By Carrie Jacobson

And so, December starts, and in this month of long, dark nights, we feel our age in the early sunsets, and our losses in the lateness of the dawns. We fight back, celebrating and decorating with light. We cook and clean and shop, we plan and order and wrap to fend off the fears, keep the sadness at bay. And if we are lucky, we tuck our faith – in God, in nature, in family, in art, in laughter, in humanity – close around us, and feel thankful for its warmth.

You can find some warmth and friendship and art at the Wallkill River School in Montgomery this weekend. My work and Shawn Dell Joyce’s will be included in the members’ show, which opens with a reception on Saturday, from 5-8 p.m. You’re invited; please come!

All weekend, as well, the Starving Artists sale will offer framed and unframed pieces of our work, along with the work of many other local artists, at discount prices. The school in on Route 17K in Montgomery. Check the website to the right of this column for directions and more information.

For more information on this painting, including size, price and delivery options, contact carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

By Carrie Jacobson

Chapter 24

Zoe and Kaja run up the road, away from the yellow house where Zoe used to live.

They run around a curve, and stop, panting, behind a bush.

Kaja peers around the edge of the bush. She can’t see the yellow house any more, but she can smell it, and the scent of the man who yelled at them and chased them away.

She turns back to Zoe, and rubs her nose along the small dog’s face. She licks the little dog’s ear, and Zoe pulls in close to the big red dog, and Kaja feels the little dog trembling.

Zoe doesn’t know what to do. She’s come so far to this little road, to this neighborhood she knew so well and loved so much. She and Kaja have followed roads, crossed fields, forged rivers. They’ve faced danger, outsmarted people, and been tempted time and again to stay, to rest, to settle, but they kept moving. They kept walking and traveling and fighting, to get here, to this place that was supposed to be home.

And now it’s not home. It’s just a yellow house on a little road, a yellow house with strangers who yell and kick and hate.

The dogs don’t know what to do. And so they do what dogs do. They curl up beneath the bush and sleep.

They sleep, and they dream dog dreams. Kaja runs with deer. She races, fleet and swift and silent through the woods, leaping like flight, running so fast that winter never catches her, hunger never catches her, death never catches her. Zoe dreams, and in her dream, she’s in the yellow house, curled up in front of the fire. James is sitting in a chair, reading, and the woman is in the kitchen, cooking something that smells delicious. In her dream, Zoe is happy and warm and full, and everything is as it is supposed to be.

She hears the neighbor’s voice through the window then, and in her dream, she listens hard, and she hears the sound of James’s car in the driveway. And then she hears him talking to the neighbor, and in her dream she imagines she can smell his scent – and it is so real, so close, that it wakes her up – and she listens, and sniffs the air –

And she jumps up. She jumps up so quickly that she wakes Kaja, and the big dog raises herself up, and stares at Zoe, and Zoe barks, once, twice – and cocks her head and listens.

She barks again.

And again.

And then she hears it.

“Zoe?” the voice calls.  “Zoe?”

And Zoe barks again, and begins running down the road, barking, running as fast as her tiny legs will carry her, and as she and Kaja round the corner, the big dog sees a man running toward them, a man with dark hair and a beard and a huge smile on his face, and he sees the little dog and calls her name again, but  this time, tears have choked his voice, and he reaches Zoe, and bends down and picks her up in both hands, and holds her close to his face and says her name, again and again and again.

Zoe is wagging and wriggling so hard that James has to hold her tight, and he presses his face against her, saying her name again and again, and the little blind dog licks his tears away, and snuggles tight as she can against the man she loves.
The End

Epilogue

James Dunning took Zoe and Kaja back to the house he and his wife were sharing with her mother.  If we’re going to stay here, he told her, these dogs are staying with us. Susan’s mother finally agreed. It turned out that she wasn’t as allergic as she’d led them to believe.

Soon enough, Susan’s hours picked back up, and James started a new job at Orange Regional Medical Center. By the start of 2010, he and Susan were able to give their renters notice, and move back into the little yellow house.
Now, they were four: James and Susan and their two dogs, Kaja and Zoe.

A note to readers:

The animals in this story are based on our own animals. Zoe actually is a blind lhasa apso. Our daughter got Zoe from the Connecticut Humane Society, and we ended up taking her a few years later. Zoe is about 12, we think. She is a fierce and loving little dog, happy and sweet but serious about her role as a guardian, blind or not.

Kaja is based on our big red German shepherd-chow. We got her as a puppy, from the shelter in Westminster, Maryland. Kaja is about the smartest, most noble dog ever. She’s 13, and arthritis is taking a toll on her, but she’s still happy to greet every day.

Loosey was a wonderful cat of ours, who was killed by a coyote. She was a smart and sweet and funny cat who loved the woods and the sun and the big, broad outdoors. I wrote this story in her memory.

Thank you for reading.

Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com

Zoe, asleep on the couch; Loosey, beneath the couch

The real me, with the real Kaja and a painting I made of Kaja

The real Zoe

By Carrie Jacobson

The harvest is in, the days are shorter and winter has grasped us with a light, firm grip. The color has drained away and the fields look burnished and rich in the early hours of day.

For information on the size and price of this painting, and delivery options, contact carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

By Carrie Jacobson

Chapter 23

Zoe and Kaja round a corner on the road, and Zoe can smell her old neighborhood. It’s a light scent, but it is there, on the thin November breeze. She can smell the lake that the road crosses, and she can smell the road itself, and the trees and fields alongside it, and the tumble-down blue house that people are working on, and she’s so excited, she begins jumping and leaping around Kaja, and wagging her tail, and barking, and hopping up to lick her friend’s nose.

But it’s a long way from where they are to where they’re going, Zoe knows. And so she settles down, a little, and trots along behind her big red friend.

They pass the mansion, and turn down the road that goes along the lake. Zoe can smell the water and the pines and the particular grass that grows there. She has smelled this all her life, it seems. Most times, when the man took her out in the car, they’d come near here. Sometimes they’d stop, and the man would just sit in the car and listen, and pat Zoe, and talk to her in his calm voice.

And then, Kaja stops. She stands still, and presses her nose onto Zoe’s head, to still the small dog, too. Day is falling into night, and the shadows are deep and cold along the road. Zoe can hear animals moving. She can hear small branches breaking, and she can hear leaves moving.

Then, a deer stalks out of the woods. It’s a young buck, tall and heavy, the color of the fallen leaves.  Antlers rise from his head. He holds his tail high. His eyes are huge, and his big ears twitch and turn. He sees Kaja, and the two stare at each other. Then, he turns and, with a flash of his tail, leaps back into the deep woods.

They’re starting to move again, when Kaja hears something else. She sniffs the air, and pushes Zoe toward the road. They cross, and hear something else and turn to look. A squirrel darts down a tree, and starts digging, and just like that, a coyote leaps on him and grabs him, closes his giant teeth over the squirrel and shakes him.

Kaja gets behind Zoe and pushes her into a run. They run down the road, and turn onto the main road. They run across the lake and up the hill and down. They run until they can’t run any longer.  And that night, they sleep beneath the porch of a house filled with people and noise and the smell of cooking meat.
In the morning, Zoe is stiff and sore from being hit by the car. There’s frost on the grass, and the ground beneath their feet is cold and hard.

They push on, and as the sun rises, they trot along the edge of the road, and in a while, they come down the last hill, and there’s Zoe’s house, her sweet little house, standing on the corner, smelling just as it did when she left.

But then they get closer, and Zoe realizes she’s wrong. It doesn’t smell the same. It doesn’t smell right. And the car, that’s not his car. But she can smell his car, and his smell, and the woman’s smell, and her own smell. And she knows it’s the house. She knows it.

The two dogs walk up to the house. People are awake inside. The dogs can hear them, making noises and talking, making food. Kaja and Zoe sit in a patch of sun near the car. Zoe trembles from time to time, and whines.

And then the door opens. Kaja barks. Zoe leaps up. She cocks her head to hear his voice. She sniffs the air to smell his scent.

It’s all wrong. All wrong!

“Hey! You dogs! Get out of here!” the man yells. It’s not his voice! It’s not him! And then the man is running at them, yelling and clapping his hands, and Kaja sees that he’s about to kick at them, and she gets behind Zoe and pushes her, and they run away, as fast as they can.

Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com

By the River. Oil on canvas, 6x18. Contact carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for price and delivery information

By Carrie Jacobson

We rise, we sleep, we love, we hope, and on the face of this Earth, we tremble with fear and courage, trepidation and conviction. There is nothing as full as a well-lived life. That’s not to say we leave without regrets – only that regret takes as much heart as anything.

Loosey

By Carrie Jacobson

Chapter 22

The story so far: James Dunning lost his job, and then, to save his house, had to move in with his wife’s mother. She is allergic to dogs, though, and so James took Zoe, his mostly blind lhasa apso, to the Pike County shelter. He left her there in the middle of the night. But before the shelter opened, Kaja, a big red dog who’s been on her own for a while, found Zoe and freed her. The two set out to find James. On the way, they picked up a cat, Loosey, who’s helped them on part of their journey. Loosey has decided to stay at a farm where they just spent the night, and so Zoe and Kaja have pushed on. But, crossing the road away from the farm, Zoe has darted out and been hit by a car.

It starts to rain. Kaja looks at the woman who was driving the car that hit Zoe. The woman is weeping. It wasn’t her fault, Kaja knows. It was the fault of the big dog, the big white dog behind the fence in that yard, the big white dog that lunged at Zoe and scared her into the road. Kaja leaves her friend’s side and walks to the fence. She growls at the big dog, growls and snarls and barks at the dog, and he stares at her for a moment, and she stares back, stares him down, and he slinks back to the porch, climbs the steps and stands there.

And then she hears gasping from the little crowd of people. And she hears crying, wailing and sobbing, and she trots back over, knowing that her friend is gone. Her sweet, happy little friend. They were close to where she used to live, Kaja knows. They were almost there.

The rain falls harder, and the wind picks up. Kaja pushes in past the legs of the people, knowing what she’s going to see.

But instead of seeing her little friend dead there on the pavement, she sees Zoe sitting up, breathing. Her unseeing eyes are open, and she’s panting and holding her head a little to the side, and then Kaja sees Loosey, sitting beside Zoe, licking the side of the little dog’s face.

“It’s a miracle,” one of the women says. “That cat! Where did that cat come from? How did that cat do that?”

“It’s like she breathed the life back into her,” another woman says, and reaches down to pick up Loosey, but the cat skitters away. She sees Kaja, and comes up to her and rubs against the big dog’s legs. Loosey smells good, like hay and dirt and sun-warmed wood. She smells like the Piersons’ barn, and the horses in it, and she rubs against Kaja and the big dog knows that the cat has found her home.

And then she touches noses with Kaja, and turns and lopes off across a field, and in a moment, she’s gone from sight.

Zoe is up on all fours now, and Kaja pushes through the little crowd to get to her. The big dog licks the little dog’s ear, and licks the side of her face, and Zoe knows how glad Kaja is to see her again, and the two begin to walk off together.

“No! Don’t go, don’t go, dogs, come here! Come here!” a woman’s voice calls.

Kaja wants to go on, wants to push on their way, but the woman’s voice stops Zoe. She remembers being called, and getting cookies for going wherever they wanted her to go. She remembers being called, and being patted and picked up and hugged when she came to them. Being called had everything in it, everything from her old life, and when the woman calls her again, everything in her pulls toward the woman. But then, she looks at Kaja, and though she can’t really see the big red dog, she can feel the big dog’s heart.

Zoe aches where the car hit her. She’s bruised and sore. She’s tired and thirsty. But the big red dog is her friend and her guide, and Zoe realizes right there how much she loves her, how much she trusts her.

“Come here, dogs!” the woman’s voice yells again.

But Kaja and Zoe turn away, and head out through the cold November rain, toward the house where Zoe used to live.

Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com

By Carrie Jacobson

As autumn moves toward winter, farmers reap the harvest and the land lies rich and fallow in the thin November sun. The fields warm and cool, and whisper a promise of spring beyond the snow. For information about price and shipping of this painting, contact carriebjacobson@gmail.som

Loosey

Chapter 21

The story so far: James Dunning lost his job at the Record, and he and his wife had to rent their home out and move in with her mother, who was allergic to dogs. So James had to give up Zoe, his 12-year-old mostly blind lhasa apso. James left her, in the middle of the night, at the Pike County shelter. Kaja, a big red dog, came along, and together, the new friends set out to find James. Along the way, they met Loosey, a cat whose elderly owner had to go into a nursing home. They’ve made their way to Otisville, and have spent the night in a barn at the Piersons’ farm.

Frost rims the fallen leaves and field grass this November morning, as the three friends wake in their warm corner of the barn. Zoe loves the smell of the barn, the scents of hay and oats, horses and cows and old dry wood and night-cold air warming in the dawn.

Inside the barn, Kaja hears scrabbling in a corner, and a moment later, sees Loosey carrying a mouse in her jaws. Just as Loosey emerges from the dark back of the barn, the girl who let them in last night pulls the big barn door open and walks in carrying a bag of food.

“Oooh, kitty, good work!” she says, and takes the dead mouse by the tail and puts it in a trash barrel. “I feel bad for the mouse,” the girl says, “but they’ve been eating the horses’ food and just getting into everything. You’re a good barn cat, kitty girl. A couple days of you out here and we’d have no mouse problem at all.”

She reaches down to pat Loosey, and the big cat stretches and rubs against the girl’s legs, and begins purring, a loud tiny motor. It’s been a long time since any human had time for her, or words. Her woman had loved her, but she was sick for so long, and she was so sick and so weak that she could barely breathe, let alone pet Loosey. The daughter who finally came to help her didn’t like Loosey at all. The first thing she did was to banish her from her woman’s bedroom, even though the woman and Loosey both loved it when she curled up on the old woman’s bed.

So Loosey rubs now against the girl’s legs, and purrs and purrs and then, when the girl picks her up, Loosey rubs her face all over the girl’s neck and cheek. The girl holds her close, and whispers to her, and Loosey can smell her scent and hear her heart beating, and she knows this girl is young and healthy and maybe a little sad, and she decides that she will stay, if the girl will let her.

The three friends eat, and drink clear, clean water from a bowl the girl fills fresh for them, and then the dogs look down the driveway. The sun is just breaking over the tops of the trees, and it warms the dirt and the air in front of the barn. The girl stands in the doorway, and Loosey sits beside her. The cat’s white fur gleams in the sun.

Kaja noses the cat’s fur, and Loosey rubs against the dogs, Kaja first and then little Zoe. This is a good place for Loosey to stay, and the girl picks her up and strokes her fur as Zoe and Kaja trot away down the drive.

Little Zoe feels sad. It’s been a time of losses and leavings, and she’s just a little blind dog, tired and small and wanting to be home. The days are colder and colder, and the ground beneath her feet is harder and harder. The wind blows the smell of snow, and ice and winter, and though her coat has thickened, she can feel the cold against her skin.

Alone together, Kaja and Zoe trot along the edge of the road. On the other side of the road, horses gather along a fence, waiting for a person to come and feed them. Cars go by, and overhead, Canada geese fly together, honking at the wind. The sun begins to warm the air, and the frost vanishes, and then, all of a sudden, a huge, snarling dog lunges off the front porch of a small house and races toward them, barking and gnashing his teeth, and Zoe runs, runs into the road –

and into the path of a car, coming around the bend.

The dog lunges and jumps and growls and barks. The brakes on the car squeal. Kaja begins barking, and the car hits Zoe and the little dog drops to the pavement.

The door of the car opens, and a woman jumps out, shrieking and crying. She runs to Zoe and picks her up and holds her close. The little dog isn’t moving. The woman puts her head against Zoe’s chest, and cries and cries.

A car coming from the other direction stops, and a man gets out. A woman comes running from the house with the big mean dog, and she takes Zoe while the drivers pull their cars over, off the road. Kaja watches, nudging her way in, and sniffing at Zoe, and the woman from the house listens at Zoe’s chest, and pets her side and turns away.

Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com

Arabesque

By Carrie Jacobson

The winter wind twists through these autumn days and whispers a song of sweet melancholy. Fall’s colors drain off, leaving memory and hope and the brilliant promise of an early dawn.

For price and delivery information on this 10×30 oil painting, contact Carrie  at carrie@zestoforange.com

Kaja

By Carrie Jacobson

Chapter 20

The story so far: James Dunning lost his job and moved in with his wife’s mother, who is allergic to dogs. He brought Zoe, his old, nearly blind lhasa apso, to the Pike County shelter and left her there, tied to the fence, in the middle of the night. Before daybreak, Zoe met Kaja, a big red chow-German shepherd, and the two left the shelter to make their way back to James. They’ve been joined by Loosey, a cat, who’s most recently helped them make their way across the bridge over the Neversink on Route 209.

In the morning, at the intersection of Route 209 and Route 211 in Deerpark, the trio stops. Kaja can smell water, and the rich scent of tilled soil. But which road to take?

She nudges Loosey toward a tall tree, and Loosey understands in an instant. She’d lived with dogs her whole life and she likes them. Then, Thelma, the last dog, got old and died, and Marie went into a nursing home, and suddenly, Loosey was on her own. But she knows dogs, and so she leaps up into the tree and climbs high, high above the little building on the corner, high above the house across the street, higher than the fire station roof.

From the branches, she can see the fields below, and a river snaking along one side of the road. She can see the mountains and a tower sitting high in them. She can see houses, and a road that curves in one direction and climbs a small hill in the other.

She comes down the tree – always harder! – and the three decide to walk along the flat road that skirts the fields. They’re hungry, and there should be mice or voles to catch and eat there.

Loosey does just that, catches two mice, and the three eat, and then drink from the river, and make their way along the road. It narrows and climbs, runs past houses set back in the woods, and past dirt roads and big patches of forest. Cars zoom by, and the three shrink back into the underbrush.

In the afternoon, the three come to a place where the road widens and there are more houses. Kaja can smell people, and a bright mix of cooking smells, from houses and from restaurants. She can hear people talking and laughing, and she knows this is a town, and that towns are dangerous.

They scramble down a bank, away from the main road, and cross under a bridge. It’s quieter down here, and darker, and they run along this road, down a hill, away from the town, Kaja in the lead, Loosey following Zoe. Night is coming, and the air is getting sharp and cold, and it doesn’t feel safe here.

Just then, there’s a loud noise, louder than any of the three has ever heard, a noise of metal and machine and iron, and a smell of something harsh and dark, and then a long, screeching, horrible screaming whistle – the three stop and flatten themselves, make themselves as small as possible – and the train roars past, cabin lights coming on, whistle blaring – and then it’s gone, and Kaja and Zoe and Loosey run as fast as they can.

They end up on the big road again, and this time, Kaja can smell horses and cows, and it’s a good smell, a smell that means barns and water and hay and maybe even food. A smell that means safety. They trot along the road, and as the day darkens into night, they make their way up the drive into Pierson’s farm.

There’s a light on in the barn, and a girl is singing as she does her chores. She’s raking a stall when the three friends arrive at the door, and she looks up and laughs.
“Well, hello!” she says, and they know they’re safe for the night.

Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com