A Black Dog at Night

Massachusetts is noisy.

My residential street is a cut through between the Interstate and the highway into town and trucks travel down it all day rattling over pot holes and sometimes shaking my house. In the fall and spring the sound of leaf blowers start at 8am and continue until the sun goes down. There’s a recreational airport nearby and in the afternoons, when the wealthy come home from their offices in the city, you can hear the incessant buzz of Cessna’s and the anemic whop whop sound of tiny Robinson helicopters. On the weekends kids ride dirt bikes illegally through the neighborhood. In one direction I can hear the sirens every time the local fire department leaves for a run and the gunfire from the local police range. In the other is the never ending roar of the interstate, a low growl so continuous I don’t even notice it during daylight.

At night, when the traffic dies as much as traffic ever dies along the I-95 corridor and the air changes so sound travels further I can hear other things. After the sun goes down (and for some reason in inclement weather) the flight path to Logan changes and aircraft make their descent right over my house. I can tell when the weather is changing by the sound of jet engines. On weekends I can hear the neighbor's parties. In the summer time I can hear the live shows at a nearby outdoor music venue. There’s a shocking amount of fireworks considering that they’re banned everywhere in the state of Massachusetts. I have no idea where these people get them all. I assume New Hampshire. There’s even the occasional celebratory gunfire. I’m surround by million dollar homes and people in Mercedes Benz’s and yet somehow the nighttime in this “small farming community” doesn’t sound much different than Gerttown in New Orleans except here the gunfire somehow doesn’t leave bodies in the street. It doesn't even warrant a police response.

Every night at ten p.m. I walk the family mutt, Jack one last time before we go to bed. It’s late and I’m tired and I grew up in a world with fenced backyards where I could just open the back door and let the dog out then open it again when they scratched to come in. For reasons I don’t understand they don’t do fences in Massachusetts. There is no clear line between my neighbors yard and mine. Our Dachshund, Huey Long, was old and tired and no fan of the cold and dark so I could toss him outside without worry, but Jack is a young dog. The yard is full of rabbits. The nearby woods are full of raccoons, fisher cats, coyotes, and deer and there is nothing to keep him from running into the dark trees after them. So I have to go out with him each night, rain or shine, to ensure he doesn’t run off.

It’s not a task that I love.

Jack is a black dog, nearly impossible to see in the darkness, so I strap a blue LED lighted collar around his neck before we head out. He makes a circuit counter clockwise around the perimeter of the yard, checking the tree where he saw a squirrel, the rock wall where he heard a chipmunk, and under the shed where he knows the rabbits live. Sometimes he’ll catch one of the poor cottontails in the open and there’s a brief, chaotic chase in the darkness until the rabbit finds cover and Jack loses interest. Afterwards he’ll stand briefly on the edge of the woods, looking into the dark trees as if he can see something just beyond the circle of light thrown from the neighbor's back porch. He stands there for a moment like a Jack London character hearing the call of the wild, staring into the "wilderness" until I call him off and remind him he has business to attend to.

Some nights, for reasons I’ve never been able to determine, Jack will take his time. He makes the same route, the tree where he saw a squirrel, the rock wall where he heard a chipmunk and the shed where he knows the rabbits live, but he’ll stop and sniff every leaf in between. He’ll double back. He’ll freeze and stick his nose into the wind and stand as if he’s listening to some unheard message. He hesitates when I call him back from the edge of the woods, like he has to decide whether to obey or make a run for it this time. It’s the same routine but slower and more frustrating. I find myself cussing him under my breath. My frustration grows and I pace in the darkness muttering “Just fucking potty."

It was during one of these evening walks in early October that I noticed something I’ve never noticed before. Something I’m not sure happens back home in the deep south where the nights rarely get cold and don’t stay chilly long. There’s a moment just before the first frost when suddenly the night turns quiet. One night there’s car sounds, parties, the hum of bugs, the chirp of amphibians, and the song of night birds in the trees. The next there’s nothing. In between the passing traffic and the planes overhead the night is silent. Or as silent s anything ever is in Massachusetts. The bugs, the frogs, the birds, they’re all gone. Hibernating I assume. All I can hear is the distant roar of the interstate, the ringing in my poor battered ears, and Jacks foot steps in the leaves that I know I need to rake.

I realized recently that I look forward to this first, silent, night. I’m not sure why, but I enjoy it. I guess because it’s different. Or maybe because it means the seasons are changing. Soon it’ll get cold. Soon it’ll snow.

The first time I stood in the falling snow at night was during a guard shift while in the field in Fort Drum, New York. I grew up in Louisiana and my first duty station was in Hawaii, so I’d seen maybe five inches of snow in the first twenty-one years of my life. I never understood how silent the world got when fresh snow was falling. I didn’t realize how the flakes soaked up sound until I stood in the cold, early morning darkness, watching the snow fall around me. It felt like I was in a cocoon. It felt like the world had receded and I was alone. Later, when the snow stopped falling and the sky cleared I marveled at the way the moonlight reflected off the snow and turned night to day. In those frigid, silent, moments I could feel the faintest hint of an all knowing, all loving creator.

I loved those moments then and I love them still now. After nine New England winters I still look forward to them. I await the first flakes of snow with a childish anticipation that annoys my Masshole neighbors. I can’t wait to stand in the silence of falling snow, listening to the flakes landing on my old Army parka and Jack’s footsteps as he makes his rounds, his black fur silhouetted nicely against the white of fresh fallen snow. For a brief moment the world is quiet and calm. For a brief moment I feel alone, just me, the dog, the trees and the weather. The Megaopolis I live in fades away and for a moment I'm a million miles from anywhere. On these nights I don’t begrudge Jack the change in his routine. It’s a good thing too because for a dog born in East Texas he loves the snow as much as I do. While I stand quiet and still he makes steady loops around the yard, his nose buried in white powder like Tony Montana, stopping only to check the tree, the rock wall, and the shed, and to stare into the dark woods.

Eventually the winter will turn hard. The novelty wears off and I start to notice the icy edge in the North wind that cuts through my old Army parka and makes my cheeks burn and my body ache. The cold will settle in until I can feel it, a dull throb highlighting every one of my many old injuries. The once fresh snow first turns a dirty gray and then it gets compacted and turned to ice under foot. Our circuit around the perimeter of the yard becomes treacherous as the dog and I slip and slide on the icy old snow until even Jack just wants to do his business and get back inside where it’s cozy and warm.

Then one “warm” day the ice melts and my yard turns to mud and starts to stink. The world smells of damp and rot and as winter becomes spring, pollen. The spring skies are cloudier. The nights darker somehow. Snow gives way to cold drizzle and fog that gives the woods an ominous look, like something is hiding there, watching. The silence is heavy. Foreboding. Fall in Massachusetts is glorious. Fresh falling snow is gorgeous. Jack likes the winter cold. Neither of us like the chilly, stinking, mud of spring.

But one day I’ll step outside with Jack and the world will be noisy again. It’ll start with the salamanders and frogs chirping in the vernal pond behind our house but soon they’ll be joined by the bugs and night birds. My old Army parka will go back into the closet for another season, replaced with a sweatshirt, and eventually whatever country music concert t-shirt I’m wearing at 10 p.m. The days will get longer and warmer. One night I’ll step outside to walk Jack and there will be a pair of fire flies flickering in the trees and I’ll know summer’s come.

I hate to give New England credit for anything, but summer here is far more comfortable than the blistering heat and choking humidity back home. Summer in Massachusetts is amazing. I love Louisiana and Texas and I want to go back where I belong but if I were a wealthy man I’d return to Cape Cod every year in June, much like my distant relatives who took the “right” boat out of England and have their name engraved on a plaque on a Newport wharf.

For a while I’ll appreciate the warmth and the noise, until eventually the summer traffic, pollen and mosquitoes make me forget how pleasant the season can be. I’ll start getting snippy again when Jack takes too much time. I’ll get irritable when he stares off into the trees as if he’s contemplating a new life in the wilderness instead of doing his business so we can get away from the bugs and back inside to the air conditioning. Slowly the days will get cooler. The leaves will start turning colors and eventually there will be a crisp night where I can feel the first hint of arctic cold on the North wind and I know that eventually I’ll step outside and the world will be silent again.

The cycle starts over every season as reliably as Jack travels counter clockwise around the yard, a black dog in the dark, checking the tree where he saw a squirrel, the rock wall where he heard a chipmunk, and the shed where he knows the rabbits live. I can't help but wonder sometimes, as I watch him stare off into the dark forest, if something there really is calling him and one day, when he's tired of the routine, he might go.

I like to include a song with each blog post. A tradition that no one but I seems to care about or appreciate but my tradition none the less. I wracked my brains for an hour and came up with nothing but just as I was about to give up I realized that there really was only one option.