A Place Called '“The Sticks’

An Excerpt from ‘Noleen Mona’

Written by T.W.S Armstrong

I cannot recall where I slept in Walnut Street, whether in a corner room or beside a window, whether the sheets were coarse or soft, whether the night air carried the weight of the bay. Those details have slipped away entirely.

Yet I do remember climbing trees.

That memory remains, though it floats free of all contexts, as if detached from the ground on which it once stood. There was a tree in our yard, and another next door, and I would climb them whenever visitors arrived. We had many visitors, so it seems to me now, a constant procession of voices and footsteps and laughter that pressed upon my small, timid spirit. I was painfully shy, so shy beyond reason, and when the sound of strangers filled the house I would escape upward, scrambling into the branches and hiding among the leaves as though the height might render me invisible. I remember the feeling of bark beneath my palms, the scratch of it against my knees, the thud of my heart as I tucked myself away and watched the world from above.

By the time I began school, my world had narrowed and steadied. I played with Elaine Macintosh, who lived up the road, and in her, I found the rare comfort of a companion beyond my sisters. She was the only child, outside of school and home, with who I felt entirely at ease. Our friendship was quiet and uncomplicated, built of shared afternoons and the easy understanding of two children content in one another’s company. We played with my dog, Trigger, as though the world had been made solely for the two of us, and in those hours of companionship I found a courage that eluded me everywhere else. He was no creature of pedigree or polished breeding, but a mongrel of fox terrier stock, his coat forever a little unruly, as if even the wind had taken liberties with it. There were burrs caught in his fur often, and red dust upon his paws, yet his eyes shone with a brightness so unwavering that one might have believed he had been entrusted with some sacred duty, namely, the guarding of my small and uncertain heart. In the early mornings, before the house had fully stirred, I would slip outside and find him waiting, tail already in motion, as though he had anticipated my coming long before I knew it myself. Together we would wander the yard, inspecting the familiar corners as if they were lands newly discovered. A fallen branch became a pirate’s mast, a mound of earth a fortress to be defended. Trigger entered every fancy with solemn enthusiasm, chasing imaginary foes with a seriousness that would have shamed a soldier. When I hid behind the water tank, he would circle anxiously, whining in exaggerated despair until I sprang out to surprise him, at which point his relief was so extravagant that it bordered upon the theatrical. There was a particular game we favoured, one in which I would run the length of the yard and he would pursue me, not with any true intent to capture, but with a joyful restraint, as though mindful that victory must always be mine. His bark rang out like laughter, and when at last I stumbled and fell, he would bound upon me with clumsy affection, licking my face until I shrieked with mirth and protest. In those moments, breathless and grass stained, I felt no trace of the shyness that plagued me in company. With Trigger, I was bold, commanding, entirely myself. On hot afternoons, we would lie beneath the sparse shade of the house, I would rest my head against his side, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breathing, and tell him secrets in a whisper, secrets I would never have dared to entrust to another soul. He listened with the patience of a saint, his ears twitching occasionally, his gaze fixed upon some distant point as if weighing my confessions with due gravity. I do not suppose he understood my words, yet he understood the tremor beneath them, and that was enough.

Once, when a group of visitors arrived unexpectedly, filling the house with noise and unfamiliar laughter, I fled to the yard in my usual alarm. I climbed halfway up the nearest tree, my refuge of choice, and there I might have remained, trembling and resentful of the intrusion. But Trigger stationed himself below, steadfast and vigilant, his small body forming a kind of living boundary between me and the world. If any ventured too near, he would issue a warning bark, not fierce, but firm, as if to say that I was under his protection. From my perch above, I looked down at him and felt, perhaps for the first time, that I was defended not by strength, but by loyalty. There were quieter episodes too, small incidents that might have escaped notice in any grander chronicle yet loom large in my private remembrance. I once dropping my cherished peg doll in the dust, a peg all dressed up, I believed to be the most beautiful object in my possession. Before I could retrieve it, Trigger had seized it gently between his teeth and presented it to me, tail wagging with such pride that I could not help but laugh. It was as though he understood that what mattered to me must, by extension, matter to him. In the sundown, when the sky faded from gold to violet and Launa called us in from the yard, Trigger would accompany me to the threshold, though he knew well enough he must remain outside. He would sit there, watching the door close, his silhouette framed against the last light of day. Sometimes, as I washed my hands and feet, I would glance back and see him still waiting, content simply to be nearby. That image remains with me, more vivid than many human faces, a small, faithful figure who asked for nothing but presence in return.

Animals, I have long believed, recognise the tremor in a child’s spirit and answer it with steadiness. Where people misread silence as indifference or awkwardness, a dog sees only a heart in need of anchoring. Trigger anchored mine. In his company I did not measure my words or shrink from attention. I was neither too loud nor too shy, neither too large nor too small. I was simply his, and he was mine.

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