---

Tuesday, September 4--

4:10 p.m.-

An unidentifiable buzz like a chicken under a tin can, is whirring near the stream bank. A solo crow is cawing from the top of a maple tree. EZ is sitting on her deck in the bow, watching and waiting ... now curling, napping. Eiderdown clouds blowing feathers through a crepuscular sky. Despite dismal predictions of cloudy and cold, it's not. The air is unmoving, the sun is still warm, the current is lively but low. The water saddle is dry now, about two inches above level.

What a change from yesterday, Labor Day. Mobbed with trucks and trailers and campers and canoeists jockeying life on the run. Today the boat landing is silent, no one around. Yesterday there was a big party at the neighbor's roistery next door. Bibbers milled and staggered shouts, big speakers blasted minuets in 3/4 time, and lots of bodies danced on the sagging dock. A big speedboat tied alongside floated twelve revelers, eight small children and a middle-aged woman in a passenger seat who answered a chirping cell phone. Shabby and the Georgie were there too, along with three other bad mannered pups; two lifted their legs against me as I tried to unload.

A big blue van pulled in and parked right on the boat ramp. The side door "blammed" open and four children of diverse ethnicity peeked out, then scrambled over a rusty Kenmore tipped on its side and screamed toward the water.

A jiggly jolly woman unloaded herself and barked, "Arthur, Amos, get the basket! Cherise put down that blanket!" A tot staggering under a mound of pink chenille, headed for the dock.

"Dolly, pull up your pants!"

Arthur and Amos, dragging a large blue plastic basket, mounted the dock a moment before I did, and spied EZ beaming at them from the boat. They dropped the tote, spilling bright plastic toys into the water, and ran the rest of the way to begin their next phase. One boy or the other stepped into the boat. EZ stood up to greet him, tail wagging hard, just as the second boy stepped in too. EZ moved back and altered the balance. Dolly dropped her pants and toddled fast onto the dock, tried to stop, but didn't.

The woman yelled "git back here," I guess to anybody who'd listen. They didn't. EZ moved forward to greet Dolly; the gap between the dock widened just enough to let the chenille-blinded Dolly bump Cherise into the gap. Amos, or Arthur, let out a laugh. The other boy jumped in the water to rescue shrieking Cherise. Jolly woman came running (or something like that, moving real fast for someone who's fat), stormed into the river shouting orders at all to "git back, go on, go stand by that tree. You in the boat, you'll be hearing from me!"

I figured I already had and started the motor and backed alarmedly out, hair standing up straight in dreadlocks by fright.

Next door at the party, Gaptooth I'd seen playing with Shabby weeks ago started shrilling and pointing directly at me.

"Manwreck, that's him! He kept looking me over three weeks ago."

A very big mustache wearing a tight tiny loincloth and a blurred sloshy face looked right at me.

"And he's the one what called Abby shabby."

It's true I had, but not by disgrace. And young woman had belched as she'd said who the dog was. So I thought Shabby was its name. Manwreck lifted his left arm from her shoulders, set down his bottle and picked up a viola--the music suddenly stopped and all but Gaptooth scurried and sat down in the pick-up game of musical lawn chairs. She cried. Manwreck dropped his viola to soothe her hurt humor. I escaped quickly, EZ barked.

6:10 p.m.-

The water is all ours today, except for a small aluminum boat tied along the river's edge with an elderly newlywed couple fishing with six lines. I stopped briefly and chitchatted, learned they're on a fishing honeymoon. They smiled a lot, at EZ, each other. Both beamed at the leech she was attaching at the end of a hook. I wished them goodness and luck and headed upstream.

EZ is the quietest dog I've ever known, barking only when supremely excited. But lately she paces the deck, looks me in the face, puckers her lips and barks exuberantly. Whirling for the front she leans over the gunwale and barks at turtles on the bank, at leafy refuse floating on the water. She turns back toward me, strains her head skyward like a wolf howling at the moon and barks with eyes shut at the sky. It's great to see her loosening up, vocalizing just for the hell of it after a lifetime of fearful silence.

Yesterday while she and I lay on the bow deck waiting for a nap to arrive, a pileated woodpecker landed in a tree just overhead. The afternoon sun blazed his red crest. It clung to the trunk, hopped lower, closer. They are big, about twelve inches in length, black and white body, an eighteen-inch wingspan. They are the source of the jungly cries we hear in bad movies.

Chickadees "dee-ed" winter warnings off to our left, the next thing I knew it was quarter to two. EZ was snoring, but I'd been too. I think it awoke me to resume the afternoon.