RAISING CROW

Chapter 19: June, 1994. Moving South, starting college.

Two strangers wearing city police ID badges knocked on our apartment door early in the morning (on Monday) to expedite packing and our departure. One of them said they were hired to come into homes and pack everything like when the owner died without any family or friends. We packed our remaining clothes and the dog food in my trunk and left for Galveston at 10:35am, which was kind of late to start a trip that long. While I was carrying suitcases and boxes to the trunk the movers started to hand carry all our furniture out to the truck, so by 2pm today the apartment would be empty. All our furniture and some small appliances (and the TV) went to charity.

We had a few stops to make in town, like to return the apartment keys to the office, return the cable box, and two videos to the movie rental place. Everything else was packed. We also packed the dog food bowls, his iron bowl stand, and all the remaining dog food we had at home.

Our last stop was at the vet office to buy one last bag of dog food, then we took Coulter Street south, it eventually runs into I-27 about six miles south of town. Once we got out of town I pulled over and Gram took over driving. I sat in back with the dog, I think he already figured out we were driving to Galveston again. We decided to take the diagonal route across rural Texas because on the interstate we'd hit major traffic around Dallas during the after-work rush.

She drove 230 miles (4 hours) southeast to Sweetwater Texas then we stopped for gas and coffee (@ 4:15pm) and I drove the remaining 400 miles (6 hours). We hit several coffee shops on the way so I could pee and fill up on caffeine. Gram called home to update Gramps on our progress across the state. It's when you drive across Texas that you get a feel for how large Texas was. Gram and I were not in a hurry, but there are a lot of traffic lights and even some stop-signs on the diagonal route.

On the way down she connected the rubber antenna to her bag phone and plugged it into the cigarette lighter so at least we had phone service most of the way, but the map said there were a few cellular dead spots near Denton Texas and north of Houston. The phone rep told Gram there were dead spots along I-35, but if we need to make an emergency call pull over and put the phone on the roof of the car so the antenna is higher and unobstructed. My car did not have one of those coiled antennas on the back window, but she put the Motorola phone on the dashboard so it was up higher than on the seat between us.

Crow was very well behaved in the back seat but this was not his first trip to the Gulf coast. That's one nice thing about older dogs, you can always count on them to take extra naps when needed. I'm sure if I could have told him we were leaving the apartment for good he would have been fully supportive, except now he had to surrender to the lack of green grass in Galveston. It's likely he will never have a private grassy back yard for the rest of his life.

I know it sounds funny but it's actually like a desert near the ocean, you find the same thing on many Caribbean islands, the east end has cactus and is mostly a sand and rock desert.

At home he had a private grassy back yard. At the apartment he had a fenced-in ponding field he shared with a few dozen other dogs. But we'll be living at my grandparents place for a month or more, there he'll have to pee on weeds along a busy street, and always walk on the leash. But at the apartment near the campus he'll have another fenced-in ponding area to share with stranger dogs, they can communicate by scents. This is going to be a rough transition for my dog.

Grandpa said he stayed up to wait for us. We arrived at 11:25pm. I left our stuff in the car but the three of us went inside and almost directly to bed. I grabbed my backpack and the dog stuff, Gram took her purse and we decided to unpack the car tomorrow.

Their spare bedroom looked like a warehouse filled with boxes of stuff we already shipped here at the UPS Store. They were literally stacked four foot high. Gramps said the chair lift carried each box up the stairs.

Gramps said he hired a kid in their neighborhood to handle the boxes when UPS dropped them off in their driveway by the garage door. The kid lived across the street and when he saw boxes he was to put one on the seat and press the button. Gramps would hear it and go outside, take the box and send the chair back down for the boy to place another box and send it to the top. He said the kid would send up one box and go back home then about an hour later he'd come back and move another one onto the plastic lift seat.

Soon after we arrived I walked Crow then all of us went to bed. Crow seemed happy and already knew their stairs but he didn't react much to the chair lift, except that time he didn't walk up the middle of the stairs, he tried to keep a safe distance from the unknown machine. I thought in a day or two I would sit on the grass by their driveway with the dog while Gramps rode up and down on the chair lift so Crow could see what it did and that it was not dangerous. I'd ask if there was a small dog nearby that we could borrow so Crow could see other dogs using the lift, it was safe.

Really though, considering his giant size there was no way Crow could ride the lift, he wouldn't fit. I didn't want him to be afraid but I wanted him to understand what it did. It was possible he could sit on my lap but I'd have to pull him tightly into my body then ride up the lift, but I don't think he'd cooperate with that. This is the big problem being a Great Dane, they just don't fit well in this world.

They never tried to wake me the next day. I slept till about 10:15am when Crow informed me that he needed to go out. He seemed very serious. During our walk down the block he located a couple spots where could pee on clumps of weeds. I figured Crow better learn to pee on sand and be happy with it because a lot of the lush green lawns down here are actually outdoor carpet! Not only are we further south but also a bit closer to the sun too! Grass is very hard to grow in Galveston, it takes a special type and is like a grass that grows naturally on sand dunes and needs a lot of rain.

We got back home from our walk in time for lunch. After eating I got my computer set-up in my room and dialed into CompuServe and emailed Tom and Daniel to let them know we'd arrived safely and the room was full of boxes. UPS arrived every day for the next seven days dropping off all the remaining boxes from our apartment, we didn't seem to be missing anything. I only unpacked clothes and computer stuff, and my mom's collection of Clint Eastwood movies, which I gave to my Grandparents. Mom had almost every movie he ever made (including the westerns), and a few old TV shows too, like Highway Patrol. Lots of people loved John Wayne, but Mom loved Clint Eastwood.

My favorite Clint Eastwood movies were him as Inspector Callahan, the five Dirty Harry movies. I also liked his movie A Perfect World where he starred with Kevin Costner.

We had an important discussion after lunch about house rules, what my responsibilities were and what my trust fund would be charged. I asked for a phone line of my own and for a few food items they normally didn't eat (toaster pastries, cereal, and dark roast coffee beans). We agreed that I would pay $75 a week out of my trust fund for living expenses. I agreed to handle all the vacuuming since most of what I would be picking up would be dog byproduct anyway. I also agreed to do all my own laundry and all dog maintenance. I agreed to be 100% liable for anything Crow damaged. They would cook all meals and do the dishes and help with Crow when work might take up too much of my time.

One problem with a large dog was their paws trapped and held sand. Even if you swooshed them in water they still held onto some, it was constantly accumulating on the hallway floor after he walked inside, there was no way to stop it unless he wore shoes but Crow refused to wear shoes. We had the same problem since the day he was born. We parked a broom and dustpan near the door so I could sweep up several times a day. Luckily their home was carpet-free.

As a joke I offered to let Crow do the dishes, but after thinking about what I said, they started to laugh. Mom said she saw it as a comic in a magazine once, how an elderly couple with a Great Dane put the dishes on the lower rack in the dish washer but never ran it because the dog cleaned them spotless after every meal.

We discussed parking in the driveway and other rules of the homeowner's association (HOA). We talked about Tom and that my goal was to be in an apartment ASAP - possibly in August 1st. I agreed to go to the university tomorrow to enroll in fall classes and buy my books. Gram gave me a blank check to pay from my trust fund. Both of us had to sign the trust fund checks. She said she scheduled a short meeting with us at the new accountant's office who managed the trust here on the island. Because it was an investment account someone with investing experience and a license had to handle that aspect of the trust.

I emailed Tom and Daniel to let them know what I got done in one and a half days. I got an email from Tom saying school was a heavy load since final exams were only weeks away (the spring semester at the university ended on May 31st). Everyone was talking about graduation and signs went up all over Caprock. He was studying like a crazy person trying to do what I did. Daniel said he missed me and people were talking about my sudden disappearance from campus, most said I was probably in prison somewhere. He never corrected any of the rumors and told some people I moved to Kansas City to work for the Mob running a prostitute service.

On Thursday I had the intern interview with the newspaper and was starting in two weeks after several mandatory classes next week at an HR-like service in town. I got my approval notice and unit number from the apartment complex along with a move-in date. I'll get the keys, sign the lease, and start moving August 1st, about 70 days from now, five weeks before the start of the semester.

The days went by quickly as Gram and I worked on the checklist of things I needed to get done for my new life on the coast. We had several days of rain and clouds but the sunshine always returned. The humidity here takes a while to get used to, it didn't seem to bother Crow much at first until he realized it rained often here, compared to Amarillo.

We opened some boxes of stuff we brought from Amarillo and gave a lot of household stuff to Goodwill, things that were too valuable to throw away but we couldn't sell in our garage sale. It turned out that maybe 25% of the stuff we shipped wasn't worth shipping after all. I gave all my winter clothes to Goodwill too.

Because of all the big changes I spent extra time with Crow, on my days off we walked to Pirates Beach at the south end of 12 Mile Road, which was about 2.2miles each way. I taught him a word for beach, but we named it: `Fishes' because he liked to stand in shallow water and look straight down and watch the tiny colorful tropical fish swim around his legs. One day a fisherman on the beach reeled one in and held it out to let Crow see and sniff it. He seemed very curious about fish, I'm sure he thought they looked weird. I noticed that when Crow stands in six inches of water his feet sink into the sand and get covered so all the little fishes see is his legs. He stands there looking down like he's not quite sure what to do.

The question comes up since I already taught him that some of the meat he eats is fish, is that the same as the fish at the beach? I used the same word, so I think he realizes fish for dinner is the same as fish in the water. He can probably smell it too.

On the long walk to Pirates Beach it was interesting to see how different homes tried to disguise exterior reinforcing they were required to add to maintain insurance. This entire area looked rather wealthy, much more than where we lived in Amarillo.

Sometimes I still got teary eyed thinking about my Mom and how I still felt empty inside and a bit afraid of the future with her gone. With Mom I could get away with doing stupid kid stuff but with my grandparents that trick didn't work. They expect me to act like a responsible adult all the time, which wasn't easy at my age, I was a beginner. And for them I am their only grandchild so they are also new at how to treat an 18 year old grandson. I think they kind of treat me like an incoming freshman at the university.

On my first weekend on the island I drove Crow back to the state park by the boulders. He seemed to remember the place. It made me sad that Tom wasn't here, I hoped in my absence Tom wouldn't find another boy to love. He was still replying to all my emails. I knew next week would be finals for Tom and Daniel. All I could do was pray and worry and try to be polite around my grandparents anyway. They had no idea about the emotional hurricane going on in my brain. I lived with anxiety every second of the day, which made it hard to concentrate and made my stomach hurt sometimes.

Sunday morning Gram said we had an appointment about my trust. The trust manager changed after I moved, and the trust rules changed after I graduated from high school.

On Tuesday (11am) we sat in a meeting room at the bank, it took fifty minutes. I didn't understand about half of what they talked about but I knew Gram would explain it at home. We got new numbers on my mom's estate. With the sale of her house, closing her bank accounts, her retirement accounts, her military benefits, work benefits at Pantex, all her patents and stocks were sold, and the insurance payouts so far. The total amount deposited into my complex trust fund so far was well over seventeen million dollars. Gram whispered to me I was probably the only very wealthy teenager they had as a customer, which was why all the bank officers came in to welcome Gram and me. Some of them seemed surprised to learn the kid in the room was the heir and not the lady with the gray hair.

Now, in Galveston with college starting in 16 weeks they handed me a debit card and an allowance of $2000 a month (tax free) pocket money but the fund would also separately pay all my college costs (books, tuition, fees), rent, utilities, insurance, and medical expenses. The best part was that I didn't need a job when I started school.

Out of my allowance I had to buy groceries and gas for the car. The lawyer said the fund would pay for Compuserve or dial-up internet since it was required by the college. On the ride home Gram strongly suggested I save as much of that money as possible because stuff would happen that I didn't anticipate, she even mentioned Tom moving down might cost more than either of us realized. She told me to put an envelope under the mattress and start my own savings account.

I did some estimating on the computer with a spread sheet and figured out that both of us could live comfortably on my allowance as long as we didn't have something horrible go wrong, like a serious car accident or medical emergency. Tom told me once that his mother was going to buy a medical insurance policy for him during school but he had to pay tuition and all the other stuff with student loans.

Since we'll be living together I might be able to pay some of his tuition too, and do it in a way that he doesn't know until he graduates and has to start making payments and discovers his balance is somehow half paid-off already!

She told me that two thousand bucks a month is 500 bucks a week, it sounds like a lot of money after making $75 a week working at the vet's office. But that $500 would disappear quickly at the grocery store or fixing the car brakes, or having to run to the urgent care at 11pm for stitches after I accidentally cut myself with a kitchen knife.

I asked about moving Tom and if Daniel wanted to visit, could that be paid from the account. Gram said I should ask the accountant, she didn't know. I called Wednesday and was told tentatively yes, those could be paid but the money may be taxable which would cost me about 33% more than the actual amount I needed. So the money to move Tom would come from the trust but would be reported as taxable income at the end of the year. They also suggested I save-up money to pay stuff like that. Someone said I should look for work that paid cash, like photographing weddings and special occasions. Someone else suggested building and renting out a photo booth for large parties that could generate unreported cash.

What they told me was almost any amount of money can be removed from the trust, but it was then taxed at a much higher rate than if I had earned that money at work. So if I decided to spend $3000 to move Tom down here they would remove $5000 but I would still only receive $3000, the rest went to Uncle Sam. I gave serious thought to paying off his student loans before they started to pile up. I'll have to find his account numbers and try to do it posing as him at the bank.

The days went by and I was constantly busy with stuff. I learned how to navigate around Galveston. People drove very differently here than they did back in Amarillo. I liked the warmer weather but not the humidity. Gramps said I would get used to that by the end of summer.

I also noticed there were a lot of American Indians living in Galveston and sort of blended-in with the Hispanics. Many of them were the remnants of coastal tribes which were all but gone by the early 1800s. Someone told me some of the Indians along the coast were part African, and many of them actually looked somewhat African. That happened long before Europeans started the slave trade. The African ancestors of the Caribbean Indians were the ones who introduced pyramids to Central America and sailed across the Atlantic thousands of years ago.

Modern day historians doubt the theory that the Caribbean Island Indians were actually African because no evidence of their voyages has ever been found. So there is no evidence they sailed across the Atlantic before Europeans, but there is also no evidence they did not. The only proof today is in the DNA of modern natives on the islands from Aruba to Cuba.

Three days after finals at AHS (mid-June) I got an email from Tom that he passed all his finals with scores around 94% on everything except phys-ed he got 100%. He said his final GPA on his last report card was 3.79.

He spoke of moving, and that they called his Mom's cousins down here and was looking forward to meeting them. He said the soonest he could drive down was early July. Then he listed about six things he wanted to do to me during the first few days here. Sex just hadn't been on my mind one bit. I was super happy having heard good news from him and no mention of meeting another boy.

I told my grandparents Tom should arrive in July, they were happy for me but probably not looking forward to the added commotion and noise. It really complicated things but luckily only for about four weeks then we'd move to the apartment. Almost everything here was new to me which was scary and made me feel insecure. I still got lost sometimes trying to get from home to the university. The one nice thing about the endless beach along the island was you never had to worry about getting lost and driving too far north or south!

A few days later Tom emailed and said him and his mother would drive down together in his car in early July. She'd ride a bus back home after two days here. She would stay at a small hotel on Stewart Road (near Pirates Beach). Tom said he was only bringing what fit in his car, basically clothes, electronics, tapes, CDs, and his computer. He was not bringing household stuff or his VCR or TV.

When I wrote back I very quietly mentioned that when he calculated how much money he needed to borrow he would be staying rent-free at our apartment, it was 100% paid for by my trust account, not only rent but electricity too.

That week I also attended the pre-employment training at an HR company in downtown Galveston, those classes were super boring and nearly insulting too. I was working as an un-paid intern only four hours per day, two days a week during the semester. So I didn't need to hear about the 401k accounts.

I started the internship job at the newspaper and got assigned to work with one of their city reporters. I brought my camera but they gave me one of theirs to use instead. We concentrated on current events, concerts, conventions, and fun stuff like that. After two weeks the newspaper was only using my photos for local shots. I came home excited every day and showed my grandparents which photos in the paper were mine and which stories I rough drafted. I loved working at the paper.

I told them their darkroom had really neat film developing and printing machines, but I was used to doing it the old fashioned way. One of the independent reporters warned me that digital cameras were coming, the days of film and prints and darkrooms would come to an end in several more years. I had a hard time believing his grim prediction for photographers in media, we'd all be gone in a couple decades as technology replaced us all.

I also applied for a part-time job at two photo studios, showed them my portfolio and told them about my internship. I was offered both jobs, accepted the one closest to the apartment and started the following week. I emailed Tom the news but didn't get a reply, which scared me.

I got emails from Daniel about his graduation ceremony but never mentioned Galveston, which sort of broke my heart. Daniel stopped mentioning visiting here because he was busy with the lawyer about the lawsuit, he said he wanted to go to college but was too busy right now. He said his parents just wanted him to move out and take his girl clothes and eye make-up with him.

He also told me about the lawyer he signed with and they were getting ready to sue the school corp. and several teachers and staff for neglect, civil rights violations, and another charge I did not recognize. The lawyer said two staff from AHS were looking at possible prison time and would be charged criminally and later on civil charges.

One subject he never mentioned was possible lawsuits against his parents for neglect of a child dependent. I told him that was probably why they wanted him to graduate and get out, so they could sell the house and move far away so you'd forget about them. Once they learned about his lawsuits I'm sure they had some talks about if they were also liable.

During the last week of June Tom stopped replying to my emails. I tried calling their house but it was never answered. I was paying my own phone bill now so I was more aware of the cost of long distance phone calls. That's why I hated answering machines because you got charged but never talked to anyone.

July first arrived and the silence continued from Tom. My grandparents saw my fear and depression grow as news from Amarillo all but dried up to an occasional peep from Daniel. At dinner the nights of July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd I wanted to cry. Crow was always nearby watching me, he knew something was wrong. I felt depressed like I did back in high school before Crow was born.

One night we were eating supper and they had the TV on and it was on the six o'clock news that a disabled student in Amarillo filed a twenty million dollar lawsuit against Amarillo High School, some of the staff and teachers, and the school corporation. Two of the staff were arrested, perp walked in front of TV cameras, and taken into custody. I cheered but my grandparents had no idea what the story was about. I told them the kid who filed the suit was my best friend Daniel, he might visit here before school starts after Labor Day. But they met him up in Amarillo.

They both met Dan at the funeral but there were so many new faces his memory kind of faded. Then Gram said she remembered him because of how he talked, I told her he was standing behind me when we met those men from the helicopter. I spent some time telling her about Daniel but when she finally met him he was just a small teenager from the neighborhood who was in jeans and a t-shirt. The only thing unusual about him was the way he spoke. Gram said she guessed he was nearly deaf. Gramps never spoke to him and had no memory of him.

On the fourth of July we saw a small fireworks show local property owners around the golf course put on themselves, my grandparents said the size of the show was directly related to alcohol consumption. But it was mostly small stuff, a few large bottle rockets. The show on the (spring break) beach was too far away (15 miles) to hear but we could barely see the highest rounds above the trees far to the east.

That night about 1am Crow woke me up, and then came someone tapping on my bedroom door. I was in bed but Crow was at the door bumping the door knob with his nose. I heard talking in the kitchen but I couldn't make out the voices. I was still in bed in the dark staring at the silhouette of the dog at the door, he knew something was up. Then his tail started to sway.

With no warning the room was suddenly filled with light after the door burst open like a police raid and in walked Tom with a wide smile on his face. He stepped in the room and dropped his suitcase and kicked the door shut so the room was dark again.

I jumped out of bed. No, I flew out of bed to the door. Stopped a few feet short then started to cry, I stepped into him and held him tightly, we stood there for a long time just holding each other while I sniffled. We gently rocked at the hips side to side and held each other tightly. I continued to sniffle and then he started to sniffle too. We did a slow dance thing for a few minutes not speaking. I rested the side of my head on his shoulder like he was my mommy and just held him like I never wanted to let go.

Slowly, Crow wiggled his head between our stomachs and Tom lowered one hand to rub his neck too. I pulled back and wiped my eyes.

Tom dropped to his knees and hugged Crow, he got the tongue across the mouth and I told him Crow said he missed you.

In that instant we fell back into our old way of talking to each other with sort of a fake anger.

"Asshole, where's your Mom?"

"Asshole? Who's the asshole? She's at the hotel sleeping dumb shit!"

"God, I hate you for not emailing for two weeks!"

"Sorry, I had to pack the computer. I got so busy with stuff I just wanted to get down here. I figured we'd get caught up."

I lowered my hands to his arms then unbuttoned his shirt and un-tucked it and slid my hands all over his chest and belly. "God, I can't believe you're really here, I hope this isn't just another one of my weird dreams!" I said with more tears leaking from my eyes. I looked down at Crow, he was smiling and looked at my eyes. "Crow said he's happy you're here but he hasn't been fed in days."

We both chuckled, Tom mumbled, "Lying fucking Great Dane. He's like Wellington Wimpy on the old Popeye cartoons: I will gladly greet you on Tuesday for a hamburger today!" He got down on his knees and hugged Crow again, kissed the side of his face, "Oh you poor abused doggie!" he said scratching his favorite spots behind his ears. His long tail gently swung side to side. When Crow tried to lick his face Tom suddenly turned his head to avoid The Tongue. But it was nice to see the two of them very close together and Crow was showing Tom he truly loved him. Crow is normally not very affectionate but when Tom walked in the room he could not get enough face time. The fact that Tom quickly got down and hugged Crow was an excellent idea.

While Tom was still on his knees with his arm around Crow's shoulders he said, "Oh wait! I think I brought something for the dawg!" He slid his hand into his front pocket and pulled out a package of Slim Jims and broke them into pieces and gently hand fed them to Crow. His tail swayed side to side the entire time.

Tom played the dawg like an expert. He gently handed him a small piece of Slim Jim and kind of fed it to his mouth at his front teeth. Then Tom asked "More?" and the dog pranced and smiled and his tail swayed faster so he pressed another piece into the front of his mouth and watched him chew until he swallowed, then he asked "More?" and that went on for a couple minutes to drag it out and make the dog very happy that he got every piece without having to do anything. For the dog it was like: chew, chew, swallow, and sniff. While he was doing that I told Tom what he was doing was a very good idea. I told him Crow will remember this for the rest of his life.

After he was done hand-feeding Saint Crow I took Tom his hand and pulled him over to the bed. I pulled off all my clothes, then took his off and gently pushed him backwards onto the bed. I climbed over top, "You have no idea how much I missed your body too," I said.

I leaned over and took his boner in my mouth and worked him (mouth and hand) until he came, then I moved up to his chest and nursed on his tits for a few minutes then up to his mouth. After a short time I rolled onto my side beside him, we both said how much we missed each other and eventually got into spoon position and went to sleep. That night Crow slept between our legs, we were reunited as a family again.

Gram woke us up early in the morning. We walked Crow who still seemed excited to see Tom again; he actually leaned against him more than he ever did before. I think that meant that Crow formally accepted him into the pack.

We got into my car and drove to the hotel to get Maria, we brought her to my Grandparent's place for introductions. Then we hit the road again for me to show them Galveston, where I worked (photo studio), where I interned (newspaper), where our apartment complex was, the university campus, and the miles and miles of white sandy beach! Maria wanted us to park near the Amusement park on the pier, she wanted to walk barefoot on the beach for a little while. So we sat up on the seawall on the sidewalk with the dog and watched her check out the Gulf of Mexico. In the distance to the south were some ominous gray storm clouds and we saw lighting strike the ocean far out to sea.

One of the questions Maria asked in the car was where the newspaper was printed, I told her it was printed in Houston and trucked to the island daily.

The five of us had lunch at a nice sit-down restaurant with an outdoor patio near downtown Galveston, then we hung out in her hotel for a while. We drove Maria and Crow to the state park near the boulders to show her where the photos were taken last year. Maria said it looked desolate, just a nearly flat sandy beach and miles of open ocean all the way to the horizon. We could barely see one oil platform way out in the haze.

I tried to convince her to imagine a few Spanish Galleons at anchor off the beach but she said she couldn't make the images in her brain. The beach itself was timeless, just shifting sands, it probably looked the same 10,000 years ago except there were no people around and Galveston wasn't there.

Maria called her cousins and we met them for dinner at a small Mexican restaurant on Broadway. My Grandparents stayed home since that was a family thing with Tom's folks. I met his aunts and cousins. They all looked 100% Mexican but they all spoke English. I spoke as much Spanish as I could muster, they corrected my errors but all loved it that I took the time to learn their culture and language. They were all extremely nice people, very funny, always kidding and hugging each other, especially Tom who they haven't seen since he was about six years old. Nobody ever said the G-word or `boyfriend' or anything other than hetero phrases in front of us, which I expected would happen.

That night we dropped Maria at her hotel (8pm) while Tom and I went home. It sounded funny to refer to my Grandparent's place as home but it was temporary. It was so totally different from Amarillo but in some ways they (Amarillo and Galveston) were very much alike. Galveston had poor areas, homeless, and crime just like Amarillo. But Galveston had the enormous wide beach with big hotels and condos, waterfront stores and tourist areas. Amarillo had the I-40 corridor with malls, shopping, car dealers, and other tourist attractions but no ocean or beach. Galveston was a coastal city fully ready for hurricanes so the houses here looked different from up north. In Amarillo and most of the USA storm shutters were decorations, but here they were real and most homes had them shut during the season, which started on July 1st.

All the homes in Galveston were raised above the ground like New Orleans. In the residential areas many people left their hurricane shutters closed all year which made those areas look dark and uninhabited when they weren't empty at all. Just very little light from inside homes could be seen in the streets and there were very few street lights either. Galveston cherished their nice view of the sky at night so street lights were minimal.

Galveston was a college and party town, but Amarillo was all about cattle, farming, military manufacturing, and was thick with feds. If you drove on the highways sooner or later you'd end up in Amarillo, but Galveston was sort of like a secret party spot at the end of a dead-end street. Galveston sort of became a suburb of Houston. Houston was enormous.

The next morning Tom left alone to drive his mother to the bus station. Gramps got out a city map and showed him where it was, almost across from the airport rental car lots. I wished I could have gone but he needed some private time with his mom, he might not see her again for almost a year.

Tom drove Maria and watched as the Greyhound bus closed its door and drove off toward Oklahoma City. In Oklahoma she will change busses and ride another one west to Amarillo where she intended to live until retirement. She'd be home early tomorrow morning.

Its 460 miles from Galveston to Oklahoma, they had stops in Houston and Fort Worth, so she will get to Oklahoma City around 2pm and catch the 3:30pm bus to Amarillo which arrives around 9pm.

He seemed very quiet that night but when we went to bed he fucked me on the bedroom floor. It felt wonderful to have him inside me again, like we were physically joined. The next day he seemed more like his old self, but I could see in his eyes he was just as scared as me about all the new stuff and the start of college, the risk of failure.

I was sure he'd do fine but Tom had no self-confidence when it came to his grades. That evening we talked in bed for almost two hours. I finally told him to stop freaking out, school hasn't even started yet. Then he said he felt weird not paying for rent or utilities so I corrected him and said `Technically, my mother's estate was paying, not me." He finally stopped worrying about being a moocher. I just wanted him to succeed and become a happy restaurant owner and chef.

We drove around looking for a job for Tom that day. He found a part-time kitchen job at a Denny's near the apartment. We spent hours talking over plans and goals with Gram who made a list of stuff for Tom to get done, they were in effect taking over parenting for him too. They never mentioned paying to stay at their house for a month, they knew he was poor.

By the end of Tom's first week on the island we were in daily routines. We had Sundays off and usually spent those on the beach with my camera and Crow and gallon jug of water and some sun screen. Tom found a Frisbee underwater near the beach but Crow chewed it to death during week-two, so I got a new football and we just played keep-away and teased the dog, made him run trying to intercept the football, the dog assumed any ball I owned was actually his. He chewed on the pointy end of the football trying to poke the inner tube so it would flatten and then he could hold it in his mouth.

Our observations about the dog and balls prompted a rather long conversation at the dinner table. I told everyone he's been playing with tennis balls since he was six months old and we also had Frisbees and footballs. With every football I owned he seemed to try to flatten it by crushing a pointy end with his teeth until it flattened. It's as if he knew there was a rubber inner tube inside. Gramps said he could smell it, that's how he knew.

I suggested he felt all balls I owned were actually his to do with as he pleased. And he understood that a soccer ball, a football, and a tennis ball were all balls, and all of them were toys, therefore he had ownership of them. He never tried to control my socks or my shoes or my pencils, but he did take control of any balls I owned. I always called them all just BALL to him.

At the AHS sports field I told him to FETCH BALL or GET BALL and he would once in a while, sometimes not, until I made a run for the ball then he'd go grab it before I got to it. After that the game turned into Me Catch Dog with Ball and try to wrestle ball from his mouth. Those became tug-o-war which all dogs understood. The harder I tried to get the ball out of his mouth the louder he'd growl. So I'd tickle his tummy while he was pulling the ball because I learned when a dog growls it's hard for him to act happy at the same time, and most dogs have ticklish spots, usually around where the inner thigh meets the belly. One thing sounded really funny was when he was around 7 months old and we wrestled for the ball and I'd reach down and goose his tummy and hear his voice jump up when he was trying to growl. Or sometimes he'd have an iron grip on a tennis ball and I'd pick him up with my hands on his tummy, that also ruined his growls and almost pissed him off even more.

When he was four months old he'd grab a tennis ball and not let go so I'd grab the ball and pick him off the ground and let him hang by his teeth and growl. Of course he was so small back then I could put him down in his back and tickle his entire lower side until he quit fighting.

I loved Crow a lot when he was like 5-10 months old and I could still pick him up and carry him with his legs upward, like he was a baby. I'd put him on the grass on his back and make faces and funny voices at him and he'd try to paw at my face and act like a baby who was highly entertained. Finally one day I realized he was just too big to fit inside my shirt anymore and he was no longer a baby. He went through growth stages which lasted a few weeks where one time his body looked way too small for his long skinny legs, and other times his body was way too big for his weak baby legs. They call that time The Puppy Uglies when Danes grow in stages. We joked how if you shut your eyes and counted to ten, when you opened they he'd look a little bit taller because he grew so fast. That was when Mom started buying the most expensive dog food available in Amarillo but we mostly fed him the same food we ate.

I think that single batch dog food added about 1-2 inches to his overall height. It was amazing to see how fast he grew. And a lot of the stages of growth were the same as for human babies.

A couple times before he turned 8 weeks old I took him with us to the grocery store and carried him in a fanny pack on my stomach with his little head sticking out looking at everything in amazement.

Our routines went well, the days went by quickly. Tom and I fell into a nice pattern and for the first time we were actually living together having a great time. We got back into our sex two nights a week habit and made sure we kept the sheets clean and bed from squeaking. We usually did it on the floor beside the bed with the dog ignoring us. I sometimes cheated and extracted a load from him silently in bed with my mouth. No matter how much I told him I don't think Tom ever understood how much I loved having his dick in my mouth or my hands on his flesh. He also did not understand how nice it felt to have him suckle on my nips. His favorite thing was plain old missionary position fucking, hard and sometimes fast. I think his favorite thing was to ram it in hard while he was coming inside me. He liked to hold perfectly still while his prostate squeezed so he could feel the intensity, but that first squirt always came with a pelvic thrust that usually moved my body.

I finally got Crow to swim in the ocean with me. The gulf was super glassy one day, I was sure there were no rip-tides or under-toes. We swam out quite a way then back to shore. He handled himself very well but got really thirsty. No need to explain to the dog not to drink water from the ocean. One taste and he understood. I found a flexible rubber (camping gear) bowl at a sporting goods store that I could crush and stuff in my pocket for him to drink from which greatly increased our beach time.

By mid-July I started referring to them as my parents but still called them Gram and Gramps. I also decided to drop Compuserve and get the local dial-up internet which was $21 a month for 56k dial-up (a little bit higher than CompuServe back then). I saw a story on the TV that coming soon to Galveston was a phone company internet service called DSL with speeds up to six times faster than dial-up. The restriction was it only worked so many feet from the nearest switching office. I had no idea if my grandparent's house would be within range to get DSL.

Since moving day was only two weeks away with their help we made a shopping list for the new apartment, Gram was a huge help with that. We really never unpacked except for a few sets of clothes. It became obvious we needed all new clothes since the climate there was very different from Amarillo. Tom said we should wait until school starts to see what to wear. A lot of the kitchen stuff we'd need was in boxes that came from our house on Sandie Drive.

I was saving my money because I figured sooner or later Daniel would visit. I was still emailing him about once a week and he always replied later that day. He always said he was doing well and missed me. I told Tom more about our friendship, from our days in grade school and his coming-out in 4th grade. Tom and Dan weren't close but they considered themselves friends. I also told Tom about `boy's garage.' I told him Dan was involved but I was never invited so all I knew was based on what Dan said. At first Tom acted as if he was grossed out at the idea of a group of pre-puberty boys putting on strip-tease shows for money, but eventually he laughed at the idea like it was too strange for him to believe. He said it sounded like a bogus rumor, like flying saucers from Mars.

The only thing I could say that might convince him was I saw several times when we were in 7th grade and well into high school that sometimes Dan had hundreds of dollars in his wallet, he had no other means of making that much money back then. I was certain he didn't steal it because Dan's not that type.

If memory served, Daniel's coming out in grade school coincided with the peak popularity of Boy George. I think he was Daniel's fashion role model back then although I doubt he would admit it to anyone today. Daniel gave up on wearing skirts after high school graduation but his father still resented him. He does on occasion use a little eye pencil to emphasize his eyelids because he's a pale Scandinavian.

Daniel was hard to get to know and befriend. His speech was so bad he was hard to understand and Tom didn't know ASL. Many deaf people know they sound really weird so they are often hesitant to speak out loud. If Dan and I did not live one block apart as little kids we probably never would have known each other. I never got invited to join their private jerk-off club 10 years ago. He never told me why and I never asked. I suspect they thought I would tell if I saw all the stuff they did for money. Lots of people around the neighborhood thought my mother was some kind of government agent so they avoided her and me.

Tom asked me again what the neighborhood kids did. The short version went like this: He said it started off as kids playing with each other's dicks, then the group got larger, then it became one at a time taking off their clothes in front of the group and showing off their boy parts, then as one by one they reached puberty and discovered ejaculation it turned into performing for the group and dripping on the floor. At some point they agreed they could earn some cash so they decided to admit strangers and charge money to watch. There's a place in the big park near the school where older guys cruised to pick up teens for sex, so that was where they recruited men with money to pay to see the show. They were surprised some were willing to pay hundreds of dollars, the performers split the cash. Tom still acted like it was a great idea but dangerous and also kind of sick.

I reminded Tom I saw no proof his story was true, other than several twenty dollar bills in his wallet in the school cafeteria. Normally his mother gave him five bucks for school lunches all week, but never eighty dollars.

Tom felt obligated to do his fair share so he took over cooking dinner five days a week. We both did dishes and cleaned the kitchen after all those meals. Gramps put on three pounds by August! We seemed to really work well together as a family of five. I can't imagine how we must have disrupted my grandparent's lives going from two elderly people to four with a 150 pound Great Dane prancing around all day and occasionally boofing at a passing garbage truck or a nearby car door slam.

We actually had long conversations about dogs in general and the Great Dane breed. I found out Gram misunderstood what I was saying when I described Crow's half-assed barks as 'Boofing.' (Rhymes with: Roofing) So we watched him one evening when a delivery truck stopped at a neighbor's house, we watched his cheeks puff out when he did the lazy dog semi-bark. We all laughed and agreed it sounded exactly like he was saying the word: boof.

We responded to his boofing by telling Crow: "If you want people to treat you like a person you gotta stop talkin' like a dog." I swear that evening I saw Crow do an eye-roll at us. Gram said she read somewhere that dogs don't have the brain capacity to coordinate their mouth parts and vocal chords to make human speech. She said it was far more complicated than we realize which is why babies can only cry and it takes them months to learn how to say Mama or Papa. I told them some babies can easily learn hand gestures to signal parents what they need.

Gram asked if the Boof meant anything. I told her it was him telling us he heard something abnormal outside that indicated a stranger was near our den. He knows the person across the street cannot hear the Boof, so he was talking to us. He was doing his self-appointed, self-described job as security manager.

I tried to recall some of the conversations Mom and I had about dog brains and what went on in their skulls. I said dogs had an imagination and creativity, they enjoyed fun and games, they had a simple sense of humor, they could count, they could learn quickly when motivated, they hid what they knew, and we believed that they liked to sniff the air with their heads out the car window so they could memorize the series of scents in case they had to find their own way home, because they have a strong survival and return to home instinct.

I said they had an internal mental dialog like ours but only thought English words they learned, because they repeated sounds they heard humans utter. Gram was skeptical that Crow learned as much as I claimed. She said if he got upset at the dog in the mirror that meant he wasn't very bright but I totally disagreed. I said he didn't like the dog it the mirror because he was at first confused by the lack of a scent, not the image of the dog. I said Crow was just being cautious and also maybe showing off because at home alone he ignored the dog in the mirror.

He growled at the dog to impress me and protect me, not because he didn't recognize himself. How I taught him was to bring him close to the mirror and turned it completely around, let him sniff the mirror and see it up close, I taught him the word 'mirror,' and showed him other mirrors in the house, even Mom's little round one on the bathroom counter. I had him sit in front of it and took his paw and struck the mirror a few times so he could see it was solid, and not a doorway. The way to teach him was to expose him repeatedly to our reflections.

My best argument in favor of dog intelligence was when they dream. That ability implied a lot more mental activity than people realized. Whatever they can dream in their sleep then can also day dream while awake. I believe they can mentally replay human speech and sounds like music too.

Speaking of Crow, we got him a futon mattress for the living room since my parents asked him to stay off the sofa because of his toe nails damaged the leather, there were two little holes they repaired already. He took the news badly at first but learned and adapted to his own cushion just fine. We put it on the floor between the sofa and the TV once I convinced my folks he actually watched TV when nobody was in the room. I showed them the video I shot of him watching TV after everyone left the room. I also asked them to leave the TV on PBS during the day so he could watch Sesame Street.

We also discussed the dog and strangers in the house. I told them if he was home alone nobody should ever come inside the house. And nobody should ever come in and pretend to be beating or harming anyone here because he'll take it seriously and risk his life to protect you. "Just ask the dude from across the street when he stabbed Tom. When he stuck him with the knife he was dead four seconds later." I told them to put him in my bedroom and shut the door, make sure it's fully shut and latched. I don't think they took my warning seriously. But Gram said nobody comes inside unless one of them was home. I reminded them to always put Crow in our room and shut the door when strangers came over, like the guy who serviced the water softener.

My bottom line actual belief was dogs are a lot more intelligent than humans realized, and they understood the advantage it gave them to be thought of as a dumb animal. Dogs can add, count, learn spoken language, gestures, and can problem solve a little, but are poor tool makers/users and had a hard time drawing conclusions like cause and effect. They had great memories for scents and sounds. I said I felt dog intelligence was closely related to personality. Some dogs didn't care and only wanted to be treated like babies, others wanted to be hunter/warriors and leader of the pack. Great Danes tended to be lazy sofa dogs that were easily addicted to attention and ice cream. Gram said dogs could eat chocolate but never highly concentrated chocolate, it was poisonous to them but a scoop of cheap chocolate ice cream was not toxic because it had a very low chocolate content. I told them the whole chocolate thing was exaggerated. Gram said she thought that coco could put their heart into a dangerous very fast rhythm, but there was very little actual chocolate in most chocolate sold today. She said that chocolate milk and ice cream contains almost no cocoa at all, it was all sim-chocolate. She also said that aspirin and Tylenol do not work in dogs.

Daniel emailed and said he would like to come down by Greyhound bus for Labor Day weekend. I wrote back saying, `...fine, get the bus details and email it to me ASAP." He agreed. Two days later I went to the bus station and bought him a round trip ticket and mailed it to him, just like I promised. He showed it to his mom. She wasn't happy that he was going to Party Town Texas. In with the ticket I wrote a note ordering him to go to University Hospital and get tested and bring the result sheet along with him. I was sure he'd misunderstand why.

Moving day.

Our lives changed again dramatically again on Monday August 1st. We drove to the apartment complex office and signed a one year lease and handed them our driver's licenses to copy. All our deposits and first/last month rent, and our first 6 months of regular rent too were already paid.

The office lady gave us door two keys and walked us around the complex (at the corner of 51st Street at Broadway) to see the facilities and the dog run, which was a fenced-in retention basin covered in grass and weeds about the size of a baseball diamond, but there were a lot of petrified dog turds scattered around so the rules were not enforced. She pretended she never saw them. I knew Crow would have fun there with all the new smells and dogs to sniff. My brain told me to get his distemper and kennel cough shots updated right away.

The complex was huge, they had 300 apartments but some of them were larger two-bedroom units with washer dryers so the coin-op was for the smaller apartments. Most of the residents were college students, most of the apartments were small studio units, our one-bedroom was a mid-size. And they had a few pool parties on some holidays like Spring Break, Memorial Day, and 4th of July.

After the tour we went inside our new home to see the place then we drove back to my grandparents. Tom and I made calls to get the electricity turned on and the phone line moved, then we called the lawyer's office and sent a new change of address to the post office in Amarillo for my mail and spent the rest of the day stuffing boxes into every square inch of our cars. But we got half of it moved in one load. Tom followed in his car and parked it by our apartment. His car was almost on empty so we decided to use mine instead because it got better gas mileage. We drove there a second time with the rest of our stuff and the dog after my phone line went dead at their house, I assumed it was on at the apartment. When we got there the power was on and the refrigerator was cold but empty. It took almost an hour to empty the car, some of our new neighbors welcomed us, but most of the units that shared a common wall with us were empty.

The complex was so big they hired crews to come in and rehab apartments after the students moved out for the summer. Carpets were steam cleaned, walls painted, and scrubbed from top to bottom. I heard a renter at the dog run say that nobody actually got deposits back.

Since it was a mandatory household expense Gram met us at Walmart the next day to get stuff for the apartment, like things for the bathroom (shower curtain, soap holder, bars of soap, etc), for the kitchen (aluminum foil, wax paper, oven bags, hot pads, etc.), and living room (lamps, curtains, outlet strips, extension cords, etc.). The apartment was furnished but the furniture was minimal, cheap, and worn out. I took detailed photos of the apartment before we carried anything inside. We purchased extra king size flat bed sheets to cover all the furniture and protect from dog damage.

We needed bedding and all sorts of stuff I never considered. We both signed the check and spent about $375 bucks on household stuff, but Tom said we were still missing lots of things.

We found a liquor store that sold Tom a 12-pack without being carded, I think Tom's accent and brown skin helped there, plus he sort of flirted with the gay cashier too. He reminded Tom not to drive and Tom said he acted very gay in the store. Tom sounds super funny when he talks all flirty and feminine with his fake flamboyant accent!

On our second night in the apartment we celebrated independence and already had a nearly full page shopping list of stuff we forgot, like curtains for the bedroom. We used aluminum foil on the bottom half of the window instead. At least the air conditioning seemed to work fine. No swamp coolers here like in Amarillo, it was way too humid for swamp coolers down here. Galveston is a rainy city with a sub-tropical climate like New Orleans.

Crow wanted to spend hours in the dog walk sniffing all the petrified turds, but most of those dogs went home for the summer, so at first he only met a few dogs, all of them were tiny ones you could hand-carry. He was fascinated by miniature breed dogs, like he could hardly believe there was such a thing as a dog that only came up to his knees!

The first problem we discovered with the new apartment was when I bottomed for Tom and he rode me hard our headboard banged on the wall, so we had to stop and move it away from the wall by about seven inches so it didn't hit every time he pushed hard. We sort of learned to like doing it on the living room floor instead and eventually the dog got up and went to bed whenever we fucked in the living room.

We found a cheap old 13" CRT color TV at a garage sale so we hooked up cable and discovered all units got a basic cable package included in the rent that also had some of the same channels we got in Amarillo, like the independent TV stations from Houston and Dallas. Most of the TV stations in Galveston were actually Houston stations. Downtown Houston and downtown Galveston were only 48 miles apart.

That week I found a stack of telephone books in the laundromat and took one to locate a new vet office in town. We needed a source for prime quality dog food, many of them sold top of the line dog foods but some brands I would never buy because of their name and reputation.

We started working our jobs and got into routines, Crow got into a potty routine too similar to what he had back in Amarillo, we left the TV on during the day but not too loud. We left it on PBS because he liked watching Sesame Street. Crow also likes watching animals on TV, especially horses. He has seen and smelled horses up close before (many times) back in Amarillo. The one place I wanted to take Crow the most was one he was not allowed to go. I always wanted to take him to a public zoo to see all the different animals, I think he'd remember that day for the rest of his life. I thought zoos didn't allow dogs so it didn't disturb their display animals, but it was a shame we couldn't do it just once, even as a private event I paid extra for. It would be worth the money to me to further Crow's education. I believed a better educated dog made a better member of the community. I'd even be willing to disguise him and push him in a baby buggy just so he could see and smell the animals.

Tom said he started off at his new job as a bus boy then would advance to line cook once he proved himself worthy. He said lots of kids had no work ethic at all and had to be told to do everything, Tom was not like them at all. At work he was a real go-getter, always looking for things to do. He thinks he'll get a raise and promotion within a couple months.

During August we discussed plans for Dan's Labor Day visit. Most of the stuff Tom assumed he'd want to do I suggested not to because he was deaf and only liked doing certain types of things. Dan normally did not want to see concerts or movies or live performances. He also avoided places that might be dangerous to someone who couldn't hear normally.

Tom said he never considered safety before. I explained Daniel was sometimes hyper cautious because of his hearing, he might not hear shouted warnings or alarm sounds (tires squealing, gun shots, cracking-breaking, etc). When he went to strange places he was dependent on others to protect him. I suggested we feed him, offer him beer, and just hang out while he was here. I suggested we order delivery pizza and stock up on beer before he arrived. We should take Dan to East Beach where dogs could run free too. All of us could get in the water and have a fun time, maybe throw the Frisbee.

He asked me what kinds of things Dan liked to do. At first I said he liked to wank, but when I really stopped to think about it I said: Maybe throw the Frisbee, maybe toss the football, movies are okay -- he likes sci-fi like Star Wars but he struggles to follow the dialog. He likes action adventure stuff like Indiana Jones and Lethal Weapon but cannot tell you what the story was actually about but still has a good time watching. I also said we went bowling a few times and had fun watching the other boys our age. I told Tom that bowling alleys are often secret gay hangouts.

Around Galveston beaches that did not ban animals were on the outskirts, like the area (East Beach) where Spring Break was held annually, which wasn't very far from our apartment (6 miles). That area was on a peninsula on the far eastern end of the island. The farthest of East Beach was often considered bathing suit optional, Dan might like that too.

Tom arranged to get some of those days off, but care and feeding Daniel would be my responsibility since he didn't know ASL. The good part was while he was visiting Dan would take care of Crow since they were best friends too. Crow knew Daniel since he was one day old, we took turns bottle feeding him which seemed very long ago now. One thing occurred to me while I was thinking about Daniel was if Crow would live long enough to see any of us graduate from college. By my estimation he'd be about 8-9 years old when we graduated. Danes don't live long lives, perhaps an average of 9-11 years, and by 10 most of them are very crippled with joint problems.

Our plan was to have Dan sleep on the living room sofa, or he could sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag. I'm sure wherever he decided to sleep the dog would try to claim that spot first. Crow had his own mattress on the floor in our bedroom but he would pretend it didn't exist while Dan was here. Nobody had any idea why the dog did that but he always did when visitors slept over, since he was born.

When I moved down here from Amarillo we had two mattresses for the dog but one of them got thrown out because it was too big to carry in the car so he's down to one again unless we could find something affordable at some place, maybe Goodwill. Ideally he'd like a futon mattress like 3'x3' in size and maybe 4-6 inches thick.

The days counted down until Labor Day Weekend, Dan would be here four nights and we started college on Wednesday. We were very busy with new jobs and getting our apartment turned into our home for the next four years. Just when we thought we had everything we needed one of us would discover something missing. One time we bought all the toppings and crusts to make our own pizzas and while it was in the oven we discovered we had no proper round pizza cutter.

Tom met Dan several times but they never spent time alone together before. I didn't expect any problems with them getting along. Crow got along with anyone except very tall adult men. Basically, Crow liked anyone who was shorter than him on his back legs with his nose pointed up. (And yes, Crow checked each new adult male visitor to see how tall they were.)

One common question people ask me is what it's like living with a giant dog, what is Crow like when it's just the two of us together?

This is one question I'm well prepared to answer because I get asked all the time. I tell people if Crow was born human instead of dog he'd be like your cousin, someone you've known for years, a very familiar face.

He's a guy's guy. That means he's a guy who likes doing guy stuff with guys. He loves wrestling on the ground, he loves to get down and dirty, he loves a physical challenge. He's the kind of person to drink a few beers with then go outside at 2am and throw the football in the rain, if that's what you asked him to do. He'll stop whatever he's doing and wrestle or play games anytime you want, the answer is always YES. You can wake him up at 3am any night and expect he is always willing to play, wrestle, go hiking, or do nearly anything anytime you want.

He's also the kind of guy that if you and him go out for drinks and run into someone with a knife and that guy says "your wallet or your life" Crow is the kind of friend who would respond with "Go away or I'll kill you." And then he'd risk lethal injuries to protect you, without a moment of hesitation. If you two were outside doing stuff he's always ready to rapidly kill any creature who poses a threat to you first, him second. And he does all that stuff without speaking a single word, but he listens carefully to everything you say. That's what kind of friend Crow would be if he was human.

I don't really think Crow would be that different had he been born in a human body. He's the silent hero type, like he was born to die young in service to mankind, and he knows it.

Crow likes to do all sorts of guy stuff, he likes sports, he's into cars, he watches TV, he's a foodie (your food), and he drinks beer and wine. He likes meeting new people, making friends, and hanging out doing anything you like to do (anything that does not require thumbs or speaking). He won't play Monopoly or card games, but he will play Tag and Hide-n-Seek (but he always cheats). He'll go tent camping, or go along on 10 mile hikes on dirt trails in the forest.

On the down side he farts a lot and they pack a wallop sometimes, but he isn't grossed out if you fart. He's not impressed by money or fancy cars, and he cannot ride a motorcycle or a bicycle. And the worst part of all is between you and all your friends the Dane will probably be your first friend to die, and his final year or two he is likely to be severely crippled with bad hip joints and slowly worsening eyesight and hearing. Having a Great Dane professionally cremated after death is nearly as expensive as a human.

I also get a lot of people who think Danes must eat a lot. But the truth is they eat less than your average 75 pound German Sheppard or police dog because their metabolism is slower and they are usually a very low energy `sofa-dog.'

Daniel arrived on Friday September 2nd, 1994. I picked him up at the bus station. All he brought was a backpack with one change of clothes, clothes to sleep in, and a paperback book: `The Teachings of Don Juan.' He looked thin and pale, baseline for him. He seemed to be unchanged since our last visit. We hugged in the station and again inside the car. On the way home we took a few detours to show him the university, and the Denny's where Tom worked. Crow rode in the back seat, he kept trying to chew on Daniel (to start the games) but there wasn't enough room in the car. I feared what might happen when we got home. On the trip home we held hands several times.

Dan turned sideways in the front seat so he could reach into the back and scratch Crow's ears and tease him a little too. He let Crow lick his face once.

The photo studio I worked for had a small storefront shop for graduation portraits for high schools and the university, it was a small place with two chairs and one camera. They had pull down backgrounds and racks of sport coats and dress jackets and blouse tops for women to dress above the waist for school portraits, but most people came dressed and made-up. Most people pre-paid by mail and got an appointment time and just showed up in costume ready for me to take their photos then they left. They could teach a monkey to do my job. They also made passport photos.

At home we brought Dan's backpack inside and I showed him around our little apartment and the complex, then we walked Crow to the dog run, Dan held the leash and Crow pranced the entire way. We both noticed and commented about the prancing display. Crow really looked happy to see him, it was obvious he seemed happy to have Dan on the leash. Sometimes we wondered if Crow saw the leash as a control device for the human, whereas we saw it the other way around. Some people believed that was why most dogs pulled on the leash and walked ahead of the human, because in their minds it put them in a position of superiority over the human. Crow was very guilty of that one, and had been disciplined for it more than twice.

While we watched Crow sniff around and pee a few drops of scented urine in the distance I saw Tom's Impala drive by but he didn't see us.

Back in our apartment Crow was staying near Daniel and we saw him try to grab his wrists with his mouth several times because he wanted to chew on him to get some kind of wrestling match started. Dan would feel the dog gently grab his wrist and pull his arm up and lean over and gently say "No, not now." But Crow kept trying to get him in the mood.

The reunion of Tom and Dan was surprisingly low-key. They hugged briefly and Tom smiled broadly, I quietly reminded Tom twice to talk slower and look Dan in the eye. It took practice to get good at talking so he could see and understand what you said. We decided to leave early to run Dan over to my grandparents house, they already knew him but they wanted to see the four of us together since we were like a reunited family once again. It's like we took our act on the road to Galveston! Then Gramps said now he remembered him from the funeral.

We spent about an hour there then drove back to town and stopped to get pizza at a place on Broadway Avenue where Tom wanted to swipe a menu and eyeball the kitchen. He loved going into restaurants to see the operation and try to estimate how they made money. We went to the special gas station and he went in alone and got a 12 pack of cans, but we already had three 12 packs at home. We got home with two medium pizzas, jalapeno poppers, and garlic bread with melted cheese on top and dipping sauces. The combination of pizza and beer was a match made in heaven and we feasted for nearly an hour. I could tell the alcohol was working on Dan since his voice was louder and his ASL got sloppier!

I told him once in ASL 'you're too drunk to sign' and he replied with a middle finger (then asked if he did that one right), which was funny because that was one gesture he could still do. When anyone around Tom flipped the finger at anyone else Tom often grabbed his crotch and shook it, which made Dan chortle oddly. Tom always reacted to the middle finger as if people were asking him for sex, which I think was the historical meaning. It goes back thousands of years.

Around 9pm we all had the yawns and were all buzzed so I made up Dan's bed on the sofa and showed him the bathroom. I was so happy to have Daniel here I had a hard time not touching him constantly. I had a strong desire to hold him and hug him constantly like he was my son, returned home from the war.

That evening we spent time with me and Dan on the sofa and for part of the time I had my arm over his shoulders and sometimes I sat there and rubbed his bare chest with my fingers. He never reacted to my touch but loved being held like a child. Plus, we could sign to each other with our hands on our laps and not distract Tom.

I need to confess something right here, something about Daniel. You know what I would do to him if it was just him and me, time was stopped, and I could get away with anything and nobody else but us would know? I would put him in the bath tub and hand-wash him from head to toe, like a toddler. That way I could run my hands over every part of his body to make sure he was really okay. When it comes to Daniel I get a strong mothering urge to check him and protect him, not sure why. His body isn't sexy, his face is mediocre, and he really doesn't excite me. But I still have sexual-mommy urges for him. I'm sure some people will think this book is actually about Daniel, but it's all about Crow.

Around 10pm Crow boofed and looked at me with an expression of need, so I told him "Show." That meant I needed him to look at what he wanted. He glanced at the dog leash on the hook by the door so I quickly walked him to the dog walk, he did his business and we went back inside.

While we were outside Tom took a shower and went to bed, Dan was still on the sofa watching TV with the sound muted and captions turned on, but he looked tired. I took a shower and went to bed and let Dan fend for himself with the dog. I slipped between the sheets on our bed and wiggled against Tom and was asleep fairly quickly.

When I got into my favorite sleeping position I thought to myself how blessed I truly was being surrounded by my best friends. I realized that night we really were just like a little family, and I created it by pulling the four of us together.

With my eyes closed in bed, head on my pillow, my butt touching Tom's butt I remembered something Crow used to do when he was younger. Back when he was around six months old and could reach he'd often come to bed when he was ready but after I went to bed he'd come in the room after lights out and check on me that I was okay, he'd often touch my face with his nose and sniff me then go back to the sofa and watch TV until he was ready for bed, but I always thought it was sweet that he'd come and say goodnight.

Saturday September 3rd, 1994.

We never set an alarm, but Tom was up first and just like at Denny's he fired up the kitchen, made coffee and got out the stuff for breakfast: bacon, eggs, bread, cheese, butter, frozen veggies, and breakfast sausage links from the freezer. For eggs we usually bought liquid egg whites which were easier for making omelets. Dan made the orange juice from frozen, I walked Crow. Or maybe I should say: Crow walked me to the fenced-in people walk.

I could tell by his speed that the dog was excited and wanted to get back inside quickly, so we ran back to the apartment. Crow hung out partially in the kitchen watching everyone work. I scrubbed his bowls (which we kept in the kitchen with a tall cardboard sheet protecting the wall) and fed him.

Then I realized we had no ice so I put `two ice cube trays' on the grocery list so I could put ice cubes in the water bowl.

I asked Tom what they had him doing at Denny's and he said he will be promoted to `egg station' dude next month. Since they serve breakfast 24 hours a day there's always something to cook, eggs any way, omelets, steak and eggs, hashbrowns, toast, and some of their signature dishes like Moons over Miami (cheese, ham, scrambled eggs and more cheese, on toast with hash browns). He said if it contains eggs or hash browns he made it. He is also the #2 toast maker for the entire kitchen. He told us your average Denny's makes enough toast to pave Seawall Boulevard with toast once a year. Tom also claimed he can flip eggs with the spatula with one hand while cracking eggs on the griddle for another order. He uses a heavy paper cup to measure hash browns and pours them on the griddle and adds several drops of vegetable oil to conduct heat and help them brown faster.

I asked what kind of bread they used and he said it came from a commercial bakery in Houston and was delivered daily at 5am. They also bought eggs by the case, which was 100 eggs per box. They got butter in one pound blocks, bacon by the case, coffee by the case in foil bags custom made for their coffee machines, and they had three ice cube machines that ran 24/7. He said their coffee was a custom blend that came from Guatemala and Nicaragua, but it was mixed with the cheaper Robusta beans to keep the cost low.

We sat down at the dining table to eat, but I had to move the computers since they occupied the table after we moved in. Tom and I usually ate in the living room.

After eating and clean-up we got in my car and drove out by the hotel on East Beach and walked down to the edge of the water. There was nobody else out there so we walked all the way to the farthest east end. I took Crow off the leash but he was in his own world of scents and being dive-bombed by Seagulls. All they were dropping on him was squawking sound bombs. They were trying to scare him off but Crow gave them his usual "Who cares what you think, fuckin nasty birds."

At the east end of East Beach is a very old block seawall, I think it's there to slow erosion and to keep boats from getting grounded on the shallows close to the peninsula. Dan and Tom carefully walked part way out but its wet and slick and looked dangerous. Crow barked at them as if to warn them. It's pretty bad when the dog understands something you were doing was a bad idea, I heard it in the dog's tone of voice when he barked. It just sounded stressed.

The instant I heard his distressed bark I laughed and Crow quickly turned his head to glare at me then went back to watching them balance and try to walk on the nearly submerged block wall. The seawall looks like it's made from a million chunks of old concrete foundations with a partial sidewalk formed on top. Depending on the tide sometimes it's above water all the way and other times it's partially underwater.

The difference between high and low tide in the Gulf and the Caribbean is usually just several inches. It's one thing I never understood why some places get huge shifts (like eight vertical feet) (Normandy Beach, France) from high to low tide but other places it was only maybe four (vertical) inches (Montego Bay Jamaica). I have heard quite a few bullshit explanations.

I got down on my knees beside Crow, he leaned against me and we watched them walk on the blocks hoping nobody slipped and broke an arm or a skull. Eventually they turned around because it was just too slick to walk out to the end. When we got there the walkway was above water but it was wet, I told Crow he could go with them but he wasn't interested, he stayed near me.

Tom said the blocks were covered by a thin fuzzy-green layer of seaweed which was slick as pre-come.

After they got back Dan stripped naked and waded into the water with Crow and they swam around, Tom and I stood near the edge of the waves and watched them play, and Dan's cute little boy-size pale ass cheeks. Crow was happy to play with Dan again. I held his hearing aids in my shirt pocket while he played in the ocean with Crow. From behind he looked like a naked 6th grade boy. He had almost no chest muscles and he was very thin and pale. Tom mumbled to me that he looked cute, from a distance he'd never guess he was almost twenty years old.

For lunch we went to the store (Target grocery store) and got two packs of brats, dog buns, and hotdog condiments. Tom cooked them in a frying pan with a lid, despite the lid the apartment got smoky from all burnt the grease. After lunch we drove to Pelican Island and drove around the campus, our school opened one day after Daniel went home. That afternoon we drove up to Texas City to a large, paid, 18-hole Frisbee golf course on the waterfront and played all 18 holes but left Crow at home because they did not allow dogs. Tom kicked our asses and on the way home he bought another 12-pack of Coors (in cans), which increase our in-house stash of beer to something like three cases now.

That evening Tom made us small submarine sandwiches out of the rest of the dog buns with cold cuts and lots of toppings. They were Italian style and actually tasted much better than I expected. I'd never seen dog buns used for anything but dogs and brats before. Dan liked his and complimented Tom but I had to translate. The more drunk Dan got the worse his speech got. He removed his hearing aids early and set up his charger up high so Crow couldn't reach them and we had to enable captions on the TV.

Tom told us you could cut hot dog buns into halves or thirds and use them as slider buns too. Then we had a long talk about burgers and sliders. He said Denny's refused to add sliders to the menu because they were a money loser unless you specialized in making them, sort of like White Castle.

That evening I tried something that was a little risky, we've never done this before but I got Dan (naked) on the floor in front of the TV and used lotion and massaged his back side with Tom in the chair watching. Then I rolled him over and massaged his front, Dan was hard the entire time, but I worked around it down to his knees then turned off the lights so the TV was the only light, then I massaged his erection and testicles, he came on his stomach. Then Dan got up and went to the bathroom and took a shower so I got Tom in the same spot and did him exactly the same way. Dan sat cross legged beside us while I massaged Tom, he came on his front side too but it also spurt on his chest. While Tom was getting my massage Dan reached over to rub one of his puffy nipples, he found them to be irresistibly large and inviting.

He got up and also took a shower and while he was gone Dan did me the same way. By the time he started stroking my boner I was so horny I was almost in pain from needing to come so bad. That was the first time I jerked Dan, but he seemed to enjoy it. After my shower we all went to bed.

That night in bed with my eyes closed I thought to myself how nice it was that the three of us were getting along to well, it seemed too good to be real. Everyone was very well behaved, even Crow was trying hard not to be grumpy.

The thing to remember with Great Danes is that despite their willingness to cooperate with the pack they still got huge fucking teeth and those alone demand a certain level of respect, and they know it too! On the plus side it seems all dogs are born with a strong desire to please humans and to get along with the pack. Knowing that now watch some nature show about a pack of wild wolves in places like Yellowstone Park and see how they act in an actual wolf-only situation. Dog politics is an entirely different situation that Crow doesn't deal with because his pack is all humans.

Sunday September 3rd, 1994. Labor Day weekend.

We drove to the Target store to get everything else we'd need until Wednesday, our first day of college classes. On the way home we got another 12 pack and put away all the groceries and walked the dog. We also went to the coin-op and did two loads of laundry. We were out of clean towels, wash cloths and needed clean sheets too. By lunch all that stuff was done and we were back in front of the TV again. With Crow on a leash we drove down to an outdoor mall on Seawall Boulevard and walked Crow down the long sidewalk checking out all the boys trying to surf the tiny waves on the Gulf. Some of them were trying to master another kind of board for gliding on the thin layer of water when the waves flattened out on the beach, but if done correctly you could slide quite a distance, but timing and balance were hard to master.

I stayed with Crow on the sidewalk while they went down to the water's edge. In that part of the city no dogs were allowed on the beach but I think Tom wanted to check out some of the surf boys up close. I stayed on the concrete above the giant tidal wave barrier and played Great Dane public relations as dozens of people wanted to pet him. I kept one eye on Dan and Tom down on the beach in jeans with no shirts or shoes. Dan's hair was still long enough to tuck in his jeans. From a distance it looked like Tom was walking around with his shirtless little sister. They had a great time, and I walked Crow down to a fountain and used the squishy rubber bowl to give him a large drink of water.

About an hour later the boys came back up on the sidewalk (which was about forty feet above the ocean water), they seemed very happy, Tom seemed to learn what I knew for years about Dan, his flesh was irresistible to touch. They re-joined me, Tom had his arm on Dan's shoulder and once they got back I saw him reach down and gently pinch his little red tit a few times. He seemed to do it without realize he was doing it, and Dan never reacted to it.

That evening we baked two more pizzas, different from the ones we had last night, he used up the sliced ham and sliced tomatoes and added crushed red pepper and salt. The pizza sauce was much better than I guessed it would be for an unknown brand from a jar. From the outside it looked like just another spaghetti sauce.

We watched TV for about an hour while drinking beers then went to bed. During TV time Tom and Dan sat together on the sofa, I sat in the arm chair, Crow was curled up between them, he rested his head on Dan's thighs.

We all showered, but Tom and I went together and did it quickly. He fucked me in bed and came in me and rolled over onto his back.

"Look at the door." He whispered to me.

I lifted my head and looked at our bedroom door (which was wide open) and saw Dan was leaning against the door frame, I guessed he watched us fuck.

"Can he sleep with us?" I whispered to Tom. He mumbled that was fine with him. So we both wiggled apart a little, I patted the bed between us and Dan walked up, stepped onto the bed and got down on his knees and stretched out flat on his back between us, he set his head on my pillow.

I rolled over and kissed the side of his face and rubbed my hand up and down his front side. Like us, Dan was completely naked but not turned on.

Moments later I heard a snort and saw Crow standing at the foot of the bed, noticing we were all in bed together but him, so he snorted again and went to get on his own bed under the window in our room and grumbled once he got into position. Dan took his spot once again.

I sat up and looked at Crow, he was looking at me and snorted again. I told him "No, you have to talk with your mouth, no snorting." But he lowered his head and was ready to go to sleep.

Monday September 4th 1994. Labor Day weekend.

Tom drove to the gas station early and got another 12 pack of Coors, while we walked the dog. That morning we drove way down Seawall Boulevard to show Dan the airport and the state park where the huge boulders were, so he could see where some of those old pictures were taken. I secretly showed him one naked shot of Tom limp, not too long after I printed them. Dan was sworn to secrecy.

That evening Tom baked a jumbo whole chicken in the countertop oven along with baked veggies, it tasted wonderful. We got breasts and Dan ate the thighs and legs. We all had baked veggies: toms, carrots, onion chunks, and he also sauteed cauliflower slices.

It was way too much food and we were all stuffed so we watched TV for about one hour, drank beers, walked Crow again, and then called it a day. During dinner we reviewed his bus ticket for the ride home, he had to be at the Greyhound terminal, which was near the airport, at 4am. The sky would be dark at 4am but start to turn dark blue in the northeast sky by 0430.

I set two alarm clocks to make sure we were up at 3am. Dan had his stuff ready to go, except his clothes for the trip home. He'd arrive in Amarillo at the bus station near the community college at 11pm tonight. He was not in school since graduation but he had a job working at the public library.

We went to bed early, once again Tom topped me, that time I was on my back with my feet in the air. I felt something and turned my head to look at Crow's bed and saw Dan on his mattress leaning against the wall watching us, just then Tom hit it hard and came in me and collapsed on top of me.

We slept that night together on our bed, Dan in the center and a jealous Great Dane on the sofa. I think he slept out there as a message to us that he was upset that he was excluded again. Although he had no interest in sex, he felt he should have slept in the middle, not Daniel! Crow believed everyone's 'pack rights' should be based on size and ability to inflict lethal bites.

It didn't feel like I slept very long when the alarm went off Tuesday morning. Dragging myself to the bathroom I got up and turned on lights but we had to get going. Even at 3am it would take us about twenty minutes to get to the bus terminal. Tom and Crow stayed home, Crow got into bed as soon as Dan got up and got dressed. We double checked that he had all his stuff especially his hearing aids and charger. We got in the car about 3:25am and left for the airport. On the drive over I gave him twenty bucks to buy lunch and pop on the ride home.

He showed me his ticket, it said he'd be on this bus all the way to Oklahoma City, there he would have a 90 minute layover and he'd change busses then there was only one stop on the way to Amarillo.

I parked outside the bus terminal, there was one bus outside and had the cargo doors open, and the driver was standing by the door checking tickets. At a glance I saw about ten people standing in line to board.

We got out of the car as it started to sprinkle outside. We hugged for about one minute then I kissed him on the mouth and reminded Daniel he could come back anytime, all he had to do was ask. He seemed happy as he turned to walk across the sidewalk and in the front door of the bus station with his ticket in hand and his backpack on his back. He looked like a little girl walking to the terminal. He had his hair down his shirt in back, which he usually did regardless of where he was. Dan used tiny rubber bands to keep his pony tail tightly wrapped into a slim blond tail. He's talked about getting it cut much shorter, he said shampooing it is a hassle.

Dan looked back at me through the window, I signed to him, 'You live here' not sure if I said it right, but I meant I wanted him to move down here. He smiled and joined the line of people boarding the bus.

I sat in the car with the AC running and watched until the bus backed away from the building and drove away towards I-45 which would take them to Oklahoma City then west to Amarillo on a different bus. Dan said he'd email me when he got home. I think he'd have a 90 minute layover in downtown Oklahoma City.

That morning we cleaned the kitchen and made a new shopping list for us for our first weeks of college and then we drove to the campus book store. We converted the dining table back into homework central with both computers and printers set up. We hand wrote our class schedules into our A&M student planner books and got organized for school tomorrow morning. I was excited and scared. We discussed parking and what buildings our classes were in. All we really had for our first semester were pre-requisite classes for our majors. Even though we were in different degree programs there was some overlap, we both had English Comp and Intro to Psychology in two of their huge lecture auditoriums on campus. Both of us had three classes on Wednesday, two in the morning, and one after lunch. We agreed to meet in the student union building by the campus library near the third floor elevator. We'd be home by 2pm and decided not to eat on campus, so I packed a baggie of peanuts in case I got the munchies.

We discussed breakfast on school days and had some ideas how to save time by cooking the night before.

On our shopping list I added another extension cord and an outlet strip because we both had computers, monitors, printers, lamps to plug in on the dining table. Tom suggested we look into some kind of printer selector so both of us could use one printer, probably my daisy wheel printer because it produced the clearest printouts. His dot matrix printer needed some kind of cleaning and it looked fuzzy or blurry on paper. We needed some kind of box so two computers could share one printer.

That afternoon we walked Crow around the entire apartment complex then did a load of laundry, mostly bedding and towels. I wrote Daniel an email that afternoon and thought about him a lot. I told Tom I was going to encourage him to move down here and go to college. Tom asked where he'd stay and I pointed to the empty corner of our living room, an area about 6x6 where he could pitch a dome tent to be his own room.

Tom said Dan didn't seem like a tent kind of guy. I told him I wanted him down here so I could watch out for him, his parents never did, his father hated him and beat him when he started wearing eye makeup.

While Dan was with us he never once wore eye makeup or girl's clothing, it was just a shirt and jeans like us. I never really paid much attention to his skirts or eye makeup, it was all for attention anyway. The only thing he did that was unusual for him was on his first full day with us when we were home he unbuttoned his shirt but kept it on all the time, maybe if someone pounded on the door he could close it quickly.

I also noticed that Tom did not show off his big puffy nipples much while Dan was here. I think he's slightly embarrassed by them and the unwanted attention they attract.

Wednesday morning arrived; we got up early and ate leftovers for breakfast with coffee. I got an email from Daniel overnight that he made it home (11:45pm) without any problems. We got in the car and drove to campus. We could ride bikes to school if we had bikes, and I thought there was a city bus route that ran past our apartment complex too but today we drove. English Comp was at 8am, we left at 7am and got stuck in traffic trying to cross the causeway onto the island and find a parking spot. There were lots of extra people on campus filling up parking spots, so it should be easier by late September which is the drop-add deadline. We parked in one of the furthest lots and hiked to the classroom building. Our class was in a small lecture hall which looked like a movie theater except the seats had foldaway desktops. We sat side by side in the back row.

Our professor was a small older woman, she handed out the syllabus as everyone walked in and reviewed the entire semester, and the required writing projects and when they were due. She reviewed the policy on plagiarism, attendance, test cheating, and offered info on tutoring for grammar and content. She reviewed her office hours and location. The class was 90 minutes with one break at 45 minutes, we went to the bathroom and recalled never getting breaks in high school. In high school all our classes were 55 minutes long.

Most of our classmates were female, not sure why. I took very few notes and mostly wrote what she said on the syllabus paper about assignment due dates. Unlike AHS, this university had two semesters per year, they ran Sept to Dec, Jan to May. There were two (7-week) summer semesters, and the school was closed for most of May each year. We also learned there was an A&M system-wide word processor software I never heard of before called WordStar for Windows 2.0. We needed to buy copies at the bookstore and install it on our PCs. It came on floppy discs in the bookstore for $39. She told us how to email her our homework or we could hand it in on paper, but she preferred paperless.

On the way back to our car we stopped at the store which was packed, I grabbed the card for the software and paid. Once you paid they got the actual package from behind the counter.

We sat in the car and talked for 30 mins, next we had Intro to Psych at 11am that was also 90 minutes in another large lecture hall.

Psych was more interesting and had a more interesting student body. Our lecturer was a younger man with a PhD and he was a good speaker too. He never said Uhhh or Ummm or Y'know, and never smacked his lips, and never up-talked (Valley Girl speak). I got the impression his lecture was basically a re-run of his last semester and the ones before that. The surprising thing was he said the class was about humans learning and not psychiatry, so we would learn how humans learned and how to optimize our time in college and improve our grades. I told Tom that Gram taught me most of this class already.

That afternoon both of us had one class but not together. I had a journo related course, he had Basic Nutrition. We went to the small campus gym to see if it was worth the time and cost.

That afternoon we got out of classes at the same time in different parts of campus and met at the car and drove home. We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in our living room reading our assignments. But we did our joint class reading together and installed the word processor in both computers. I found a WordStar cheat-sheet online and printed two copies and put them on the table.

That was our first day of college. It was much nicer than high school, fewer rules, less bullshit, more strange looking young people. It sounded like we were free to flunk out of everything and quit college, it was totally up to us. We were definitely not the only ones in those classes that were fresh out of high school. We saw lots of pimply faces, so to speak.

That afternoon was the first time I tried using the search engine called Yahoo.com. I typed in the box: Wordstar cheat sheet and it showed me links to a dozen web pages with homemade cheat sheets for different versions of Wordstar. I taped one of them on a desk lamp stand so both of us could see the same cheat codes. The codes were for things like: print, select, copy, paste, spell check, page up, page down, search, and font settings. Our computers really only had like ten fonts to select from but you could buy more online, I was satisfied with Courier New.

Tom said in his afternoon nutrition class he overheard some of his classmates say "I'm the first person in my family to go to college." He predicted those girls would drop out after the midterm exams. He also said more than one wasn't wearing a bra in class, he thought they were recruiting for something, like lesbian relations maybe.

I was going to make a comment about walking around the campus with their nipples protruding but Tom was guilty of that every day of his life!

The rest of September pretty much went without any major issues, we focused on homework and did several assignments together. To study for his first test he taught me from his class notes in nutrition. He reviewed my Journo notes with me too. It started to dawn on me that we should have taken the same majors and same classes because it was very powerful when we studied together. If the rest of my life was already paid for then I didn't really need to be in college anyway so I could change to his major so we could do it together, but it was too late this semester to change classes.

We both had no classes on Thursdays so that was a day for us and Crow. We took him to East Beach and let him run, it appeared Crow was slowly slowing down too. He had more grey hairs on his face now, they first appeared between his upper lip and his nose then started to spread further back into where his whiskers grew. He also seemed to be willing to quietly spend more time napping. We also invented times where we could walk him around the apartment complex on the leash and review for tests by verbally drilling each other. We also discovered the laundromat was a fantastic time/place for doing homework, if we left the dog at home.

Late in September we took first tests and got upper 90s on each one, which was an improvement for Tom.

That fall we mapped out the rest of the year and decided to take summer classes, one per semester. We were both working, but I was an intern at the paper which didn't pay. He worked at Denny's in the kitchen and had to write a paper on that restaurant and how they operated. He said it was a franchise location, not a corporate owned location. I had to have him explain what a franchise was in plain English.

In October I decided to buy a used camping chair and spent time with Crow at the dog walk, I sat on my camp chair inside the walk and read while he sniffed around and did his thing. I couldn't do that on rainy days but I did get a few hours per week outside with Crow, just the two of us. He was slowly starting to shed his summer coat. I put a note in the apartment suggestion box that they install some kind of benches inside the dog walk. They claim to be dog-friendly but dogs are a part of the family, the dogs don't go to the walk alone, so be friendly to dog owners too and install some kind of weather proof, hurricane proof bench. I suggested something like a bus stop bench seat, mostly made of concrete so it would never blow away.

Like we learned in Psych, the more time we spent reviewing materials the better we did on tests, that strategy was called 'elaborate rehearsal.' I was a believer because it really worked. Our Prof was also a caffeine use booster, it had documented positive effects on test performance. It was the same technique Gram taught me last year in high school, and Mom taught me even earlier. One of my classmates suggested buying black market nicotine packs as another way of accomplishing the same thing.

Crow made lots of friends at the dog walk and the laundromat, he was also a chick magnet and he played them like a pro. Several people learned his name and greeted him as if he was a human. There were times when other people there were too loud to study but since most of the residents were students it sort of evolved into library noise rules in the coin-op. I always thought it was interesting to see how strangers reacted to Crow's size. Many of the comments were totally predictable, like my least favorite: He's as big as a horse! Or: That dog needs a saddle. Anyone who thought Crow was as big as a horse has no idea how much a horse weighs, like over 1000 pounds but Crow only weighs 153 pounds.

I think part of why Crow likes horses is because he's a predator and he senses they are prey animals. He senses their weakness; it speaks to an ancient part of his brain.

The weather changed and we started getting monsoon rains almost daily in the late afternoon, many were thunderstorms, but nothing severe. We had to adopt a different attitude about rain and getting wet outside walking to the coin-op or walking the dog. Crow didn't seem to mind getting wet in the rain, although wet dog wasn't the nicest smell in the world. I'm sure our apartment smelled like wet dog too, so we started burning incense. I also purchased a couple cheap rain coats and hung them beside the leashes.

This brings up another bad part of owning a giant size dog: clothing. With small dogs you can but all sorts of clothing, coats, boots, hats, Halloween costumes, etc. but nobody makes stuff like that for the largest dog breeds. If I could have purchased a rain coat for Crow I would gladly buy him one. But I also have doubts if he would keep it on. He refused to wear anything on his feet, we tried that when he was about two years old one winter. He made it clear he did not want anything on his feet. I even showed him sled dog races in Alaska on the TV and pointed out how all the dogs wore shoes but he didn't care, his mind was made-up. But he's worn a collar since he was about six weeks old and started to act as if his collar was his property. His collar was a black braided belt with small reflectors and embroidered on it was his first name and our phone number.

We got invited to a few small parties in our complex that fall, from people we got to know in the laundromat or at the dog walk. Like I said, Crow was a chick magnet.

In our part of the complex the buildings were three stories tall and rather ugly. They almost looked like apartment blocks you'd expect to see in Soviet East Berlin. Everyone said they were early hurricane proof designs. It was a tall cement prison building with outdoor hallways and nothing pretty, just functional with very little that could catch fire and burn, or blow away. Windows were smaller and less frequent. They had no skylights and the entire building was poured re-enforced concrete.

On the inside there were never enough outlets, our interior walls were cement blocks so it was difficult to hang stuff on the walls. They sold bee's wax wall anchors but they were rather expensive but they would hold up a poster, but not a framed photo unless you used several of them. The only thing I had to hang was that 8x10 framed photo I took of Crow running on the beach, I planned on sending the negative to a company to print it on a black and white poster about two feet tall and three feet wide.

It's funny that the apartment buildings were hurricane proof but they still sometimes mandated evacuations when major storms were predicted to hit Galveston.

We saw a documentary on a local TV station about what people died of during hurricanes. The most common causes were: drowning, hit by debris (bleed to death or traumatic injury), building collapse (crushed or trapped and drowned), electrocution by power lines outside on the ground, and trapped inside a car (drowned). The problem with evacuation is finding a place to go. Lots of people rely on friends who live far enough from the coast that their home is considered safer. But hurricanes can spawn dozens of tornadoes rather far inland.

It was an awkward conversation with my grandparents but he said we could not rely on them for help in evacuating, they paid a lot of money for an elder evacuation service. But Gram said to look it up in the yellow pages: hurricane shelters. It's better to arrange that months ahead of time, even if it's just sleeping in a school gymnasium on a cot with no privacy somewhere near Houston.

In early November Gram called and invited us over for Thanksgiving dinner, but Tom had to work so we declined their invitation. There was a catered dinner at the apartment in the multipurpose room but we decided to not go and have our own dinner on Sunday after Thanksgiving. Tom said he wanted to change jobs in December because that restaurant was a hot mess and restaurant jobs were plentiful, even for students. Tom said he was treated and paid differently because he was a food service major.

Crow was getting even more grey hairs on his face but otherwise doing okay, he seemed happy with life and has adjusted to the new weather and the lack of vast acres of green grass. We tried to drive him over to East Beach at least twice a month, but lately when we got there and let him run free he just stayed near the car. Back in Amarillo it was a 15 minute walk from our house to John Stiff Park where he had acres to run around if I let him loose.

Tom and I finally had our first big argument. There was a tropical storm warning on November first and second, the storm was bordering between a tropical storm and a Cat-1 hurricane. The news said to evacuate to the mainland but Gramps said not to, it would fizzle out, the TV news always said to evacuate because of the elderly retired folks on the island. Tom wanted to leave but I sided with Gramps and wanted to stay. That turned into a heated argument, I argued we had nowhere to evacuate to on the mainland, where were we going to go? The Walmart parking lot in Texas City where we'd be exposed to the exact same storm, Tom said 'storm surge' and 'flooding' but Gramps said it won't happen but the beaches might be underwater for 19 hours. So Tom left the island and I stayed behind with Crow and listened to the wind howl and saw people running around getting soaked. Our power went out for six hours but came back on that evening. I never opened the refrigerator.

Tom spent the night on a mat on the floor (unable to sleep) of a school gym in Texas City. I slept in our bed with Crow and felt really bad about our argument. But I knew most of those shelters did not allow pets and I was responsible for Crow and would never abandon him.

Tom came home the next morning and things were very quiet at home, but Crow was thrilled to see him return safely. That evening we had a long talk in bed and decided to stay together for storms and accept weather advice from my grandparents and make Crow a priority. I asked Gram to research dog-friendly storm shelters on the mainland. We also considered just driving up to the north side of Houston to a grocery store parking lot and staying in the car until the worst of the storm was over.

I read Tom's paper on the business model for the restaurant where he (formerly) worked and saw how it appeared to be a jumble of rules from the 1970s and ineffective ordering (too many suppliers) and why it got bad reviews online (inexperienced staff). The only thing they had going for them was the name and sign outside, but it was a mess. He finished his big paper a month early and turned it in, then quit after he got a job at a large Mexican restaurant (family owned) closer to home on Broadway Ave, in early December. He said fluency in Spanish was required since many of the other kitchen people were Mexicans.

What Tom learned after he talked privately to his Nutrition teacher was they had a list of recommended restaurants in the food service school office, so he picked two from the list and the first place he applied hired him, that family owned Tex-Mex restaurant.

We had Thanksgiving dinner together on Sunday, but we cooked a large chicken since neither of us were huge fans of turkey. Tom baked it just like a turkey with the most common sides too. He's even got me talking about cooking like I worked in a restaurant too!

He said at this restaurant they used a griddle but they didn't do much breakfast business, but they did have a breakfast burrito. He said they were known for their big iron skillet fajita meals. All the fixings came to your table on a steaming hot iron skillet and flour tortillas (corn by request), and they sold mixed drinks and a lot of tequila too, their biggest business was dinner and drinks and sometimes had a live Mariachi band.

He told me the owner was trying to act like a teacher and a father to him, which was odd. I suggested he stop wearing tight t-shirts to work that showed off his protruding marshmallowy nipples. He thinks there was no way that was changing the way his job prospects went. I told him he was wrong, it was like a girl wearing tight clothes that showed off nipples or camel toe. I told him that Walmart often sold black long sleeve stretchy athletic shirts, one of them might keep his tits hidden better, or maybe just a really snug fitting undershirt.

One day in mid-November I was walking Crow around the neighborhood and a cop car drove quickly into a parking lot ahead of us and a female cop (a very tall woman) got out and motioned for me to come speak to her.

We walked up by her car and she asked me to sit in back, which was cramped and Crow barely fit, but we got in and shut the doors, she had the AC running since it was hot and humid outside.

She identified herself as a detective with the Texas state troopers. She told me she knew who I was and why I moved to Galveston, she said she had a lengthy chat with Detective Zeller in Amarillo and had an update for me. She said her name was Detective Lucy Chatterton, she's stationed in Texas City and drove to the island to find me.

The short version was that they were able to find on the hospital security camera recordings the image of a woman they suspect was an agent of the North Korean military. She did not name names, perhaps they didn't know, but she told me they suspected the agent was in my mom's ICU room trying to force her to disclose nuclear design secrets while posing as a close family friend. They discovered bacteria in her blood during the autopsy which caused Mom's death from sepsis. She said it appeared my mom was injected with a small amount of raw sewage containing parasites the antibiotics couldn't kill, they grew like crazy in her body and killed her within hours by looking like she went suddenly into heart failure. Mom showed no signs of a struggle.

Hospital staff noted on her chart the elderly looking Asian woman in the room but never suspected anything was wrong. Hours later my mom's heart suddenly stopped. Staff never put together the two events but police did.

Lucy told me Galveston Police (and campus police) knew where I lived, worked, attended school and kept an eye on us from a distance to watch for any attempts to make me tell things my mom might have said to me about the US nuclear program, which she never did. I don't think she ever even said the word 'nuclear' to me.

We spent about twenty minutes in her car talking. I cried a bit twice during her story. Lucy told me they were obligated to tell me most of what they knew. She suggested from now on when I walked alone I take along something for self-protection, even as simple as a tiny can of pepper spray. She made me promise I would report to her immediately any suspicious strangers trying to talk about my mom or the Pantex plant. She gave me her business card and suggested I memorize her name and phone number.

When we were done talking, she drove us back to the apartment complex but dropped me off a half block away so the neighbors didn't see. I thanked her and walked home with Crow. That night I sort of explained a watered down version to Tom. I also called Gram the next day but she told me they were visited today too.

That conversation made it hard for me to concentrate in school for about a week. I never felt truly safe again in Galveston. Gramps gave us a shotgun and shells. We kept it under our bed. I covered it with newspaper sheets to keep the dust off it. It was loaded and ready to fire.

After that day I never ate at a Korean or Chinese restaurant again.

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