Jeff Brackett - Half Past Midnight

Catahoula leopard dogs were reputed to be ideal herding and hunting dogs. They were supposed to be very smart, and fiercely loyal to their packmates. The trick, I was told, was to make sure they recognized their two-legged packmates as dominant. They sounded like exactly what I wanted. Better yet, Judith had let me know that one of her bitches had puppies on the way. Now two months old, those pups were weaned and ready to leave their mother. We had visited more than a few times in the last several weeks so the dogs would get used to us, and we were ready to take one home.

When I opened the back screen, Judith and I found Zachary sitting on the ground giggling, while six puppies crawled all over him, tails wagging so hard their entire bodies swayed with the activity. Each one whined with pleasure as they tried to climb his body, licking any exposed skin in a frantic competition for his attention.

Megan stood to the side, cooing over another pup she cuddled to her cheek. “All right, guys. We need to pick one and get home.”

Zachary latched on to a particularly energetic black and white speckled puppy. He and Megan replied at the same time, “This one!” And each of them had a different dog.

“Sorry, guys. Pick one or the other.”

Judith patted my arm and shushed me. “Take them both. You’ll be doing me a favor. I can’t afford to feed all these little mouths, and the kids will take good care of them.” She turned to the two of them. “Won’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Four pairs of puppy dog eyes looked my direction, and only two pairs actually belonged to the puppies. I knew when I was beaten. “All right. Let’s get home.”

August, Year 3

“Leeland, the dogs are in the garden again!”

At the sound of Cindy’s complaint, Mark and Brad looked at me and grinned. “Go on,” Brad told me. “We’ll finish up here.”

“You sure you got it?”

“Go! You don’t want to get Cindy mad at you.”

“Thanks.” I stripped off the leather apron and hung it on a peg beside the forge, then trotted to the garden. Sure enough, two gangly, six-month-old speckled pups were chasing each other around the well-tended rows of garden vegetables, scattering cucumbers and winter squash as they ran. Cindy chased them around, trying to shoo them out of the garden, but it appeared they thought it was all part of the game, and they chased around her as well.

Cindy saw me and threw up her hands. “They’re going to ruin the garden!”

“Ginger! Oreo! No!” The pair immediately stopped and looked at me. “Sit.” They hadn’t learned too many commands yet, but they knew no and sit well enough, and my tone told them they were in trouble. They plopped their tails in the dirt immediately and, as I advanced, they cowered, half-rolling into a submissive pose. I approached the gate and opened it, giving them the only other command they had learned well-“Out!”

Tail tucked between her legs, the black and white Oreo came through first, obviously fearful of my tone, but more afraid of disobeying. The red and white Ginger was less afraid, but seemed eager to please. Both of them came directly to my side and sat panting. “Good girls.” I didn’t think they would understand if I fussed at them for the damage their rampage through the garden had caused, and I didn’t want to confuse them by scolding them after they had followed my commands so well. Cindy didn’t see it that way, though.

“They are not good girls. Just look at what they did!” She indicated the damage to the vegetables.

“I’m sorry, Cindy. How’d they get in?”

“They jumped the fence again.”

I sighed. Ken and I had originally built a four-foot-high chain-link fence around the garden to keep out the goats. The dogs had learned to jump that a month ago, so we’d replaced it with a six-footer. We had assumed that would be tall enough to keep them out. So much for assumptions.

“I’m really sorry, Cindy.” I entered the gate to help her salvage what we could from the damage.

“No.” She stopped me as I approached. “I’ll take care of this; just get those dogs away from here!”

I’d never seen Cindy so angry. “All right. I’m really sorry-”

She cut me off with a raised hand. “Just go.”

I hurried away. Some days, I regretted bringing the puppies home. Ostensibly, they had been Debra’s birthday present, and she had loved them. But we soon found that two gangly, four-legged furry balls of youthful energy were sometimes more than we’d bargained for. “Ginger. Oreo. Come.” I took them back to the house to look for Zachary.

I found him in the barn, milking the nanny goats. “Zach, are you about done there?”

“Yes, sir, this is the last one.”

Grabbing a length of rope from a hook on the wall, I tied the makeshift leash to their collars and watched as he moved the pail and released the nanny from the milking stanchion. When he stood up, I stuck out my hand for the bucket of goat’s milk. “Here, then, let me take that.” I traded him the bucket for the dogs. “Would you please take the girls out to the woods and wear them out? They got in the garden, and I think Cindy’s about ready to fix Catahoula stew for dinner.”

His eyes lit up as he handed me the bucket. “Sure, Dad.”

“I know how much you hate playing in the woods.”

Mouth upturned, he shrugged. “Yeah, but if you’re gonna insist.”

“Just make sure you keep them away from Cindy and the garden.”

“Yes, sir.” And with that, he became a fading blur, running with the pups toward the tree line at the edge of the property. I turned to take the milk to the house and reflected again on how much life had changed for us-how it had slowed down, allowing us time to realize what was really important, things like allowing a young boy to enjoy time with his dogs.

I frowned, remembering other things were important, too. Just a few years ago, we would have been shopping to get him ready for his next year of school. Now, there was no school. We were still too busy with day-to-day survival. I mulled that over on my walk to the house and, the more I thought about it, the more dour my mood became.

Debra interrupted my musing as I arrived at the back door. “What’s got you looking so down in the dumps?”

“Just thinking about how much everything’s changed. I mean, Zach should be in school. Megan should be getting ready for college. I would be back at the shop…” That, of course, made me think of my parents, and though my grief had lessened considerably in the last two years, my chest still tightened with emotion, further darkening my mood.

“Yeah, maybe.” Debra took the milk pail from me. “But we’re alive.” She raised her eyebrows, and I had to concede the point. “And every day above ground’s a good day, right?”

“I suppose.”

“So yeah, we’ve lost some things. But it’s not all gloom and doom. We’re regaining a lot of lost ground, and we’ll get the school going next fall. It’s not like we’re going to let civilization completely fall apart. We just need time to regroup.”

I took a deep breath and got my emotions back in check. I could always count on Debra to snap me out of it whenever my temperament took a dark turn.

Nodding, I smiled at her. “Thanks for the pep talk, coach.”

“Any time, kid. Now, go get back in the game.”

I kissed her lightly and headed back to the forge, where I could hear the whoosh of a bellows forcing air across the coals and the steady pounding of Mark’s hammer on hot iron as he and Brad continued to work. I rounded the corner of the barn and watched the two of them for a moment. Debra was right. Things weren’t all gloom and doom.