
with weeds and he didn't bang the shed door anymore,
nor call to be let out.Before long he had moved away.
He would live only two or three more years before he
was with B. again, lying close beside her in eternal
peace.

Ginger, the Irish setter would be stolen on Lookout
Mountain while a friend and I were walking with her
on the shores of Lake Lahousage. We thought she
had just run ahead of us, but she must have gone
back up to the road and gotten picked up there.
We called and searched for her, and returned
several times to search for her, but we never
saw her again. Several dogs were stolen on the
mountain in the months to come, and only dogs
of recognizable breeds were taken. People were
saying that they were sold to be used in experiments
of various kinds.In spite of advertisements and
offered rewards and posters plastered all over, none
of the dogs was ever recovered.

Buster stayed with us for eight years. J. had said he was
really a smart dog, and so he was. He quickly recognized
that our cats- the four remaining of the eight we brought
from Chicago- belonged to us and were not to be harassed.
The cats came inside whenever they wished- they had their
own door- but Buster preferred to hang around the yard and
sleep in the shed. He never seemed to lose the sense of
wonder at having found a place where he was wanted. One
time when Gil was working in the shed, a mouse scampered
along one of the shelves. He told me that Buster looked at
him with an expression that clearly asked if that mouse was
also something that belonged to Gil.

But when I went walking with the dogs and we passed a
house with cats in the yard, Buster turned and gave me a
hard stare, then bolted into the yard and chased the cats.
The books I've read about the nature of dogs refer to
that type of stare as showing dominance. Buster was
letting me know that he would make a decision about
those cats that he knew were alien to me and to our
yard and home.

He would also chase squirrels, but never once caught one.
I remember Gil cheering on a squirrel the dogs had tried to
corner on the front porch. "Run, baby!" he was calling,
Run, baby, run!"

I was walking with Buster when Grace, the big muscular
dog, possibly part American bulldog with a bit of pitbull,
followed us home. She was about three times his size and
about half as intelligent as he, but they remained good
friends and companions until he developed cancer and had
to be euthanized.

I can still see them in memory, walking with me to the store,
the post office, or to the walking track, Grace's muscles
rippling as she strode along, Buster's white socks
twinkling as he trotted to stay even with her.

And I remember a late night when I was clearing water out
of the old store building where I keep my books after days
of torrential rains. Buster and Grace were on the sidewalk
in front of the building when a sheriff's car pulled up, the
deputies most likely wondering why the door was standing
open around midnight. The dogs sprang at the car,
dancing around it, sounding out their threats and dares,
Grace's deep voice underscoring Buster's barking.

I hurried out, afraid that if the deputies got out the dogs
might attack them, and equally afraid that the deputies
might shoot if they even thought the dogs would attack.

"I'm sorry," I called, "My dogs are only trying to protect me."

They stayed in the patrol car. "I wish," one of them said,
"I had dogs like that."