Memoir

In Grangemont, Idaho manmade structures were few and far between: a one-room school house sat at the epicenter of a community defined by a road and a dumpster. My family fell into the ladder category.

This isn’t to say that we were dirty, terribly impoverished, or found some odd affinity with the waste of others. We were four plus one: mother, father, two sons and a dog. We were a new beginning: recently moved to this quiet little mountain enclave in Central Idaho where community potlucks and cross country skiing at recess were the norm. Our connection to the dumpster was geographical. We lived in a small cabin that stood on a hill, our driveway traversing the hill from the dumpster.

The dumpster was an odd convening point for our half of the community. It sat at the end of Grangemont Road, which was dotted by the trailers of my neighbors, and it was not different from your standard dumpster: a mottled blue and rust colored, weathered, dented, and generally billowing with garbage. It was where I waited for the school bus with the few classmates I had. We would throw rocks at the dumpster, cringe from the scent of rotting who knew what, and marvel at what our neighbors disposed when seated in the bus. It was also where I learned about responsibility and death.

When my classmates and I made the left turn onto the road in the bus, we always perked up. Some because it meant an opportunity to flee the carsick inducing bumps, others bounded towards cookies and milk, while a handful lumbered towards a list of chores. I always looked forward to my dog, Tucker, a purebred Australian Shepherd that never tired, who greeted me with barks and licks, imploring me to take him off his chain so that we could run together. Yet, as a collective, we all perked up at the chance to see Bud. And occasionally we would.

Bud was an older man. As a boy, I thought he was ancient. I thought he was so old he had died and come back to life. He must have been a retired logger by the jeans he always wore, held up with dull red suspenders, as well as the flannel shirts. I assume he was bald, though I wasn’t sure because he always wore a an old felt hat, dirty with age and use. But his clothes were only a distraction from what drew my attention. Bud had been badly burned at some point in his life. His skin looked reptilian, drawn so taut against his face, his eyes distorted and without brows. And at seven years old, I thought Bud was some sort of lizardman, a mythical creature created in the depths of the dumpster, born of man, lizard and fire.

I never saw Bud anywhere but the dumpster, notably because whenever I did see him he was in the dumpster. His mythical status elevated by the long wooden staff with a sharp nail jutting out, which he drove into cans and emptied into a burlap sack he slung over his shoulder. I would watch through the bus window in a state of wonderment. On the one hand, I saw him sifting through the bags and imagined that he fed off of the rotting fruit peels and steak hunks lurking within. After eating his fill, he would fill his sack with what remained, taking it home to his progeny of half lizard half humans. Yet, beneath this fantastic, a kernel of understanding existed, knowing his purpose was simply practical. Yet I never asked him. How could I possibly ask a lizardman anything? Once the bus stopped at the dumpster, I would descend the stairs and run towards our cabin, fearful of Bud, fearful of what I didn’t know.

I asked my father why Bud was a lizardman who dove in the dumpster one day when I arrived home. He looked at me and chuckled. “Son, Bud’s no lizardman. He was burned in the war. He’s a good man. A poor man, but a good man. He recycles the cans for money.” How did my father know Bud was not a lizardman? How did he know about the war, and how much money he made? But I did not ask these questions. My father was a man of few words. He had spoken. There was nothing more to say.

The dumpster was the community dumpster. It housed not only the garbage my family and our neighbors produced, but the garbage of those who lived on the other road, Rudo Road. At the base of Rudo Road lived one of my classmates, Kristy Shepherdson. Her father was Sheriff Shepherdson. Along with being the sheriff, he was also a cattle farmer and dairyman. My family got our milk from the Shepherdson’s each week. My mother made butter out of cream, and my brother and I drank rich glass fulls each morning. At school I played tetherball with Kristy; our family occasionally rode horses with hers. My mother would ski to their house from our cabin in the winter. Our families were friends.

During the winter, their cows were limited in the range they could access. Sheriff Shepherdson would clear a small ring and fence it off for the dairy cows to exercise. They would lumber about, aimlessly as I could see, chomping on hay. Sometimes Kristy and I would watch while our parents drank coffee inside. I would grow bored quickly, but Kristy could have watched her cows all day long.

On a winter afternoon, returning on the bus from school, I eagerly waited for the wheels to come to a stop so that I could see Tucker. With the fresh snow, we would build snowmen, me in my bibs and moonboots, he running and returning, running and returning, running and returning. But when I got home, Tucker was not waiting. His chain lay broken. My seven year old legs froze. Where was my dog?

I went inside the cabin and my mother told me he had broken loose earlier in the afternoon. “But why, Mom?” I wailed. “Where could he be?” She shook her head, tears in her eyes. “I don’t know, son.” I raced outside shouting his name over and over. I searched until dark.

My father drove our car into town each day, and I knew he would be home shortly after dark, so I went inside to wait for him, to wait to further search for Tucker. As foreign and strange as Bud seemed to me, nothing seemed as real as Tucker. His black and white fur was mottled with grey and brown, but it was his eyes that I can still see. One was a deep calm brown, the other, a fiery blue, gemlike, turquoise. On winter nights we would lay in front of the fire, me with a book, he as my pillow, my blanket, my friend. On summer days, we would run through the forest, he the partner in the fantasy world I created. Now he was gone.

The phone rang not long after I returned inside. It was the Shepherdsons. They had Tucker. And then my dad came home.

Relieved, I anxiously waited for my father to go pick up Tucker, I was not allowed to go. “Son, you need to stay home. This is final.”

I will never know what was said between my father and Sheriff Shepherdson, what they agreed upon or what went through my father’s thoughts as he came home. At the time I didn’t care. I only cared that my dog was safe.

When Tucker and my father arrived, my dog bounded up the steps, through the door and licked me while wagging his tail. My father followed. He sat me down.

“Son, Tucker has been herding the cows. They can’t hold up in the winter. He’ll run them to death.”

I didn’t understand.

“Why would he do that, Dad?”

I stared into my father’s eyes for an answer. Why would my dog break his chain, run five miles, to herd our friends’ cows? It didn’t make sense.

My mother, always a lover of animals, spoke up. “It’s in his blood. He can’t help it. It’s what he knows how to do without even knowing.”

“Son, we can’t let this happen again. If it does, we’ll have to put Tucker down,” my father asserted.

Again, I froze. “It won’t, Dad, I whispered.” Then I crawled down to the floor and made my dog promise, promise never to run cows again.

For a couple weeks, Tucker kept his end of the bargain, as did I. I never let him out of my sight, and he spent more time indoors, but occasionally, he had to be chained outside. We had bought a new chain, a stronger one, and we drove the stake further into the ground. But it could not hold him, it seemed nothing could, whatever ran in his blood could not be bound.

Early one morning, we woke to the sound of the phone ringing. It was the Shepherdsons. They had Tucker. I looked outside: the stake pulled from the earth. He had run their cows again. This time too far. The Shepherdson’s beloved milking cow, the same cow which we drank milk from, the same cow that was pregnant lay dead. Run to exhaustion, over and over, Tucker had herded her into the fence till she collapsed.

When my father returned with Tucker, he told me to say goodbye to him. I held my dog, cried, and told my father I would never speak to him again if he put my dog down.

“Son, there is nothing else we can do.” I looked at him through blinding tears, trying to communicate a new promise, another chance, pleading with him for mercy. What I saw were tears in his eyes too, and what I heard was something of a refrain, “Son, there is nothing else we can do.”

Somehow, I left for school and spent the day in a daze. I didn’t wonder what would happen because I knew what would happen. My father was a man of his word. He never told me what he felt or what he thought after I left for school that day. He never told me how he coaxed Tucker to the dumpster, or what he said to him before he put him down. He never told me about the weight of lifting his body into the dumpster, nor the weight he felt days later, weeks later, years later. Yet, nearly thirty years removed, I imagine that he pulled Tucker into his arms and whispered that he understood and begged Tucker that he would understand too.

When I returned from school that day, I did not perk up at the chance to see Bud. I could not let my eyes glance towards the dumpster. Though there was the possibility of the lizardman emerging, I knew that amidst the black plastic bags was one black plastic bag that held Tucker. And in that moment, Bud no longer seemed fantastic or mythical, he simply seemed sad and poor, a man who had to do what he had to to get by. Just as my father had to do what he had to do.