Buddy Read online

  “You don’t let the bad overwhelm the good, do you?” I asked him.

  He cawed.

  “I had a dog,” I told him, “named Harry. The best friend I’ll ever have. For that reason, I’m not sure he would have liked you—”

  “Cluck-cluck-cluck.”

  “Sorry, I thought we were speaking straight here. But he taught me more than I knew I could learn, gentle lessons about life and looking beyond yourself and about knowing you could get through just about anything if you were comfortable in your own skin.

  “And now I’ve got you,” I added. “You demanding that I appreciate what I’ve got, demanding that I learn my proper role.”

  Another caw.

  “You’ve got a much different style than Harry,” I said, laughing softly.

  He cackled in such a way that it seemed to have a question mark at the end.

  “Listen,” I said in a tone that suggested I was wrapping up. “I get what you’re doing to me. I do. You’re right on all fronts. I appreciate you leading by example. So how about a truce now? A real truce. You and me, getting along?”

  Total, stifling silence. You could have heard one of his feathers land on the floor.

  “No, really,” I said, amused.

  Nothing. This didn’t bode well.

  Harry taught me security. He revealed in me a tenderness, a level of emotional attachment, that I never knew was there. He showed me the safety inherent in unconditional love, all of it during one of the most tenuous stretches of my life. Buddy? Buddy didn’t fool around with any new-age approach. He was my personal drill sergeant, schooling me in the virtues of commitment, and telling me “Hey guy. You’re either in or you’re out. Man up.” No gray area for miles.

  “You’re a good boy,” I finally said before stepping back down the ramp, pushing the towering doors shut, and fastening the latch to keep them closed.

  I stood there in the cold air for a long moment, long enough to hear one final grumble come from inside, then nothing at all. He was probably shaking his head at the idiocy of this guy who was constitutionally incapable of coming to terms with the most basic elements of life.

  That goddamned bird really did have it all figured out.

  22

  It began snowing in late December of that winter and basically never stopped, all of which would have been fine—actually nice—had I lived in Boston, where big snowstorms had meant that Harry, and later Baker, and I would walk down the middle of Commonwealth Avenue or Newbury Street in the early morning, the city young and quiet and social all around us.

  But suburban snow, I learned, was different. Suburban snow came with more wind. Suburban snow led to isolation. Suburban snow meant commutes that harked back to the Donner party trying to pass over the Sierra Nevada.

  It came down so hard, so often that winter that my paper, the Globe, took to running a Shaq-o-meter to see if we’d clear the great Shaquille O’Neal with our annual snowfall. Shaq is seven feet, one inch tall, and we nearly did, not stopping until we got above his chin.

  I reveled in the very first snow of my new suburban life, big, fat, dazzlingly white flakes falling from a wide gray sky. I pulled out the shovel I had bought on what seemed like my weekly Saturday-morning Home Depot runs and embraced the concept of free exercise, no gym required. If it was good enough for my father when I was growing up, then it sure as hell was going to be good enough for me. I figured I’d have an hour of good, honest manual work, followed by a creamy hot chocolate at the kitchen table with two equally exhausted dogs flopped at my feet and a woman, Pam, expressing her appreciation at my masculine achievement. The kids would probably ask me to light a fire, and we’d all play Monopoly by the hearth on the family room floor.

  Then I began shoveling. The snow was heavier than I remembered, and it dawned on me that my driveway from my formative years had been nowhere near this long or wide. What it meant was that on almost every scoopful of snow, I had to walk six, eight, ten, twelve feet before tossing it to the side, then back for another scoop. Scoop, walk, toss. Scoop, walk, toss. It was on one of those walks that I remembered that my father might have had a shovel, but he’d also had me to use it. I’m not sure I recall him ever holding one himself.

  An hour in, I was probably no more than a third of the way done, and the pace wasn’t getting any faster. The kids came out with a couple of round coasters and began sliding down the minimountain of snow next to the driveway that had risen from my work, giggling as the dogs jumped on top of them when they came to a sliding stop. They were pushing snow back onto the cleared area, but in my semidelirious state, I didn’t really care. Hell, I plunged my shovel into the sixteen or so inches of snow and joined them, the effortless sensation of whooshing down the makeshift mountain, the wind in my face, all of it making me feel like a kid again. I don’t think I’d gone sledding in thirty-five years.

  We raced, we joked, we laughed. Truth was, it was getting more and more like that between me and the kids, the lightness of being, the shared moments, much of it as natural as I’d always hoped it would be.

  Half an hour later, the kids announced in unison that they were cold and tired and wanted to go inside.

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “Let’s keep playing. Please.”

  “My feet are wet,” one of them said.

  “My hands are freezing,” said the other. They trundled toward the house, the legs of their snowsuits swishing with every step. And once again it was just me and the shovel and the snow.

  Scoop, walk, toss. Scoop, walk, toss. I watched private plows speed down our street headed for driveways unknown. I watched the high school kid next door, a nice young woman, open her garage door, emerge with a snowblower, and clear her driveway in about twenty minutes, the sound of the gas engine taunting me mercilessly the entire time. After she was done, she could have gone inside, cooked dinner in a Crock-Pot, and watched an entire season’s worth of American Idol on her DVR, and I would still have been shoveling.

  When I was finally done some three-plus hours after I’d begun, when I lifted the last piece of heavy, crusted snow that the town plow had deposited at the mouth of my driveway, I hobbled up the gradual hill to my house, so stooped that I looked like I was on my way to ring the bells of Notre Dame. My face was frozen in place. My fingers were permanently gnarled in the shape of the shovel handle. My ears, I assumed, had fallen off a couple of hours before. I’d find them in June, when the snow piles finally gave way to the lawn. As I got inside the door, Pam was standing in the mudroom in her down jacket and a ski cap, pulling on her mittens.

  “Oh good, you’re finally done,” she said casually.

  Finally done.

  If I could have spoken, I’m not sure what I would have said, but I’m fairly certain it would have been something that I’d immediately regret. Pam added, “Buddy doesn’t like the snow, so I need to clear a path to his house.”

  Buddy doesn’t like the snow.

  Pam headed out. I staggered to the kitchen table and slowly lowered myself into the chair I had been imagining, dreaming about, for the last hour of shoveling. Like midsummer cherries, it was every bit as good as I had hoped.

  From that place of total exhaustion, I had an unfortunate view of Pam in the front yard, lifting one heavy half shovelful after another, creating a path between the porch and Buddy’s house, which was way too far away. Pam is basically the type that if a guy can do it, she can too, and mostly she’s right, especially when I’m involved. But seeing her outside struggling with the wet snow, I couldn’t take it. I slowly lifted myself back onto my feet, pulled my wet gloves on, drew a deep breath of warm air, and headed out the door.

  “Why don’t I grab that,” I said, reaching for the shovel. Uncharacteristically, she didn’t resist. Actually, she didn’t even stay around to lend her moral support. So there I was, alone again, faced with the utterly and undeniably absurd task of shoveling a path through nearly a foot and a half of snow so a monster bird could be emotionally unburdened
and physically at ease as he waddled from his palace of a rooster house to drop copious amounts of personal refuse on the floor of my covered porch. I thought back to a question that a reporter at the Globe had once asked me when she saw a bunch of the animal pictures I kept on my phone: “How did this happen to you?”

  Presidents do not arrive at the Oval Office on the first day of their presidency with any greater sense of achievement than I arrived at Buddy’s red rooster house, my shovel finally stubbing his ramp as I prepared for the final toss of snow. I pushed the snow off the wooden incline, pulled the latch on his big double doors, and swung them open in unison. Buddy sat on his high shelf with an indignant look on his face that said, “What the hell have you been doing all morning?”

  “Come on,” I said with all the faux cheeriness I could muster, which admittedly wasn’t much. I looked at him looking quizzically at the white world outside his door. He stared back at me in what seemed like a plea for help.

  He probably would have done that for the longer part of forever if Pam hadn’t suddenly shown up at my side and coaxed him in her happy chicken voice: “You handsome Boo-Boo. You come out right now so everyone can see what a good-good boy you are!”

  Perfect. I get a You’re finally done after shoveling an entire driveway, and this obese bird is told that the whole world is waiting with bated breath for him to greet another day after a long night of sleep.

  With that Buddy jumped from his shelf, onto my chair, then to the floor, waddled over to the doors, and peered more closely at the snow. For whatever reason, maybe every reason, I’d always suspected that he was a very profane bird within the privacy of his little brain. In this case, he wore his profanity all over his disgusted face.

  “Look what we did for you, Boo-Boo,” Pam said. “You have a nice little path. Follow me!” And she started off along the cleared area toward the house.

  Buddy just stared at her from his doorway as if she were out of her human mind. He cawed. Pam beckoned. He made his kung fu sound. Pam walked farther down the path. Soon enough, he stepped gingerly down his ramp and onto the ground, which probably had an inch or so of snow on top of it because I hadn’t wanted to dig up the grass. This he didn’t like.

  He froze in place as Pam’s voice only got higher and more encouraging. His head twitched from side to side, his wattle swaying back and forth with each movement. As Pam continued singing encouragement, he finally high-stepped past me, a look of beleaguered disappointment in his beady eyes. He cautiously walked the length of the path, around the front of the house, and up onto the porch, lifting each of his rubbery legs high in the air with every reluctant step. Anyone driving by could probably have seen only the red comb that sat atop his white head. Pam picked him up and hugged him, then set him down in front of his morning bowl of diced chicken nuggets, oatmeal, shredded cheese, and cracked corn. Buddy let out a long squawk of relief, or maybe it was admonition. Either way, shame on me for not foreseeing the next logical step in that whole grand procession.

  Yvonne and Leo McGrory didn’t raise any fools. The next big snowfall, I was ready. Shortly after that first debacle, I parted with an absurd amount of my hard-earned money and bought the kind of bright orange snowblower that looked as if it would have been used by a maintenance crew at a Colorado strip plaza. It had a headlight, a throaty engine, and enough torque, whatever that is, to drag me up the driveway when I slipped and fell down behind it that first time.

  The truth was, I couldn’t wait for it to snow again, and when it did, I was up early, sending the garage door northward, emerging with my big, mean snow-clearing machine. It took me just forty-five minutes to clear what had required more than three hours by hand, and then another half hour or so to shovel out all the snow I had blown into my garage and at my parked car. After that I spent a few minutes apologizing to Baker for accidentally shooting so much snow into his face.

  It was at that point that I brought the snow thrower around the yard toward Buddy’s house, where I would clear a new path from his ramp to the front porch in just a few minutes. But arriving at his palace, something startled me, that something being Buddy’s doors, which were swinging open in the winter wind. I noticed deep footprints—of human boots—coming and going in the snow.

  “Pam,” I called out as I poked my head in the front door of our house. “Is Buddy all right?”

  Before Pam could say anything, Buddy answered for himself with a massive squawk that began in the basement, echoed up the stairs, and filled the front hallway. Pam looked at me only half apologetically and said, “He’s in the cellar. He hates the snow, it’s awful on his claws, and it’s too cold for him, anyway. I don’t have the heart to keep him outside.”

  Never in my wildest fears did I ever think I would recall having a rooster in my yard—rather than inside my house—as the good old days.

  For the next six or so weeks, men and women all across New England, natives and newcomers alike, complained bitterly about the vicious winter that played havoc with our psyches and tested our souls, the merciless cold, the unrelenting snow, the insulting winds that arrived from the Great Plains. Through it all, because of it all, I lived with an added, unspoken burden that I’m fairly certain nobody else in the world I live in had to endure: a rooster in my basement, his every crow at the beginning of every morning pulsing through the walls and floors and just about shaking the foundation of the house.

  He crowed in the morning at the mere prediction of first light. He crowed in the afternoon to let us know he was still there. He crowed at night because, well, because he was probably just confused. He crowed when he heard us and he crowed when he didn’t, and just as consistent was the fact that no one ever seemed to notice him crowing except me. Everyone just carried on with their days, their lives, occasionally to pause and say, “Oh, Boo-Boo.” In my frustration and self-pity I began to feel sympathy, even empathy, for this voluble, voluminous bird. Pacing the hard concrete floor of our unfinished basement, Buddy couldn’t have been any further out of his element. Night was day, and day was night. There was no soil to pick at, no bushes to brush against, no bugs to eat—at least I hoped there weren’t. When I voiced my concerns to Pam, she agreed but said, “What am I supposed to do? There’s no farm that will take him. He hates being outside. He’d probably freeze to death in his own house. So am I supposed to euthanize him just because it’s a tough winter?”

  In my silence she provided the answer, emphatically: “No! In another couple of weeks, it will warm up and he’ll be fine to go back outside to the life he loves.”

  In the meantime, on the days that rose above freezing, Pam would carry him to the back porch, where Buddy would shiver in the wind on the cold wood, with nothing interesting to hold his attention. He refused to wander off the deck into the snow, so inevitably, invariably, he spent those hours standing at the door peering inside and pecking at the glass.

  Back in the basement, he started a new routine. He climbed the stairs, all the way to the top step. Once there, he didn’t peck, crow, or scratch. He simply pressed his feathers against the door and fell asleep to the sounds of the household cacophony just out of his reach. It was, figuratively and literally, as close to his flock as he could possibly get. Pam took to leaving a blanket on the step for him to sleep on; the kids would open the door and offer him words of praise.

  Admittedly, that got to me, Buddy’s attempts to be with the only family he knew in the only way he knew how. It didn’t go unnoticed how much the family, in turn, appreciated his efforts. But every time I was on the verge of relenting, ready to declare that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t such a bad creature after all, he would scream his lungs out during a Patriots playoff game or while I was on an important call for the column or simply trying to catch an extra ten minutes of sleep before another day dawned.

  February break was especially bad. Pam and I decided not to travel with the kids on principle. Well, all right, principle and the fact that the airlines and hotels jacked their prices thro
ugh the roof on these school vacation weeks. So we stayed home, with the bird screeching from the basement, the girls getting on each other’s nerves, the yard crusted in ice, the winds rattling the windows, and repeats on TV. That might have been the worst move since I’d invested in General Motors in 2009 with the philosophy, It’s not like GM would ever go bankrupt.

  I don’t know how many relationship arguments have begun with the words “I can’t take it anymore,” but add mine to the list. Otherwise very good kids were uncharacteristically whining; they couldn’t have friends over because every other son or daughter of our town was sitting on a tropical beach or in a faraway ski resort. The rooster was crowing. It was sleeting outside. I told Pam I was going for a ride, a ride that would lead to Boston, where I would spend the afternoon. She understood without actually condoning it.

  “So much of this stuff is just being there, even when it seems like it would be a whole lot easier to be somewhere else,” Pam said to me, not stern but matter of fact, her blond hair streaked across her forehead and an exhausted look in her eyes.

  My thoughts, of course, slipped to the creature in the basement, Buddy on the top step, Buddy at the back door in better weather, Buddy always there, all day, every day, because he was exactly where he needed to be.

  Pam added, “But you know that already. You know it because it’s exactly the way you were with Harry for a long, long time.” She paused, then added, “And that’s what I thought, or maybe just hoped, you wanted here.” And then she casually walked away, back into the kitchen.

  But Harry had never seemed like an obligation—a point I was just smart enough not to make to her. But maybe that’s exactly the point. Harry hadn’t been an obligation because I’d been there whenever I needed to be or should be or wanted to be, which was most of the time.