My Morning Game Of Scrabble

I close my eyes, whistle, and send the dogs off into the brush to see if they can scare up any words. I’m not sure how long I sit here –it varies, I suppose, from night to night. When it gets quiet like this, though, and I can’t even hear the rustling or baying of the dogs, I get a little bit spooked.

Some nights –more and more often lately– they’re out there a long time, traveling great distances across the barren fields. It’s March, after all, and the winter tends to drive language underground. It’s too dark, there are too many rough patches, and I’m too tired to run with the dogs, so I just sit here quietly with my eyes closed, waiting.

I no longer expect the dogs to bring back any stories or even paragraphs, and a sentence of any length would frankly be a surprise at this point. One night, I’ve no doubt, the dogs will finally disappear for good, but for now I’m grateful for whatever random, useless words they manage to drag back and drop at my feet. A ‘why’ or two, a ‘what,’ maybe a ‘mule,’ ‘moon,’ ‘river,’ or ‘road.’ A good night might net me a handful of multi-syllabic words: ‘casket,’ ‘donkey,’ ‘steeple,’ or ‘gasoline,’ although ‘gas’ is the more likely candidate.

At the end of the night, usually when the winter sun is casting its first bruise across the eastern horizon, I’ll gather up whatever words the dogs rustle up on their rambles, stuff them in a burlap bag, and tote them back home across the fields. I’ll then empty the bag onto the kitchen table and spend a couple hours moving the words around, trying with little success to make them say something.