It is fortunate that I have a friend able to shoulder such burdens and make me forget for a while that they are there.
<So tell me more about your plans for this meat and gravy bar, Atticus,> Oberon said as he placed his paws against a bound tree in Tasmania prior to shifting home to Oregon. My Irish wolfhound was expecting a proper feast before I went off to battle gods and monsters and assorted demons from the world’s pantheons, and he’d challenged me to supply a meat bar for him, Orlaith, and Starbuck, our new Boston terrier, in the style of salad bar buffets. We’d adopted Starbuck during a stint of crime-fighting in Portland that Oberon pompously called “The Case of the Purloined Poodle.” <Is it going to include all of the meats I will one day include in The Book of Five Meats, or are you going to just have the traditional stuff?>
“The five meat categories will be represented,” I assured him.
<And the gravies? There will be more than one kind, right?>
“Of course. Didn’t you have a maxim about this?”
<Oh, it’s the best line from The Communist Manifesto, by that guy Karl you told me about. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his meat.”>
“Uh…I think you’re misquoting, Oberon. It’s supposed to be ‘to each according to his need.’ ”
<Well, I need that quote to be about meat, Atticus, so I fixed it.>
Choosing to keep Oberon carefully insulated from double entendres has proven to be endlessly entertaining. “An excellent job too. It can’t possibly be interpreted to mean anything else but what you meant. Here we go.”
I shifted us home to our cabin near the McKenzie River in the Willamette National Forest, and Oberon immediately shouted mentally to the other hounds once we arrived.
<Hey, Orlaith! Starbuck! We’re home, and guess what! Atticus is going to make us a meat and gravy bar!>
Starbuck’s higher-pitched voice replied immediately with his limited vocabulary. <Yes food!> he said.
<This sounds like one of the best human inventions since the sausage grinder!> Orlaith added, and both of them exploded through the doggie door to greet us, Orlaith trailing behind because she was very pregnant and close to delivering.
I had to spend a while getting slobbered on and trying to satisfy three dogs with only two hands while they demanded details on the meat and gravy bar. I confessed that I didn’t have sufficient information to provide details.
Oberon was incredulous. <Okay, Atticus, wait now. What information are you lacking, exactly? Surely you are aware of the basic conditions of houndly existence? All the meats are out there, like the truth is out there, and we want to eat them all! Is that sufficient?>
“All the meats? Oberon, that’s impossible.”
<Is it, though? Is iiiiiiiit?>
“It is. At least in the time I have allotted to me. Maybe it could be a squad goal for later. But right now we have to limit ourselves to what we can pick up in Eugene. Is Earnest here?”
Earnest Goggins-Smythe was our live-in dogsitter, whom we’d been depending on rather heavily in the past few weeks, especially as Orlaith’s delivery approached. He had a standard poodle named Jack and a boxer named Algernon, or Algy for short, and they’d remained inside with him.
<Yeah, he’s here,> Orlaith said.
“I should probably say hi and make sure he’s okay with Jack and Algy participating in this smorgasbord. But after that, would you three like to come with me to Eugene to go shopping for the meats, so you can advise me on what to get?”
<That would be wonderful!> Orlaith said.
<Yes food!> Starbuck shouted.
<I advise you right now to get everything,> Oberon said.
“Do you want to go or not?”
<I do. My advice isn’t going to change but I want to smell the wind on the ride over and slobber and shed on your upholstery.>
“Okay, give me a minute to talk to Earnest.” After confirming that Jack and Algy could participate in at least some cautious meaty debauchery, my hounds piled into the blue ’54 Chevy pickup I’d acquired during an escapade that Oberon had dubbed “The Squirrel on the Train.” Oberon looked out the back window at the truck bed.
<I’m not sure you have enough cargo space for all the meat we’re gonna need, Atticus.>
“It’s more than enough, Oberon.”
<But leftovers, Atticus! Leftovers, for the time you’ll be gone!>
“I’m not promising anything at this point beyond an assortment of meats and gravies. And maybe a story about a famous hound for the drive, since you’re way too pumped up right now.”
<Famous hound?> Orlaith’s ears perked up.
“More of a tiny hound—a beagle, in fact.”
<Oh, I like beagles!> Oberon said. <They’re good at sniffing out rabbits, and then I can chase them.>
<What was the hound’s name?> Orlaith asked.
“It was Bingo.”
<Oh, like the song about the farmer had a dog?>
“Exactly like the song. I can tell you the true story of the actual Bingo who inspired that song.”
<He had a story?> Orlaith cocked her head at me as we pulled out onto the road. It was crowded in the cab—the hounds barely fit and Starbuck had to sit on my lap, all aquiver with excitement. <The song just says that Bingo was his name-o and that’s it.>
“Oh, but there were earlier versions of the song, which hint at some heroic deeds. And I know the details of that heroism.”
Oberon stopped looking at the truck bed and trying to imagine it filled with meat. <Okay, Atticus, you hooked me. Tell us about Bingo.>
* * *
—
In the eighteenth century, just before the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, there was a cabbage farmer in the Southern Uplands of Scotland—that’s the region closest to the border with Britain. His name was Dúghlas Mac Támhais, the Gaelic form of Douglas McTavish. In addition to his hillside of cabbages and a hayfield, he had a barnyard with some animals in there—a dairy cow, a plow horse, and, most important, a henhouse. Because chickens—those humble descendants of dinosaurs—are so delicious, they needed protection from foxes. And because cabbages are likewise delicious to some animals, they needed protection from rabbits and the like. That was where Bingo came in: Half his job was to protect the farm, and the other half was to be adorable. Bingo was outstanding at both halves of his job.
But he worried about his human. Dúghlas, you see, had taken to drinking quite a bit of ale after tragedy struck: He lost his wife as she gave birth to their first child and then lost the child soon after to fever. He was heartbroken and descending into alcoholism, and Bingo worried that he’d never recover.
One night, as Dúghlas was scowling at a potato and cabbage pie he’d made for dinner—a dish called rumbledethumps—Bingo let loose with a tremendous racket outside, and Dúghlas assumed quite rightly that they had an unwelcome visitor. He was already pickled as he grabbed up his musket, which he kept loaded and primed in case of emergencies like this one.
There was a fox trying to get into the henhouse, and Bingo was chasing him off, headed toward the property of the neighboring farm. They had a stile over the fence, for they were good neighbors, and the fox actually used the stile and Bingo leapt after him. That was the first verse of the original song: “The farmer’s dog leapt over the stile, his name was little Bingo.” The second verse had to do with the farmer’s drinking habit, and that was immortalized because Dúghlas was inebriated to the point where he shouldn’t be attempting things like steep steps over a fence. He managed to climb up to the top okay, but coming down was disastrous. He slipped on the first step, fired the musket into the air with a convulsive jerk of the trigger, and wound up hitting his head on the bottom step pretty badly. He was unconscious and bleeding.
Well, Bingo left off chasing that fox right away when he heard that gunshot and realized his human had stopped hollering. He ran back to Dúghlas and tried to wake him up, even slobbered on his nose, but it was no good. So he hightailed it to that other farmhouse and barked his head off until some humans came out, and then he kept running back and forth until they got the idea he wanted to show them something.