Mel and I arrived in Kansas just ahead of a thunderstorm that had been on the old Dodge’s tail since we left Colorado. Bones and Michael were scurrying around collecting things that were about to blow away, but Tiny the Wolf Hound was right there at our feet – protector, friend and greeting committee all in one. She became the first dog to ever to sleep at my feet.
We had picked up a hitchhiker, Jimmy, and had offered him a place to stay for the night, and a trip back to the highway in the morning. He was an old guy to us then, but certainly younger than I am now. He was headed South to find his people. Bones had some cherry brandy and I had some warm quarts of Budweiser. Mel pulled out her guitar and Jimmy brought a pair of spoons out of his backpack. The guy was incredible, still one of the best spoons players I’ve ever seen, including that gal from Asheville that’s all over the internet. He gave us careful lessons, showed us how to shape the spoons to fit the fingers, explained that silver plate worked best – pure silver is too soft and rings flat, stainless is too hard to shape. He showed us how his bottom spoon was a round soup spoon to get those nice loud pops, and the top spoon was more elongated to make those trills across all four fingers. We finished off the beer, and most of the brandy.
The newcomer, the traveler and the dog slept on the floor that night. Perhaps that’s when Tiny and I bonded. I called her Calliope for some strange reason. As the summer passed, and the wheat grew taller, her circles around the house grew wider, she would sit each day a little farther out, staring across the fields at something invisible, or very far away.
Tiny had no actual wolf blood, the name was a coronation, an honorific for services rendered, for her devotion to her pack, for her ability to see the unseeable. She passed before the summer was gone. I decided to stay in Kansas, living in a house with other writers and musicians was the feast my soul was born to survive on. That fall, we rented the house on Doyle Creek. It was rougher country, our backyard was not a wheat field and the landlord didn’t live just across the lot. We left Tiny’s bones under that wheat field.
After a couple of years of beautiful isolation, I moved into the city, still ready to be surrounded by artists and writers, lovers and story tellers, magicians and healers, deep thinkers and hard workers. The table was laid out, the chairs pulled back, and the feast began.