The Girls He Adored

3

On a Ridgetop High in the Cascade Mountains of southern Oregon, a strawberry blond in her early fifties, wearing a highnecked green silk gown and matching surgical mask, stands in the middle of a chicken yard, scattering feed to a flock of goldenplumed Buff Orpingtons.

Her movements are awkward-she bends and turns stiffly from the waist-and the hands emerging from the long sleeves of the gown are freakishly skeletal, smooth shiny skin stretched tightly over fleshless bone. She spills nearly as much feed as she sows. As the birds crowd around her ankles and dart under her gown to peck at the fallen seed, she scolds them mildly.

“Now, children, there's plenty for everyone.” Her voice is muffled behind the green silk mask and has a peculiar timbre, thin and unresonant-the converse of nasal. “Vivian, mind your manners- no shoving. And you, Freddie-try to show a little self-control. Remember your position.”

Freddie Mercury is the lone rooster in the hen yard, a strutting dandy with flowing plumage of antique gold and a proudly erect crimson comb. When the woman ducks into the dark coop, he follows her, clucking soothingly to the brooding hen inside to reassure her that her egg will be safe.

And indeed, the woman's bony fingers pluck only the unattended eggs, all brown, some still warm, from the dirty straw of the roosts, and deposit them gently, carefully, into the shallow basket hanging from her forearm. When she has finished, the rooster accompanies her to the gate and stands guard, facing his flock, to prevent any of his plump golden wives or buff chicks from escaping with her.

From the hen yard it is a hike of a few hundred yards through a shady wood of old-growth Douglas fir to the kennels next to the embowered, double-gated sally port, where half a dozen ambereyed, black-and-brindle Rottweilers with barrel-like bodies, powerful, wide-skulled, flattened heads, and massive jaws capable of crushing a sheep's skull or a bicycle with equal ease greet her noiselessly, wagging their stubby tails and wiggling their broad behinds.

Eerily silent, eerily patient, the dogs stand at quivering attention while the woman opens a wooden bin containing a fifty-pound bag of dog chow, scoops the dry kibble into six individual bowls, each labeled with its owner's name-Jack, Lizzie, Bundy, Piper, Kiss, and Dr. Cream-and breaks a fresh egg into each bowl. Not until she has finished breaking the last egg into the last bowl, and given them a verbal command accompanied by a hand signal, do they rush forward to begin eating.

When they are finished, the woman lets the dogs out through the front gate via the sally port. They split up in six different directions to do their business as far from the kennels and each other as possible, and return within minutes without having to be summoned.

“Good dogs,” says the woman, locking the front gate behind them and leading them back into the kennel, leaving the door between the kennel and the sally port open. “Now give me my lovies.”

As she drops stiffly to her knees, the dogs line up before her like obedient schoolchildren and present themselves one at a time to be petted by those skeletal fingers and kissed through that silken mask until the woman's heart is eased and her fear of abandonment temporarily assuaged.

Now only one chore remains, her least favorite: a visit to the drying shed. She decides to put it off until after lunch.