Five weeks after Farina’s coming to this patch of Old Dixie Lane her weight had doubled. From day one she was the perfect addition to this big piece of land under oak trees, home to squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, giant gopher turtles, snakes and the occasional alligator. She spent her early days here dashing from one end to the other, running giant circles around the house at a speed fast enough for the greyhound races. In between that she chowed down on big bowls of food. Other than running and chasing either squirrels or rabbits, the biggest fascination was with the two horses living next door, one a full grown dwarf standing at most three and a half feet from hooves to ears. She did a lot of barking at those horses over the fence, and on walks to the mailbox pulled on the leash when we passed the horse gate. At one stop the dwarf galloped up to the gate tossing his head in a sort of “who the hell are you?” fierceness and Farina almost wet herself.
Another part of the young dog thing is getting used to holes in the yard, lots of holes. Not many times that Farina out romping around doesn’t miss the chance to dig a new hole or two. I wouldn’t mind a scatter of holes dug way at the back of the yard, and there are a few of those, but the two favorite digging spots are in the driveway and along the fence line. I don’t want her digging under the fence and a driveway that looks like a prairie dog village makes for a bumpy coming and going in the truck. The dog books offer up a cure but there are a lot of holes and the ingredients for the cure take time to collect. “Deposit a pile of the dog’s poop in the dug hole and cover it up. That will put the dog off and prevent digging in that spot again.” Problem is, the book doesn’t say anything about all the available places the dog hasn’t dug up before.
The other day Farina was barking at something out by one of the sheds, her eyes focused on something under a bush. I walked over to see what she was riled up about and there was a baby turtle. It looked like one not long hatched from a buried egg and right off the bat was being tormented by a noisy puppy. But to find the hatchling of a gopher turtle was no surprise. The big ones sometimes wander around the backyard nibbling grass and once before I found a baby crawling out of an old fencepost hole. The one Farina had found I washed off with the hose and took a picture. The babies are more beautiful than the full grown turtles, which are a dull and smelly greenish brown. Maybe the yellow spots fade as they grow and the black turns dark green.
Lamar and Jimmy were barbecuing Mexican sausages across the fence just before sunset yesterday. Up against the woods where Jimmy’s trailer is set up at the back of Randy and Jean’s yard, mosquitos are pretty bad late in the day. Must have been an uncomfortable picnic with all the mosquitos. Jimmy is Jean’s brother and she told him to get outta the house for a few days because she had company coming, told him he could buy a trailer to park out in the backyard. And he did. Then she upped his rent from $400 to $500 a month. Her own brother. Since he had that quintuple bypass surgery last summer, and with an assumed prognosis of little time left, he’s busy drinking himself to death, trying to spend the $50,000 in savings he’s got left. Jimmy is a Vietnam vet living off his pension, which seems to do him okay. Thin as a rail, somewhere in his middle 60s, I guess. Back in the day he got shot up along those jungle trails and came home with a Purple Heart. Now he smokes funny cigarettes and drinks all day long every day. I don’t see much of Jimmy but sometimes hear his 1970s Jefferson Airplane songs booming out of the trailer. Lamar says he plays it so loud they can’t hear each other talk, have to go outside and sit in the mosquitos.
Looking down Old Dixie Lane toward the river
Speaking of Jean, about a week ago I walked over with Farina to say hello around 4:30 and stayed until 7:00 sipping on Randy’s nasty Canadian whiskey and ginger ale. Jean sat across from us throwing back Southern Comfort on the rocks. At one point Lamar came tooling down the road on his lawn mower pulling a baggage cart, come to pick up some laundry Jean had done for him, a bedcover she said later hadn’t been washed in eleven years. He swerved into the driveway, hit a big root sticking up out of the ground and drove his mower and cart bang into Jean’s new Ford compact, a broadside to the passenger door. In her state of Southern Comfort, Jean didn’t give a damn but Lamar was all discombobulated. Conversation came around to pests out in our area and Jean announced she wouldn’t harm a single pink hair on an armadillo’s belly and even enjoyed watching two baby ones play out in her yard. Two seconds later she told us if she ever got her hands on one of those guys who raise fighting dogs she wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet through his medulla oblongata and walk away like she’d just swatted a fly. Me and the dawg didn’t get home until after dark, treading carefully along the dirt road, eye out for things that bite.
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