Chapter Six: An Unexpected Trip into Spook Canyon

Mercy! All at once I felt as giddy as a pup.

I mean, consider the opportunity that was about to fall into my lap. Here was the woman of my dreams, my one and only true love, the world’s most beautiful collie dog, coming down my road in a pickup that I could bark all the way to the next cattle guard.

If I had been the least bit inclined to show off in front of women, this provided me with the perfect opportunity. And while I wasn’t one to cast my pearls before oysters, so to speak, or to engage in childish displays for the benefit of just any old girl-dog, Beulah wasn’t just any old girl-dog.

No way could I pass up this chance to show her my best stuff.

See, there were sides of my personality she had never seen. Basically and fundamentally, down at the bottom of the soil of experience where the roots of my complex personality lay pulling in the nutrients of . . . 

Lost my train of thought there.

Something about plants.

Huh. Just lost it.

Anyway, I guess I was talking about plants.

In the past sixty days I had noticed an increase in vegetation in the ditches along my road—Johnson grass, thistles, wildflowers, and . . . 

Oh yeah, Beulah. She was coming down the road in Billy’s pickup. Hot dog, what an opportunity! I stood in the middle of the road and waited.

You ever notice that on a hot day, pickups turn soupy? I know that sounds strange, but I’ve observed it many times. At a distance, maybe half a mile away, the front end of a pickup will turn to soup or water or something wavy and fuzzy. When it gets up close, it goes back to steel, but at a distance it looks just like chicken broth. It won’t do that in cold weather, but on a hot day it happens all the time.

I’ve often wondered if ordinary dogs notice such small details. It must be some special power I have. Just thought I’d throw that in because when I first saw Beulah’s pickup, it was soupy.

Billy was taking his time, driving slow, which fit right into my plan. He came toward me, closing the gap between us. Fifty feet out, he blew his horn—a hint, I suppose, for me to get out of the middle of the road. My road.

Heh. He didn’t understand my strategy. You never saw a bullfighter step out of the path of bull, did you? No sir. The trick, if you can do it, is to wait until the last possible second, make your audience think there’s no escape, throw a good scare into ’em, and then put a couple of fancy moves together and escape death by the thickness of a hair.

That’s just what I did. Very slick move. No ordinary dog could have pulled that one off. It helped a little that Billy swerved into the ditch and derned near clipped the mailbox, but I would have sidestepped him even if he hadn’t.

Very slick move, though Billy didn’t appreciate it . . . He bellered like a wounded rhinoceros and called me things my ma never taught me.

Beulah was standing on the spare tire, saw the whole thing. Boy, was she impressed! Plato was there too. Same story, very impressed. I fell in behind the pickup and chased after it.

“What did you think of that?”

Beulah wasn’t smiling. “It looked very foolish to me. You could have gotten us killed!”

Plato spoke up. “That’s a good point, Hank, and I’m sure you’ll agree that one of the risks of exhibitionism . . .”

“Why don’t you dry up!”

“Right. But I thought I should point out . . .”

“Hey, Beulah, watch this.” I did a few dives in the air, barking at the same time. “You ever run into another dog who could do that little trick?”

They looked at each other and shook their heads. Of course they hadn’t! Nobody had. This was all new material.

“But this next one’s going to knock your socks off,” I yelled. “Just sit back and enjoy the show.”

I turned on a sudden burst of speed and zoomed around to the side of the pickup. Old Billy was glaring down at me, talking under his breath. “Come on up here, soup hound, just a little closer.”

As a matter of fact, that was exactly what I had on my agenda. I turned on some heavy barking, sprinted forward, and made a slash at his front tire. He blew his horn and swerved to the left. Did he think he could catch me unawares and roll me? Ha!

Behind me, I could hear Beulah’s voice. “Hank, be careful, don’t get yourself hurt showing off!”

“She’s right, Hank, that looks risky to me.” That was Mr. Echo, the bird dog.

The sound of Beulah’s voice just by George inspired me to do incredible things. I was ready to move mountains, fight wildcats, swim rivers, jump canyons, tear down trees, the whole nine yards of amazing things a guy can do for that one special woman in his life. And the dangerouser, the better.

Even old Billy was impressed, in spite of himself. I know because I heard him say, “Try that one more time, doggie, come on, go for that tire just one more time.”

I was a little winded after burning up the road and doing all that serious barking, but hey, when they’re begging for an encore, what can you do? I turned on one last burst of speed and zoomed in to take a snap at the left front . . . 

HUH?

It was a very sneaky and devious thing that he did, one of the sneakiest, deviousest, foulest tricks that had ever been sprung on me. I fell for it—literally fell for it.

Here’s what the snevious deak did to me, the devious sneak. First, he asked me to bite his tire, right? Okay, so I did that, made a dive for the tire. Suddenly he stomped the gas and sped up, which put me beside his door instead of beside the front tire.

Here’s the clinker. He opened his door, struck me in the rib cage, and sent me rolling into the ditch, which just happened to be very deep since it connected to one of the draws leading into Spook Canyon. What’s more, I think he did it on purpose.

Well fellers, it was flying lessons for this dog. There must have been five bottoms to that draw and I hit every stinking one of them and kept rolling. Oh rocks and brambles! Oh hurt!

When I returned to my senses, I was lying at the bottom of the ravine, not far from the creek and only a couple of steps east of Death’s Door, so to speak.

I opened my eyes and looked into the tragic face of a bassett hound whose ears hung down to the level of his jowls which hung down to the level of his front paws which were pointed outward. That’s a strange way to build a dog.

“Tender juicy chicken,” I said.

“Potatoes and gravy,” he said in his slow-talking voice.

I studied his face. “What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, just trying to make conversation. Was it you that come flying off that hill?”

I looked up at the hill, which loomed some seventy-five feet above us. “Yes, I’m the one.”

“Thought maybe you was. Heard all the racket and come over here to check. Thought maybe you took a tumble, the way it looked. Are you hurt?”

“What do you think?”

“Well . . .” He was a slow thinker. Several minutes passed before he finished the sentence. “. . . I ’spect so.”

I pushed myself up to a sitting position. “Everything hurts. A lesser dog wouldn’t have survived that fall.” I took another sweep of his face. There was something familiar about it. “Do I know you?”

“Yup. We served time together at the T.D.P.”

“Texas Department of . . . what?”

“Twitchell Dog Pound. You was there on suspicion of hydrophobia.”

“Oh yes, it’s coming back now.”

He sniffed his nose. “You had eat a bar of soap. Made your mouth foam.”

“Yes indeed. That was the day I broke out and ran for my life. Let’s see, they were going to cut off my head and send it to the state lab in Houston.”

“Austin.”

“And to make my escape, I had to flatten a cyclone fence.”

“Well, you sure tried.”

“Yes, I tried and succeeded. I can still hear the sound of snapping metal.”

“A guy’s memory plays tricks on him.”

“Exactly. I can hear it, just as though it happened yesterday.”

“That snapping sound was your neck when you hit the fence.”

“Yes, it’s all coming back now. What an adventure that was!”

“Uh-huh.”

“And let’s see, your name is Clyde, as I recall. Yes, I’m sure it is because I remember thinking that you looked like a Clyde.”

“Ralph.”

“No, it was Clyde.”

“Ralph.”

“Hey listen, I’m the one who’s remembering this story.”

“Yeah, but I’m the one who knows what my name is.”

Neither of us blinked for a long time. It was a tense moment. “All right, if you want to call yourself Ralph, that’s no skin off my nose. But you and I both know that your real name is Clyde. The question is, why did you suddenly decide to change it?”

He wagged his head, causing his ears to flop. “I been Ralph since I was a pup. Never been Clyde in my whole life.”

I managed a laugh. “Come on, Ralph, the party’s over. It took me a minute to put everything together but I’ve got it now. You’re under arrest for murder!”