A Black Dog in Norman Rockwell’s America, by Bob Watt
[Editor’s Note: In February 2021, Bob’s story was in a writing contest sponsored by Leading Age.]
I was coming home from my paper route and a black dog followed me home. Dad said I could keep him and the dog agreed to stay. That dog was street smart and could spot the dog catcher three blocks away. And if he didn’t want to be caught, there was no catching him. He must have liked our house because he decided to hang around and joined up with my routines.
He went along on my morning walk to school and shared that brief interlude before my incarceration in the classroom. He ran from yard to yard, circling around with his nose to the ground. I thought he was a historian of sorts who could see the day just like me, but could also smell out the drama of the night before. He knew who had passed by – cats, dogs and possums — and who had had a fracas, and who had stopped to leave his mark like Genghis Kahn or Napoleon.
When we passed old Mrs. Moody’s house she’d bust out on the porch and yell at him for crossing her yard. But he did not share her passion for private property. If she got too agitated and waved her arms, he’d stop and leave a token of his opinion of property rights in the middle of her front yard. I was always a little behind his running ways and never did own up to Mrs. Moody that the dog was a guest at our house.
She must have known though because everywhere I went the dog tagged along, like when I walked to the library or to Grandfather’s real estate office. And when I went for a haircut at Mr. High’s barbershop down by Schwartz’s Market, he was at my heel. High’s shop was a converted front porch walled in with windows. He lived in the house in back.
Two big barber chairs stood in the center of the room, but there was only one barber. Small chairs backed up against the walls and the windows for waiting customers. When I stepped into the shop, the dog lay down on the stoop to wait for me. There was usually a few guys waiting – steel workers, or guys from the gas station across the street or maybe one of the coaches from high school.
When my turn came I climbed up into the chair. “That your dog, Chuck?” He asked as he draped the big barber cloth around me. Since Dad’s name was Charley, he called us all Chuck – Dad, and me and my brothers Chuck, and Jim and Don — we were all Chuck to Mr. High.
“Yeh,” I said, “He’s the smartest dog that ever was.”
Mr. High was one of a kind. He was bald and fat and had warts and squinted and smelled of whiskey. His belly pressed up against the arm of the chair, and seemed to squeeze talk out of him like he was some kind of accordion. The talk alone was worth the price of a haircut.
“What does he know that’s so damn smart?” Mr. High asked.
“He can track ring-necked pheasants,” I said, “and bobwhite too.”
Our neighbor, the one that sold me the muskrat traps, old man Hedrick, was sitting in one of the wooden chairs by the windows. He was next up for a haircut. His house was only a few blocks over from our house, and I used to go by and look at his big Walker hounds chained up to dog houses.
“Yes, Chuck,” Mr. High said to me, after he pumped up the chair a time or two, “Bird hunting is a proper sport for a gentleman like yourself. Some folks, you know, run raggedy old hounds at night after possum. But real gentleman, they hunt them little bobwhites in the daytime.”
“You agitating old reprobate,” Hedrick said. “Any dog can follow the stink of a bird, but it takes a real nose to pick up on a raccoon and not get thrown off onto a possum or a deer. My dogs are worth more than your whole shop. You’ve never heard sweeter music than those hounds singing out when they are on a scent.”
Sam Johnson was waiting there too and he joined in with Hedrick.
“I’ve got three beagles,” he said, “and any hound is far better than those jug headed Irish Setters that McIntyre has. McIntyre takes them idiot red dogs clear down to Carolina to go bird hunting. He likes to think he’s southern gentry or something, and not just a small-town car dealer.”
“Yeh,” Mr. High said, “but this boy doesn’t have one of those crazy red dogs, he’s got a smart black dog – the kind they use for seeing eye dogs. This boy’s got himself a Labrador Retriever.”
“Bull shit,” Hedrick said, “that little black thing out there on the step, isn’t a Lab.”
Mr. Hedrick didn’t hurt my feelings any since I didn’t know what a Lab was.
Mr. High put down his comb and shears and walked over and rooted through a pile of Playboy magazines and came up with a copy of Field and Stream. He brought the magazine back and handed it to me. Right on the cover was a picture of this leaping black dog flushing out a pheasant.
“Now, there’s what you got Chuck,” he said, “and don’t you let none of those ‘West, by God, Virginia’ hound folk tell you any different.”
Hedrick raised up a little in his chair. “Just cut hair barber,” he said, “we’ve had enough of your bull for one day. I can get a better hair cut up on Fifth street, and I would do it too, if the son of a bitch wasn’t a Republican.”
I knew that shop on 5th Street because I’d been there a time or two with Grandfather. The clientele there was more proper and the conversation almost hushed and delicate. There might be a preacher waiting, or a school teacher or a mother with some kid getting his first haircut. The place was a hundred times cleaner than Skinner’s with no mat of hair stacked up against the base of the barber chair. Even the magazines were different: National Geographic or Life, and not Field and Stream and Playboy.
But I was more comfortable at Mr. High’s shop. A haircut there not only got the job done, but allowed for education and entertainment at the same time. When he finished my haircut Mr. High asked me as he did since I was in the first grade “Are you going to have a shave today?”
“Nah, I’ll skip it.” I said, as he pulled off the cloth and shook hair into the big matted pile around the chrome base of the chair. Hedrick got up and stepped over to the chair. I paid my 50 cents and said thank you, and pushed open the door. The dog jumped up and wagged his tail. He was all black and had a nice square build to him even though he was just a little on the small side. But he did look exactly like the picture in the magazine. That was a really good haircut: I went inside with a mongrel dog, and came out with a Labrador Retriever.