Summer Chore

"Your dog stinks," my father remembers his father saying to him one warm summer afternoon. "I'll give you and your sister each a nickel if you take him down to the creek and give him a bath." My father was eight years old, his sister Ellen was ten. A nickel apiece seemed like a small fortune to them. They grinned at each other greedily before Ellen ran off to get the soap and some towels and my dad went searching for the dog. He found the foul smelling Irish Setter, Duke, sleeping on the front porch, blissfully unaware of what lay in store for him.

Ellen came around the corner of the house wheeling the cleaning supplies in a red wagon. The wagon was one of Duke's favorite things, he would sit in it and let the children pull him all around the huge yard that surrounded their country house. He would let Ellen dress him up in all sorts of ridiculous outfits; bonnets tied to his head, tutu's wrapped around his midsection, every conceivable indignity patiently suffered as long as she would pull him in the wagon. Then my father would get hold of him, wrapping bandages around imaginary wounds and pulling him in the wagon, pretending Duke was a soldier trapped behind enemy lines, my father the hero who'd been sent to rescue him. Whatever the scenario, Duke played along, just happy to be chauffeured for a while.

The sleeping dog sprang to life when he heard the rusty wagon wheels squeaking toward the front porch that afternoon. He bounded down the front steps and wagged his tail expectantly at Ellen in her summer dress and the funny hat she liked to wear. My father followed down the steps and took the handle from his sister, "Let me pull him," he said to her.

"All right, go ahead," she answered, "I'll walk back here and keep Duke steady when we get to the hill." With that Duke clamored up into the wagon and they were on their way.

The creek was a half mile walk from the house, down a dirt path that meandered through the woods. Just above the creek the path widened out and became a long, steep, rock strewn hill that ended at the shallow water. When they reached the top of the hill my father had a brilliant idea.

"Scootch back a little, Duke," he said as he swung the wagon's handle up toward the sky, "I'm gonna ride with you down the hill." My father pushed Duke to the back of the wagon with the soap, sponge and towels, and then he climbed into the front.

"Jimmy what are you doing?" Ellen asked with alarm, though it was all too apparent what he was planning to do.

My father gripped the wagon handle in front of him with both hands, intending to use it to steer the wagon down the hill. "Just give us a little push, Ellen, would you?" he asked.

"I don't think that's such a good idea...," Ellen began to say, but as soon as my dad realized that she was going to try to talk him out of it he swung one leg out of the wagon and pushed off as hard as he could. The wagon shot off down the hill with my father piloting and the poor unsuspecting Duke along for the ride. After a moment of disbelief, Ellen began to run after them as fast as she could go. At first they did o.k., my father laughing as he steered the wagon around the rocks in his way. They picked up speed at an alarming rate, however, and my father began to have difficulty picking a clear path. When the back right wheel bounced over a good sized rock, Duke had had enough. The Setter, proving without a doubt that dogs are smarter than children (and many, many adults), bailed out in a panic and turned tail, running back up the hill, never once looking back to see if the crazy boy who had started this lunacy survived to the end. Ellen, still running behind the streaking wagon but losing ground every second, saw Duke leap from the wagon bed and turn up the hill toward her. She tried to stop and catch him as he went galloping past but her momentum was too great and as she reached for him she tripped and flew face first down the hill scraping her forearms and elbows and ripping her dress across the knees. Meanwhile my father continued down the hill, dog-less, careening from one rock to the next, almost, but never quite tipping the wagon over every couple of seconds. The creek came up quickly, the rocks increased, and as he neared the water's edge the front of the wagon struck a boulder that the wheels couldn't clear and my father shot forward out of the wagon, ass over teakettle, and into the shallow creek.

Thoroughly drenched, and more than a little shaken from the dramatic turn his wagon ride down the hill had taken, my father rose up to his hands and knees in the water at the edge of the creek. Ellen was slowly walking down the hill toward him, examining her scraped elbows but not crying, his older sister was a tough little girl. Her face was streaked with dirt and her hat, though pinned into her hair, was askew. She stopped on the bank of the creek, looking at her brother, her hands on her hips. "You're an idiot," was all she said.

Together they gathered up the supplies and started pulling the wagon back up the hill. It's front was dented from where it had stuck the final boulder and the right front wheel was a little bent, but other than that it worked just fine. My father wasn't so lucky. He'd slammed his hip into a rock when he tumbled into the creek and by the time they reached the top of the hill he was limping badly. (It would turn into an ugly, plate sized bruise over the course of the next week or so.) They walked through the woods and into the yard, slowly heading to the house. As they neared the porch the screen door opened and my grandfather stepped out of the house and watched them approach. It must have been quite a sight. His daughter: face dirty, hat crooked, dress torn, elbows bloodied; his son: soaked from head to toe, limping like an old man and grimacing in pain. All this from a simple trip to the creek to wash an old, gentle dog. The children stopped and looked up at their father and as they did, Duke crawled out from under the porch where he'd been hiding since his return. He took a quick glance at the two, disheveled youngsters and then slunk up the steps with his tail between his legs and hid behind their father, looking as though he feared that he would be blamed for how this whole thing turned out. My grandfather, never one to mince words, looked from the dog to his two children, a slight smile on his face. As he turned to go back into the house he looked at my father one more time and said, "Your dog stinks."

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