The Little Man Who Wasn’t There – Living With Brownies

I’m not sure if Grandma brought the brownie to live in the coal yard when she came to stay with us. Perhaps he was a built-in feature of the house at 145 Madeline Street in Pittsburgh. I know he was there until we moved in, and I imagine he’s still bothering the inhabitants of the house, unless they’ve replaced the old coal furnace with a new gas heater.

All winter long, I could hear him jumping in the coal bin as I played on top of him in the living room, never leaving the hot air grate where the updraft from the furnace warmed me on very cold days. My invisible friend, Dahlia Brown, also heard the brownie. We never got close enough to talk to him, but when we surprised him coming down the cellar steps ever so gently, we caught a glimpse of the shadow of his peaked cap fluttering across the cinder block wall and disappearing into the depths of the tender.

Each morning, I faithfully served him a saucer of cold milk, as Grandma directed, and when I returned later that day, he was clean as a whistle. Grandma was an expert on goblin behavior. Having had numerous brownies in her past, she knew that families who treat them kindly and share their homes peacefully will be rewarded with good luck.

The only time the brownie expressed dissatisfaction with our house was when he was forced to share it with a dog. The first pet we got was Pal, the white collie puppy. Pal seemed friendly enough the day he arrived in a box from my aunt’s farm in West Virginia, but it didn’t take long for me to turn him into a monster.

For the sake of neatness, Mother tried to relegate Pal to the basement for the night. As soon as she pushed him down the basement steps and closed the door, leaving him in the dark, the brownie began to tease him mercilessly. In the morning, Pal was in a state of perpetual animation. The moment the basement door opened, he ran out of the depths howling and began to dash across the living room as if trying to shake off an invisible little man who was riding on his back.

The older Pal grew, the wilder he became. My father built a sturdy twelve-foot fence that surrounded our backyard. He couldn’t contain Pal. He was so distraught after her late-night encounters with the brownie that he tore down the fence and destructively fled through the neighborhood. The third time he escaped, he found a friend in Reo, the local

automotive mechanic.

Reo chewed large pieces of tobacco. I mistook them for Hershey bars and nodded enthusiastically every time he offered me a “chewy.” I was happy to provide a corner for Pal in her greasy garage and couldn’t understand why we were having such trouble with such a quiet creature. We knew the brownie was the problem.

Our next dog, a beautiful Dalmatian, came to our house when I was six years old. Rex first appeared one winter afternoon when my father was digging out the ashes. Rex timidly approached her, tail wagging.

“Hello, friend,” my father said, before heading back to our warm home.

The snow was still on the ground, but it had begun to disappear from the ground in random patches, and it was in one of those barren, muddy places, on a strip of land next to the alley that Rex spent the night. My father saw him there again the next morning and thought it strange that the dog had not gone home.

He was there the next night… and the next. By now my parents were sure they had left it nearby on purpose and it needed shelter. During the Depression, money was tight and food for such a large dog cost a lot, perhaps depriving a family in need of basic meals. The father believed that the dog’s owners had brought him to our neighborhood in the hope that he would find a good home there.

During the day, Rex would sit sadly in our alley avoiding the ash man, as well as the ice delivery man and baker who sold their wares at the kitchen doors leading to the alley. Grandma and I watched him from the comfort of our overstuffed chair. He was convinced that he had chosen us to be his family, but she was cautious.

“We don’t know anything about him,” he said. “He could belong to someone on the next street.”

“Then why don’t you go home?” I replied.

Grandma thought for a moment, then went to the kitchen cabinet and pulled out a burlap sack. “We’ll put this on the back porch and leave the door open. If the dog wants to stay, he’ll let us know by coming into the yard and sitting down.”

From his distant spot on the cold ground, Rex watched Grandma place the sack on the porch. As soon as she entered, he jumped through the door and onto the porch, tail wagging tentatively.

“I guess we’d better get him something to drink,” he mused. She found an unused bowl, filled it with water, and placed it by the door. She licked it dry.

Up close, we could see the outline of his ribs. “That dog needs food,” Grandma declared.

He found leftovers in the fridge. As soon as she put them out, he consumed them. By the time Dad returned from work, Grandma and I had decided that the dog deserved to come into the house. Mother was less sure. The dog was disheveled from his fight with the elements, she said. It was unknown what kind of germs he harbored. The mother’s germs regarded as the deadly enemy of him. At other times, the mere mention of germs would silence any further discussion of any subject at all, but now as my chin trembled and my eyes filled with tears, she looked to my father for help. Since no one was coming from that direction, he put his hands on his hips and ruled that the dog could not come into our house clean without a bath.

Smiles reappeared everywhere. The father had little trouble coaxing the dog into the basement through the basement door. With some effort, he shoved Rex into the laundry tub and Mom, now wearing her oldest housedress, washed him up. After Rex was dried by the warm oven, he proved to have a beautiful, glossy coat, and after a few weeks of constant feedings, his ribs were gone and he took on a distinguished air, not unlike the dogs in the royal cars of those who were fed. he was lowered.

Rex was a kind and gentle dog and wouldn’t have hurt the brownie for nothing, but the brownie, remembering how Pal had invaded his sanctuary, was smug. He worked with Rex in his insidious way until the morning Mom opened the cellar door to find him foaming at the mouth, his eyes sad, as if to say, “The brownie did it.”

Our next dog traveled from Parkersburg, West Virginia, on the B&O baggage bus. It was a birthday present from my great-aunt Jen, who visited us twice a year while she got her hair done at Joseph Horne’s department store.

A “grass widow” (grandma’s fancy euphemism for “divorced”), Aunt Jen didn’t notice the clock. She routinely sat up all night devouring astrology books and outlining key prophecies. On this occasion, she called us at three in the morning to tell us that a puppy was on the way.

“He’s a thoroughbred,” he assured my sleepy father. “His mother was a Scottish Thoroughbred and his father was a Thoroughbred Bulldog.”

Aunt Jen never understood that her assessment of the dog’s lineage was wrong, but despite his mixed ancestry, Bruce was primarily a handsome, black little Scottie whose only traits inherited from his wandering father were short hair and bowed front legs.

From the day we brought him home from the train station, Bruce refused to stay in the cellar with the brownie. He earned his freedom by clawing at the door and chewing on a piece of the top step. Horrified at the thought of having to account for the damage to our rented house, Mom relented and fitted out a box for Bruce under the Chippendale legs of the kitchen stove. There she found peace, just as the brownie was granted solitude.

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