The Dogs of Bedlam Farm Read online

  It had only been a couple of months since I had put my cherished mountaintop retreat—a cabin where I’d written three books and found more peace and beauty than I’d ever known—up for sale. I wanted to buy an old farmhouse with a porch, some land, maybe a barn. Through a series of flukes, I’d gotten more than I’d bargained for, more acreage, a lovelier house, more barns in more advanced stages of decay, along with coyotes, hawks and songbirds, yellow jackets and fleas, feral cats, rats and mice (despite the feral cats), raccoons, chipmunks, foxes, loads of deer, and unconfirmed rumors of two moose and a mountain lion. I also had a sweeping view of a lush valley checkered with pastures, cornfields, and barns.

  The classic white Greek revival farmhouse had seen a lot of history. It sat on a hillside above a tiny hamlet of thirty or forty houses, two lovely old churches, and a general store—Bedlam’s Corner. The name mesmerized me from the moment I first drove by.

  My earlier cabin, a half hour south of Hebron, was a getaway, a private corner for a writer’s internal life. I worked there, read, hiked with the dogs. Apart from my wife and daughter and two or three friends, hardly anyone else had ever seen it. That was part of the problem; it was my place and only my place.

  As much as I’d loved it, as important as it had become, the cabin had also defeated me in a way. It was so small that there was barely enough space for the dogs and me; it felt crowded when my wife visited, let alone my daughter Emma. I had come to want not a retreat for me, but a rural home for us, with places for Paula to work and Emma to stay, with space for friends—a place for liveliness more than solitary contemplation. I felt ready for a fuller existence, though I had no inkling just how full it was about to get.

  I was conscious, as I try always to be, of entering another phase, of marking the transition and pondering how I was going to deal with it. I’d just turned fifty-six. How many more houses would I be buying? How many more dogs could I ever own? How much more time did Paula and I have to be together in a place like this?

  I couldn’t really afford the farm any more than I could the cabin that preceded it, but I couldn’t really afford to wait, either. For several years, especially since the terrorist attacks on New York City, I’d seen people assessing their lives, making changes, seeking property upstate. In another five years I doubted I’d be able to buy acreage. My little cabin, forlorn and ungainly at the time, had been on the market for two years when I bought it. It sold in less than a week, once I put it on the market.

  Driving me around the town of Hebron as I looked for the replacement I had in mind, the real estate agent had looked up at the hillside as we passed and pointed at the white farmhouse. “There’s the house you want,” she said ruefully. “But it isn’t for sale.” Three weeks later, it suddenly was. Sometimes houses, like dogs, find you.

  What better place to test my notions about dogs and humans than here, with border collies and a bunch of sheep? Could they become happier dogs and more useful partners? Could I learn to be a better human? The four of us and our little band of animals, tucked away on a hillside through a glorious fall, the bitter upstate winter, and a cold, muddy spring filled with lambing, could probably find out.

  Two months later, I was here, unpacking boxes and dealing with hay supplies, cranky barn doors, monosyllabic Vermont fence builders, and more. It seemed I had compressed years of activities into weeks and days—selling a beloved home, buying a more complex one, moving out and in, arranging the endless details that would make it possible for me and my assorted livestock to live here.

  In a few hours, I told the dogs, as we puffed uphill in the dark, there would be sheep right out the back door. The announcement wasn’t as loopy as it seemed: every mention of the word “sheep” got three heads swiveling. Even little Rose, who’d visited Raspberry Ridge just a few times, was already hooked and showing quite a bit of herding style.

  I bought the place for my family and me, but my wife pointed out what I privately conceded—I bought it for the dogs, as well. Owning land you could barely see the end of was wonderful, but owning property that could give dogs a chance to do and perfect what they most loved, what their breed had done for hundreds of years, that was still another dimension.

  Perhaps I could finish the difficult and painstaking work I had begun with Orson years ago and finally show him how to make sense of the world. Perhaps I could resolve my long-standing concerns and bring the good-hearted but anxious Homer into the mainstream of our family. Perhaps I could take advantage of the opportunity presented by the astoundingly energetic Rose and, applying what I’d learned researching and writing about dogs for the past few years, not screw up this remarkable puppy.

  As our odd little group made its way up the hill, I was leaning on a walking stick to guard against my bad ankle giving out. I’d filled a travel mug with hot coffee to ward off the wind’s chill. I was also carrying a copy of Saint Augustine’s City of God, which I planned to read aloud to sort of bless the farm and our adventure together, officially about to begin. The early Christian writers were spiritual ancestors to me—born a Jew, a convert to Quakerism, still struggling with religious conviction. Saint Augustine and his colleagues also grappled valiantly to make sense of their world, and City of God was his brave effort to explain the fall of Rome and the world’s plunge into the Dark Ages.

  Though I’ve always struggled with religion, I’ve never given up on spirituality. It’s not always an easy distinction, and I’m not sure the saints would approve of my applying the word “spiritual” to the profoundly loving and complicated relationships that people like me have with their dogs.

  I don’t see dogs as psychic or telepathic. Nor do I believe that we will meet them in the afterlife, or that mediums can channel their deepest thoughts. But I do believe the human-dog relationship can be deeply meaningful. Dogs have a remarkable gift for entering our lives at particular times and weaving themselves in. It is one of their most endearing traits, a key part of their impressive adaptability.

  This morning held that promise. The early walk up the hill had become a ritual for me in West Hebron—navigating the steep and rocky rise with the dogs to watch the sun appear. Was there any finer way to start a day? Afterwards I could fire up the woodstove in my study and have a few good hours to work while the dogs rested from their romp and waited for their shot at sheep.

  In their own way, experts that they are at reading their humans, my dogs seemed to grasp the ritual as well. They couldn’t literally understand what I was doing, of course, but they sensed that something important was happening.

  This morning I could see an eerily beautiful dawn about to break after the classic dark and stormy night, with gusting winds left behind by the weakening and retreating Hurricane Isabel. The mountains that stretch all the way to Vermont were shrouded in mist as the light began to creep up. Living in cities and crowded suburbs most of my life, I could never take the sight of such beauty for granted. I almost felt it lifting me up, soothing and healing and inspiring.

  Even my dogs paused in their circling and tilted their heads, noses in the air to pick up strange scents, perhaps brought on the wind from far-away places.

  Panting and sore, I made it to the hilltop chairs and flopped into one. Orson hopped onto the other. Homer and Rose chased each other across the field. Orson growled, jumped off his perch, and began to move toward them—he discourages any kind of enthusiasm or horseplay—but I reached out to put my hand on his head, a calming gesture.

  “Relax, pal,” I said. “Let the kids have their fun. What do you say us old farts sit up and read from this book?” He relented, putting his head on my lap.

  Orson and I have been together for less than four years, but it’s hard to describe all the two of us have been through, how difficult and rewarding and complicated our relationship is, how much we’ve come to mean to each other. This dog came out of nowhere to challenge my very nature and alter my life; I think I have returned the favor.

  “Look what you’ve done, pal,�
� I said to this intense and complex creature. “All this because of you.” It was true: my work, this farm, many of my friends, much of my life, all were different because of him and the unexpected directions in which he’d led me. If not for this dog, would I have been sitting atop a hill, overlooking a tiny town, waiting for sheep and perhaps a donkey? Would I own this place? Or see this beautiful valley brighten as the sun rose after a passing storm?

  I cradled Orson’s head in my lap, stroking the side of his nose. He seemed as peaceful as it was possible for him to be. The animal ethicist James Serpell has written that the human-canine relationship is as close as humans ever come to a dialogue with another species, and Orson and I were engaged in that dialogue this morning.

  I took in the sight, sat back in the chair, sipped from the coffee mug, and tried to accustom myself to this new, still strange setting. Orson’s presence made it less odd, more familiar, part of the continuum of our lives together.

  I felt as if we had crossed a portal, entered a serene and beautiful space, strolled together into Augustine’s City of God.

  My friends often chuckle knowingly when I tell them that I’d decided to read aloud from Saint Augustine to mark the occasion. I had no illusions that Orson understands such weighty prose, but he does love it when I read aloud to him, watching my face for clues, listening to my tone. Probably he’s wondering how long it will take me to stop droning on and reach into my pocket for a biscuit.

  Still, it was a beautiful moment.

  I loved reading about the City of God. I’d carried a worn copy of the book all over the country, reading it in airports and hotel rooms. The City of God wasn’t the sphere I usually occupied, sadly, but the place we all strived to reach.

  Augustine believed there were two realms, the earthly and the heavenly, and the City of God was the heavenly part, a holy place of rivers, streams, and mountains—just the sort of place I was seeing at that moment, as the light began to glow in the distance.

  Augustine was a religious man; my own vision of the City of God was different from his, more a state of mind, a place of serenity we rarely found in our overstressed lives.

  “Since, then, the supreme good of the City of God is perfect and eternal peace, not such as mortals pass into and out of by birth and death, but the peace of freedom from all evil, in which the immortals ever abide, who can deny that that future life is most blessed?” I read to Orson, to whom peace was generally an alien concept. “Or that, in comparison with it, this life which now we live is most wretched, be it filled with all blessings of body and soul and external things?

  “And yet, if any man uses this life with a reference to that other which he ardently loves and confidently hopes for, he may well be called even now blessed, though not in reality as much as in hope.”

  The wind was pushing the clouds across the hills at a quick pace now, and the morning light had filled the valley. I closed my book to watch for the first glimmers of the sun itself. Homer and Rose, tongues dragging, came over and collapsed. Orson’s eyes were closed, his head still in my lap as I scratched his ears.

  In a busy suburb or on a busy-and-getting-busier farm, moments like this are rare. Soon I’d be yelling at Orson or Homer to stay away from the road. I’d be ordering feed, checking my answering machine, my e-mail and my voicemail. Soon the world would, as it should, begin its inexorable intrusion. Soon Wilbur Price would be here.

  The places a dog can take you, I thought. Look where mine had brought me.

  BUT SAINT AUGUSTINE WAS NOT A SHEPHERD.

  A few days later came a lovely night with a quarter moon. The sparse lights of West Hebron twinkled below.

  The sheep, settling into Bedlam Farm, seemed happy, crunching away up in the pasture even after a full day’s grazing. I shined my powerful new flashlight—purchased to help me spot circling coyotes—up the hill and saw their eyes reflected in the light.

  I had to duck into the pig barn for a second to hook up a hose. It seemed safe enough to leave the pasture gate briefly unlatched. The sheep and Carol, crunching along with them, had plenty to eat, and I’d only be a second.

  As I walked into the barn—just twenty feet from the gate—I heard the sound of hooves thundering behind me. My new flock went flying past before I could move, racing down the dirt driveway alongside the house and across the dirt road toward an unfenced meadow.

  I remember feeling something between shock and panic. There were lots of woods—and coyotes—across that road, and beyond that, miles of thickets and fields.

  What a dumb way to invite catastrophe. What was I thinking? But I would learn many times in the coming weeks that panic is useless in Bedlam, where catastrophes are not rare shocks but an integral part of life. You either learn how to handle them, or you pack up and head back to the Flatlands. There’s no dialing 911 up here, unless you’re about to be murdered. Help is too far away. A volunteer firefighter visiting me soon after I moved in had offered some advice: “Put some of your valuables in one of the barns, because if there’s a fire, your house will burn down before we can get here. We’re mostly basement-savers.”

  So it was me and the dogs. I ran into the house to get them. I couldn’t see the sheep, but I could hear them. I had belled two of them, so the clang would warn me if they were running from predators at night. They hadn’t gone far.

  I had limited options, though. Orson was too excitable to send out. He’d tear after the flock, and the sheep would just take off and scatter. He hadn’t yet mastered the difference between herding and chasing. Homer sometimes got excited and gripped the sheep—took mouthfuls of wool—but he had considerable experience taking flocks out to graze. He was my best shot. Rose was much too young. I’d brought her near Carolyn’s sheep a few times, and she’d stared at them hypnotically, but the sheep barely paid attention. She was only five months old, and it was risky to work her much; if Nesbitt charged or the ewes stomped her, she could be traumatized for good. Border collie puppies, if pushed too fast or too far, sometimes became too skittish to work sheep at all.

  So I grabbed Homer and we headed out. “Homer, find me sheep,” I commanded, and he dashed across the road into the meadow. He’d been trained to do an “outrun,” to circle the sheep, urging them back to me. But Nesbitt emerged from the mist and charged him, and Homer lost it and broke into a full run, right into the middle of the flock. I heard them gallop still farther into the darkness, spooked by the charging dog and strange environment—or maybe by something I hadn’t seen. They were headed for the deep woods.

  We were really in trouble now. I called the panting, wild-eyed Homer back to me and hustled him back to the house. He was just too cranked to help, perhaps in too strange an environment himself. This was not the gentle grazing we’d done in Pennsylvania, where the sheep were so familiar with the path that they practically herded themselves. I could hear the coyotes yip-yipping somewhere in the distance, perhaps telegraphing the joyous news that dinner was racing their way.

  I felt I had no choice but to turn to Rose. She might not be able to turn the sheep back, but I didn’t think she’d freak out. Rose was not lacking in confidence. She already dominated poor Homer and took no guff from the possessive and iron-willed Orson, either. She was lean and fast and had some chance at catching up with the flock. But it was a long shot.

  I worried about Nesbitt charging again, about Rose getting lost. The idea of my puppy wandering the countryside at night was even more disturbing than worrying about the sheep, who at least had one another.

  But I decided to try. Even at her tender age, Rose exuded a feistiness that made me trust her. She was bred to be a working dog. If I were going to make it on this farm, I had to handle situations like this. And Rose would have to help me.

  I took her across the road on a leash, peering out into the inky blackness. Clouds had drifted across the moon, making the night even more impenetrable. All I could see in the flashlight’s beam were tree trunks. I couldn’t hear the sheeps’ bells or bleats
any longer. They could by now be miles away.

  I took the leash off, understanding that I was probably violating every rule of sound herding training. But my instinct was to trust this dog. “Rose,” I said softly, “can you find the sheep?”

  Rose spun around and looked at me uncertainly. She knew the word “sheep” from our previous encounters and remembered it. She looked up the hill toward the barn, then across the meadow, so intense I thought she’d lift off the ground. She wasn’t sure what she was being asked to do, but she was ready to do something.

  I raised my voice. “Rose, girl,” I said, a bit desperately. “You’re free. Go get the sheep! Find the sheep!”

  She paused for another moment, and I stayed quiet to give her a chance to think things over. Who knew what her genes might cause to bubble up? Then she took off like a rabbit into the meadow, moving so quickly I couldn’t keep the flashlight beam on her.

  Within minutes, my anxiety had grown to terror. Now there was no sign of her or the sheep. Had I lost my dog as well as my herd? It seemed I had compounded one idiotic mistake with another.

  I ran off in the direction I’d seen her go, finding a trail at the edge of the meadow. I stumbled over holes, stumps, and undergrowth, my clothes jabbed by thorns and branches as I plunged down the path, yelling her name. I was frightened and tired. I heard all sorts of strange sounds in the dark that I couldn’t identify. After five minutes of running, I was gasping and had to lean over, wheezing and puffing, to get my wind back.

  Should I go get my truck and drive up the road, or call a neighbor for help? But what, exactly, could I ask anybody to do? And the road led in the opposite direction from Rose and the sheep.

  Suddenly I heard some faint barking ahead. I started forward, calling Rose’s name while swatting branches away from my face. In a minute, I entered a small clearing. The sheep were bunched right in front of me, their eyes reflecting the light. Nesbitt was out in the front, trying to butt Rose.