Richard Wolkomir & Joyce Rogers Wolkomir

 

 

We decided to show our two new puppies the outside world.

 

Until yesterday, they'd lived indoors, at the humane society shelter. Now, after a night in our house, their first, we led them out into the meadow.  

 

A perfect day for it: under the May sun, the puppies wallowed through tall timothy grass, and rye, on short baby legs. Bumblebees buzzed among the buttercups. Above us, tree swallows swooped, white and green. Sweet clover scented the air, and apple blossoms.

 

Exhilaration!

 

We could see it in our puppies' faces. We felt it ourselves, because this was long ago, when we, too, were young, not yet strained by deadlines and must-dos, and we felt the springtime's pulsing.   

 

We stopped, in a patch of shorter grass, to let the puppies catch up and rest their legs. We stood at peace.

 

A snort.

 

Atop a knoll, just beyond our stopping spot, stood a white-tailed deer and her spotted fawn. Terrified of us, the doe snorted again. Her fawn, however, stared down at us, calmly.

 

Once more the doe snorted. She jerked around to run away, looking back to make sure her fawn followed. However, it still stared down at us.

 

If we moved, we feared, even breathed, we'd shatter the magic.  

 

Atop the knoll, the fawn took a downhill step toward us. Then another. And another. It stopped just inches away. It stared, fascinated, at the puppies. They stared back.

 

A meeting of innocents.

 

A touching of noses.

 

Time stopped.

 

The universe held its breath.

 

Atop the knoll, the doe snorted in agony, and the spell broke.

 

Calmly, the fawn turned and started back up the hill. Then doe and fawn were gone.

 

That was long ago. Yet, after all these years, often when the night's tv news seems especially dismal, we still speak of that magic moment.    

 

"Do you remember the fawn?"

 

--Joyce and Richard

 

 

 

 

Last night's tv news ended with a segment about quiet acts of kindness, and I wondered: what did I ever do?

 

A memory bubbled up. Nothing heroic, nobody rescued from a burning building, just a small thing.

 

We'd driven Joyce's elderly Aunt Edna up to the Burlington, Vermont, airport to catch a flight to Detroit, to visit her older sister, possibly for the last time.

 

As we watched Edna tottering around the crowded departure gate, the PA system blared: Edna's direct flight to Detroit had changed. Now she must fly to Philadelphia, then board a different airliner, at a different gate, for the trip's final leg, to Detroit.

 

Listening to that announcement, Edna looked bewildered, just as the line of passengers began inching ahead, to board. Joyce and I panicked. We imagined Aunt Edna tottering in Philadelphia's vast airport, alone and lost.   

 

Desperate, I scanned the line—impatient business people, tapping cell phones, bored youths, pinch-faced people irked by the schedule change….

 

Did anyone look kindly? What about that middle-aged couple, patiently standing in line? Without thinking, I rushed up to them and blurted out: "Are you folks going to Detroit?"

 

I saw the man's face cloud with suspicion, and rightfully so. Warily, he nodded. Yes, they were going to Detroit.

 

"We need help," I said.

 

Their suspicion intensified.

 

Then I pointed to Joyce helping her elderly Aunt Edna shuffle forward in the line, already looking lost.  

 

For me to accost strangers? To ask for a favor? Until that moment, unthinkable. But we were desperate.

 

I asked: will you watch her in Philadelphia? Point her in the right direction?

 

As they looked at the old woman, the couple's expressions softened. Of course they'd help, they said. Don't worry.

 

After Edna tottered through the boarding gate and was gone, though, I had misgivings.

 

Was my impulsive judgement correct? Were that old woman's guardians truly benign?  

 

Another thing: Edna grew up in upstate New York's farming country. Had she ever spoken to a Black man and woman? Would she accept their help?

 

Later, when we called Edna's relatives in Detroit, we learned this—from the moment she arrived, Edna never stopped talking about the wonderful couple who helped her. Even after she got back home, for months, we heard her praising them.

 

As for her guardians? When they understood why I'd accosted them, their expressions softened, brightened. I'd chosen them out of that long line of passengers. I'd trusted them to look after Joyce's aged Aunt Edna. I believe that pleased them.

 

So, no rescue from a burning building. Just this little thing.   

 

--Richard

 

 

 

What dogs want is clear—they want to be our pal. Also they want dinner.

 

Dogs aren't coy. We can read their thoughts. They give us a mischievous glance ("Throw that ball!"), or a joyous tail wag ("You've come home!"), or they express more complicated ideas—a furrowed brow, a growl or whine or sigh or delighted bark.

 

Now, let's consider the cat.

 

In particular, let's consider Alex, the handsome gray-and-black cat who lives in the apartment across the corridor from ours, with Karen.

 

We're working on "The Alex Project," a scientific (sort of) probe into Alex's mind, because cats mystify us.

 

A friend of ours once said her cat's favorite thought was: "If I were bigger, I would eat you."  

 

What does Alex think?

 

He dashes up the corridor, suddenly stops, lays down, and stares at us balefully, like the sphynx.

 

"What's he thinking when he stares at us like that?" we ask Karen.

 

"Who knows?" she says, shrugging.

 

She tells us that Alex often gets up in the middle of the night to noisily play with his toys. Why?

 

"Who knows?" Karen says.  

 

We know thunderstorms frighten Alex because he hides under the bed, except that his long tail sticks out. Do cats not know their tail is part of them?  

 

Yesterday, as Alex lay on the corridor floor, giving us his baleful stare, he suddenly noticed his tail, because it twitched. He twisted to watch his tail. He watched it a long time.

 

Another day, Alex stared fixedly out the corridor's window at song sparrows and chickadees fluttering by. We guessed why, but it gave us the creeps, so we opted for a different interpretation: Alex is interested in ornithology.

 

Sometimes Alex will be lying on the corridor floor when he suddenly jumps up and races like a lightning streak to the corridor's far end, where he plops down again. No explanation.

 

Sometimes, after a corridor prowl, Alex dashes to his apartment's door and paws it. Why does he want to go in?

 

"He's tired," Karen says.

 

Maybe.  

 

Who knows?

 

--Richard and Joyce

 

 

 

We live at the town's edge, but our apartment's windows look out on wildness.

 

Once a bear ambled by. Yesterday, a skunk hurried along our little park's macadam walking path. Deer graze in the meadow. Atop the knoll, red foxes flaunt their plumy tails. Lately, though, we've focused on wild turkeys.

 

They look like Mesozoic reptiles, marching single file out of the adjacent woods, led by a self-important male, chest out, tail fanned, full of himself. Following Mr. Big come the females, less resplendent, but also skin-headed, with long gray legs. 

 

We counted twenty in the flock. For weeks we watched them, enjoying their wildness. Then, suddenly, they vanished. Just one lone female waded through the meadow grasses, and that worried us.

 

Had the flock rejected her? Or had some carnivore decimated the flock and only she survived? Or had the flock moved on while she slept, and she awoke to find herself abandoned?

 

We dubbed her Agnes.

 

She foraged alone now, pecking here, pecking there. Then she, too, vanished. We feared the worst.

 

Did something with teeth do her in? Some avian disease? It upset us.  

 

Weeks passed.

 

One morning, Agnes returned—she strode purposefully along the park's walking path. Around her long gray legs and big feet swirled a tan cloud. With binoculars, we saw the "cloud" was actually twelve fluff balls, pressed together, hurrying on tiny legs to keep up.

 

So Agnes left her flock to become a mom. Now she led her hatchlings to some previously scoped out promised land. Never to return?  

 

A month later, suddenly—seventeen turkeys paraded under our window. Among them, for sure, our old friend Agnes and her chicks, now adolescents.

 

We haven't seen them since, but we're not worried—spring will come.  

 

Moral: don't agonize over imagined disasters. Things may yet turn out okay.

 

--Richard & Joyce

 

 

 

A book club asked us to talk about our new memoir—it tells how a charismatic corgi came to us, just as Joyce was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia, chances of survival 4%.  

 

That was three decades ago, and Joyce attributes her cure, in part, to Nosmo the corgi's devotion. I, however, wanted no more dogs in our life. I wanted to endure no more dog deaths. And I didn't want to be tied down by a dog, when our magazine work required constant travel.  

 

At the book club meeting, a woman asked me: "So when did you start to love Nosmo, and accept him?"

 

Not easily answered.  

 

For one thing, I instantly loved Nosmo, when he first popped up on our deck. A dog so handsome, so joyous, so charming, so clearly aware, you had to love him. Accept him, though? No, not until one horrific night.

 

I'd spent that day in Joyce's hospital room, as she lay in bed, bald and skeletal, unable to lift her head. I thought she might be dying. So I stayed by her, fetching ice cream. She could eat nothing else. I made frequent trips back home for Nosmo's walks, and his supper, then back to the hospital. All afternoon and all evening I sat by Joyce's bed, talking, unsure she could hear.  

 

I felt desolate.

 

I got home at midnight, too weary to think. I took Nosmo out for his final walk in the moonlit meadow. Then I pulled off my shoes and socks and fell into bed, still wearing my jeans and t-shirt, and I instantly sank into unconsciousness.

 

At 2 A.M., out of deep sleep, I jerked upright in bed, feeling summoned. Had Joyce died? Then I saw Nosmo sitting beside the bed, staring steadily at me. Seeing me sitting upright, he seemed to nod, as if saying, "Finally!" Then he hurried to the stairs, and looked back to urge me on.

 

"All right!" I said, angry.

 

I put my feet down beside the bed and it felt wet. I turned on the light—diarrhea covered the rug, and now covered my feet. I managed to get to the bathroom, walking on my heels to keep from spreading the mess everywhere. I washed my feet in the bathtub. Then, cursing under my breath, I followed Nosmo down the stairs and let him out the back door into the yard.

 

While the corgi walked in the moonlight, I hunched on our deck's steps, burying my head in my hands.

 

At some point, I realized Nosmo sat beside me, leaning against my leg. I knew he sensed my misery, and offered his warmth and caring.

 

We sat that way a while. Then I noticed I had my arm over Nosmo's back. I suddenly realized it horrified me, to think of coming home from a day like this with no corgi there to love me.   

 

 I heard my own voice: "It's not your fault, Nosmo." 

 

At that moment, I accepted Nosmo into our life.  

 

Afterwards, with a bucket of sudsy hot water, I cleaned the bedroom rug. Then I fell back onto the bed.

 

I heard Nosmo sigh, as he lay beside me on the floor.

 

So we became a team of three, a corgi, a woman, and a man.

 

That's how Nosmo wanted it.

 

--Richard

 

 

 

My grandfather, Anson Rogers, bought the seven horses by mail. Their train, from the west, arrived at the Rochester, New York, freight station in the dark, as he'd arranged.

  

At that hour, Anson knew, the constabulary slept.

  

He was a huckster. He bought low and sold high.

  

Problem: how to transport the horses twenty miles to the family's rundown Bristol Hills farmhouse. Solution: free labor.

 

Grandpa loaded his pickup truck with his seven sons.

 

My father, Art, was oldest, at fifteen. Next came Andy (14), Herbie (13), Stanley (12), Billie (11), Jimmy (10), and Bobby (9).

 

 Anson had moved the family from Rochester to that weathered country house—no running water, no electricity—to avoid regulatory eyes. He knew the child-abuse laws. Only when no one watched did he enforce discipline with a bullwhip. Once, he and my grandmother drove to Florida for the winter, leaving their seven sons and seven daughters to shift for themselves, which got him arrested.

 

He figured endangering kids to move horses would be okay, if he did it in darkness.

 

With Anson hissing orders, the riders mounted, the bigger boys boosting their littler brothers aboard.

  

I assume the horses had been working steeds, accustomed to riders, because my father—who told me about this adventure—said no kid got bucked off.

 

They rode bareback, clinging to the horses' manes.

 

Anson drove ahead, the horse riders following his red taillights, hanging on, mile after mile.

 

At some point on that twenty mile journey, one rider, Herbie, fell in love with his horse.

 

I'm guessing that in a household crammed with fourteen children and a work-weary mother, Herbie got little love. His horse loved him.

 

As the weeks passed, Herbie fed his horse special. He taught the horse many tricks, like picking up a dropped handkerchief in his teeth and handing it to Herbie.

 

Every day Herbie hurried home from school to be with his horse.

 

Anson watched the horse's growing portfolio of tricks with a calculating squint.

 

One day Herbie hurried home from school and his horse was gone.

 

Sold.

 

My father said his little brother spent the rest of the week sobbing.

 

I guess my grandfather decided a trick horse could sell for a few pennies more.

 

I do know one thing for sure.

 

Anson Rogers was a bastard.

 

--Joyce

 

 

 

We stood, Joyce and I, at a desert's edge, facing 3,000 miles of sand.

 

Behind us, in an outdoor market, villagers sold dates and figs and leather belts and wind-up alarm clocks. We didn't know the language, but we bought a few figs, by pointing, then extending a handful of coins, for the seller to choose among.  

 

 So, munching our figs, we stood where the oasis ended and the desert began. If we walked out there, we knew, under that lethal sun, we'd soon die. We guessed nothing lived on that sand.   

 

Then, out of the village, three white-robed men rode camels, each beast laden with wicker baskets and burlap sacks. Trading goods, we guessed. Each camel wore a strap of bells around its neck.    

 

We watched the camels stride out onto the sand, their riders relaxed in their saddles, chatting convivially, as if they followed a familiar road. Maybe they exchanged village gossip, or discussed today's price of myrrh.  

 

Camels and riders dwindled, finally too distant to see. Yet, we still heard their bells ringing.   

 

At odd moments, I remember that sound, long ago, bells out on the desert.    

 

--Richard  

 

 

 

Our new book, The Corgi With Starlight In His Eyes, just published, is unusual for us, because we're in it, Joyce and Richard.

 

It's about when a handsome corgi appears on our deck. Nosmo makes it clear—our home will be his new home, and we will be his new people. 

 

"It's fated," Joyce exclaims. "He's come to us for a reason."

 

So it is, because just as Nosmo arrives, we face a crisis, life or death. This memoir is the story—as Nosmo sees it—of how we face that crisis together, now a team of three: a woman, a man, and a dog.

 

But what a dog! Preternaturally aware. So charismatic he seems to glow.

 

It's a joyful story.

 

It's a love story.

 

We hope some of you read this story. We hope it gives you pleasure.

 

You can find this book on Amazon.com.

 

 

My draft summons came just after Joyce and I graduated.

 

We'd taken low-pay starter jobs in Manhattan, and that summons felt like a wallop.

 

For one thing, without my meager contribution, how could Joyce pay our two-room apartment's rent?

 

Also—and this came as a shock—outsiders now directed our life.

   

So I rode up to Albany for the physical, feeling unnerved, weakened.

 

That's my excuse.

 

My seatmate on that government bus was Willie Flute, who'd emigrated to our Hudson River factory town from Appalachia—tiny, frail, mildly retarded.

 

Otherwise, young men from the adjacent town's Black neighborhood filled the bus seats.

 

As we exited the bus, a soldier, probably a corporal, not much older than us, yelled orders.

 

"Line up!"

 

"Clothes off—underwear, socks, everything!"

 

So we stood in a long naked line as the corporal thrust bottles into our hands.

 

"Pee in that!"

 

Probably half the men, given the circumstances, had trouble peeing in the bottle. 

 

"Hurry up!"

 

Now the corporal focused on tiny Willie Flute, dazed and uncomprehending.

 

"Damn you, I said pee in that bottle!"

 

"Did you hear me, Jerk?"

 

Willie shrank under this barrage, and I felt terrible for him. Yet, I didn't speak.

 

Somebody else did.  

 

One of the men from the neighboring town glared balefully at the corporal, then spoke in a steady voice.

 

"Why don't you leave him alone?"

 

I could see the corporal taken aback.

 

"I'm doing my job," he protested.

 

"Why don't you leave him alone?"

 

So the corporal left Willie alone.

 

Riding back on the bus, after the physical, I thought: I should have spoken up, but I didn't.  

 

Some wars involve machine guns and grenades. Every day, though, micro-wars flare, incidents like the bullying of Willie Flute. In those tiny hostilities, even when you see the injustice, you may shrink back.

 

Some, though, with principles, and character, and courage, do speak up.

 

They defend the Willie Flutes.

 

They are heroes.

 

--Richard

A dog just taught me the sound of one hand clapping.

 

I had errands to finish before lunchtime. So I barreled along the highway, until—abruptly—I braked to a crawl.

 

A small SUV blocked me.

 

In this stretch of highway, speed limit 50 mph, the car ahead poked along at 30 mph.

 

Frustrating!

 

Rushing is what I do. I'm given to impatient finger tapping. My head's full of worries.

 

After a few annoyed minutes, staring at the slow car ahead, I noticed a dog in the back seat, calmly regarding me through the rear window. An old dog, muzzle gray, but with amiable brown eyes.

 

Those benign eyes seemed to say: "Friend, why hurry?"

 

Actually, I didn't know—why do I hurry?

 

I finished my chores. I drove home.

 

All the way I remembered that old dog's kind gaze, and I relaxed.

 

--Richard