I stopped writing around 4 p.m. – I started at 7 a.m. and I was bleary-eyed and fuzzy in the head. I took Red out to the porch and I hauled out two bags of mulch for the new garden. I was about to sit on the porch and watch trucks go by when I saw a small gray SUV pull up right next to the pasture fence to the right of the porch. A portly man in bermuda shorts and spanking new sneakers with a buzz cut and thick sun glasses – he had to be a tourist, nobody upstate wears spanking new sneakers – came to the fence holding a small video camera. Very gingerly, he came up to the near where Simon and the donkeys and sheep were grazing.
I was coming towards the porch when he saw me, nearly bolted I thought, and then I heard him clear his throat and say, “do you mind? I’ve never seen a donkey.” Sure, I said, they love strangers.
Simon, a total media whore, came up to the fence to investigate, hoping for a cookie, and Lulu and Fanny came sidling over, they know the drill, and the man jumped back as if he saw a tiger. I yelled over that these donkeys were just curious and friendly. He stepped back and took some more video. The man was staring at Red, and I had this idea for a video he might love. “He’s a working dog,” I said, “would you like to see him work?” The man looked at me suspiciously, as if he thought I might charge him, and I recognize this look as the wariness people are made to feel in cities and suburbs about strangers. You don’t find this wariness where I live, people have not yet learned to be suspicious and live by warnings.
The man was drawn to the animals, yet clearly cautious too. He nodded, as if to say yes. He turned back to look at his wife, who was in the car, and signaled her to wait.
I brought Red into the pasture, and he went into his spectacular thing, showing off his sweeping outruns, walking up to the sheep, crouching and staring, bobbing and weaving. Red walked the sheep right up to the video camera and then posed for the stranger for a full 30 seconds. “Oh, my God,” he said, yelling over to his wife to come out of the car and see, but she wouldn’t, he said she was nervous. “Where did you get this dog? I’ve never seen anything like it.” The man, wide-eyed and shooting one movement after another, peppered me with questions about Red and said he never thought a dog could respond or move like that. Then he recovered himself, and got quiet and wary again. I asked him where he was from, and he mumbled, “somewhere in Long Island.” I asked him if he were on vacation and he said he was coming back from Vermont. I saw he was getting uncomfortable at telling a stranger these details, perhaps thinking I would call a cohort down there and rob his house before he got home. I noticed that there were now four or five cars lined up in a row and there video cameras sticking out of all of them, so I had Red do some more outruns and when he was done, and I called him, a couple of the people leaned out of their cars and applauded.
The man from Long Island asked me if I was a farmer, and I said no. Why did I have a dog like Red?, he asked and I said I was a writer, I wrote about dogs and life in the country. He grunted as if this confirmed some awful suspicion he had had, then left without saying a word and got back into his car and drove off Soon it was quiet again on the porch.
I am loving my porch. I see the porch is becoming an important place for me, poems come into my head out there, it is kind of meditative for me, I look at the trucks going by, and things happen on the porch and Flo hangs out there now, and I am loving fussing over my young garden, scattering mulch, watering carefully, watching for signs of growth.
I am glad the man from Long Island had a good time and got some good video, I love showing Red off and he loves to show off. I’m glad we drew a crowd – I am proud of Red. Maria jokes that next time she’ll bring out some potholders and sell them from the road. We could sell the remaining notecards, too. Could work.
