Smile in Summer and the Dog Smiles Back

I am sitting here on the rear deck of my house, staring at the oak trees that surround me and feeling, well, sluggish.

The good dog Barkley, whom everyone is calling Broccoli, is similarly lethargic. He is lying at my feet with one eye open observing a bird sitting on a nearby limb. The bird is staring back with the intensity of a tax auditor.

I hadn’t known until then that dogs were able to sleep with one eye open. I thought that only Marines in combat situation were capable of sleeping and not sleeping at the same time.

But my intent was not to sit out here on this sweet summer morning and stare at the trees like some kind of farm boy idiot. I hauled my laptop computer out to the deck because I began thinking the other day that I had the deck, so why not write out there?

I spent big money recently having it rebuilt because the old platform was rotting and the whole structure was getting shaky. When people start bouncing on your floor like characters in a Mickey Mouse cartoon, you know that something must be done.

Just before we had it rebuilt, an old drinking buddy visiting from Oakland managed to put his foot through one of the rotting planks.

“He’s half drunk,” my wife, the observant Cinelli, whispered to me after we had pulled his foot out of the hole.

“Don’t be negative,” I whispered back. “He’s actually half sober.”

My intent this morning was to bustle out to the deck, set up my laptop and send words tumbling into cyberspace like beads of sweat from a thinker’s brow. I’m not sure how that works exactly, columns flying from here to there, but I don’t know how the radio works either or the telephone or the dishwasher, and so what?

Old Broccoli, which is what I’m going to start calling him, seemed pretty eager at the outset too. We usually begin our mornings leaping out of bed, shouting, “Into the breach once more, dear friends!” like British soldiers fighting an unwinnable battle, but plucky just the same. (Why are the Brits always plucky? Who knows?)

Actually, I’m the one who does the shouting. Broccoli, who sleeps on an old leather couch near our bed, greets the day with a bark that is half woof and half yowl. My granddaughter Nicole says he wowls. Anyhow, he was eager to get on with it.

But by the time we reached the deck, something had happened. The morning bore the subtle aroma of perfume in a woman’s hair, a hypnotizing blend of flowers and sun warmth that can turn a tiger into a lamb and a writer into something soft and pliable and strange looking. I was mesmerized the moment I stepped out the door.

For one thing, I began smiling. That is not a condition of my nature, although in high school and college I was told I had a quick, bright smile and I should use it for attracting girls and seducing teachers into believing that I was smart and pleasant.

I smiled all through high school, though it didn’t do me a lot of good, but quit smiling after a few months in college when people suspected I might be on drugs, which I wasn’t. And here I am smiling again, and I’m not sure why. Even the dog is smiling, and dogs aren’t supposed to smile either.

“What are you doing out there?” Cinelli has just called, standing in the doorway.

“Smiling,” I say.

“Aren’t you supposed to be writing a column?”

“I am,” I say. “I’m writing and smiling.”

“I don’t hear the cheery clickety-click of your writing machine.”

“I’m writing it in my head first, the way Mozart wrote his stuff before putting it on paper.”

“Good,” she said, “we’ll play it when you’re through. Can we expect a concerto or will it be a simple cantata this time?”

She knows.

What she knows is that even though it’s summer, spring fever has caught up with me and my inert friend Broccoli. We are finally tired of winter’s wearying rush of events and have dissolved into this April state of ennui--me staring at the trees, and the dog with one eye on the bird. It is springtime of the soul in the summer of our languor.

“Have we come to this?” I ask the dog. His other eye pops open. He looks up at me with both eyes, waiting eagerly for words of strength and wisdom, or at the very least a dog biscuit. I carry them in my pocket. Not words of wisdom, but dog biscuits. I am tempted to share one with him as an act of friendship, but I am not quite at that point. I ate dog food once, thinking it was hash. Pour a little ketchup on it, and everything tastes like hash.

Emily Dickinson, that puckish old sprite, wrote, “A little madness in the spring / Is wholesome even for the king.” That goes for springtime of the spirit.

So I’m not writing of Valley secession today, or the pope or any of his saints. I don’t care about either the scramble for power or the lure of salvation.

All I care about is the soft breeze that stirs the uppermost leaves of the trees, and the sun that lights their morning ... and the good dog Broccoli, who lies in peace at my feet, one eye in heaven and the other on the bird.