The Speckled Beauty - Rick Bragg

(bell chiming) (typewriter carriage returning) (gentle music) - [Rick] I'm Rick Bragg and my book is "The Speckled Beauty."

(gentle music) - What is it about this dog that made him the foundation of this book?

- I found him on a ridge line in our place north of Jacksonville, Alabama, and he was starved and he was tore to pieces.

He had been a stray.

Someone just threw him away.

And he's a beautiful, merle-coated Australian shepherd.

- [Jeremy] Yeah.

Pat Conroy and Willie Morris had both told me that eventually, you're gonna wanna do a dog book, because you'll get old and you'll think, "Hey, it's hard to do anything else.

I'll write about my dog."

And so I wanted to do a softer, kinder book.

And I'll tell you when I decided to do it was because I took him in, didn't mean he was happy there.

He was a stray and he was the alpha in the pack of dogs and he was not tame.

But when I brought him home, he was okay for a while.

Well, and that's a lie, he fought everything.

He fought everything from the mule to the other dogs, he just fought.

And then one day, he just left and came back a few days later and he was again, torn to pieces again.

He was torn to pieces when I got him, when I found him.

And then he was torn to pieces again.

And I told my mom, she's 85 now.

I told her, I said, "You stay here with him.

I'm gonna run in, call the vet, tell him we're on our way."

And I came back out and she was talking to him.

And she never liked that dog.

She was talking to him like he was a child.

And she was saying, I'll never forget this, "You don't have a name yet."

He didn't have a name yet.

"You don't have a name yet.

I think we're going to name you after our third cousin.

She had these freckles all over, had a million freckles.

And my daddy," my grandfather, her daddy, "nicknamed her The Speckled Beauty."

And she looked right at the dog and she said, "So because you've got freckles, I think that's what we're gonna name you."

I could see the title on the book jacket, "The Speckled Beauty."

Which I think is one of the three or four best book titles, he said modestly, that he'd ever heard.

- I mean, thank God for mothers.

- Yeah.

- [Jeremy] I mean that, just that- - "The Speckled Beauty."

- Speckled Beauty, thanks, mom.

(gentle bluegrass music) What is it about dogs?

(Rick laughing) They can't talk.

They don't feed us.

They don't pay our bills, but we'd do anything for 'em.

- I think that might be it.

I think the fact that, we don't want anything from 'em, really.

I mean, we want something from everybody.

We don't want anything from 'em.

I know a wonderful person who loved birds.

And I asked her once, I said, "What is it?"

And she said, "Well, they don't ask anything from you.

They're just there."

And I think that's what dogs are.

You read things into 'em.

I mean, everybody gets to read their own narrative into their dog.

And what's the dog gonna do?

I mean, the dog gonna say, "No, that ain't it.

No, you read me all wrong."

They project their own feelings and no matter what they project into the dog, and I don't want this to sound highfalutin, 'cause I am not that smart, but whatever they project into the dog, what they pull out is happiness.

I mean, it's just a... if that is not magic, then I don't know what is.

(playful guitar music) - So, I have a terrible dog.

And he steals things.

He sleeps in our bed.

And I think the worse he acts, the more we like him.

And I don't know what that says about us as people, but you've written a book about a dog kind of like that.

- It took me a long time to figure out what was going on.

At first I thought he was just slightly had suffered some kind of terrible injury to his head, because he would gnaw on dead deer carcasses, but he would drag 'em up to the front door so we would all get to enjoy it.

- Right.

Right.

- And he watered my mama's flowers in very inappropriate ways.

That's a pretty good public broadcasting way to say that.

- It is, nice job.

- And he fought everybody.

I'll never forget going to a book event and a car and driver came to pick me up at the farm to take me to Atlanta to the airport.

And the dog just attacked the limousine.

I mean, just gnawing and scratching.

And here's this immaculate lacquered finish.

- Of course.

- [Rick] And the dog is just- - Nice.

- And the driver just looked on in fear.

And I said, "You just stay in there.

Don't get out."

I said, "I don't think he'd hurt you, but he would sure mess up your suit."

- Can you imagine what the driver thought?

And he thought, "Where am I?"

- Well, first of all, he came from Atlanta and drove down roads that you can barely you know, get a tractor down.

- Right - And then he...

But as we were pulling away and the dog running full tilt, 'cause the dog hated to see me go, dog loved me.

'Cause he is a bad dog and a terrible dog and an awful dog doesn't mean that he didn't love me.

- That's right.

- And the dog's running alongside, just that look on his face like, "I ain't ever gonna see you again."

And the dog's running.

And the guy looks at me and said, "Does he bite?"

I said, "He even bites me."

And so, I don't know, I mean.

But people want to make their dogs myths.

But every now and then, there really is a dog.

And I think my dog is like that who is perfect in their mythology.

(lonesome piano music) - [Jeremy] You've written about your mother, you've written about your brother, you've written about your family, your ancestors.

This is a key member of your family, this dog.

- It is not the book that we wanted to do.

No big spoiler here, but I didn't want it to be a book where the dog dies.

And I was not gonna do it if the dog died, just wasn't gonna do it.

I'd write something else.

Might have to forego the pavements on my Learjet.

But I was not gonna- - Not gonna do it.

- I was not gonna do it.

But then, after trying so hard to do a book that would be happy throughout, my brother, Sam, who was in every book I ever wrote, and every story I ever told, he got sick with cancer and he passed away.

So, it became a much more human book.

And it just shows how life will do you.

If you concentrate too much on one thing and try to hold on to one thing, sometimes life sneaks in and gets you from the direction you're not looking.

(inspiring piano music) - [Jeremy] Is there a book that changed your life?

- I think that what happened to me was I grew up in a house, and this is not an exaggeration.

We had the New Testament and the seed catalog, and that's not a cliche.

We had a seed catalog and the New Testament.

And we would get boxes of like "Birmingham News" and "Atlanta Journal Constitutions" and I would read them that were sent down to us from relatives when they were done with them.

So I'd be reading about Christmas sales at Macy's in July.

So that's how I learned to love to read.

But I grew up at the knee of the best front porch storytellers on the planet.

There are no better talkers than the people at the foothills of the Appalachians.

They're just aren't.

And the first time I saw a writer capture that, that spirit in color, was in a book by Fred Gipson called "Savage Sam."

And he wrote "Old Yeller."

But see, "Old Yeller" was tragic and awful and brooding but "Savage Sam" was bloody and fast-paced.

And it had Comanches raiding the farms of the Texas Hill Country.

And I saw in those pages that you could tell a story in print the same way that my people told them just talking.

The best book I think I ever read was Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove" you know, which won the Pulitzer.

And as an adult, as a grownup man, I saw in those stories something that I did not think humanly possible, that you could vanish into a book.

When it came out, I read it two or three times in a row.

- [Jeremy] Wow.

- Read it once because it was just such a great story.

And then I read it because it was for the craft of it.

For the craft of it.

- Right.

- And then I read it again because I was broke and didn't have anything else to do.

- And that's a good way to spend the time.

This has been a highlight of my life.

- Oh, it's fun.

It's easy.

- Thank you.

Thank you for taking the time and doing this, Rick.

- No, this was, talking about words, talking about writing, talking about books, that's one of the great luxuries of my life.

- Yeah.

And you're a luxury in our lives, so thank you for doing this.

- No, it's my pleasure.

Thank y'all.

- And thank you for watching "A Word on Words."

I'm Jeremy Finley.

And remember, keep reading.

(bell chiming) - [Rick] He gets a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit.

Now, he doesn't get one every day, but he gets one often.

Until the world runs out of bacon, egg and cheese biscuits, me and him are gonna be like this.

- [Jeremy] You're gonna be fine.

(gentle guitar music)