The Gentlemen Next Door
The Adventures of Gunner the Lab… Oh, and Tiger Too
Story 40: The Gentlemen Next Door
A Virginia Homestead Story — Present Day
Gunner had been watching the new neighbors’ field for three days.
Something had moved in. Something large. From the safety of his own fence line, he could just barely see them through the trees — three enormous chestnut shapes drifting across the pasture like sunset-colored barns with legs. Every time the wind shifted, he caught a smell that was completely new to him. Not cow. Not deer. Not the donkeys from the old Texas days. Something other. Something enormous and slow and warm.
Tiger, watching from the top of the fence post, had already gone over there twice, conducted a full reconnaissance, and come back. Tiger knew exactly what they were. Tiger was simply choosing not to share this information because watching Gunner work it out for himself was, frankly, the best entertainment he’d had all week.
On the fourth morning, Dad clipped on Gunner’s leash. “Come on, bud. Let’s go meet the neighbors.”
Gunner’s tail did one uncertain wag. Meet? Meet implied approaching. Approaching implied getting closer to the warm sunset barns. Gunner had been very content to observe from a distance of one entire property line.
Tiger appeared on the porch railing as they walked past. He blinked once, slowly, and then fell in behind them at a casual distance — close enough to witness everything, far enough to maintain plausible deniability if it went badly.
The neighbors’ fence was new and strong, the way fences for very large animals need to be. Dad and Gunner walked along the gravel road until they reached the gate, and there, standing in the morning sun, were three of the biggest creatures Gunner had ever seen in his entire ninety-pound life.
Three Suffolk Punches. Solid chestnut from nose to tail. Built like the side of a house and twice as wide. Great feathered hooves the size of dinner plates. Kind brown eyes set in heads bigger than Gunner’s whole body. They were standing perfectly still, chewing slowly, watching the new arrivals with the quiet curiosity of creatures who had never been in a hurry to do anything in their entire lives.
Gunner stopped walking.
Gunner stopped being.
His tail did not wag. His tongue did not loll. He simply stood there at the end of his leash, frozen, head tilted so far back that his whole spine bent, trying to understand what he was looking at.
The biggest one took one slow step forward. Then another. The ground actually trembled — not much, just the faintest thump-thump — but Gunner felt it through his paws and his eyes got even wider.
The big horse lowered his enormous head over the top of the fence, ears forward, until his soft nose was about three feet above Gunner’s face. He breathed out — whoof — a great warm hay-smelling breath that ruffled all of Gunner’s fur backwards.
Then he spoke.
“Well now, look at you, bor. Ain’t you a proper little chap, then?”
Gunner’s brain stopped working entirely.
It wasn’t just that the horse had spoken. Gunner had been around plenty of talking animals in his head — Tiger talked to him constantly, mostly in insults — and he was used to making sense of things. It was the way the horse spoke. Slow. Soft. Round. Words that stretched out like they were being poured. Bor instead of boy. Ain’t instead of aren’t. A burr at the back of the throat that sounded like rolling hills and wet grass and somewhere very, very far away.
Gunner had no idea what any of it meant. Not one word. He just stood there with his head tilted to the other side now, trying to file the sounds somewhere in his brain.
The second horse ambled over. She was slightly smaller — only the size of a small barn — and her eyes were the soft brown of warm bread.
“Oh, do leave the lad alone, Wally. Look at him, all wide-eyed an’ that. Hello, my lovely. You’m a long way from grand, ain’t you?”
Wally? Gunner thought. You’m?
The third horse, the smallest of the three (which is to say, only enormous), came up last. He had a white blaze down his nose and a slightly mischievous tilt to his ears.
“That ain’t no horse, Beth. That’s a dog, that is. Little black ‘un. Look at his ears flop. In’t he proper sweet, then?”
The three Suffolks stood in a row at the fence, three great chestnut faces lowered down, six kind brown eyes fixed on Gunner with the gentle, unhurried curiosity of creatures who had decided this small black thing was, on balance, quite nice.
Gunner did the only thing his brain could come up with.
He sat down.
He sat right down on the gravel road, looked up at three of the biggest animals he’d ever seen in his life, and produced one single, uncertain boof — not a real bark, just the verbal equivalent of hello, I do not understand anything that is happening, please be gentle.
The big one — Wally — let out a deep, slow chuckle that rumbled out of his chest like distant thunder.
“Hark at him! Beggin’ your pardon, little chap. We don’t mean to give you a fright. You’m welcome here, you are. Welcome as the rain.”
Gunner’s tail did one tiny, tentative wag against the gravel.
He still had no idea what any of them were saying. But the tone — the slow, warm, kindly tone, like a grandmother offering biscuits — that, Gunner understood perfectly. That was a tone he knew. That was a good tone.
His tail wagged again. A little bigger this time.
Dad, holding the leash, was trying very hard not to laugh out loud. He couldn’t hear the horses talking, of course — only Gunner could — but he could see exactly what was happening on his dog’s face. The tilted head. The frozen ears. The slow, dawning realization that these enormous things were not, in fact, going to eat him.
“Easy, bud,” Dad said softly, scratching behind Gunner’s ears. “They’re nice. They’re just real big.”
Gunner leaned against Dad’s leg without taking his eyes off the horses.
The smallest horse — the one with the blaze — lowered his nose even closer, until it was nearly touching Gunner’s. Gunner could feel the warm breath on his face. Up close, the horse smelled like sweet hay and dust and sunshine on grass.
“Pleased to meet you, bor. Name’s Tom. That’s Wally an’ Beth. We’m the new lot. Hope we’ll be seein’ you about.”
Tom blinked his enormous, gentle eyes.
Gunner, very slowly, very carefully, stood up on his back legs and stretched his nose up as far as it would go, until it just barely brushed the tip of Tom’s nose. One single, polite sniff.
It smelled like nothing dangerous in the world.
Gunner’s whole body relaxed. The tail started up properly now — wag, wag, wag — and a little bit of his usual goofy lab grin returned. These were good. These were fine. These were just very, very, very large versions of the kind of creature he had always understood.
Wally watched the dog’s tail start up and made a soft pleased sound deep in his chest.
“There we are, then. Knew you’d come round, little chap. Knew you would.”
It was at that exact moment that Tiger decided to make his entrance.
Tiger, who had been sitting in the long grass at the edge of the road for the entire interaction, watching with the focused attention of a theater critic, now stood up, stretched, and walked — slowly, deliberately, casually — directly under the fence and into the horse paddock.
Gunner made a small panicked noise. Tiger! NO! THEY ARE BIG! THEY ARE—
Tiger ignored him completely. He walked right up to Wally’s enormous front hoof — a hoof bigger than Tiger’s entire head — and rubbed his cheek against the feathered fetlock like he was greeting an old friend.
Wally looked down at the small striped cat winding around his ankle. He sighed the deep, contented sigh of a horse who appreciated being respected by something small.
“Ah, hello again, little tabby man. Come back for another visit, have you?”
Again? Gunner thought. AGAIN?
Tiger looked over his shoulder at Gunner, very slowly, with an expression of such pure superiority that it could have powered a small town.
Beth, the lady horse, made a soft amused sound.
“He’s been over twicet now, that one. Proper little gentleman, he is. Knows his manners.”
Gunner stared at his cat. His cat, who had apparently been making social calls to enormous draft horses behind his back. His cat, who was now rubbing against the leg of a creature that could have stepped on him without noticing. His cat, who had clearly known exactly what was over here the entire time and had let Gunner work himself into a three-day frenzy about it on purpose.
Tiger walked back under the fence with the leisurely pace of a creature who had made his point.
By the time Dad turned them around to head home, Gunner had relaxed enough to give all three Suffolks a proper goodbye sniff through the fence rails. Wally, Beth, and Tom all lowered their great gentle heads down to him one by one, and Gunner gave each enormous nose a polite, careful lick.
“Cheerio, then, bor,” Wally rumbled. “Come back soon, why don’t you. We’m always here.”
“Bring the tabby man,” Tom added. “Likes a bit of company, that one.”
“Mind the gravel,” said Beth, who was apparently the practical one. “Sharp on the paws, that is.”
Gunner did not understand a single word, but he wagged his tail at all three of them and made a happy little whuff sound that he hoped meant thank you for not eating me.
Walking back up the gravel road toward home, Gunner kept looking over his shoulder at the three chestnut giants in the field. They had gone back to grazing, slow and peaceful, three sunset-colored shapes against the green Virginia grass. He could still hear, very faintly in his head, the warm rolling burr of their voices.
Bor.
You’m welcome here, you are.
Welcome as the rain.
He didn’t know what any of it meant. But somehow, the not-knowing made it even better. Like the words themselves were a warm soft place that he could visit anytime he wanted, even if he never figured them out.
Tiger trotted along beside him, tail high, the picture of a cat who had been right about everything and had no further comments at this time.
Gunner bumped his shoulder gently against Tiger’s side as they walked. Not best friends, he thought, looking back at the field one last time. But maybe acquaintances. Maybe the kind of acquaintances you visit on a slow Sunday morning when you want to hear someone say nice things you don’t quite understand.
That seemed like a very good kind of neighbor to have.
That night, Gunner dreamed about the horses. Three great chestnut shapes standing in a green field, lowering their gentle heads down to him, speaking words that sounded like rolling hills and warm hay and a place he had never been but somehow already missed.
Cheerio, bor, the dream-voice said softly. Welcome as the rain.
In the dream, Gunner finally understood what it meant.
It meant you belong here, too.
He slept very well.
Next time: Tiger has been visiting the Suffolks more often than anyone knows. Tiger has been negotiating with them. Tiger has a plan that involves a horse, a fence, and a strategically placed bag of carrots from Mom’s garden. Gunner, naturally, will be the distraction.