Buried Alive Read Online Free PDF Page B

with the cabin’s name. Vacation retreats were given names –
Rocky Ridge, Timbertop, Braeside
and so forth – mine apparently named by its remote placement.
    Road’s End.
    I heard a hellacious din from inside and saw a blur of frenzied motion at the window. I sighed and opened the door.
    A tornado blew out.
    “Jesus, ouch, damn … calm down, Mix-up.”
    Having saved my dog from the euthanasia needle with about a half-hour to spare, many would have figured his wild-eyed, slobbering delight was joy at greeting his savior, but jubilant chaos was his default setting: spinning in circles, bumping my legs, rolling on his back, a dog that delighted in everything.
    Mix-up thundered between my legs, and I went down. When my head was on his level he began licking it like a beef roast.
    “Stop, dammit. No, Mix-up. Sit! SIT!”
    A strange thing happened, something I didn’t expect in a hundred years.
    He sat.
    His body twitched, but his haunches stayed glued to the ground. I stood, staring at the phenomenon. For a year I’d been working on commands, Mr Mix-up immune to my imprecations. I’d say
Sit,
he’d thunder in circles. I’d say
Stay,
he’d follow me like my pants were made of bacon. I’d throw a stick and yell
Fetch,
he’d roll on the ground and pedal his legs at the sky.
    A couple months ago I’d spoken about Mix-up’s recalcitrance to his day-care lady, Lucinda Best, who volunteered at the animal shelter from which I’d rescued him. She’d recommended a nearby obedience school and I’d taken him thrice-weekly for a month, a hundred and fifty bucks’ worth of watching other dogs learn to heel, fetch, sit and stay while Mix-up went his merry way.
    It appeared he’d managed to learn something, though. Did one of his many breeds have a learning lag time?I held up my hand and quietly said,
Stay.
I backed away. He stayed. I back-stepped down the drive for fifty paces, hand up, repeating my command every few seconds. I stopped, gestured my way, said,
Come here.
    He exploded toward me. When he was two dozen feet away I thrust my hand out, said
Sit.
    He skidded to a stop in sit position. I backed away again, keeping him in place with the
Stay
command. I found a foot of busted branch on the ground, threw it down the drive yelling
Fetch
!
    He tipped over and began pedaling his paws at the sky.
    “Two out of three ain’t bad,” I told him, rubbing his belly. “Let’s go grab some chow.”
    I opened the cabin door and went inside, the air cool and smelling of wood and my breakfast bacon. The walls were pine decorated with cheap buys from local flea markets: a red-centric quilt, a sign advertising Texaco Gasoline, calendar-style photos from the Gorge stuck in a variety of dime-store frames. The living room had a vaulted ceiling, with loft space above. Dormers let light pour in. The dining room and kitchen made one long unit.
    I showered away the morning’s sweat and grit. Afterwards, I went to the kitchen area and lashed together two sausage and jalapeno cheese sandwiches. I cracked open a cold Sam Adams and dined in a rocker on the sun-dappled porch, serenaded by insects, birdsong and the tumble of water over rock in the nearby creek. Swallow-tailed butterflies skittered through the warm air.Somewhere on the ridge above the cabin a woodpecker drilled for bugs.
    I leaned back in the rocker and set my bare heels on the railing as something puzzling happened in my neck and shoulders. At first I didn’t recognize the feeling, then it came to me.
    They had relaxed.

7
     
    I spent the remainder of the day hiking in the Gorge, watching Mix-up bark after squirrels and turkeys and splash through the creeks. With the wide blue sky a constant companion, we pushed through green thickets of rhododendron, crossed slender ridges no wider than my truck, yawning drop-offs on both sides. We climbed up and down the steep grades until my knees went weak and we had to return.
    I hit the mattress at eight thirty, worn and weary and