Jaycee Park, Tybee Island, Ga. Monday afternoon in July.

Calista and I take our afternoon walk. There is a welcome breeze. Not the scirocco of the past week. Pleasant.

It was pleasant enough that she was ready to go to Jaycee Park. We haven’t been there in a week.

As usual, we wander around the winding path along the creek, then stop. She drinks from the two bowls of tepid water in front of the Officer’s Quarter row of houses. She pees in her ordinary spots. She adds a few new markers.

As we round the path and cross the creek, we take a stroll we usually don’t choose. We approach the picnic table pavilion, and that’s when we see her.

A woman, maybe 60ish, with graying hair swept back, placed into a ponytail by a loop of some kind.

She is wearing one of the 60s skirts, perhaps cotton. Her top and skirt are off-white. Her sandals are sitting to the side. Birkenstocks. Well worn.

An aging hippie comes to mind immediately.

For her age, she is comforting, attractive, and oddly welcoming.

I think of the women at the coffeehouse above Crazy Horse Billards at Murray State in 1968. I smile as I also remember my wife’s wedding dress, which I chose and gifted her.

The woman sits in a comfortable-looking lawn chair with a similar one to her side, holding a hound dog in her lap.

To her other side is a multi-colored striped bag of cloth. In big letters is VADRA. It is the kind of bag you carry wine, cheese, and bread to the beach.

The woman is gently and slowly stroking the dog’s head.

Calista pulls me towards them. She insists. I tug on her leash to distract her and avoid her aggressive PTSD response to another dog.

I am not successful. I relent. But Calista stops the pull as we get nearer.

The woman looks up, and I can see she is very emotional—tears in her eyes. She is still lightly stroking the dog’s head and body.

The dog raises its head and looks at us. It relaxes back into her lap. The dog sighs.

Calista sits without command. Then she lies down, looking at the woman and her dog. Cocking her head slightly. I have never seen this behavior before.

No aggression. No barking. The intent is almost as if she is studying the situation.

The woman asks if we will join her. I thank her and sit down.

We introduce ourselves and our dogs.

Her name is Phaedra. The bag says Vadra. She is observant of me and says, yeah, my folks thought spelling that way was easier. She has a sweet drawl familiar in the South.

Her dog is John Boy, named after her brother John. They played the “John Boy” routine nightly at bedtime, and the name seemed fitting. She sighs—the dog shifts.

I apologize to her in advance if my dog reverts to her PTSD behavior. I explain she is a rescue. I fear Calista will act out any minute. Our visit may be short, I say.

Calista has laid down and seems content to observe.

Now, I am not good at many things. However, I read people pretty well, and I spent 50 years honing that skill.

Listening and observing, I do well. It seems that this woman needs someone who will listen.

Tell me your life story, I say, imitating Mr. Jim Williams of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil fame—my western Kentucky accent not quite as a drawl.

She looks at me, and a sweet smile emerges. For a moment, her sadness escapes her thoughts.

Vadra tells me John Boy is a 15-year-old coon hound who “adopted” her at a critical time in her life.

He is black and tan with some red bone. These days, his muzzle is white and gray. His eyes are big and soulfully brown. He has long, floppy ears. He pants now and then.

John Boy raises his head and looks at Calista. Something passes between them. I wonder if dogs can empathize; I sense some communication is occurring. Then, for what reason I don’t know, Calista sneezes. And if hounds could smile, I believe I just saw one on John Boy.

I tell her I always liked the name Vadra. It would have been my second choice as a daughter’s name. She looks at me inquiringly.

I smile. Story for another time, I say.

She asks if I knew that Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood had written a song with Phaedra as the central character.

“Some Velvet Morning.”

Phaedra, in Greek mythology, was a Cretan princess. Her name means “bright.”

I do know the song.

Art Bell often played the haunting melody on his program Coast to Coast on late-night radio.

I’ve never met a Phaedra. However, she is the picture of what I imagined, except she is decades older than what I imagine.

Piecing together what she says and how she says it as she talks, I figure she is at least in her late fifties, maybe even early sixties.

The back of her hands shows the first signs of the dreaded liver spots—the tell-tale signs of an aging body. Her nails are manicured, her feet are delicate, and her eyes are bright crystal blue. Tiny wrinkles.  

She asks if I would like a drink. Without waiting for an answer, she reaches into her VADRA bag and pulls out something I have not seen since the 1970s.

A bottle of Annie Green Springs Apple wine.

She screws off the cap, takes a long swig, wipes it with the hand she has been lovingly stroking her dog with, and hands it to me.

Momentarily, I pause. I am OCD and germophobic at times. All the time, actually.

I wipe the neck again with my pet-loving hand and follow her swig with a gulp. It fizzles. I cough and sputter.

Fine, I say, trying to catch my breath, mighty fine. The ridiculousness of the situation is even humorous to me.

Breathe returned; I squeaked; I guess this is why I preferred Mogen David in college.

That evokes a chuckle from her. When the woman smiles, she is beguiling.

Some velvet morning when I’m straight, I’m going open up your gate and tell you about Phaedra and how she gave me life.

Plenty of wine remains to share. I hope she doesn’t ask. She goes back to talking. A little less teary-eyed now.

John Boy adopted me after my brother, Bubba, and Diddy did the “Thelma and Louise” off a boat ramp at Santee-Cooper.

I love it when a Southern lady uses Diddy instead of Daddy.

They were both touched in the head.

Diddy was a Korean War vet; and loved his whiskey and women, and Bubba was a Vietnam wreck,  a meth head, but the best, most protective big brother a girl could have.

She tears up again. As she raises her hand to wipe a tear, I see she is wearing a charm bracelet with two hearts.

She takes another hit of the wine. She screws the cap back on and sets the bottle to the side. Didn’t even wipe the neck after my swig.

You get close to another person downing wine at Jaycee Park when you have dogs that get along.

John Boy showed up at my house the day after their “accident.” I tried to shoo him away, but he plotted himself on my porch. And here we are.

Down here, we would never use the word suicide, she says, even if the people are certifiably crazy as bed bugs.

Suicide is scandulous. Flying off a boat ramp at a hundred miles an hour is an accident.

The coroner said when they retrieved their bodies that, both of them seemed genuinely at peace. I hope so. They weren’t in life.

I didn’t want a dog. The hound had a different idea.

So, I got him food, water, a collar, a few dozen toys, and a bed he never uses.

When I first called him John Boy, he immediately came to me; it was almost like he knew his name in advance.

I talk to him, just like he’s human. I say sorry if I accidentally step on him, excuse me if I need to get past him in the bathroom, and hello, goodbye, good morning, and goodnight when he scrunches next to me in bed.

I can relate to all this. I think back to the day Stimpy adopted Kay and me.

Over the years, I understood that God always knows what we need and sends it to us because he/she loves us.

The dogs, for the most part, are ignoring us.

Calista now and then grabs a fly mid-air like a Ninja. She detests the little buggers. You don’t want your finger near her mouth when she chomps down.

John Boy seems asleep. Slightly panting and chasing rabbits.

She strokes the dog again and looks at me with great sadness. I’m taking him in tomorrow. The cancer just about got him.

I know that look, and I know that feeling. My heart hurts, and emotions rush through me.

Calista stands up now.

It is as if she needed to hear the conversation to the end. What more is there to say?

She begins to pull the leash off to my left. Smelling pee from John Boy, most likely. She squats. I am now emotional myself.

A deep breath. Another. I am more stable now. Our conversation has not been 30 minutes. I have made a heart connection with this woman, Vadra.

Strange how life works.

And maybe tell you ’bout Phaedra, And how she gave me life, And how she made it in, Some velvet morning when I’m straight.

Vadra, I say, looking into her bluest eyes, God loves you.

I know he does.

Because God loves dogs and the special people that dogs adopt.