Living History
adrien rain burke
Oh it was a long, long time ago - I'm over a hundred year now and I was just a girl then.
Still I remember it all. I can almost smell the dust and the henhouse and that ol' dog! It was a real hot summer but I was barefoot anyway and our old dog, Tracker, was lying like a corpse by the henhouse, staring into those blue clouds that had pretty much covered his eyes by then. Once in awhile he'd sigh real big or shake a leg as if to scratch, and twice a day he'd get up and limp over to his water and food.
Ma thought Grampa ought to take him out and shoot him to put him out of his misery, but that only made Grampa mad. He said bein' old was no crime to be shot for and Tracker and him went way back and he'd just as soon shoot her. He wasn't a loud man, usually, but he really kicked up a fuss about it and ended up sayin' that Tracker was just lazy anyway and not half as miserable as he was, livin' with his own flesh and blood.
Just beyond the kitchen garden was a woodlot, and in it lived a vixen. Of course we had a pretty good varmint cage for the hens - with chicken wire laid 'bout a foot under the dirt and wired to the chicken wire walls -. but I expect she had plenty of game available, 'cause she never bothered the hens much. And nobody bothered her much, though I did see her once or twice before that day.
She was not a real bright red. More brown, really, and she sure was fast. Once when we were out looking for herbs, she streaked by and I said to Grampa I bet she was about the fastest thing in the woods and he just laughed and said a slow fox was a dead fox.
I guess I'll never figure out why she did what she did that day. Maybe something was chasing her. Maybe she wanted to see just how much she could put over on old Tracker. Maybe she just wanted to get over to the other side - you know - like the chicken in that story.
Everybody was there to see it. Ma was looking for hornworms on the tomatoes and Grampa was sitting in an old chair on the back porch. I was supposed to be pulling weeds, but my heart wasn't in it. The cat was settin' next to Grampa and my little brother was twisting her ear or something. And Tracker was where he always was. Everyone was exactly where they were supposed to be and everything was exactly the way it was supposed to be - do you know how rare that is? We should have known that something really important had to happen, but you never do know these things, do you?
Tracker may have been asleep, 'cause he kind of ran his paws in the air and whined out loud and so we were all watching when it happened. Course we didn't for a long time even know how important it was. History is like that. You're just living your life - living history - and it's just like every other day.
But it stayed with me all this time, and I feel privileged that I was there to see it.
The fox was just at the edge of the woodlot, so stock still you almost couldn't see her at all against the brown trees. But there was a kind of crackle in the air, and poor Tracker kept running along sideways in his sleep, whimpering and snuffling. Grampa kind of sat up and looked hard at Tracker and the rest is History.
Or maybe it's just Typing. Because - in case you haven't figured it out by now - that was the day The Quick Brown Fox jumped over the Lazy Dog!
30
HOME
