The picture with this blog is of my original copy of Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White. As you can see it is a much loved book. I’ve had the book for about forty years, but that’s not why the book looks so beaten up. I bought this book through the Scholastic Book Club in junior high. I think I was twelve. I got off the school bus with my new book in my armload of school things. I ran towards the house eager to start reading this new adventure, but when I got inside the house I couldn’t find it. I searched every inch of what I’d been carrying in my arms, including my sweater, but the book was nowhere to be found. I finally looked outside and found my dog, Jenny, chewing on something in the yard.
I ran out and, of course, Jenny was chewing on Charlotte’s Web. I grabbed the book from her and I was furious. The cover was ripped off, there were tooth marks all over it. The book was ruined! I yelled at the dog, and can still remember how angry I was with her. I marched back inside with my damaged book and she stayed out in the yard where she always was because my grandmother didn’t believe in indoor dogs, or indoor pets for that matter. I was able to read the book, but every time my fingers touched the tooth marks it made me angry all over again. I was livid about the book being damaged for a long time. Fast forward a little to the serial dog poisoner that was killing in our small town. The coward even put poisoned meat inside fences and cages where the dogs never got out to bother anyone. If I’d been the grownup in my life, I’d have brought Jenny inside to live with us and put her on a leash – always – until the poisoner was caught. But I wasn’t the grownup in my life, and my grandmother only allowed Jenny inside the house one day a year, on Christmas morning to get her presents. You can guess the rest, one morning we discovered Jenny stiff with her body stretched out in a painful bow. I know enough about poisons now that it was likely strychnine, which is a painful way to go.
I dug the grave for my dog in our yard. I ground was hard, or maybe I’m remembering other pets and other graves dug. It all sort of gloms together in my mind, digging in the dirt of the yard to bury something I loved.
In the years to come I would value this copy of Charlotte’s Web all the more, because it holds the toothmarks of my first dog, the only dog my mother would ever bring home to me because she would die the summer of my sixth year. The marks that had irritated my fingers when I touched them before were a touchstone that comforted me and reminded me of things I had loved. No, I suppose in the end this book reminds me of things I still love. You never forget your first dog. The one that was beside you on the first adventures out of the yard. The one who roamed the woods at your side. Jenny even risked her life to protect me, taking on the most fierce dog in the town. One so dangerous that even his owners knew it and kept him on chain, or caged, except with them. He got loose one day and tried to attack me, but she threw herself at him. The other dog was almost four times her size but she never hesitated. This was her child, her pack! The big dog’s owners heard the dog fight and my screams and came running. They dragged the other dog off and miraculously Jenny wasn’t hurt. He’d gone for the throat and her thick wooly coat had saved her. But I can still taste the fear on my tongue when the dog attacked and the surprise when my little dog that had never picked a fight in her life launched herself at the other animal. Ironically, the other dog would be one of the first victims of the poisoner, who put meat into its outdoor caged run.
Would I have read Charlottes’ Web so often if touching it hadn’t reminded me of my lost dog? I don’t know, but I do know that this was the book where I first began to figure out how a good sentence was constructed, how a descriptive paragraph worked, how a story is built. For decades I would read Charlotte’s Web once a year in the autumn. Eventually this, my first copy, got so fragile that I bought other copies to read so this copy could be saved. But when I think about reading Charlotte’s Web, this is the book I think about reading. This texture of toothmarks, and tears, that one rip. I know the feel of this coverless book in my hands better than almost any other book I’ve ever read, save perhaps one. This book helped make me a writer, and those precious teeth marks helped me learn another invaluable lesson. That there is no anger, no fight, worth being truly enraged at someone/something you love. It’s not every book that can teach you two life lessons, and its not every dog that can help you learn them.
You never forget your first dog. I’ve had other dogs since, but once I got to be the grownup in my life and had a way to make choices, all the dogs have been indoor dogs. I would never lose another pet because I could not protect it. As I trace the bite marks on the pages, I wonder would I have loved this book so much if Jenny had not chewed it up, and then died, so that it was my remembrance of her? Since this book was the first one that began to teach me the trick of being a writer, would it have happened without everything that I think of and feel when I touch this book? What goes into making a writer? How does the magic happen? I don’t write about dogs much, or pigs, or clever spiders, and I certainly am not a writer of children’s stories, but I know, absolutely know, that this book was critical to my development as a writer. For the first time, I wonder if maybe my first dog, Jenny, was more important in that development than I thought. I’ll keep this book forever, because a writer never forgets that first important book, and a girl never forgets her first dog.