The Education of Will Read online

  I volunteered to take the dog out by myself, to be free of my parents and the tension that permeated the house. I had begun sneaking cigarettes on these walks, which kept me skinny but allowed me to start eating more food. However, Bruce continued to walk with us, his long blond hair shining in the sun. We’d walk to a dirt road that wandered up the hills among the prickly pear cactus and creosote bushes. I didn’t mind him coming, as he could be funny sometimes, but mostly, I wanted to be outside in the desert and out of the house.

  One early summer day I needed to shop for a bathing suit. I was too young to drive myself, and for some reason—parents too busy?—Bruce was made driver and fashion consultant. After I tried on numerous suits and got thumbs-up or thumbs-down from Bruce, I settled on one and we drove back home, grinning like pirates in a B movie. I ran down the long hall into my bedroom and put on my new swimsuit while Bruce and my parents waited for me to model my new purchase. It was a bikini. An itsy-bitsy one.

  The room went silent, except for the mockingbirds calling from the olive tree in the backyard. I spun around exuberantly, and then the circles slowed as my father said, his voice low and quiet, “You will return that bathing suit right now.” Bruce winked at me when I walked back to my bedroom to take it off.

  • • • • •

  He kissed me a few weeks later, suddenly turning to me on a walk through the desert and circling my head with his hands. Big and powerful, he radiated desire like some lothario out of a bodice-ripper. The only boys I had kissed up to then had been just that—boys—with awkward hands and noses in the wrong place, their breath smelling of potato chips. Bruce’s kiss was a man’s kiss, and it stopped my heart from beating for a moment. It also felt wrong, horribly wrong. I immediately pushed him away. But I couldn’t push away the fact that, for one fleeting, involuntary moment, something in me had responded when he drew me to his chest. Maybe he realized that in spite of my telling him to leave me alone. Maybe he knew that, even though afterward I avoided him when I could, never again going on walks with him, avoiding eye contact. But the shadow of his presence never left me, always accompanied by the guilt I felt over my body’s momentary reaction to him.

  At the same time, my mother’s lessons about being pretty became more complex. Yes, it was important to be beautiful, but there were dangers associated with it. She repeatedly told the story of how a workman, holding a carpet knife, had admired a recent photograph of me in their bedroom.

  “He kept looking at you, holding that knife. It was awful.”

  “Oh, Mom,” I’d say. “Don’t be silly. He was holding a carpet knife because he was installing a new carpet! What’s wrong with him saying something nice about the picture?”

  Yet when she was gone, I’d look back at myself in the portrait and feel a chill. When I moved out of the house, I put the picture in the back of my new closet and didn’t take it out for decades.

  • • • • •

  The first time Bruce crept into my bedroom, a few weeks after the kiss, I was sound asleep. I woke up in the dark to sense his face looming over mine. He had his huge right hand on my belly. The air conditioner kicked in as he began to smile. “Shhhhh,” he said while slowly, almost reverentially, he pulled the covers down and my nightgown up.

  “What are you doing? Get out of here!” I said.

  “Don’t say anything. You’ll wake up your parents.”

  Their bedroom was close to mine. Trying to be quiet, I hissed at him again to go away. He said, “Do you really want to wake up everyone in the house?”

  I stopped talking. The thought of causing more conflict in the family was paralyzing. The fights and the silences between my parents had intensified. Many of the fights that year were about Bruce, whom my mother disliked intensely. His bawdy jokes and Rabelaisian drinking appalled her, raised as she was to be a proper, stiff-upper-lipped Englishwoman. Things were especially tense because my oldest sister was ill, and we were all worried about her. Would she be okay? Would she recover? I loved her and admired her as only a little sister can, and I thought it would destroy her if she knew that her partner was being unfaithful. If I spoke out, then I would be causing her harm when she was already so vulnerable.

  That first night, he ran his hands up and down my body while I lay motionless against the wall. Years earlier, a scorpion had fallen out of an air-conditioning vent above my bed, landed on my chest, and crawled up my neck onto my face. I thought if I moved, I’d make it sting me. I felt the same sense of paralysis when Bruce ran his hands up and down my belly, my baby breasts, my thighs; I was afraid to make a scene lest the entire family get stung.

  He started coming into my room unpredictably; he’d appear one night, then not for the next two or three. I never knew when he would show up. He didn’t rape me but instead seemed content with taking control of my body. He seemed to want only to look at my body and run his fat hands across it. He’d suck in his breath as he pulled down the bedspread, while I hissed to him to stop it, to go away. He always answered, “Go ahead, wake everyone up.” I was forced to choose between tolerating his intrusions or breaking my sister’s heart.

  I would curl up against the wall when I heard his footsteps coming down the hallway. I lay frozen with revulsion as he touched me. I began to feel nauseated every night about the time he entered my bedroom, sick to my stomach as if I had eaten spoiled meat. I still sometimes feel physically ill when I hear about sexual violations. For years I would fight the urge to vomit when reading about the molestation of a young person.

  The nights he didn’t come were almost as bad as the ones he did. I stopped being able to sleep; the thought of him entering my bedroom when I was unconscious made me feel even more vulnerable. I began wearing more clothing to bed, but that just made it take longer for him to remove it.

  It didn’t go on for very long, because finally I rallied the strength to call his bluff. I said that if he didn’t stop, I’d wake up the entire household. I’d tell my parents, I’d tell my sister, I’d yell and scream and blow the house down.

  He never came back to my room at night, and eventually, my sister recovered from her illness. They moved to an apartment in another suburb. But even after they moved away, I would lie in bed for hours every night, ears straining, afraid to hear footsteps coming down the hall. Afraid I’d miss them if I didn’t stay awake.

  CHAPTER NINE

  One morning when Willie was five months old, Pippy didn’t wake up when all the rest of us were buzzing around the room. I went over to her and stroked her shoulder. “Pip? Pippy, hon, wake up.” Nothing. I spoke again, louder now, my throat closing when she didn’t respond. I dreaded the day she would no longer be with us. Too fearful to stand up to the sheep, Pippy nonetheless was a perfect mother to her own pups and a nanny to the pups of others.

  I thought of all that as I massaged her shoulder, hoping I hadn’t lost her yet. She was partially blind, mostly deaf, and increasingly feeble, but she didn’t seem to be suffering. Of course, how would I know? You can’t ask dogs how they are feeling. They have no voice to tell you that their belly aches or that they’re having a bad day. All I knew was that she still seemed to love naps in the sun, belly rubs in the evening, and most of all, the chicken and lamb we let her eat because . . . why not?

  Finally, that morning, Pippy thumped her tail and lifted her head. I helped her out of her bed and guided her down the stairs. She rallied a bit, as she seemed to each day, ate her breakfast with vigor, and then lay back down for another nap.

  As Pippy faltered, Willie improved. Gradually, his bouts of diarrhea became less frequent. I learned what he could eat and what he couldn’t, and found a combination of supplements that helped him. Willie also made behavioral progress. A good friend volunteered to keep him while I was away on a book tour. We introduced him carefully to the resident dogs, and in no time at all Willie flourished in the company of other friendly border collies and four loving humans. This was a good start: He learned that at least some dogs outside of hi
s own pack were not dangerous, and he romped and ran within a streaky blur of black and white.

  When I returned home, we began a structured conditioning program to help him acclimate to unfamiliar dogs. I taught him to look at me when I said, “Watch,” and then asked him to do it when he was sniffing the scent marks of other dogs. My first goal was to teach an “autowatch,” in which Willie would automatically look at me when he saw another dog, instead of barking like a maniac. When he looked at me, he’d get a food treat or a play session with his favorite toy. If I did it right, he’d eventually associate the emotions he had when anticipating something good with seeing another dog. It’s a technique that we trainers use often, but this time I needed it for my own dog.

  Willie improved and became less reactive to the sight and smell of other dogs. He even began looking at dogs on walks as if he wanted to greet them, rather than freezing in a fixed stare with the tip of his tail wagging slowly and stiffly. (Slow wagging from a stiff-bodied dog is a behavior comparable to a lion’s tail twitching as it stalks an antelope.) Now, sometimes, he’d wag from the shoulders back, his body loose, his mouth open, as if happy to see another dog. However, I didn’t let him meet dogs I didn’t know. That was far too risky, because I couldn’t predict their behavior. We started walking parallel with dogs whom I trusted to be socially appropriate, first twenty feet apart, then ten, then five. Gradually, he became comfortable as they trotted side by side along the streets of Black Earth, our hometown.

  These outings led to Willie making his first new friends: Ashby, a cheerful little springer bitch; and Sydney, an adolescent Australian sheepdog who loved to run with Willie in the high pasture overlooking the farmhouse. Willie began a bromance with Brody, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel who could come into the house without Willie objecting. They wrestle-played on the living room floor, charming us as we watched.

  His circle of dog friends, however, was small. One day I asked a friend with a male black Lab to come over and help Willie in his conditioning program. Willie and I played the “watch” game outside until he looked comfortable, and then we let the boys loose in a fenced pen behind the farmhouse. Their greeting was polite, if a bit stiff, and once they seemed relaxed, we brought them into the house together.

  Remember Jack Nicholson’s face in The Shining when his character peers through a crack in a door, eyes burning with insane intensity, teeth bared as if ready to bite? That was Willie’s expression once the two dogs entered the house. I simply cannot describe Willie’s face at that moment without using the word “crazy.” He looked so angry and evil that he seemed possessed. Yet this is the same dog whose face could be so soft and loving that sometimes I just had to stop what I was doing, bend my head forward, and rest it against his.

  I told a friend about the dark side of Willie’s behavior, and her eyes went blank as she turned her head ever so slightly to the side. She didn’t believe me. Who could blame anyone for not believing that this exuberant, people-loving creature could panic if you put a bowl down too hard on the counter, or that he could look with murderous rage at another dog? Ninety-nine percent of the time, Willie was a glowing testament to why we love dogs. He was thrilled to meet visitors and bring them his toys. “A golden retriever in a tuxedo,” I called him; he was loving and funny, radiating joy most of the time. Except when he didn’t.

  • • • • •

  We all have a dark side. When I was in my teens and early twenties, I was the cheerful, funny one in school and at the office. A little shy, never one to join clubs or committees, I nonetheless could crack up my classmates or colleagues with a joke. No one knew that five or six times a day, while walking down the street, I would feel the presence of that faceless man who sneaked up behind me with a baseball bat, ready to kill me with one powerhouse blow to the head. I knew he wasn’t really there, but the perception of his presence was so strong that I had to wheel around to check. I would try to ignore it, to continue walking purposefully forward, but the sensation was too intense. Eventually, I couldn’t stop myself and would whirl around as fast as I could, trying to catch sight of him before he disappeared. And then it would happen an hour later while I was walking with a friend, and I would sneak a look behind me as she chattered on about her date the night before. I’d see nothing but sidewalk and lawn and trees, and I’d turn back and try to keep up with our conversation.

  CHAPTER TEN

  By spring 2007, Willie was an adolescent. The red-winged blackbirds were back; their cries of CONK-A-REE! drifted through the trees as Willie and I walked up the hill for one of his first sheepherding lessons. The path was lined with stately oaks and upstart honeysuckle bushes. While we walked, a flock of turkeys flushed in a cacophony of gobbling, as if the forest floor itself had arisen. The snow was finally gone in the high pasture, although hard, dirty patches lay like moldering icebergs on the shady side of the barn.

  At nine months of age, Willie was ready to begin learning to be a sheepdog. It’s not the calendar that tells you when a border collie is ready; it’s the dog. He needs to be mature enough to be able to outrun the sheep, but just as important, his heart and his head must be in the right place. Some dogs are keen to work sheep at six months, some not until they are much older. You can’t decide for them, and you can’t ask them, either—not verbally, anyway. The only way you can ask the question “Are you ready?” is to put them in with sheep. The answer is what happens next.

  Youngsters who aren’t ready will avoid the sheep by studiously sniffing the ground, or they will be distracted by butterflies. Then one day a switch gets flipped: You take them into a pen with sheep and their heads sink down, their eyes focus as if everything else in the world has fallen away, and there is nothing but the sheep. Seeing a young dog “turn on to sheep” will give you goose bumps. It’s beautiful and riveting—the dog’s intent focus draws you in like a black hole pulls in energy. And at nine months, Willie’s switch had flipped.

  However, his first efforts were less than ideal. Before he was allowed in with the flock, he barked at them across the fence. This was a sign of fear and not what you want to see in a young dog. After he stopped barking, he would dash back and forth along the fence line and then charge toward the flock, scattering the panicked sheep. This is a terrible habit for a dog to learn and, once started, is tough to break. Nervous dogs love to bully the sheep, to make them move by charging them, rather than quietly and confidently taking control. So I squelched this bad habit by not allowing him to come with me to do the barn chores; Willie had to stay in the house when I fed the flock.

  Once Willie had matured into late adolescence, he had enough physical ability and emotional maturity to begin training, so I put him in with sheep for the first time at a good friend’s farm. Peg had a small fenced area with enough room for the dog to work, but not so much space that we couldn’t stop things before they got out of control. The word “control” should be used loosely when introducing dogs to sheep. The dog needs to learn to move on his own, to be free to find that magic zone where his actions allow him to manage the sheep without panicking them. Most handlers put young dogs in with sheep who are accustomed to dogs, then do all they can to stay between the sheep and the dog to protect the sheep if necessary. (Sometimes it is the dog that you have to protect—sheep don’t watch the movies and aren’t aware that they are supposed to be helpless victims.) It’s like white-water kayaking, in which you study the route, prepare your equipment, and practice your skills; ultimately, you have to put your boat into the river and let the water catch you up and sweep you away.

  Anything can happen when a young border collie is let loose with sheep for the first time. On rare occasions, a young dog takes one look at the sheep, runs around them in a perfect semicircle, and quietly brings them to you, the flock neatly served up like a martini at a five-star restaurant. That’s what happened the first time I introduced eleven-month-old Lassie to sheep. She had arrived at the farm the night before, scheduled to stay just a few days as a favor to
her breeder. Having grown up in the suburbs, she had never seen sheep in her life. Out of curiosity, I let her loose in my smallest pasture, where she ran around to the other side of the flock, stopped exactly where she should, and carefully walked the sheep up to me as if she’d had months of training. I called the breeder and asked if I could keep her.

  Willie was a more typical young dog. When the sheep began to move, he charged forward and chased them. He thought it was great fun, but chasing a flock of sheep like a group of tennis balls is not herding them, and running away from a dog isn’t good for sheep. It took one more session to get him to stop chasing, and several more for him to get the courage to go between the sheep and the fence in order to peel them off and bring them to me.

  Sheep are neither dumb nor defenseless. They learn fast that if they hug the fence, a young dog will have to push its way between their bodies and a hard, solid structure to get them off. Ewes weigh 100 to 180 pounds and have heads like hammers, while herding dogs are all of thirty or forty pounds. Aggressive sheep are perfectly capable of smashing a dog into a fence post and ending its career before it even starts. Good handlers carefully select the sheep for a dog’s first lessons—not so aggressive that they’ll attack the dog, but not so flighty that they’ll attempt to sail over the fence like clumsy deer if the dog gets to chasing.

  Essentially, sheep herding is about managing fear. Sheep are prey animals, and although they’ll stand and fight if they have no choice, they prefer to move away from danger. They’re also social creatures and understand fractions in the only way they need to: If there are a hundred sheep, their chance of being killed by a predator is only one in a hundred. If there are ten, it’s one in ten. If there is only one of them . . . even they can do the math. Sheep want to be in a group, the larger the better, and they want to be able to move away from danger.