A gunshot could be heard clear and loud like it was closer than 50 ft away and there stood Bob cigarette in one hand and head held low, his shooting arm swayed like a pendulum from the kick of the revolver.  Still no Snowball after an hour or more. We all knew in our hearts she was lost to the rocks and the sage, and whatever predator might devour him.

 

Hadn’t seen Ben in 4 years.  In that time I had recovered from a midbrain stroke, and 3 years later a false diagnosis of terminal cancer.  As far removed as he may have put himself, we needed to be together. It’s been said a parent can be as happy as his least happy child.  True probably for a young parent with a child who is still eating cereal at a family dinner table. That changes when the child steps into the real world of his own.  To their world. Into their shoes. You can’t expect of your children more than they do of themselves, forever, out of fear of disappointment. Gone is the expectation of joy from your children, and what remains is the profound hope for their own happiness.  That is unconditional. We each have journeys being forged by ourselves.

 

Montello has less than 100 residents who live in a remote part of Nevada, where only on the radio time can be Central or Pacific vieing for your attention. Ben lives and works as a hand on the one million acre ranch once owned by Jimmy Stewart.  The Gamble Ranch is currently owned by Boston’s Paul Fireman, billionaire founder of New Balance, or Reebok, or both.  He’s also a golf buddy of Mark Sokol who performed our marriage ceremony with Ben in the same room, recused from it, in 2009.

 

Mornings we sat on the front porch of the Cowboys Bar.  On the first day Bob drank beer, and Ben scrambled around finding coffee for me, his old man.  It was a gesture. The coffee was terrible. Nothing like home, but home is where you put your heart, not where it is kept.   

Ben’s coffee was just fine, and I was grateful for having it.

Snowball was a gift to Bob, and brought smiles to anyone who laid eyes on him.  A blonde long haired shepherd who could be easily lost in a desert.  A big strong dog with big teeth and broad shoulders constantly smiling the way dogs do when they’re in the company of loved ones; us, the humans.  Apparently his hormones raged, and during breakfast while Bob held court in the Parliament of Menlo, between beers and cigarettes Snowball exhibited canine adolescense in trying to hump everyone.  It was awkward.  Finally Bob stood and lorded over the dog.  A tower of physical intimidation sent Snowball for protection into the shade of the rusted front end of a pickup truck, and until we moved there he lay in wait, calmly.  Dogs are good practice for raising kids, but kids matter for the rest of your life.  Dogs are temporary.  They’re only with you for part of the journey.  Explains why a dog’s love is unconditional.

It’s a twist if considering why these soft souls have chosen wide open space over any alternative.  Zazi Dans Le Metro, where a handful of them in their escape from society recreate a microcsm of the society from which they are alienated, to a heaven on earth where everyone looks out for everyone because they inhabit each other’s lives.  They live under the same sky. These are the people that live off the grid, but not completely.  That life is simply a smaller grid.

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On the 2nd day of our 3 day journey to Ben, we set out in the rented Jeep along with Brian in his flatbed tow truck and Bob in the Bronco with Snowball riding shotgun.  We were heading to Bob's place into a ravine where over the horizon I expected Injuns in warpaint training their arrows, but that was imaginary. The pitch of the mountain was not, and I was grateful (again) for the automatic transmission that never once stalled as would any manual as it scaled the slippery pile of rock.  Every few hundred feet as we cleared another gully, or ditch we celebrated by getting out and passing around a potato pipe packed with weed and every 500 feet climbing to 4000 on a mountain side we stopped to drink Wild Turkey straight from the bottle like in the movies made by John Ford, and Howard Hawks in the 40s and 50s, before the end of the founding fathers of the Hollywood factory of dreams.

 

Brian told me about his girlfriend on one stop.  Bob lit up a Marlboro, regaled us with his unique banter, and Snowball went off into the brush.  The potato pipe full of weed permeated the air as it went around from father to son, to brother, to father, and back to friend, and to the other, and the other to one.  We shared a dance at every stop on the climb up a slope of Nevada rock. Each time, Snowball jumped out of Bob’s rust bucket of an 80s Bronco, like the one OJ drove on the 405 threatening to kill himself, and he ran around marking his territory, and each time just a few minutes, and a few laughs later we piled back into our vehicles.  To get Snowball back in the truck, Bob would give a throaty shout, he'd come galloping through the brush then leap out of nowhere into the OJ truck.  We all commented how loyal he was (to Bob) considering the sodium levels in an old Bostonian hermit living off the grid in Nevada. He’d just call out and the dog would simply appear.  

 

This time Snowball did not hear it was time to leave.  If he had heard Bob calling, he ignored the call like a teenage boy might, hiding behind a door listening to rap on sound cancelling headphones.  He sniffed his way just out of reach, (dumb dog), and didn’t respond.  And then we all began chiming, and there was a chorus of 4 diferent cries.  Silence.  We stood there in the silence, waiting for the sound of a dog emerging from the bush, and listening to the silence again and again for long enough - it felt.  And then we heard it. It was muffled and brief like a fingersnap, but we were all in agreement. It was a yelp.  It caused a collective shudder. If we all felt the jolt, no one dared say it until Bob did, an hour later when we gave up the search.

 

We fanned out in a 30 minute radius, and given the terrain, the hour, the risk, and the understanding that if he had fallen prey to the elements, it was our unintended sacrifice, and final, and there was no bringing him back.  As he had been a gift to Bob, and a joy to anyone encountered, his path was at its end here where he became dinner for a den of wildcats. His mission was complete, and now his canine soul would move on to inhabit memory.

 

We drank more, and smoked more from the potato pipe and generally headed up towards Bob’s place.  At each stop we stepped deeper and deeper into resolution that Snowball had been here as an angel.  Behind his back it was said that Snowball was Bob’s best friend who had softened Bob now in his 8th decade, so like men do - we philosophized surrounding the loss of a dog, while in our hearts we simply pained deeply for Bob, who fired his gun to the sky.

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We made the destination. Finally.  A crack in the earth where water trickled from a hole at the bottom of a moutain spring.  An hour ago we were crying for the dog gone dog, and moods had settled into a somber one.  Our journey had been laced with a death of a mascot.  With mourning.  With recovery from loss by filling the void with another explanation of the miracle of life.  Standing around the jeep near the well I had to lay down.  From where I sat on the earth looking up at them it could have been Mt. Rushmore for the way they stood in a cluster.  The diference being here and now, and not an artistic fantasy -  when suddenly seeing Snowball's return from the dead, covered in mud, they're faces experienced the same degree of infectious astonishment - simultaneously. 

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