I Stole Raspberries from the Neighbour’s Garden, and the Next Day My Dog was Dead

I am 10 years old and madly smelling the throw pillows on our living room sofa. My brother Dustin is trailing me, excitedly lisping, “That thmell, Lindth, I know it from thomwhere!”

My brother and I are the exact opposite of latchkey kids. Mom does everything for us. She makes us elaborate breakfasts before we catch the school bus. After scarfing down our pancakes, eggs, or toast with homemade jam, she’ll hand us paper bag lunches with little notes tucked inside, telling us to have a great day.

I don’t know what Mom does while Dustin and I are at school. Presumably, she sits twiddling her thumbs, awaiting our arrival home.

Mom always has a vast spread of fresh-cut veggies and fruit ready and waiting on the kitchen table for our after-school snack.

But not today. Today, as we walk in our front door, Mom is nowhere to be found. Immediately, both my brother and I are shaken by this development. What? Mom’s gone? Well, where the hell could she be? How is she not here, and we are here? What could be more important than us?

“Auntie Deb!” Dustin yells. “That’th the thmell of her perfume.”

I know this to be true as soon as he says the words. Mom is with Auntie Deb somewhere.

But where could they be?

I reach the back porch and call for my trusty black lab, Duke. Perhaps he can provide some clues as to where they may be. Duke comes barrelling toward me at high speed, and I brace myself for impact — the same way all small children who own large dogs learn to do over time.

Duke is an idiot. He stares up at me with a big old grin on his dumb dog face, and despite my frustration over not knowing where my mother is, I smile at the dog because, well, it’s impossible not to.

When my stomach starts grumbling, I realize we could be in real trouble here. What if Mom never comes back? What if she got sick of being a mom and took off to go do non-mom stuff? Who will make me my after-school snack? Dad is pretty useless with that sort of thing, so it will be up to me to raise myself and Dustin.

These are the complex realities I’m facing.

“Dust, let’s go for a walk to see if she’s somewhere in the yard,” I say. But as usual, my younger bro is already two steps ahead of me and pulling on his rubber boots.

The farmyard feels abandoned without Mom’s presence, flitting from one chore to another. Her watering cans look as though they haven’t been touched all day. Her kneeling pads for the garden hang in their usual place in the shed.

We move toward our neighbour’s yard cautiously because the elderly couple who live there are grumpy and mean. I’m sure they kidnap kids like Dust and me and lock them in their basement. I’ve heard some pretty strange noises coming from their house before.

“I’m hungry,” Dustin whines.

And it begins. My life as a provider.

I spot the long row of raspberry bushes that line our neighbour’s garden and reckon desperate times call for desperate measures.

Laying out the plan to my kid brother is the easy part. We’ll sneak in through the rhubarb patch as it’s overgrown and will give us cover to get where we need to go without getting spotted. From there, we can doggy crawl through the carrots and around to the opposite side of the raspberry bushes. If we stay on the side furthest from the neighbour’s house, the brush will hide us from their kitchen window.

Executing this plan is not as easy.

As we crawl through the carrots, Duke takes this as an invitation to attempt to mount us. “No!” I squeal to the dog while dive-bombing him off my brother and flattening the bright green carrot tops with all three of our bodies.

Duke thinks this means playtime and gets the zoomies. A large black blur speeds past me, a cloud of garden dirt and carrot tops kicking up behind him.

The dog is destroying our neighbour’s perfect garden patch with his speedy laps. Also, he’s drawing an awful lot of attention our way.

Finally, we make it to the raspberries. I ignore Duke because I don’t have the mental stamina to deal with that issue right now. One crisis at a time, Lindsay. Don’t overload yourself.

Before setting off on this expedition, I had the forethought to bring a container for any food we might salvage. I begin plucking berries off the bush and plopping them into my margarine container.

Dustin and I have been picking for nearly ten minutes, and we are accumulating what I determine might be enough for a hearty dinner when my brother lets out a high-pitched scream.

“Worms!” he cries. I look down at the container and see hundreds of tiny white worms crawling out of our raspberries. The sight jolts me into action, and I drop the bowl and take off running.

Screw this, man! I’m not cut out for this caretaker bullshit.

As we return to our house, winded from the long run, I see my aunt’s car. She and Mom are sitting on the deck, sunning themselves.

“Where were you?” I scream, the panic of my past 45 minutes as a newly appointed mother-orphan is catching up to me.

“We just ran into town quickly. Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” My aunt interjects before Mom can say anything.

Dustin runs up behind me and gives me a look that says, “Be cool, man, be cool.”

So, I say nothing of our afternoon in the raspberry patch.

The next day after school, I am happy to see Mom sitting on the deck as I walk my long gravel driveway from the school bus. Except, she doesn’t look pleased at all. It seems like she’s been crying. Dad’s home, and he looks mad. He walks past me toward the gravel road my school bus is now driving into the distance.

I look back and see large tire tracks going into the ditch.

I start running towards the house, but Mom meets me halfway. She grabs both me and Dustin into a hug and gently says, “I’m so sorry, guys. Duke was hit by a car this morning.”

The news doesn’t register. I start frantically looking around for my dog. I keep thinking any moment, he will come bounding toward us, a big dumb dog smile on his face.

“Is he dead?” Dustin wails, already knowing the answer.

Mom hugs us tighter.

Lying in bed that night, I think about Duke. I think it may be my fault he got hit by a car because he always followed us to the bus in the morning.

All it takes is one rogue thought to lead us down a path of self-destruction. The thought that took me there at 10 years old was, “What if the grumpy neighbours found out about us stealing their raspberries? What if they ran down my dog for payback?”

I am 37 years old and having a few drinks with my mom in the backyard. Another good dog sits at my feet and reminds me of the one run down all those years ago.

I mention Duke and how I am sure the neighbours swerved into the ditch that morning to kill him. The conviction in my voice mirrors the certainty I had at ten years old, staring up at my ceiling with tears running down my cheeks and knowing this was, in fact, what happened.

Mom looks at me with a quizzical expression on her face.

“What are you talking about?”

“I think they ran over Duke because they hated us so much,” I say, my confidence wavering a bit now.

“Lindsay, they loved that dog. They were just as devastated when finding out about Duke as we all were. Sure, they were assholes, but they were animal lovers. They’d never do that.”

Why do I not remember them being kind to my dog? Why, in my memory, do they seem like they were the opposite of animal people? The brain is a flexible yet fragile thing. It takes our sadness and trauma and turns us away from the matter at hand.

For days after Duke died, I tried to sabotage the grumpy neighbours by any means possible. I snuck into their yard and sprinkled juice powder in their above-ground pool. I egged their dumb old tractors that sat lifeless in the back forty. I salted the earth on which their precious raspberry bushes grew.

I was angry and hurt and channeling those feelings in the only way my sad kid-brain knew how.

For 27 years, I believed I stole my neighbour’s raspberries, and my pup paid the price.

Turns out life is never that straightforward. And sometimes, we can find peace when letting go of those wild perceptions of past events.