When Henry was in town over Thanksgiving, we put our three dogs in the car and drove thirty minutes north up I-95 to the Doswell/Kings Dominion Exit, our first time back since my parents sold their farm, because it felt too much like returning to the scene of crime where something was stolen that could never be returned.
I noticed every little change as we drove past the truck stop with the quarters game where my friends and I drove for coffee at 2 AM, and the apartment complex where we’d sneak into the pool, and the Burger King where Dad got cheeseburgers for the dogs, and the tiny little chapel no bigger than a minute for the truckers taking a rest from the road. There was a new apartment building and a revamped Kings Dominion sign, or at least it seemed that they were new even if sometimes change only happens in your mind.
Then we were passing the state fair mansion and the fields where Secretariat was sired and the cow pasture where a drunk driver crashed his car in the middle of the night and his girlfriend died in my Dad and Mary’s arms. We turned right into their driveway, parking in front of their house, their cement well, their window boxes, and the swing on their tree where the black snake coiled around the branches on our wedding day, except none of it’s theirs anymore but someone else's.
Our three dogs were thrilled to jump out of the car, sniffing and rooting and running about, tails high, ears pricked with the excitement of a cold day in the country. We walked to the edge of the pond, cleared now of the brambles and blackberry bushes, past Dad's garden, and Dad's barn built by he and Stan and all the brothers, and then the little inlet in the grove of trees where our chuppah used to stand and where we were married with 200 of our closest friends sitting in white folding chairs in the fields around us.
The dock looks so small, said Henry, walking out onto its farthest edge which seemed to be sinking slowly beneath the water and deeper into the ground. For years, Stan and Henry went fishing on that lake at 5 AM every Sunday, always stopping for a BBQ sandwich with coleslaw at the gas station on the way home, Henry’s smile larger than life the time he caught a 12 inch bass, the photo Stan used as his screensaver on his phone.
When Henry moved out this summer, Stan began his crusade for a new puppy–one of his very own– eventually making the 16-hour round-trip drive to Ohio to rescue a three-month-old Great Dane and despite my misgivings about a third dog, Greg has been a beautiful addition to our family, his long, floppy limbs, soft warm tongue, coaxing Stan out of a deep freeze of depression, the way only an animal can.
Despite the biting chill, Cosmo jumped into the lake and swam past the shoreline where I’d once gotten moored in a canoe wearing a slip and high heels–in my late teens, I dressed as though I were a heroine in a Victorian novel, drinking whiskey or wine and writing in my journal, smoking cigarettes, wandering the fields or draped across my bed in velvet gowns.
After Mary’s and then my father’s death, the need for a puppy burned hot in my veins and though my parents never met Cosmo I know they would have loved him. They were always adopting stray dogs that wandered lost through the countryside, abandoned by hunters and covered in ticks that they lovingly and painstakingly picked off. They cared for those dogs like their own.
As we walked, Virginia lagged behind, the only dog of the three that knows this land, a different dog now, arthritic with stiff hips, not the sleek seal, the thin fox that escaped us over and over bounding through the tall grass as we chased after her, a feral and damaged wild thing who had no plan, was never running to something but away from everything.
Back then, eventually, Virginia would make her way back, out of breath, covered in shit and mud, the Prodigal Daughter returning to the fold like I'd done 25 years before when I finally reached bottom and was broke and broken having ripped through other people’s lives, wrecked other people’s homes, and my Dad and Mary welcomed me back, music on the record player, fire in the fireplace, a fragile new start, the hope of a new life, pieced together, no questions asked. Just welcome back, we’re so happy you’re home.
Valley Haggard is a writer, teacher, and energy worker living in the Richmond area. Visit her online at valleyhaggard.com.