Me and Annabelle, we're outlaws.

For example, today I was pulled over for expired registration. I stood on the sidewalk chatting with the highway patrolman about this and that, old VWs mostly, while he wrote up the warning, when he stopped writing and said, "You've got a good little watchdog there." I looked over and sure enough there was Annabelle's jackal face glaring out the back window of my old Beetle. She was standing full height, front feet splayed on the back of the back seat, ready to spring into action. "She'll take care of you all right," the cop said. He was a kindly highway patrolman. "Ranchers around here use those to herd cows, you know."

"She's still a pup," I said, "but I suppose I'll have to get her a cow." The cop laughed.

We're outlaws, Annabelle and me.

It's like in that movie, where the golden-hearted convict says, "I ain't a good man. But I ain't the worst, either. I'm just a breed apart." That's me and Annabelle.

In the movies the "breeds apart" always get blown away in the end. The world's no place for those who claim no extreme. It's that way in the movies, and I believe it's that way in the real world, too. I sure as hell can't find a place in it.

Bobby had that problem. He ended up killing himself when he was only 24. In the note, among other things, he wrote, "I really loved Sam, you know." That's me. Then he gassed himself with car exhaust on the cold shoulder of some highway in the Mojave. My mom--his much older half-sister--called to tell me he was dead. I was married, living in the Midwest, and had just given birth to my first child. I always figured the baby's coming had something to do with Bobby's going.

I didn't react when she told me this. That must have disappointed her; she has a great thirst for drama. But Bobby had died in my heart years before--had to, or the guilt would have done me in. His actual death, and even the way he died, seemed inevitable, seemed like a book closing on the only logical end.

Anyway, now it's just me and Annabelle. I tell her she's lucky. It's the decade of the dog. They're everywhere--TV, movies--half the people I meet anymore just got puppies, it seems like. And look at me. I'm the last person I ever thought would turn into a doggie dame. But about a year ago dogs started replacing cats in my dreams, cats that had kept me company almost every night since I was 11 years old.

I knew I was being prepared. When Brian and Paula's bitch got pregnant by mistake last spring, I knew what was coming. I held Annabelle--seventh-born in the litter of nine--in my hand when she was two days old, and I said to myself, She's here.

I didn't say it out loud, though. As far as Brian and Paula knew I still despised dogs, and they made no puppy offers. But it was obvious soon enough. Annabelle was antisocial from the start, always off playing alone while the other pups tumbled and romped together. Whenever I came to visit she'd waddle over and sit quietly on my foot, little white furball with a black tadpole patch over her right eye, just like she was at home there. The day they brought her to my house and put her in my arms was one of the happiest days of my life. Holding her close to me at that moment I felt just as blissed-out as when my sons were born.

Now it's just me and her. Sometimes I hold her so tight I can't believe she can breathe. "Don't leave me, Annabelle," I whisper. "Don't get run over. Don't get lost in the woods. Don't die of a dog disease. Please don't ever go." Worse than a lovesick lover. But Annabelle understands. And she doesn't abuse her power. If she leaves me I'll discorporate; my atoms will simply come unglued.

Not long ago my youngest boy, wearing a heavy-duty backpack and carrying a duct-taped cardboard box of belongings under one arm and a sleeping bag under the other, boarded a train for Portland, Oregon, and life as a grownup. I imagine him out there becoming his own man. Annabelle got here just in time. Who am I now, pup? The stone's rolled back, and I'm empty inside. It's my belly that's so hollow--the aching cave under my ribs. If I could fit Annabelle in I'd finally be whole. Annabelle's my soul.

I played role after role for years, just following my instincts. Now I've taken Annabelle and fled to the mountains. At first I felt safe here. True, the isolation and cold and unrelenting black of night hold their own terrors. But at least I was safe from the depredations of relatives and acquaintances, safe from everyone I know. Saved, really, from their disinterest. When they ignore me in their midst it pains me, but if I'm out of reach, then there's a good reason for it, and that's a comfort. Up here I planned to confront the emptiness and see if something couldn't be made of it. Instead, all the grief and anger and guilt I ever locked down deep within me is surfacing and demands to be acknowledged.

I remember a childhood spent observing, trying to emulate the behaviors of my peers and seniors, groping my way through adolescence, and then leaping away the instant the calendar ticked "18" to marry and reproduce. Give me a function. I didn't know what else to do.

I am a well. And my boys kept me well out of it, my well-self. And now they're gone. As I fall at last, here's Annabelle, shoved like a staff into my panicky hands, lodged in the opening, saving me.

Annabelle and me. A breed apart.
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