Animals

Thirteenth in a series on my West Virginia childhood and Appalachian exile.

When summer ended, my mother announced that the principal at my elementary school, Larry Hasbargen—yet another person my mother always referred to by his first and last name—was skipping me into third grade. From now on, my brother’s class and mine would be only a year apart.

For some reason, perhaps because we hadn’t yet sold the house on the hill, we went back to the same school, though our home at Hall Acres was in a different district. Living a two-mile drive from the old neighborhood and isolated as we were, I had no classmates to play with evenings after school or on weekends. Other children only occasionally appeared on the playground. Instead, we began to collect animals.

Even before the marriage, my stepfather owned Gus, a happy elkhound with the curled tail of a pig. My brother got a cat he named Midnight, while I christened mine Streaker, in honor of a song on the radio. The cats were sisters. Neither was spayed; both got pregnant. We were soon overrun with cats.

Gus was sometimes inside with us and sometimes on a chain outdoors. Once the kittens were weaned, the cats mostly lived outside, but also came in. Yet all that was not enough. We acquired three hamsters and a plastic maze of tunnels, along with fish and a tank that became my brother’s new hobby. We trapped skinks and a snake from the yard.

In theory, all these random additions to our zoo had separate enclosures. Still, the snake eventually got loose and hid in the couch. One of the hamsters disappeared not long afterward, but we weren’t sure whether the snake was responsible. I never saw either one again.

***

Years later, my aunt would flinch when I mentioned Hall Acres, saying there was something unpleasant about the place. In my memories of it, I almost always seem to be in my room or outside.

Less than a football field away from our house, the curving bend of Mission Drive led to everyday homes in a normal neighborhood, but I rarely ventured away from the grounds. I had a keen sense that the compound lay outside the regular world, and that we now belonged to it.

I thought often of the barbed wire and the juvenile detention center over the slope, just out of sight. My stepfather was the executive director of the Mission that had given the street its name, but I didn’t know what role he had, if any, in managing the troubled kids.

The nearest neighbors, whose house also sat out of sight of ours, owned a Great Dane that stood almost as tall as me with all four paws on the ground. My stepfather had asked them to keep him tied up, but he sometimes ran loose.

One afternoon, I was sitting in the field with my cat when I saw the dog crest the hill. Catching sight of us, he lifted his head and stiffened, as if drawing some power out of the air between us, as if he were aware I had seen him, too. He started running: the first few strides with interest, then with intention.

I scooped up the cat. The house was too far away; I had no illusions of outrunning a Great Dane. I looked at the playground. The tallest piece of equipment on it was an enormous slide. Dull gray stairs several times my height led to a shimmering runway descending in a wave. The slide stood higher than any dog could jump.

Wrapping one arm around the tabby’s midsection, I bolted. At the base of the ladder, I planted one foot on a step at hip height and climbed, using my free hand to haul myself higher. Halfway up, I heard the dog’s approach, then toenails skittering on metal. At the top, I turned to watch. Leaping and snapping, his front paws on the ladder, he stood as tall as a grownup.

I felt relief for an instant, then disappointment. For the first time in my life, I had been a hero, but no one had been present to witness my moment of glory.

The dog pulled me from my fantasy. He had not given up. On one frantic leap, his front paws landed on a step and hooked onto it, seemingly by chance. He held on. Closer to the ground, his back paws scrabbled clumsily, bouncing off the upright rails and bicycling in the air until one caught on a lower step of the ladder.

The dog steadied himself, bringing the other paw onto the same tread. He now stood two steps off the ground. He lunged upward again, using his front paws to catch the next step, and held on until his back paws could brace themselves once more.

I watched in awe and horror. The third time he did it, we both realized where all this might go. My celebration had been premature, my failure of imagination complete. It hadn’t occurred to me that a dog might climb a ladder. He seemed as surprised as I was. With awkward, panicked progress, he appeared to be learning as he went.

The animal ascended, eyes fixed on us as he rose. I understood he would kill my cat if he could. His climb dragged on with nothing to relieve the fear, giving me all the time in the world to decide what to do.

I thought about shoving him off the ladder as he got near the top, but I wasn’t sure I could use my feet without falling or being bitten. Instead, I waited until he was almost to us. I sat and shifted Streaker onto my lap. As soon as the dog’s nose crossed the metal horizon of the platform behind me, I slid down. At the bottom, I gripped the cat hard to my chest and sprinted for the house.

Halfway there, hearing nothing but my own heartbeat, I looked back. The dog sprawled almost flat at the top of the slide, his front paws extended down the shiny ramp, his haunches still on the platform at the top. Though he bucked, trying to back up, gravity was dragging him forward against his will. I turned my face toward the basement door again and ran.

We made it inside; the cat survived. But it was a bitter victory. We lost two of her kittens that fall, probably to the same dog, though I didn’t observe the means of their vanishing. By the time winter set in, the rest of the litter was still young, and death came for another pair. One crawled up onto the engine block for shelter, only to be eviscerated when my mother turned on the ignition. Another nested in a wheel well overnight and stayed there unseen until we left for school, when it was crushed. After that, we checked the car each morning.

My father and stepmother visited us one day and took home a kitten to raise themselves. The remaining two went to strangers. Upon the discovery not long afterward that Streaker and Midnight had feline leukemia, both were put to sleep. All our cats were gone.

No creature was safe; we were lethal even to wildlife. The house was surrounded by grass, which occasionally sat unmowed. Out in the field one afternoon, I was running barefoot and landed hard on some living thing with my heel. It writhed against me, rolling like a rope underfoot, and I skidded.

Coming back to see what had tripped me, I found the lifeless body of a baby copperhead. With a tail the color of lemons, it had a belly paler than its back. I picked it up. The snake was shorter than my school ruler and felt neither cool nor warm on my palm, like part of my own body. It was the first time I had killed anything.

***

Half a century later, I call my brother on the telephone and ask him to send me a list of all the pets we had at Hall Acres. Our lists agree. Then, without warning, a half-ghost twitches in the back of my mind. Our stepfather, I recall, had a second dog when we moved there. I try to summon him. Almost. Almost. But in the end, he won’t come forward.

I write again to my brother—was there another dog, a little one?

“Oh wow,” my brother answers then adds that yes, my stepfather had a second dog when we met him. Both of us had completely forgotten, for decades. Neither of us can resurrect its name or fate.

All those animals deserved better than they got. But it was the wrong home in which to be loved. We were, each of us, in far over our heads, with no good prospects for escape.

You can read another story in this series about my childhood here, or find out more about me and this newsletter on my About page.