Gypsy

Draft Synopsis:

When Nellie's dog Gypsy, the last link to her home and husband, dies, she gradually begins to pursue the photography career she gave up when her husband died-the result of a drunk driver's error. Her daughter June, now grown, with her own life, is in contact but seldom visits. As Nellie finds new ways to make her photography and her perception of her life relevant to others in a world that has changed from analog to digital, lessons she absorbed from observing her dog Gypsy begin to inform and inspire her work.

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The old dog lay on the carpet, his legs kicking out rhythmically in his dream. He was running across the field, something he hadn't been up to doing in several years. A little girl ran next to him, laughing. A buzzing insect rose from a flower, and he leaped after it. Suddenly he was free.

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Chapter 1: Endings and Reflections

When Nellie came down the stairs that morning, carefully, one tread at a time, as the stairs were steep and winding, Gypsy wasn't waiting for her at the bottom tread. She went to the living room. He was in his usual place, summer and winter, at the front of the wood stove. She put her hand on his snout. It was cold.

Through her tears, she started outside to the shed for a spade. There was no one to call. June would call her at ten this morning, but she lived several hours away in the city.

Nellie dug the hole slowly. It was hard work since the turf grew undisturbed in the place where she wanted him to lay. It was near a maple tree at the farthest edge of the mown grass in the backyard, where he would often stay for hours, gazing out, sometimes rousing for an unusual occurrence, like a woodpecker flying across the field or a fox on the ridge opposite. Rabbits would often hop along the border of tall and short grass, stopping to nibble here and there. Gypsy had given up chasing them but was always interested enough to raise his head when movement captured his attention.

She paused several times, resting against the spade, to look at the field filled with bees and white butterflies hovering over wildflowers in the tall grass. The morning mist began to rise, creating a layer of clear summer air between it and the field, still not high enough to reveal the tops of the trees at its edges. A slight breeze played in the brown seed heads, and a few cicadas started their incessant buzzing for the day. Once, she returned to the house as far as the kitchen sink for a glass of water. She started a pot of coffee in her ancient percolator and then forgot about it. She couldn't look at Gypsy again yet. She went back down the greyed wooden steps and back to her work.

Inside, the phone rang several times. June hung up and tried again. Something was wrong. Her mother looked forward to the weekly calls and would always tell her when she had to be out for some reason. She would try again in an hour.

It took close to three hours to dig the hole big enough and deep enough so that Gyp would rest undisturbed by prowling coyotes or the foxes he despised so heartily. Nellie climbed out of the hole and looked down into it. She thought it was deep enough. The sun was warm on her shoulders, but her legs felt cooled from standing below ground. The pile of dirt and rocks made a tall pyramid next to the hole. She had set aside the largest and most troublesome stones she dislodged closest to the hole's edge.

She returned to the house again and found a threadbare blanket at the back of the linen closet to wrap Gypsy's body in. When all was secure, she dragged the neatly wrapped body through the kitchen to the back door and went to get the garden cart. She half lifted, half slid Gyp's body into the cart, then pulled it across the lawn.

Nell carefully tipped the cart so the body wouldn't receive unnecessary jostling. It slid smoothly and gently into the hole. She adjusted it this way and that, making sure his head was pointing to the east. He always did wake up just before dawn, waiting patiently at the bottom step for one-half hour or so until she was ready to get up. He couldn't walk up the stairs for the past year or so, and she wasn't strong enough to carry him.

She looked furtively around to be sure no one was watching, even though no people could be nearby at her place. Then she picked a handful of daisies from the edge of the field and arranged them carefully over the top of the blanket. She sighed.

“You were a good dog while you lived.”

“Rest here in peace, my friend,” and “Unto God, I commend thy spirit.”

She looked around again guiltily. That last sounded almost like heresy, but in her mind, Gypsy deserved more attention than many people. For the past few years, he had been her companion and friend.

At the thought, she put her hand down to pat his head reflexively, but it touched nothing, though she was sure she could feel his presence by her side. She picked up the shovel and filled in the remainder of the hole, first with the heaviest rocks to keep the animals from dragging his body out, then with the rest of the dirt. When she finished, she patted down the mound with her hands.

It looked neat but lonely out there with the tree. Nellie thought of making a marker, but that would be a job for another day.

By the time she had returned to the house, it was already two in the afternoon. She felt weary and weaker than usual from the unaccustomed labor of digging and moving stones. The sun was high and hot in the sky. She unplugged the coffeepot with its now thickened and undrinkable black coffee and poured it into the sink. The drainpipe made clanking sounds in protest.

Then she remembered. June was probably worried sick. She went over to the phone and called. June answered after the third ring, and yes, she had been worried. Her voice sounded a little choked when she found out about Gyp as she said all the right things about how he had been a good dog, how old he was, and how she was glad he was out of pain.

Nell was a little comforted by that last, to be out of pain. She hung up with June and made a little lunch, leaving it absentmindedly on the kitchen counter.

She walked through the dining room and went back to the living room. Then she took the photo album furthest to the right from a long shelf and went to sit in her big chair next to the wood stove. Before sitting, she looked at the floor so as not to trip over the dog, but it wasn't a necessary gesture.

There were photos of Sam, June, and Gyp, all young. She took one out of its sleeve and looked at every detail. There they were, all running across that same field in the back, grass high, sun going down, while she stood on the edge and took the picture. They were running away from her, laughing, even Gyp, as he bounded high above the grass in his glee. She could see them. Sam in his blue work shirt and black jeans, June and her gingham dress, high tops and pigtails, Gypsy and his red collar. That day was the last day of her professional career and the last day of security for a long time.

“Sam,” she called, lowering the camera, “June. Gyp. I'm going in to start dinner.”

They looked back. Sam turned around first while June and Gypsy kept on for about another twenty paces. Then June started back while Gypsy ran circles around her, barking joyously. The straight flattened trails in the grass they made as they waded out began to look like a drunk farmer's crop circles as they returned. Sam slowed his pace to a walk, and June and Gypsy beat him back to the yard.

She awoke with a start. She had fallen asleep in her chair looking at the photos. The sun had swung around to the west and was beginning to set. Although the day had been hot, she was cold from sitting still for so long. She reached down, but no Gypsy, with his soft, warm hair, met her hand. For the first time in her life, Nell felt truly alone.

She thought back to the day of the photo. That morning she had been on a flight home from a two-week assignment photographing the most famous locations from the work of Ansel Adams. The publication's editor who commissioned the work wanted to do an article on Adams' life with a side-by-side comparison of shots for the modern age. Challenging and exciting were the two words that came to her mind. To believe that any artist could equal Adams' breathtaking landscape photography was a stretch, so her goal was not to emulate his work but to expand its reach into the present. Many of the sites were no longer as remote as when Adams visited them, and she spent time talking to the wanderers and devotees who followed Adams with their own pilgrimages.

She flew into the tiny local airport, glad to be home again. She carried her camera and other equipment on the plane, but she had a checked bag of clothing to collect from the conveyor. Walking outside and glancing around the arrivals pickup area, she was suddenly hit in the back by a pair of forceful paws. Almost simultaneously, two small thin arms wrapped around her leg and two larger, stronger ones around her waist, pulling her in.

Cries of “Mommy, mommy, mommy!” and a quieter “I missed you,” rang in her ears, along with the dog's ecstatic yelping.

She sat in the backseat of the car on the way home between Gypsy and June, fielding questions about her trip and her flight from her husband and daughter.

The route from the airport took them through a string of small towns, past suburban houses on larger lots, and finally out further to the edge of the countryside where their farmhouse stood. Beyond that were the real farms and farmers, straddling the fence between what seemed to be the modern and bygone world.

Sometimes she felt she could cross that barrier simply by walking out, past the field they mowed once a year, into the woods at the edge, and out the other side. Beyond the woods was that world, one not altogether foreign to her but hazy, like the field on a summer morning as it was today.

When they finally reached the house, they all poured out of the car, glad to be home. Sam took her bag while June and Gyp ran around the house to the back door. They seldom locked the door in those days unless they were gone for more than a few hours. They were in and out in what seemed like a few seconds. Nellie took a deep breath. Then, inexplicably, the man, child, and dog ran into the field. She fumbled with her camera bag while she watched them, hoping the lens that came to her hand was the right one, quickly set the stops and focused a little ahead of them. She caught Gypsy in the frame just as he bounded into space.

Nellie got up and went toward the kitchen, flicking on the lights as she walked through the dining room. Looking into the refrigerator, she frowned at the semi-bare shelves and the half-empty can of dog food. Suddenly Nell closed the refrigerator door and reached for the truck keys and pocketbook hanging next to the back door. She turned on the porch light and walked down the steps into the yard.

She hadn't done the grocery shopping yet, and maybe tonight she would eat at the diner before returning to the empty house.

As she pulled out of the driveway, she glanced back at her home in the rearview mirror and, a little beyond it, saw the maple tree and the raw mound of earth next to it. Suddenly the place which had given her so much joy was empty. It looked forlorn in its emptiness. The road in front of her was suddenly darker, so she turned the headlights on. Some startled deer, grazing near the edge of the road, threw their heads up and ran into the woods. The tears started again and trickled down her cheeks the entire way into town.

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People and events portrayed in this story are fictional.

This chapter was written in response to a Vocal Media Challenge "Next Great [American] Novel" in August of 2023.

What a dream to have, to be a woman and to write a novel which represents the American experience in the 21st Century or even a decade in the 21st Century.