By Carrie Jacobson
Bert is my brother’s bulldog. He’s been a good dog for a long time. Now, he’s creaky and grumpy and very white in the face. A burglar would have to wake him up to get a rise out of him. To have me make a painting of your dog or cat, contact me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com
By Carrie Jacobson
The story so far: Zoe, a mostly blind lhasa apso, and Kaja, a big red chow mix, are traveling from the Pike County shelter to Middletown to find Zoe’s owner. They have just rescued Samantha Morrone from a near-tragic rafting accident on the Delaware, and have holed up for the night in an abandoned car. Samantha, her brother Ashton and their parents, Angie and Pete, are looking for the dogs, who have been joined by a cat named Loosey.
Chapter 18
In the morning, Angie keeps Samantha home from school. She’s OK, really, but Angie just can’t let her out of her sight. Yesterday, she came too close to losing her. And she didn’t even know! This makes Angie feel sick inside. It makes her feel like wrapping Sam in a blanket and tucking her into bed and keeping her there for the next 10 years, while she waits on her hand and foot. She’d do the same with Ashton, too, but Pete took him, first to search for the dogs, and then to go to school.
Pete and Ashton drive past Glen Spey first, looking for the dogs, searching and calling out the windows, but they see nothing, not a person, not a cat, not a dog, nothing but cars.
Pete turns around and doubles back. He leaves Ashton at the school, where he joins a group of his friends, all looking at something that one of the boys has. Pete taps the horn before he drives away, and Ash turns and smiles and waves, and Pete feels his heart lurch.
He looks for the dogs as he drives down 97 again, headed for his office. He doesn’t see them, though he passes within a couple hundred yards of where they’re sleeping, curled together in the abandoned car.
In time, they get up, stretch, and head back to the road. The cat trots along with them, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, sometimes vanishing for long stretches.
At one point, she comes out of the woods carrying a dead chipmunk. In the next hour, she kills two others. Kaja and Zoe and Loosey the cat, bellies full, curl up together in a sunny spot near a house just off Barnes Road.
They’re sleeping there when someone rattles up the driveway to the house in a beat-up old truck, carrying a load of wood. The driver turns the truck around, backs it up to a spot behind the house, and gets out and pulls down the tailgate.
At first, Kaja thinks the driver is a man, but as she watches, she begins to see that it’s a woman. She’s built like a man, and her haircut is like a man’s, and she’s wearing a big flannel shirt over a T-shirt. But Kaja watches, and she can tell from the person’s movement, and from her scent, that she’s female. And strong.
The dogs watch as the woman tosses the wood from the truck. She works without stopping, without wiping her brow, without bothering to hitch up her jeans or pull down her shirt. When she’s done, though, she opens the door of the truck, pulls out a paper bag, and goes around to the back of the truck. There, she sits in the sun on the tailgate and eats a sandwich and an apple and drinks from a thermos.
She takes out a cigarette then, and smokes it, and tosses the crust of her sandwich toward the spot where the dogs are hiding.
“Come on out,” she says, and her voice is low and soft. “Come on out, dogs, I see you there.”
Zoe takes a step toward the woman. She can’t see her, but she can smell her, and she likes the smell. It makes her think of home. She takes another step, and now she can smell the sandwich.
She doesn’t like eating animals. She doesn’t like eating trash. She likes eating kibble that comes in a bag. She likes the crusts of sandwiches, and little tastes of meat and cheese, and fresh, cool water in a bowl, and suddenly, her old life comes back to her, and she misses it so much, she begins whining. She creeps toward the woman, and when she gets close enough, the woman offers her a cookie, and Zoe walks right up to her and takes it.
The woman lifts her up, and holds her on her lap and pets her. Kaja, watching, creeps closer, too, and the woman bends and pats her on the head, then rubs her ears, and Kaja lies down beneath the tailgate.
And as the woman continues to caress Zoe, she begins to laugh. Loosey the cat has come out of hiding, too.
“Well, aren’t you all something,” the woman says. “Your own little ‘Incredible Journey,’ eh? Except you’re supposed to be a Siamese,” she says, pointing to Loosey.
“Come on,” she says, “get on in.” She puts Zoe in the now-empty truck bed, and pats it. Kaja looks at her, and at little, blind Zoe, and then she jumps up. The truck smells like wood and dirt and warm sunshine on a cool October day. The woman pats Zoe and then looks at Loosey.
“If you’re with them, then, come along,” she says, and the cat leaps up, light as moonbeams. The woman starts the rattling truck, heads out to the road and turns toward Port.
Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com
Purple Haze. Oil on stretched canvas, 8x10. For price and delivery information, contact carrieBjacobson@gmail.com
By Carrie Jacobson
There’s something about an abandoned house that speaks to me. I see these houses, I pass them day after day, and I watch nature take them over, take them back. As vines climb up their sides, as the fields push their way into the lawns, as the roofs fall in and the paint weathers off, these abandoned places speak more clearly to me. This one is on Route 17K, just outside Montgomery. Last week, the purple wildflowers shone softly in the autumn sun, and the goldenrod bent and swayed in the wind.
By Carrie Jacobson
The story so far:
Zoe and Kaja are traveling from the Pike County shelter to Middletown to find Zoe’s owner. They’re sleeping at the edge of the Delaware when the river rises and nearly sweeps them away. At the height of their trouble, they see Samantha Morrone, a young girl they’ve met on their travels. She’s adrift on a raft, being swept down the river. Kaja, the big red dog, rescues her, and then she helps get Zoe, a nearly blind lhasa apso, to safety. She also rescues Loosey, a cat who’s ended up in trouble on the river.
Kaja
Chapter 17
The sun is nearing the horizon as Samantha, Kaja, Zoe and Loosey climb the bank, toward the road. When they reach Route 97, Samantha sees they’re just about in Handsome Eddy, which she knows only because she thinks it’s such a funny name for a town. Well, it’s not really a town. Not much of a town. More like a wide place where rafters like to hang out.
Samantha is scared. She is cold and wet and her teeth are chattering, and she is scared. She knows she almost died out there on the river, and that’s scary enough. But when she thinks about what her parents are going to say, what they’re going to do, she’s even more scared.
Maybe she should just run away. Go with these dogs, wherever they are going. Never go home. She made it this far, she thinks. She can’t be in much worse trouble than she’s in now.
But she’s hungry, too, and so cold. The big red dog noses into a driveway. She looks at the house, and then looks at Samantha. The dog isn’t talking, not in words, but she might as well be. The dog is telling Samantha to go to the house. Call her parents. Face the facts.
She starts down the driveway, and then tells the dogs to sit. They do, and the cat sits, too, which makes Sam smile. She turns around once, and they’re still there. Then she rounds a curve in the drive, and nearly runs to the house.
She knocks on the door. Nothing happens. She looks for a bell, but doesn’t see one. She knocks again and waits. She begins to realize how cold and wet and scared she is. She’s trembling. Her hands are white, she sees, her fingernails blue. The day is cooling, and her wet clothes are starting to feel icy on her skin.
This time, she bangs on the door, hard, and when it opens, there’s a woman standing there, and Samantha has seen her before, and when the door opens, Sam smells dinner cooking, and out of the blue, just like that, she begins to sob. She flings herself into the woman’s arms, and nearly collapses.
“Oh, dear,” the woman says, “oh, dear! What has happened to you? Come in, come in, come in, now, and ssshhhh, stop your crying, dear, you’re safe now, safe and warm,” and, talking all the time, she nearly carries Samantha into the living room, puts her on a couch, wraps her in a blanket, and goes to make her a cup of tea. By the time she gets back to the living room, Samantha has fallen asleep.
Outside, in the driveway, Kaja and Zoe and the cat wait. They hear the door open. They hear voices. They hear the door shut. And then there’s nothing.
They wait. The sun falls. The breeze picks up. Kaja noses toward the road, and they set off. She looks back once. She can see that a light has come on in the house. She likes the girl. She could love the girl, she knows. But they have to go. They have to find Zoe’s man.
Mary Dubrovnik lets Samantha sleep for 10 minutes, then wakes her. The girl would sleep all night, Mary knows, but she has parents and family and they must be worried sick. The girl is familiar, she’s from somewhere nearby, but Mary can’t place her.
She wakes Samantha, and gets her phone number, and calls.
Angie answers. She’s breathless.
“Pete!” she shouts, when Mary gets the sentence out, “Pete! She’s safe. She’s, she’s – ” her words fall over themselves, and she begins to cry, and Pete takes the phone from her, finds Mary’s address and tells her he’ll be right there.
By the time he arrives, Samantha is warm, fed and nearly dry. By the time he arrives, Zoe and Kaja and Loosey have feasted on the remains of a roasted chicken from someone’s trash can. They’ve drunk water from a stream and they’ve found an abandoned car behind an abandoned shed, and curled up on the back seat, warm and safe and sheltered, and fallen fast asleep.
Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com
By Carrie Jacobson
Chapter 16
The story so far: Zoe and Kaja are making their way from the Pike County shelter to Middletown. Kaja, a big red dog, is helping Zoe, a mostly blind lhasa apso, find James Dunning, her owner.
On the way, they meet Samantha and Ashton Morrone, a brother and sister who live in Barryville with their parents, who run a hotel. The kids want to keep the dogs, but Pete Morrone, the children’s father, says no. He later relents, but it’s too late. The dogs have vanished.
They’ve made their way down the Delaware, and spent the night in a cave. But a heavy rain has made the river rise, and Zoe has been swept off the bank and onto a tiny island, where she’s discovered a cat clinging to a piece of driftwood.
Kaja stands on the bank of the Delaware and barks. The water is rushing by so fast, so strong, it’s roaring, roaring, and Kaja can hardly hear herself. She can see Zoe, wet and bedraggled, sniffing at the cat, and the cat sinking down into itself and baring its teeth as if it’s going to leap on Zoe and attack. Please, please, she begs, please don’t do anything to scare that little dog into the water.
Kaja decides to swim, then, and she wades into the river, but instantly, she’s pushed downstream. She makes it to the bank and tries again. Same result.
This time, she gets her breath and shakes herself and walks up the bank, up the river, until she’s above the island. She walks in and in an instant, is carried downstream, past the island.
Once more, she makes it to the bank, and this time, walks even farther upstream. She wades into the water, launches herself, swims as hard as she can, and ends up, soaking and cold and exhausted, on the island with Zoe and the cat.
Zoe meets her, barking and wagging. Kaja sinks down on the sand, her muscles too tired to keep her upright, and Zoe licks the big dog’s face, licks her ears, rubs her little body against the big dog’s, while the cat, wet and cold and terrified, watches.
The cat’s name is Loosey, and until an hour ago, she lived in a house in Barryville. She was out in the yard, climbing on a piece of driftwood, when the branch broke free and was swept down the river. It snagged on this island and Loosey jumped off. No matter what, she thought, this had to be better than drifting down the Delaware.
Now, she’s not so sure. She’s trapped on a tiny island, in the middle of a raging river, with two strange, wet dogs. She’s had better days, she thinks.
Then, as though a door has closed, the rain stops. The sun comes out. Kaja and Zoe, still exhausted, fall asleep in the sun. Loosey dozes on her branch. And the river continues to rise.
Upstream, Samantha and Ashton Morrone see that the rain has stopped, and go out to their fort. Their dad is at work, and their mom is busy with some hotel guests, so they just call in to her that they’re going outside, and in a minute, they’re scrambling down the riverbank to the fort/raft they’ve made.
Samantha steps on it and it rocks under her feet. “Whoa!” she says, and takes another cautious step. The raft rocks again, the water lifting it, nudging it, pushing it. Samantha steps toward the far edge, and in a moment, just like that, the raft is loose, and drifting downstream.
“Sam!” Ashton calls from the bank, “Sam! Oh no!”
“Get help!” Sam wails. “Get Mom!”
In a moment, she is out of sight, hurtling down the river.
On the island, the water is rising, and rising quickly. Kaja is asleep on her side, and the water reaches her feet, and she’s up instantly. In a while, she knows, there will be no island. The water will cover it, and they will be swept away.
She’s nudging Zoe to the edge of the water when she hears a human screaming, above the rush of the river. She looks upriver, and she sees Samantha, and the raft, and without a thought, she leaps.
The brown water churns against her and buffets her, but somehow, she manages to get near enough to the raft that Samantha can see her. The girl tosses her a rope, and Kaja grabs it with her teeth. She turns around and tries to swim toward the bank, or toward the island, but now the river is pulling her downstream. She summons all her strength and heads toward the island, and just as she is about to pass it, just as she is about to miss it, her feet hit something solid, a boulder or a log or something, she doesn’t know what, and she grabs onto it and, with all her might, pulls the rope and the raft toward the shore.
Samantha leaps into the water, toward the island. She holds the rope and searches with her feet for purchase on the riverbed. The water is so strong, it knocks her sideways, but then she finds something, a rock or something underfoot, and she wedges herself against it, and pulls on the rope and hauls herself onto the tiny island.
She lies there, panting and crying, and then she gets up and hugs the big red dog with all her might.
And then she sees that it’s not over, that if they don’t get off this island quickly, they’ll be swept away.
But this time, the raft will help. She pulls it around until it’s between the island and the shore. It’s a distance for a dog to swim, but not so far for a girl. She ties the raft to a log on the island, and then she takes another rope, ties that to the raft, and heads toward the shore. She’s knocked downstream a ways, but not that far. She makes it to the bank and then walks upriver until she can tie the rope to a tree. Then, holding onto the rope, and then the raft, she makes her way back to the island.
She picks up Zoe and, holding onto the ropes and the raft, carries her through the water to the bank. She goes back for Kaja, whom she leads and guides through the water. And then, she goes back for the cat. She doesn’t know where the cat has come from, or how the cat figures into all of this, but she’s not going to leave her there.
And then, as they sit in the sun on the bank of the Delaware, wet, exhausted, weak, they watch as the rising water covers the island, knocks the raft loose and carries it away, toward the sea.
Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com
A note for readers: The real Kaja, our big red German shepherd/chow, suffered a series of seizures and/or strokes this week. She appears to be on the mend, but if you can hold her in your thoughts, we’d both appreciate it. Carrie
The real Kaja
By Carrie Jacobson
On Golden Field. Oil on stretched canvas, 16x20. Contact carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and delivery information.
As summer winds into fall, the fields are coming alive with autumn’s bright and burnished colors. Here, mule ears bloom an astonishingly brilliant yellow in a low, swampy marsh.
By Carrie Jacobson
Chapter 15
The story so far: Zoe and Kaja have made their way from the Pike County Humane Society shelter, across a rickety bridge to Barryville, and then south along the Delaware. The two dogs are trying to find Zoe’s owner, who had to abandon her when times got too tough. Zoe is a mostly blind, 12-year-old lhasa apso; Kaja is a big, strong red dog, a chow/German shepherd mix. The two dogs spent a night in the home of Ashton and Samantha Morrone, but their dad kicked the dogs out in the morning. Later, he relented, but it was too late. Zoe and Kaja had gone. They holed up that night in a little cave at the edge of the Delaware.
When the dogs awake, it’s raining. They leave the cave long enough to find some McDonald’s food that someone has thrown from their car. By the time they’ve eaten, they’re so wet and cold, they go back to the cave.
They sleep for the whole day, curled around each other for warmth.
And while they sleep, the rain keeps falling.
It falls harder and harder. It falls in huge, wind-driven drops. It falls in sheets of rain that blow against the mouth of the cave and drive the dogs to the very back.
The rain falls with a fury, and as Zoe and Kaja sleep, the river rises around them.
The light is going from the sky when Kaja feels the water. She’s curled up with her back to the river. Zoe is nestled between Kaja’s chest and the cave wall. And the water is touching Kaja’s back.
She jumps up, waking Zoe. The water rises. In a moment, it’s covering the floor of the cave. In another moment, it’s covering the dogs’ feet.
The rain is still falling, but it’s slackened enough that Kaja can hear the river, running high and fast. The water is halfway up her legs now, but it’s all the way up to Zoe’s belly, and it’s picking the little blind dog up.
They have to get out of there. They have to get out of the cave.
Kaja grabs Zoe by the back of the neck, and drags her toward the mouth of the cave. The little dog fights. She can hear the river. She can hear the roaring. She can’t see anything, she can only feel the cold water all around her, and she knows the big dog is dragging her toward the current.
She fights and squirms, and at the very mouth of the cave, she wrests herself free of Kaja’s grip.
The water takes her, just like that. It grabs her and shoots her downstream. Her head goes under, and she gulps water, and then her head is above the wave, and she’s floundering, paws and legs churning. She bangs against a rock and goes under again. The world is a swirl of noise and cold and water and speed, and the little dog has never been so scared, never felt her heart beat so fast. She bangs into another rock, and this time, it knocks the wind out of her, and she goes under again and comes up gasping air and water, and she hits another rock, but this time, it holds her fast.
Her feet scrape something. Sand. Slippery rocks. The water beats against her, coming in waves, pounding her face and her nose, but she feels this sand, and it’s going up. It must be the bank of the river, and she lunges up the slope, kicking and scrabbling until she’s out of the water –
And on an island. She’s not on the bank at all, but on a tiny spit of land and rocks and sand five yards from the shore. There are limbs and rocks and branches and driftwood on the island, and above the roaring of the storm and the rain and the river, Zoe can hear Kaja baying, and she barks back, barks as loud as she can, and when she stops, she hears the rain and the river and Kaja – and something else.
A cat.
Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com
By Carrie Jacobson
How can you not love a beagle? It’s a huge dog in a tiny dog’s body. This one is baying to the top of the moon. It’s part of a series of 12 dogs I’m painting for a gallery in West Hartford, Conn. Contact me if you’re interested in price information. Contact the Wallkill River School (click on the link, on the right-hand side of the Zest page) if you want to learn to paint dogs and cats. I’ll be teaching workshops there this week and again in November.
Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com
Oil on canvas, 16x20. For price and shipping information, see carriejacobson.blogspot.com
By Carrie Jacobson
The storm moved in over the Black Dirt region as Gene Bove and I painted there last Friday. The sky looked marbled with dark and light, and the fields lay mostly empty, harvested and waiting to be planted again.
You can see more of my paintings this month at the Wallkill River School Gallery, Route 17K, in Montgomery. For hours and directions, click on the Wallkill River School link to the right.
By Carrie Jacobson
Chapter 14
The story so far: Zoe and Kaja are trying to find Zoe’s owner, who was forced by economic circumstances to leave Zoe, his old, mostly blind lhasa apso, at the Pike County shelter. The dogs have crossed the Delaware on a rickety bridge, and ended up in Barryville. There, they were found by Samantha and Ashton Morrone, children of Pete and Angie Morrone, who run a hotel at the river’s edge. The kids wanted to keep the dogs, but Pete said no, and turned them out, early in the morning. The kids and Angie were so upset that Pete relented and he and the kids set out to find Zoe and Kaja.
Zoe and Kaja turn away from the road almost immediately. It’s just too dangerous. The cars go too fast, and the road is too narrow. Kaja leads Zoe through the woods toward the river.
There, at the edge of the water, animals and fishermen have worn a thin path. The dogs walk along it and make good progress south. In places, it’s easy to walk, and they can trot or lope along. In other spots, it’s rough going, and they pick their way over rocks and driftwood and fallen tree roots and exposed tree roots and an amazing amount of trash.
The morning is cold. The dogs’ breath stands white in the air, and cold seems to be coming off the river itself. Zoe feels especially cold after spending the night in the house. She thinks about her old house, and her old bed, and her humans, but the thoughts make her feel colder, and she loses her footing. She slips, and falls onto rocks. Her head hits one, her ribs hit another, and she falls into the river and goes under.
The water is warmer than the air, and it’s moving, but not so quickly, and little Zoe crashes into another rock, but this one stops her, and she’s able to get her head above the water. She floats downriver for a piece. Kaja races along the bank, parallel, and then she leaps in and swims out to Zoe. She puts her teeth softly on the small dog’s neck and pulls her to the shallow edge. Zoe stands and picks her way up the bank to a sunny, grassy spot.
Zoe shakes the water off, and lies down in the sun, and Kaja licks the little dog’s ears and face, and they rest.
By now, the road is far, far above them. There’s plenty of flat space along the edge of the river, but then the land rises quickly, sharply, so it’s nearly a sheer cliff above their heads.
When the wind isn’t blowing and rustling the tree limbs overhead, they can just hear the sound of the cars passing on the road up there. But they don’t hear the sound of the Morrones’ car, or of Ashton and Samantha calling for them.
Pete drives, and the kids lean out the windows and holler, and whenever he can find a place to pull over, he does, but they are few and far between.
He turns into Dan Foster’s driveway, and pulls in under the pines. Dan’s wife, Anna, is crossing the yard, carrying something, and walks up to the car as it pulls in.
“Hey, Pete, no work today?” she asks.
“Later,” he says. “We’re looking for a couple dogs.”
“I didn’t know you had dogs,” she says. She and Dan have lived here for as long as he can remember.
“They’re not really ours. Not yet at any rate.”
“Is one big and one real little?” Anna asks.
“Yes!” Samantha nearly shouts. “Foxy, the red one, she’s big, and Peanut, the little one, she’s teeny and old and blind.”
“Well,” Anna says, “I saw them go by a while ago. They’d been walking on the road, and then they cut down through the woods there, and that’s about all I saw. They were headed toward the river. I didn’t pay them much mind, really.”
“Can we go see?” Samantha asks.
Anna looks at Pete, a question in her eyes. Pete nods a tiny nod.
“Sure,” Anna says. “Just be careful.”
The kids run off toward the river. The pass the Fosters’ house and run down the path through the woods. But at the river, there’s nothing. Just water and branches and a couple of ducks floating downstream. They walk upstream as far as they can, but they don’t see anything. They call and call, and they walk downstream, but still nothing.
Finally, they walk back to the car. Anna has gone back inside the house, and their dad is waiting. He drives them south on Route 97 for a while longer, but the bank is high over the river, and there’s no way to search. They call, but the wind flings their word away. They are dejected. Pete turns the car around and they head home.
Zoe and Kaja rest for a while, and then get up. Zoe is sore, but not enough to keep her from walking. When they’re thirsty, they drink from the river. They’re getting very hungry, when they find a place where a rafting group has stopped. The trash cans are filled with half-eaten sandwiches, and hot dog buns and apples, and the dogs scavenge and eat until their bellies are full.
By afternoon, Zoe has gone as far as she can. She needs to rest. Her legs are sore, her feet feel bruised, her ribs and her head hurt, and she’s just tired. This is hard work, and especially hard for a little blind dog who tumbled into the river. But Kaja has seen and smelled signs of bears and coyotes here, and so she pushes them to go farther, find some safe hiding place.
Downstream, at the very edge of the river, she sees a tiny cave. Some creature – a fox, she thinks, or a raccoon – has lived here. But today, it’s empty. Inside, there’s just room for the two of them, and they curl up beside the river and go to sleep.
Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com