BR'ER COON AND THE DOG BOY.....

.In Which Br'er Coon Gets His Licks in
on the Mean Dog & the Dog Boy Abdicates
by Dick Croy

    Since there was no one else his age living near us, my younger brother the Dog Boy could have been a pretty lonely kid when the two of us were growing up.  That was some 40 years ago, on the edge of a hardwood forest bordering the Muskingum River in the Appalachian hill country of Southeastern Ohio.

    Imagination's what saved him.

    It's too long a story to begin at the beginning so we'll start where Dog – I mean Douggie – has already organized the motley crew of mongrels who hung around our house and our unspayed female collie into a loyal gang of his own.  He was a soft-spoken leader who, if he carried a stick at all, did so only because there were always some lying around the yard, and a big stick just feels good in your hands when you're a kid.

   His lieutenant was another interloping non-dog named Br'er Coon, the masked member of this large, constantly shifting menagerie.   The sole survivor of a family of raccoons felled with their family tree by loggers, Br'er Coon had been given as a baby to my father, a sawmill owner, who brought him home as a pet for Douggie and me. 

    But Br'er Coon soon showed us all – most especially our two dogs, who on command would open the screen door for him with their noses – who the real boss of the house was.   He kept peace among the brethren and was never reluctant to mete out a little justice when he thought it was due.  Dogs generally don't ask questions of someone who makes his point by gnawing on your nose or swatting it with his sharp claws.

    There was a lot to do back then on those lazy summer afternoons.  The woods had to be constantly patrolled of course, and exploration parties led into uncharted areas of the wilderness, like the Great Swamp alongside the river (still there although actually a boglet about the size of a hot tub) and the neighbors' apple orchard, a perilous climb through trees and underbrush to a ridge which to Douggie and me was an alpine meadow overlooking our house.

    Even just the bull/dog sessions in the back yard had to be organized or there were bound to be scuffles in which ears got bitten and feelings hurt.  This was especially true when Libbet, our collie, was in heat – at which time Mom generally kept the garden hose coiled up close at hand just outside the screen door.

    One of Douggie's favorite tricks to keep all the dogs on their toes was to sneak off into the woods during the daily siesta and, after hiding in some remote, inaccessible location, letting go with one of his varied and credible assortment of barks.

    Everyone's familiar with the posse scene in the old westerns, where the stillness of a hot, stifling afternoon is suddenly broken by the sheriff and his hastily deputized band of cowboys and saloon riffraff thundering heroically out of town on another desperate mission, clouds of dust trembling in the air behind them.  So you know exactly how that bunch of layabouts reacted to the sudden unfamiliar bark in their territory.   Out of the yard they'd come, one long loud cacophonous bellow in reply.

    Then about half an hour later they'd all come trotting sheepishly back down the hill and into the yard, wagging their unkempt burr-infested tails with feigned nonchalance, the same way we humans yawn or glance down at our watches, to show that of course they'd known all along that it was just another of their leader's drills.

     One animal that had them all buffaloed, including my brother, was the Mean Dog that lived up on the ridge.   Every once in a while he'd get loose, and it was all Douggie could do to keep panic from spreading among his canine corps.

     The Mean Dog, a huge part-shepherd, part-collie, was the antithesis of the kennel full of male and female collies billed collectively over the years as Lassie.  He hated everything and everybody, from the tiniest freshly born bunny to the biggest dog in the gang: a toothless old St. Bernard who wouldn't even gum you in anger.

     On one particularly sultry summer day when all the dogs in our part of the woods had come over to collapse under the magisterial apple tree in our back yard, each ensconced on his own little corner of cool, shaded earth, my brother the Dog Boy was up to his old tricks.

     There he went, sneaking out of the yard, while Br'er Coon relieved his displeasure from the oppressive heat by picking fights with the underdogs in the gang.  Soon, sure enough, one of Douggie's improvised and unfamiliar barks rang out in the heavy air.

     Chaos – there went the dogs, tumbling over one another in their rush for the woods.  Poor Br'er Coon, nearly trampled in the stampede, glared furiously at the cloud of dust marking their mad dash from the yard.

    Then, no sooner had they disappeared into the woods than here they came back again, even more frantically than they'd left – with the Dog Boy leading the way.  It seems the Mean Dog had escaped that day and was bent on investigating this peculiar ululation himself.   When Douggie caught a glimpse of this bad case of four-legged attitude scrambling down the hill through the underbrush, he lit out for home.  On the way, he met the onrushing posse and shot through it as if his young life was at stake – "steak" is probably how his young mind imagined the encounter.

    Sensing, as animals will, what was up – perhaps just a whiff of the Dog Boy's sheer terror was enough – the dogs made wide, desperate U-turns and, tails tucked, followed him full-blast for the back yard.  That burst of boy and dogs out of the quiet, still-leafed forest was one of the strangest things one in those days could behold.

    The path wasn't very wide – there was room enough for the smaller dogs to avoid the stickers that lined both sides in many places – but that afternoon they managed somehow to come down the trail neck and neck ten or more abreast.  They looked like a flash flood in a gully.  Nothing could have withstood their onslaught as they came barking, yelping, snarling at one another, screaming toward the house.  Hot on their heels, amazed no doubt at the spectacle, came the Mean Dog.  If dogs have a sense of humor, as I'm sure many do, it must have been difficult for him to keep from ruining his ferocious image by bursting into inappropriate mad-dog laughter.

     Br'er Coon, who hadn't even dusted himself off from the first stampede, watched their return, bristling.  In spite of their abject terror, those dogs swept around him without breaking stride.  You didn't mess with that old raccoon under any circumstances when his dander was up.

    The Mean Dog was right behind them.

   Ordinarily he'd have chased this coon to the end of the ridge and back, but unable to resist the shrieking pack of canines, he elected now simply to run over him.  Br'er Coon didn't flinch.

    In swooped the Mean Dog, up sprang the raccoon...and off they went in the other direction, Br'er Coon perched on the howling dog's head, one scruffy ear clenched firmly in his needle-sharp teeth. 

    Br'er Coon was so casual about it by the time they reached the large pasture field west of the house, you almost expected him to reach down and speed-shift into third gear.  He leaned out expertly on the turn before they vanished in the high grass at the edge of the field.

    There was silence then for a good minute under the apple tree.  Douggie scuffed his tennies against the ground; the dogs glanced around to see who'd been the most scared.   A flirtatious little breeze began to play through the leaves of the big shade tree.  Then, imperceptibly to human eyes, the Dog Boy motioned his charges over for a conference.  He was relinquishing command, he said.

     He was getting too old for this sort of nonsense and, besides, Br'er Coon had acquitted himself admirably.  He'd make an able leader from now on

"'Ear, 'ear," they all cried in their secret dog language.

Dick Croy is a well known story teller and accredited film-maker living and working in Ohio.