Played out

Maybe it was a dream.  Maybe not.  Working in the garden in the hot sun can do strange things.

So I was pulling weeds in the raised beds and I heard a muffled “Dang!” It came from below ground, under my feet.

“Dang!” it said again.

“Who’s that?” I asked, looking down.

“Dig!” came the answer. “Dig!”

“Huh? Dig?!”

“Dang it, get them hoofs off my back and dig me up!”

I grabbed the nearby shovel and sunk it about a foot deep.  Up came a leathery mess about the size of a baseball, caked in dirt.

“You can talk?” I asked.

“Hell yes, I can talk.  Now shut your big bazzo and wash me off.”

I ran for the hose, rinsed the mud ball off … and realized I was talking to a piece of rawhide.  

“Weird,” I thought. “Shouldn’t be happening, but let’s go with this.”

Like a congested goose, it let out a wet honk and blew a dirt wad about 6 feet.  I ducked.

“Crapohhhla, that’s better!”

Then, voice like gravel, it talked on ….

“Much obliged … though dang, boy, you were right atop my back.”  

“Sorry,” I said.  “Didn’t know.”

“Yep, I’m sorry, too. Been sorry ever since I got here. I’m played out … have had enough.  Been chewed on, stretched a damn dozen different ways, buried, unburied, buried again, left to rot, left to burn in the sun like jerky.  Just not right.  Not right at all.”

“Well, that’s what dogs do,” I said.

“Dogs … is that what they are?  Been wonderin’.  I can’t see for blazes what with the dirt and the slobber and all. If they’re dogs, they’re bad medicine.  They got me all catawampus.  Don’t know if I’m comin’ or goin’.”

“Yeah, well, dogs will do that,” I said.  “I feel the same way sometimes.  We’ve got three of them here now, you know.”

“Oh hell, yeah I know. I'm no slowpoke. You know the sayin’ … you won’t catch this weasel asleep.   No, I could tell there were three by their tooth sizes. And they all smell different.  Not pleasant.  Not pleasant at all. 

Linus

“And they, well, they just act different. Now, the little, scrappy one … well, I tolerate him pretty good because he grabs me, plops me to the floor and pretty much leaves me to sit there.  Doesn't chew on me. Now, that one will like to growl and snap if either of the other ones comes ‘round.  Helps me out!  So of the three, that’s the best.

“Then there’s that mid-sized black and brown one.  Now, that one’ll grab and chew pretty hard, but that one’s a mite chickabiddy … dashing one way, then the other, and damn fast to boot!  But blackie gets distracted easy. You know, if a bird flies by or somethin’. Then it drops me like I was dead meat.”

“You are dead meat,” I said. “But never mind that.  What about the third one?”

Koa

“Yeah, well that one’s the worst.  A big, white, hairy thing.  Got the biggest head I’ve ever seen … seems bigger than the West Kansas steer that I came from.

“That one is the slowest-movin’ ride I’ve ever been on … grabs me in that soggy mouth and just walks and walks, from one corner of the yard to another, stoppin’ along the way to smell flowers, sticks, tall grass, a bug here or there.  Stops now and then with me sitting between tongue and teeth, that tongue just hanging out, flappin’ and drippin’ in the wind.  Disgustin’.

Nellie

“Never seen a bit of flusteration with that one, though.  That little scrappy one, it’s growlin’ and snappin’ all the time.  That mid-sized one, jumpy as a jack rabbit, always got a wiggle on.  But that big white one.  Why, I’d swear it was a sleepy cow chewin’ cud if it wasn’t so darn harry.”

“But you complained the white one was the worst,” I said. “All things considered, that’s pretty easy-going with her. A gentle ride.  A bit wet at times, maybe.  But all in all, not too bad.”

“Ah, helll-ohhh-no!  That white one, well that’s the digger!”

“Oh … yeah,” I acknowledged. “She does like to dig.”

“Damn straight she does.  After we go for these lazy-day walks, she moseys over to some loose patch of dirt.  But she’s got to sniff some more first. Damn persnickety, that one. If she don’t like it, she meanders over to another, then another.

“Finally, she finds one that satisfies. Then she starts diggin’ like a bear in an ant hill … those big white paws scoopin’ buckets.  When she’s deep enough she drops me in like I was a dead skunk.  Uses that big nose to push that dirt over me ….

“Seen it happen many a time, seen that big, black nose push ‘til I could see no more.”

The rawhide now got wistful, the voice distant.

“And then she comes back and digs me up, and we do it all over again. The walks, the sniffin’, the damn la-di-da nonchalance, the diggin’, the droppin’, the coverin’.   We do it all again … and again … and again ....” 

The old rawhide stopped ... abruptly looked at me.

“Makes me crazier than a coon in heat.”

“Well, you know the alternative isn’t pretty,” I said.  “You are dead meat, literally and figuratively. Your days are numbered no matter what. At least you get some postponement a foot down … able to see another day.  It’s not like that for the others.  Sometimes they go pretty quick.”

“Yep, I know that.  Believe me … I’ve got a lot of time to think when I'm down there.  Now, I don’t get myself into no sonofabitch stew … you know, stewin’ about my fate.  I know the cattle trail I’m on.  It ain’t pretty.

“But I just wish she’d forget where she put me just one time!  Just one sweet, merciful  time.  That white one has a memory like those elephants.”

“Well,” I said.  “That’s not going to happen.  She’s not going to forget. At least I don’t think so.”

“How’s this,” I added.  “How about I dig you a new hole that she doesn’t know about and drop you in there.  Then we’ll see if she finds you.  She might not.  It’d take a mighty nose to figure that one out.”

“Worth a try,” it said.  “Appreciate it … really do.  And I’m a mite hopeful, but ….”

“But?”  I asked.

“But I’ve seen the power of that nose, seen it suck in so much air you couldn’t find enough for yerself. 

“She’ll find me.  Always does.”  

I dug the hole, dropped it in, covered it tight. 

I haven’t gone back to look yet.  I’m not even sure the hole is there.  You know … a dream?

I do know I now watch Nellie as she moseys from one side of the yard to another, a new-turned-old rawhide clinched, her tongue out.

And I think … not of Nellie, but the rawhide.

“Poor boy,” I tell myself.  “Done played out.”