My Dog Skip

Willie Morris opens his memoir by discovering an old photograph of his dog Skip, taken 40 years earlier, and admitting he still misses him. Morris turns back to 1943, when he was nine years old and living in a small Mississippi town of about 10,000 people, set between hills and the flat Delta. His father had ordered a fox terrier puppy from a breeder in Missouri. When Morris opened the kennel on the back porch, the puppy jumped into his lap and hugged him. That night the puppy slept in Morris's arms. An only child, Morris named him Skipper for his lively walk, though he always called him Skip.

Morris describes a pre-television era in which the town's economy revolved around cotton and people sat on front porches greeting passersby. Skip proved remarkably intelligent, understanding spoken instructions: fetching his own leash, leading Morris to the swimming hole, and retrieving his tennis ball from an antique cabinet. He developed what Morris calls an almost psychic ability to locate Morris anywhere in town, becoming a recognized community presence.

Skip's feats made him a local celebrity. Morris taught him to carry a football by its lace, take a snap from center, and run organized plays while crowds gathered to watch. When Morris began driving his parents' DeSoto at 13, they developed a prank: Skip propped himself behind the steering wheel while Morris crouched beneath the dashboard guiding the car, fooling onlookers outside cafés and churches. Skip joined the boys' other pranks, from placing a cow in the school auditorium to delivering medicine-laced cookies to an unsuspecting prayer meeting.

Skip's routines anchored Morris's childhood. Each morning Skip woke him with a cold nose or gentle toe-biting, walked him toward school, and stopped at a fixed spot near the bayou, returning each afternoon to wait. Skip disdained all dog food, preferring bologna above everything. Morris attached a pouch with money to Skip's collar, and Skip walked alone to the local grocery store, returning with bologna or, when given only a nickel, the daily newspaper.

At a dog contest, Skip deliberately disobeyed every command yet won a tie for first place because of his fine appearance. After joining the Boy Scouts at 12, Morris earned the county's first Dog Care merit badge, despite exasperating the veterinarian by admitting he fed Skip 7 or 8 times a day.

The Delta woods were central to Morris's childhood with his father and Skip. They hunted squirrels in dark, vine-covered swamp-bottoms where men sometimes got lost, and Skip loved pointing game and ignoring mosquitoes. On one outing, Skip emerged drenched in skunk spray, requiring tomato juice baths and exile from the house.

World War II pervaded Morris's boyhood, and he characterizes Skip as a "war dog." The boys followed the conflict obsessively, scanning the skies for enemy aircraft and once reporting a suspected spy network to the sheriff. Skip howled at Hitler's radio speeches but never reacted to Mussolini's. Morris and his father planted a Victory garden, and Morris taught Skip to collect discarded tinfoil for the war effort. On V-J Day, Morris and Tolbert, an old handyman, celebrated in the yard while Skip danced alongside them.

Morris introduces Rivers Applewhite, a girl he had known since they were two, as the prettiest and kindest in their class. Skip adored her and once jumped out the car window to greet her. During a chinaberry fight, a game played with slingshots, Morris lay paralyzed by an enormous spider descending toward him until Rivers and Skip freed him. When a starving kitten appeared at the back steps, Skip, previously indifferent to cats, began caring for it. Rivers arrived with formula, and she and Skip nursed the kitten for a week before it died in Rivers's arms. They buried the kitten under the elm tree, and Skip grieved for weeks.

Morris's mother, the best piano player in the state, taught lessons on a Steinway baby grand. Skip found the students' practicing intolerable; one day he leapt onto the keyboard, producing a more harmonious chord than the pupil had managed. During a Sunday service, as soprano Mrs. Stella Birdsong hit a sustained high C, Skip and several other dogs burst through the church door and howled until congregants covered their ears.

Skip survived serious dangers: being hit by a car, sinking into quicksand until Morris pulled him free, and attacking a copperhead snake. The worst episode came when Morris found Skip limp and feverish one evening. His father suspected poison, and they rushed Skip 40 miles to an all-night animal clinic in Jackson. The veterinarian confirmed poisoning and said if Skip survived the night he would live. After a week of nursing, Skip woke Morris with a lick on the nose and a bite on the toes, fully himself again.

Of all sports, baseball was Skip's favorite. During a game against the Jackson team before hundreds of spectators, Skip burst from under the bleachers onto the field. Players, coaches, and even Rivers gave chase, but Skip eluded everyone until Morris grabbed him and threw him over the outfield fence. Skip walked slowly through the cotton field beyond, looking back with a wounded expression.

Morris traces the seasons through his adolescence: autumn Saturdays of football and county fairs, Christmas caroling and rare snowfalls, spring tornado watches, and long summer days wandering town. Each summer, Morris and Skip rode the bus to Jackson to visit his grandparents and great-aunts Maggie and Susie, born during the Civil War, who once confused Skip with a dog they had owned in 1879. Morris reflects on the lesson of being an only child with a loyal dog: "Loyalty and love are the best things of all, and the most lasting."

One evening during Morris's junior year, Skip did not come home for the first time ever. Morris searched that night and again at first light, riding his bicycle to every familiar place. Near the dump, he noticed an old abandoned refrigerator whose door, usually ajar, was now closed. He opened it and Skip leapt out, weak but alive, having been trapped when his curiosity caused the door to shut behind him.

As high school ended, the baseball team won the state championship and Skip rode in the parade. Morris left for college, returning for summer visits, but he was no longer a boy. Skip grew old: At 11, when Morris graduated, he had arthritis, no longer retrieved sticks, and preferred the shade. Morris won a scholarship to England for three years and knew he would never see Skip again.

On the day of departure, Morris sat beside Skip under the elm tree near the kitten's grave. Skip lifted his head into Morris's lap and nuzzled him, as he had the first time they met. Morris whispered "Thank you, boy" and left without looking back. From the car, he watched Skip on the front lawn until the dog was just a tiny speck. A month later at Oxford, his father called to say Skip had died. His parents wrapped Skip in Morris's baseball jacket and buried him under the elm tree. Wandering through Oxford in the rain, Morris reflects that the dog of one's boyhood teaches about friendship, love, and death. Skip was his brother, buried not only under the elm tree but in his heart.