Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley

Chapter 21: Three Dawg Nights

21 Three Dawg Nights O ur food stamp supply was terminated at Thanksgiving when Depty Dawg tried to use all of November’s allotment to buy a turkey big enough to feed everyone at Waller. “There’s a song in there somewhere,” he declared, snuggling with me under blankets in the tree house. The forest was bare of leaves, the winter light pale and crystalline. It could get really cold at night, even with the woodstove cranking, even with Betsey Ross and Sandra Jean sleeping on the bed with us—an arrangement Depty considered my own personal version of a three-dog night. Some mornings we woke to find the glass of water by the bed frozen solid. So during a cold snap we would often stay at Bubba and Helen’s, partying and playing music till all hours of the night. Or on Old Black Dirt Road, regaled by Billy’s storytelling. There we could take a bath which, for conservation purposes, we did together; it didn’t take much water to fill a claw-foot tub with Depty Dawg and me both in it. Margery’s belly was growing. The nesting instinct had arrived overnight. “It’s true,” Billy informed us. “For days she’s been going around with twigs and little pieces of string in her mouth.” Late one night Depty and I trundled off to bed in their back room. Drifting toward sleep, I murmured, “Dep? I got to pee.” The indoor bathroom was being renovated in readiness for Basil, so the only working toilet was the old outhouse in the yard. I pushed off the covers and tried to stand. Woozy, I fell back in bed. “Can’t have you wetting the bed, darlin’,” Dep said, and throwing on his pants and boots, took me in his arms and carried me to the outhouse shed. Leaving the door open a crack, I lowered myself onto the cold seat. I could see 89 90 | Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley him in his shirtsleeves, sitting against a fence post, smoking a cigarette under a ramble of icy stars. He looked so happy, so content. I put my head down on my knees. Next thing I knew, I was on a big white bed in an all-white jumpsuit, save for my butt which was covered in blue cloth. And after that, I was being taken back to bed. In the morning I told Depty about the dream. He interpreted it as a warning from my subconscious, letting me know a part of myself was about to freeze. Because apparently I’d called out to him from the toilet, “Dep, take me in—my ass is blue.” It was a time of great possibility. We were cozy in the tree house, staying afloat odd-job by odd-job. Depty was buoyant, full of good humor, cranking out words and melodies at a breathtaking rate. He’d even begun to talk about going out to Texas to peddle Blaze Foley’s songs. Nothing we could dream up seemed beyond our reach. The air was raw and damp by the creek. We’d come home late one night after an exasperating evening at Waller where Dep had too much to drink. I knelt down in front of the woodstove, hurrying to make a fire. “Let me just get this going,” I called, balling up newspaper. “Shut up, you cunt,” he spat out. Shocked, I turned to look at him. He was standing on the platform above me, a hand raised in anger, his face a fiendish mask. My breath was white. “Who you talking to?” The question deflated him. He sank onto the loft, pulling off his boots and getting under the covers. The outburst had been so unlike him I could almost convince myself it had nothing to do with me. “It don’t,” he insisted the next morning. “That’s a little hard to believe,” I quavered. “I would never hurt you that way, Sybil. You gotta trust me.” “Then what was it?” He shook his head. “You don’t wanna know.” “Dep—you can tell me anything.” He put his hands to his eyes and began to cry. “Sometimes I think I ain’t glued together right.” I didn’t know what to say to that. A tear slid down his cheek toward his ear. I leaned my face into his and licked the tear. He drew back, startled. “What are you...