Dartmouth College Dartmouth Digital Commons Open Dartmouth: Peer-reviewed articles by Dartmouth faculty Faculty Work 1979 The Dogs of March Ernest Hebert Dartmouth College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa Dartmouth Digital Commons Citation Hebert, Ernest, "The Dogs of March" (1979). Open Dartmouth: Peer-reviewed articles by Dartmouth faculty. 3954. https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa/3954 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Work at Dartmouth Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Dartmouth: Peer-reviewed articles by Dartmouth faculty by an authorized administrator of Dartmouth Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE DOGS OF MARCH the darby chronicles The Dogs of March A Little More Than Kin Whisper My Name The Passion of Estelle Jordan Live Free or Die Spoonwood Howard Elman’s Farewell fiction Mad Boys The Old American Never Back Down I Love U nonfiction New Hampshire Patterns with Jon Gilbert Fox TheDogsofMarch_0874517192.pdf 6 6/4/2014 12:57:53 PM ERNEST HEBERT m DOGS of MARCH UNIVERSITY PRESS OF NEW ENGLAND Hanover and London University Press of New England www.upne.com © 1979 Ernest Hebert All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First University Press of New England paperback edition published in 1995. The Dogs of March was first published in 1979 by The Viking Press and simultaneously published in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited. For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61168-707-1 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61168-709-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2014940299 Acknowledgment is made to Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., for permission to reprint lines from “The Man with the Blue Guitar” from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens. Copyright 1936 by Wallace Stevens and renewed 1964 by Holly Stevens. 10 9 8 7 6 To the memory of my uncle, Monsignor Joseph Ernest Vaccarest CONTENTS 1 : Work-for-Pay 1 2: The .308 17 3: The Gift 32 4 : The Creature 43 5 : The Employment Office 56 6 : The Hunchback's Pantomime 68 7 : The Offer 84 8 : New Year's Eve 97 9: Cabin Fever 118 10 : Sunday Morning 132 11 : A Bundle of Laundry 143 12 : The Filbin Rites 159 13 : Town Meeting 170 14 : Reason 196 15 : Road Meat 208 16 : The Dogs of March 225 17 : The Trailer 246 Things as they are have been destroyed. Am I? Am I a man that is dead At a table on which the food is cold? Is my thought a memory, not alive? Is the spot on the floor, there, wine or blood And whichever it may be, is it mine? WALLACE STEVENS "The Man with the Blue Guitar" THE DOGS OP MARCH e Darby Chronicles e Dogs of March A Little More an Kin Whisper My Name e Passion of Estelle Jordan Live Free or Die Spoonwood Howard Elman’s Farewell Guide to the Darby Chronicles <erniehebert.com> N Runs more or less INTERSTATE E Parallel to the W Connecticut 91 River on the S Vermont Side Original site of Cooty’s Cabin Site of former Abare’s Folly Basketville sign Mountain and Jordan shacks Great Meadow Village New Hampshire Vermont DARBY DEPOT Rte. 12 to Keene Site of PLC Project Ike’s Cutter Place Auction Barn Trust Lands Elman Place Grace Pond Dorne Place River Connecticut CENTER DARBY McCurtin Hillary Farm Place Town Trust Lands Hall RIVER DARBY Downed Elm Turner Primeval Forest Tree House Sandbank Jordan Place Latour’s Spoonwood Cabin UPPER DARBY Trust Lands Trust Lands Salmon Ledges Estate and 1-Mile where Birch Cooty’s was born Cabin I: WORKFORPAY Teeth, straight teeth. The thought surfaced, but he pushed it back into the depths, for this was early morning, when the mind could do such things. It was the time of day to take small, famil­ iar pleasures, like a fisherman taking undersized trout, enjoying their frisky tugs, then throwing them back into the water, to rise to his hook another day. He dressed, and his forest-green work clothes were full of the good, greasy smell of mechanical things. The dinner pail clanked musically in his thick hands and sent a subtle trembling through his fingers for a moment, and, unac­ countably, an image appeared in his mind of the dromedary on his pack of Camels; of North Africa; of Pasha, a tank named for a whore; of Pasha herself, who was dark and moist in a land of yellow light and parched earth. He stepped outside, and Novem­ ber's chill slapped his face. Howard Elman was coming awake. He paused by an overturned wheelbarrow to survey his land. Birches, a score of junk cars, a swing on a limb of a giant maple, a bathtub in the garden, a gray barn, a house sided with fading purple asphalt shingles, a washing machine riddled with bullet l holes—to Howard, these things were all equal in beauty. He saw no ugliness on his property. As nature felled weak trees and scat­ tered fallen leaves, so Howard Elman dispensed with machines that would not work. To his eye, his yard and field beyond were one, as to the eye of a mariner the ocean often merges with the sky. He began to walk, moving with bearlike grace, bearlike awk­ wardness. At the driveway—ruts packed-down gravel, center grassed—he paused again, to ponder what car to drive to work this morning. The De Soto? The GMC pickup? The Ford wagon? To Howard, the De Soto was the epitome of luxury. True, the seats had been slashed long before he bought the car; true, the original maroon paint had faded to the dreary brown of dried blood, and rust spots pitted the body like impetigo. It didn't matter to Howard. The De Soto had power—power brakes, power steering, power windows, a powerful V-8 engine. Power was the bringer of well-being, Howard believed. In driv­ ing the De Soto, all one had to do was "settle in and aim it, and watch the world go by," he would say. The GMC pickup was a kidney rattler, a back straightener, a feet freezer—and a trickster. Its gas gauge worked most of the time, so that he would forget when it didn't work. The carbure­ tor stalled the engine at stoplights, especially in the rain, and anytime—it seemed—he was in a hurry. The defroster did not defrost. The front end was always out of line. Yet he loved the pickup. It was an old, untrustworthy, but unendingly interest­ ing friend. It had tricks but no secrets, and he would not part with it any more than he would willingly part with an arm or a leg. The most faithful of Howard's cars was the Ford wagon. It was reliable and economical. It never failed to start and burned little oil. It was the best car he had ever owned, and he hated it. He hated it because he could not improve it, only screw it up. It was too perfect, too self-regulating. Somehow, he felt dimin­ ished when he drove it. 2 : The Dogs of March He chose the De Soto. It started and died. He pumped the accelerator (he called it the "exhilarator") four times, cursed—"You filthy, rotten son- of-a-cock-knocker"—and turned the key again. The De Soto whined like a kicked dog and then started. He lit a Camel, en­ joyed a deep drag, and, with a deliberate effort, relaxed his eyes and shoulders to preserve the euphoria of half awakcness. He pulled onto the road, jammed his foot on the gas pedal, and he could feel the tires kick stones. The car rose up the hill toward Swett's huge house, which looked down on Howard's fifty acres and beyond to the Vermont hills across the Connecti­ cut River. Everett Swett had been a man to beat all flesh and blood dear to him, thought Howard—wife, children, dogs, cats, cows, and pigs. He once smacked Howard's son, Freddy, on the ass when the boy was young, and Howard had marched into Swett's barn, picked him up on his feet, and shaken the buttons right off his overalls. The two men were good neighbors after that, and even went bird hunting together in the upland behind Swett's house. Swett died the prettiest of deaths, full of mor­ phine after his tractor threw him and crushed his chest. Howard did not see a wet eye at his funeral. Ann Rae Swett cleared out of the house within a week, moving in with her eldest in Nashua. The house was empty now, up for sale. Somebody had better buy it soon, before some kids put a torch to it, Howard thought. The De Soto pulled onto the highway, the change jarring him slightly, so that he did his trick with eyes and shoulders. Full awakeness would be on him soon enough: the slamming of shuttles, the odd smell of the shop, as if something had died in the walls, lint in his nostrils, faces—faces of Charley Kruger, Cooty Patterson, Mr. Lodge, and William, goddamn William. He let the De Soto carry him as if he were a passenger and not the driver. He fished what he could from his half awakcness.