8

“You’re trespassing,” I said. “This is my land.”

The dachshund stood at the center of my backyard and, instead of looking to the left or right or behind to see how he’d strayed, studied me as if I might be the problem.

“Are you sure?” he countered.

I threw up my hands to show how obvious my point was.

“But are you sure?” The dachshund ignored my tossed-up hands.

“The fence is the boundary.” I pointed for emphasis to my neighbor’s white picket fence. It stopped at the trunk of an enormous oak tree, after which the land fell off, from one plateau to another. The dachshund had simply gone to the far side of the tree, walked through a patch of orange lilies, and planted himself on the lawn in front of me. “And when the fence stops at the oak,” I explained, “the boundary continues in a straight line to the center of the stream.”

“Do you mind if I sit?”

He was so, I don’t know what—polite, solemn, maybe “entitled” is the best word—that I found it difficult to say no to him.

“Go right ahead, but it doesn’t change anything.”

He settled himself on his haunches and opened his mouth very wide, in a yawn that let me see the pink of his crafty tongue.

“The boundary line goes right through the earth. Down to China or New Zealand or somewhere. And up in the air, cutting the clouds in sections and touching the moon. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“You’re playing with my words,” I replied. “It’s a simple boundary line. Right there.”

“And it runs through the middle of the stream.”

“Right.”

“What if the stream shifts its course?”

I knew that, indeed, over the years the stream had shifted in its bed like an uneasy sleeper. The incessant flow, and occasional storms, had washed out at least ten feet of the far bank, across from our patio.

“Confusing, isn’t it?” offered the dachshund.

“The boundary follows the surface of the ground.” I said, returning to this earlier point. “It doesn’t go down and it doesn’t go up.”

“You concede, in that case,” said the dachshund, “that valuable veins of ore or any undiscovered pockets of gas or oil that may reside below your land are not yours. And the same is true of air rights.”

“I’m not conceding anything. If you know so much, you know you can’t just cross a boundary line without consequences. What are air rights anyway? Who can own the air?”

“Who indeed?” he replied.

“Why are you here?” I asked him.

“What is your name?” he asked.

I had a shock, because the moment he asked I realized that I had forgotten my name. Certainly I had a name. Or at least I thought I did. I could almost bring it to my lips, but it had vanished from my mind.

“How old are you?” he asked when I made no reply.

I couldn’t tell him.

“Where do you live?”

Mute, I pointed to the house, with its brown painted wood siding and picture window facing toward the backyard and the stream.

“Are you sure?”

Suddenly I wasn’t sure. But, then, how could I have called him a trespasser?

“Where are you from?” I asked to shift the conversation in his direction.

“The dachshund is a German dog. We were bred to hunt badgers. Dachs means ‘badger’ and Hund means ‘dog.’ Being shaped as we are, we can pursue badgers above ground or below.”

“You, where are you from?”

He looked at me with his intelligent eyes. Instead of answering, he stretched for a long time, front legs extended so his paws clawed the grass and his rump lifted in the air. Then he rose, and without even a parting word trotted off toward the boundary he had violated a short while before.

“You’re not going?” I called after him, but he had turned his rear in my direction and continued toward the spot where I had first seen him. There the tiny figure, standing on all fours beside the trunk of that giant oak, turned his long nose like a compass needle in my direction.

“I’ve brought the lawsuit against you,” he said, “for your own good.”

“What? What are you saying?”

He delivered this message and vanished among the bushes and flowers in my neighbor’s backyard, leaving me to call futilely after him. What lawsuit had he brought? How could any lawsuit possibly be for my own good? It alarmed me and made no sense. What had I done to deserve a lawsuit?

“Crazy dog!” I yelled, walking across the patio and stepping down to the stream to try to get a glimpse of him.

What upset me was that he hadn’t, in fact, seemed crazy at all. If he said he’d brought a lawsuit against me, he’d probably done just that. The thought of it made me miserable. The wasted time to prepare my defense, the slow wending of the case through the courts, the outcome that, even if I succeeded, would never return to me the painful hours of preparation and years passed in uncertainty. And, of course, I might lose. What then? And what accusation had he brought against me?

I didn’t know the answers to these questions. And many others, it seemed. Kneeling to dip my hand beneath the stream’s surface, I felt the cool wetness on my fingers and watched the ripples moving away from the disturbance I’d created. Where had the dachshund gone? I could see his dark, inquisitive eyes studying me. The ripples vanished and the surface looked smooth, but I could feel the faint pulse of the current against my hand.