A Dog Named Brutus

     There were always visitors at grandma and grandpa’s house. If you spent a week there in the late seventies, you’d see just about every relative you knew and probably one or two you didn’t.

     One thing you were guaranteed to see was animals. Chickens, rabbits, pigs were not uncommon, but my favorite animal was a dog named Brutus.

     He was actually my cousin’s dog. They lived right next door, and so he spent a lot of his time at grandpa and grandma’s house.

     Grandpa’s back door never latched. To keep the door from blowing open, he nailed a small scrap of leather to the door frame. It snugged the door just enough to keep it closed, but not enough to make it hard to open.

      Brutus was a bit of a loner. He’d come to the back door and bark to get in and bark to get out. Somehow Brutus figured out that if he hit the back door hard enough it would open. He still had to bark to get out, he always let himself in. The best part for him was not waiting for one of us to let him in.

      After a while it wasn’t just him that learned to open the door. The cat figured out how to open the door. Brutus wasn’t a loner anymore. She’d go find Brutus, Brutus would run to the back door and open it, and the cat would walk in. Brutus sometimes held the door open with his body and waited for the cat to come in. He’d run back out when she was clear of the door.

      One year I got a cassette recorder and microphone for my birthday. I took it to grandpa’s house and was playing with it when my cousin Tina decided to interview my grandpa. She sat down beside him just as Brutus came to the door and barked to get out.

      She was interviewing grandpa like he was the witness of a crime. She asked him what he thought about Brutus barking at the door.

     “You better let him outside before he craps on the floor and your grandma slips and runs her nose in it,” he replied.

      Grandma turned from the sink to grandpa and said, “Oh, Jim!” She said that whenever grandpa climbed on his soapbox to complain about something. It never stopped him, but that’s the phrase I hear grandma say clearly in my head.

      The interview continued on for a few minutes with grandpa cracking potty jokes. I laughed so hard my chest hurt. I know. Potty humor is a lot funnier when you are twelve, but I broke the tab off the cassette so it couldn’t be recorded over. I put it up as a keepsake. I haven’t seen it in years. Maybe someday someone will go through my stuff, find it, and wonder what’s on that tape.

      Memories are on that tape. I wish I knew where it was. I’d give anything to hear my grandparents voice outside of my head.