Scottie, Jim, and the author
Last week I began a story set in Ketchum, Idaho, where several of my buddies and I had taken a leave of absence from college, cowboy hats and all. Living out west was a culture shock but working at the ski resort was no vacation. As Christmas day moved quietly towards us, homesickness crept in. We found ourselves on a desolate hike home after a night of broomball, isolated, cold and acutely aware that we were being watched, and stalked by wild dogs. I begin here with the last paragraph from episode one of our saga Two Angels from Ketchum:
We slowed for a moment, to take in the beautiful vapor drifting down against a midnight-blue background_,_ but as the air cleared, we saw the black silhouette of a feral beast revealed in the fog, square shouldered and unflinching, and looking…at us.
One beady pair of eyes was reflected but there were glints off to the side of others too, watching us, shifting in and out of the cover of wiry sagebrush. While one dog posed no threat, there was never such thing out here as one dog – those got picked off by mountain lions. It was difficult to see details in this lunar-like terrain, the lava plains of Ketchum’s high mountain desert, but more mongrels stood just beyond our sight, waiting for a signal to become a pack of coordinated moves. Like wolves, one leader becomes the front for a timely advance, a pestering attack, which gives the next dog an instant to move in and make a disabling bite or tear. Timely aggression, then an assail, that was the strategy of a pack of feral dogs.
We had heard stories of skiers who had lost their pet dogs one season and then sighted them on their next trip, adopted as orphans with a new pack family.
Warming up at a long communal table at the ski lift, we fell into conversation with a man who told us of his Siberian, “a gorgeous dog,” who had disappeared without a trace during one of his ski trips. Thought stolen, he’d sadly given up looking for him by the end of his vacation, and reluctantly left without his pet. Surprisingly, the next winter, while emptying his trash outside, he spotted his dog near the dumpster and called out his name, “Harley.”
“That dog pulled up short, looked right at me like he’d seen a ghost! Most beautiful animal you’ve ever seen. Pure white, with brilliant green eyes,” he said, “green as grass. He rode on the back of my Harley from the time he was a puppy.”
Jim and I had heard these kind of beer stories before out here, and we could never tell the truth from a Jackalope.
“What did you do after you spotted him?” I inquired.
“Yea… well…that’s kind of a sad story. My dog came back for handouts every night about the same time. He’d get close, enough that I could see his collar, but I couldn’t get him to come up to me. Not exactly a Disney movie, is it?”
He looked wistfully out past the slopes, as if he thought his dog might still appear.
“I guess the draw of the pack was too strong. He was there a couple of days, then I never saw him again.”
The beast in front of us, however, was not going anywhere. Nor would he be tempted by a handout, not that we had any. He ran to one side of the road, his ribs evident, and then stopped abruptly and posed for another nervous look at us. All around, other dogs were now slipping out of the darkness like spies from a foreign country. We heard their scamperings, and then saw one come out in full view, a muscley grey one, nose sniffing the air, and he joined the leader. Three more, then another three or four came up from behind, ready to bolt. We would not be able to. In and out of ruts made by ATV’s, the feral pack shifted back and forth, sneaking forwards, weighing their options. We stood like concrete statues and tried to look tall.
“Take one of these,” Jim said, and slowly let his pair of skates slide off his shoulder. Like his skis, Jim kept the edges razor sharp, and we both slid a hand inside a skate.
If Christmas brought our Savior, we hadn’t heard of him yet, and had not fostered the quieter voice of wisdom, either. The mantra we lived by in Idaho was predicated on scraggly beards, uncombed pride, and a god we thought we’d find on Experience Road. In spite of the all the signs around us, we hardly spoke of Christmas at all, and even though that day was near, we were busy manning up, trying to tough out the season by working double shifts delivering firewood and bringing towels to cozy resort cabins. In truth, Christmas had made us fragile and homesick, and searching in our sleep for a star to guide us.
Here, we chose instead a few choice words for the hungry dogs now circling. Those words were mumbled under our breaths – a lame gospel of fear for two boys trying to be men, looking more and more like dead meat.
“Well JB, this stinks. You got any swift ideas?” Jim said and motioned with his skate to the seven or eight dogs pacing out in front of us.
I did have a thought, a sighting really, of a faint light out in the distance, a glint of a trailer home, if we could make it.
“Uh, not a clue,” I replied. “They may run if we call their bluff. Maybe we can scare ‘em off. Or we could try to make it to that trailer homes down the road. I don’t know.”
“I’m thinking let’s freeze and wait it out. Hope a ride comes by. Watch that one on the left, JB. I think he’s the leader.”
The desert flatness let the wind blast right through us, finding a path through our layers, turning our worries to a cold sweat. My head was on a swivel, and I could hear a dog, maybe a second, growling off to the side. The threatening pack moved together now and in. One skinny dog feigned an attack, suddenly and snapped as it ran past, showing its pointed front teeth. I swung my skate blade out ten feet too late and heard a snarl in the quick of his moving shadow. Jim, over six feet tall, stepped over next to me, and we prepared to make a stand, back-to-back. We could make a few slicing swings, maybe get the leader, but the dogs were quick, could grab an arm and tear at us.
“They’ll jump at you, JB! Stay low and…” but his order was cut off by the sound of a high-pitched yelp just beyond the dogs.
From the periphery we caught the sight of a flurry of paws and teeth, a whirlwind of fur and legs. Jim and I, still swinging our skates, stepped away from a tumbling mass, and two fighting dogs viciously biting spun by and missed us by only inches.
The dog pack, alerted to the new dog, stopped momentarily, as we did, to watch as the two snapped at each other, almost in mid-air. But as quickly as this skirmish slowed, a new dogfight broke out more savage than the first.
Another wild dog charged in from the side with teeth barred to reinforce his packmate. It was a big Shephard mix. But before it could land a bite, it too was cut off by a second phantom dog, solid white, who raced in and cut off the Shephard. Both reared, both bearing incisors, snapping at the air, lost into a churning ball of fur. As quickly as it began, the biting ceased with a penetrating “Arrrrrriiittt! – an unnatural, beastly squeal that pierced the dark. The feral Shephard was thrown down, flattened on the ground outright. From the white gladiator standing over him came a low guttural growl as it pinned him and clamped down, a final vice grip on the vertebrae of the defeated.
We froze, and the sweat held back now beading our foreheads. In front of us, two white muscled dogs, pure in color as the snow, stood and looked up, each straddling a fallen foe. The second fight had ended exactly like the first, with a suffocating grip on a windpipe and a final snap. Where only moments before we had stood in an arena of terror, gnashing teeth, and telescoping jaws, dead quiet now filled this desert stadium arena. What was left of the wild pack scampered cowardly off into the abyss of sand and rock.
What we saw was the aftermath of the dog battlefield: Two wild dogs lying motionless underneath a pair of identical white Huskies.
“What just happened?” Jim said, looking at the two lifeless animals.
“Never in my life.” I stuttered. “Man. Where did those white dogs come from?”
“I don’t know, but I’m glad they did!” and we lifted our skate arm for a high five. We had come close to being violently bitten or worse, torn to shreds. The two Huskies gave a final sniff to the dogs lying beneath them, then playfully scampered over to us, perhaps to get a thanks, and we dropped our skates and reached out to pet them.
“Here boy, come ‘ere! Come ‘ere!” I said giddily.
I fell on my knees, overwhelmed by the relief rushing in and fear rushing out. I swallowed hard, choked up, and for a moment I thought I was going to cry. One Husky trotted up to me and I felt its warmth emanate as I buried my face in its fur. Standing, I gazed for a moment into the dog’s eyes. They were brilliant green, green as grass.
For the rest of our trip home, Jim and I were escorted to our apartment by these two beautiful Huskies, gladiators, who trotted out in front of us as if they were our own. We had not opened a present yet, nor would we need to. We were alive and we had a good story to tell. It was about a Christmas Eve night where home came to us by way of two angels from Ketchum.