All righty then,

To prepare a look ahead for creating stories, I decided to start by going back to look at some of my old ones.

The following is in stage three of revision, and I realize the ending is choppy and weak. (Like I ran out of steam, which I did.)

Thus, feel free to offer suggestions, even if they include tossing the whole thing in the trash.

Little One

She arrived when I was on a sabbatical from life. In the spring of 1996, I descended a spiraling staircase that left me drowning in a pool of grief and mental exhaustion. By that summer, I was fully withdrawn into my mountain cabin; alone on the point of a mountain ridge peninsula.

The cabin stood like a rustic castle in the sky; just on the point, surrounded on three sides by steep forested slopes that dove deep into the valley below. The only way to the cabin was the mile-long driveway which branched from the main ridge and followed the path out to the point. The cabin faced west, away from the driveway and the sunrise.

That summer, as I rambled through timeless days of mindless lethargy, I developed a minimal routine: sleep late, feed the dogs, watch the sun set, sleep. The major event of the day was the summer sunset.

I never intended to curl in the rocker by the west-end window every afternoon, that’s just where I found myself every day. Some time between four and six each afternoon after feeding and sometimes showering, I would wander into the living room, and slide sideways into the rocker. As I stared out the window, time would pass, and the skies would deepen. When the clouds caught the blushing peach of the sun, I took time to leave my inner workings and roll my senses through the rich emotions of dusk. Each evening, I absorbed the beautiful death of day.

Once night fell, I merely turned my thoughts inward again to ruminate in the dark. I was in the dark like that when she made her first appearance in my life.

My house stood completely still beneath the clear, star-filled sky, with Windows and doors were wide open, allowing the songs of crickets and night birds fill the shadowed rooms.

I too was silent in my rocking chair, lost in mourning thoughts. I had been listening to the woods around me for months, and hadn’t spoken a word out loud for days. My thoughts were interrupted when the cyclic tones of the natural world were interrupted by a low, brief growl on the back porch.

I came fully to focus, listening for any further complaint from the dog to see if he might be announcing guests. But, minutes passed, and Jazz remained quiet.

I was about to fade off into lost thoughts once more when I heard him again.

“Grrr.”

The growl was so low, I almost assumed he was dreaming, feet jerking in a dream run, the way dogs do. But there was something in the brevity of the sound that made me sure he was awake. I listened intently for sound out of the ordinary, but heard none.

Then, “grrr.”

Beyond curious, I went to the door to check on Jazz. I heard his tail beat the wooden porch slabs to greet me in the dark, and I turned on the outside light.

The yard ended abruptly on each site where the dark trees marked the forest domain and the steep inclines to the valley below. The immediate yard, illuminated by the light, was exactly as it should be, with the red clay driveway cutting hard and dry right through the middle. I saw nothing out of the ordinary.

My secluded world was intact, undisturbed on an invisible point on the edge of the Appalachian Mountains. For me, nothing existed beyond the trees.

Jazz looked at me, and then to his bowl which lay below us in the yard, still half full.

“You have food,” I told him, then joined him, sitting cross-legged. I was picking a burr out of his fur when his ears perked forward and I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my right eye.

There, where the lit yard met the dark edge of the wood, two round orbs shone in the night. Eyes. Eyes low to the ground; a sign of a small creature - or a large creature crouched down, ready to pounce.

Jazz’s shackles weren’t raised though, so I knew it wasn’t a bob cat or a mountain dog of some sort; fox, coyote or the like.

He and I sat silently and waited. Jazz pretended not to be aware of the creature visually, but his ears remained perked and alert. I kept my eyes on the eyes in the darkness, anxious, and curious.

Minutes passed, and the crickets, who paused their production upon my arrival on the porch, resumed their chirping. For a moment, I thought I saw movement. I squinted my eyes, but still saw nothing. Then, ever so gently and quietly, a small paw came into view.

The paw belonged to a small beagle, a “rabbit beagle” some call them, creeping slowly toward the porch. I remained still and so did Jazz, except for a slight radar-like rotation of his right ear.

Closer, closer, the intruder crept, eyes focused on…
… Jazz’s food dish.

When the beagle came within a foot of the black bowl at the bottom of the porch steps, Jazz objected.

“Grrr.”

Quick as the rabbits they are known to chase, the beagle lunged into the bowl, grabbed a piece of dog food, and darted across the yard into the darkness of the woods again.

I sat quietly, a bit thrown off by the development, for it was the small act of that beagle that night that forced me to again recognize a world outside my seclusion. It was the first outside interaction I had experienced in weeks of days unaccounted for.

I did not realize then that her actions were the catalyst to my escape from depression. But I did realize, instantly, that she was endeared to me.

The beagle had developed a routing for stealing food from Jazzy’s bowl. When she approached from the right, she grabbed food from the bowl, then ran left. Then she would approach from the left, grab, and run right.

I observed this on the second night after being tipped off by Jazz’s sporadic objections.

“Grrr.”

Then nothing.

Then, “Grrr.”

After a week of silent observation, I noted that the beagle always came first from the right. So, the next evening, I filled an extra bowl of food and placed it just in the light at the right edge of the woods. Then I sat with Jazz on the porch to wait.

“Do you think she’s comin’ Jazzy?” I asked him playfully. He looked up at me, surprised I think, then licked my face. I realized then how long it had been since I spoke to him in such a playful tone.

“I’m sorry Jazz,” I said aloud while rubbing his ears. “You’re a good boy.” He hadn’t heard that in months. I sat with him on the porch that night and loved him - rubbing his belly and scratching his ears.

Right on schedule, the beagle arrived.

She crept from the darkness, slowly, right up to her bowl. She then froze, eyes on Jazz, waiting for him to object. He did not.

Slowly at first, she began to eat, keeping her eyes glued on us. When she was crunching and chewing and he still did not object, she gorged herself as quickly as she could. When the bowl was almost empty, I spoke softly.

“Hi there little one.”

She jumped as though my words were gunshots, and scrambled back into the darkness of the forest.

Each night for a week, I repeated the process; bowl at the edge of the woods, speak softly when she was almost finished.

The following week, I began moving her bowl closer to the house. After a month, her bowl was at the bottom of the porch steps, and Jazz was eating inside. The beagle would no longer scramble at my voice, but if I moved in any way, she was gone.

The evening feeding of Little One became part of my new summer routine; her eating, me greeting. Although I was still struggling with inner emotions, I began taking an interest again in the world around me. I tended the flowers, cleaned house, rearranged furniture, and washed my hair on a regular basis.

In essence, I began living again. By inviting the beagle into my life, I found again a will to live.


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