Sink or Swim

From chapter 1: Good Morning! Would You Like a Beer?

Stripped to his boxers, Bryan Brushmiller stood at the edge of the stormwater retention pond and wondered if it was possible for a Chesapeake Bay retriever to drown. It wasn’t an idle thought, but it felt like one, something he’d overheard somewhere and had been meaning to check. A story about a friend’s uncle who had a dog that liked to swim so much, one day it paddled until, exhausted, it sank like a rock. Horses can run till their hearts burst, right? Still, a dog paddling itself to death was ridiculous. Bryan was briefly irritated he even considered the possibility.

In the water, Blue the dog continued to struggle.

As summer 2011 coughed to an end, Hurricane Irene swirled not far off the coast of Ocean City, Maryland. The pressure changes registered in the sky, which had been running the entire color spectrum of overcast for the last two days as it was. Irene could level Burley Oak, the brewery Bryan spent the last two years, all of his assets and most of his sanity building. If the hurricane didn’t destroy his brewery, Bryan needed to start selling beer, which meant getting the brewery open, which, in Bryan’s fragile state, meant keeping the dog from drowning. Over the previous 30 months, Bryan had been under an extreme amount of internal and external pressure. His commitment to self-determination made anticipating and resolving every problem his responsibility. Increasingly, everything was an emergency, every decision seemed life or death. How fitting that this latest one actually might be.

Caring for Blue was part of a deal Bryan struck to help speed along the inspection process. State and county officials had been in and out of the brewery, each leaving a laundry list of touch-ups to bring the building in line with commercial standards before he could begin selling beer. Bryan received the last of the blessings earlier in the week, meaning he required only the final approval from the fire marshal and a license validation from the liquor board. He knew the former to be forthcoming. The fire marshal made a firm time commitment for the coming Thursday. The liquor license was a shakier matter, which is how Bryan ended up dog sitting as a hurricane rolled in.

Brian needed a certificate of occupancy before anyone would validate his liquor license, and the licensing official was off on the Friday preceding the Labor Day weekend. Brad Gillis, a longtime friend and surfing buddy of Bryan’s, had a sister. His sister’s mother-in-law was one of the people responsible for validating liquor licenses. Brad promised to convince her to come in on Friday and validate the certificate of occupancy. In exchange, Bryan consented to care for his dog, Blue.

“The thing is,” Brad had told him. “He’ll escape. You have to be careful to make certain the garage door stays closed until you have him on his leash.”

In the dark, Bryan mistook the garage door switch for the light, and Blue ran. Forty-five minutes later, Bryan was standing in his boxers, yelling for the dog to return.

Blue was clearly exhausted and struggling to stay afloat. The skies finally made good on their threats. Bryan stood one more moment in the rain, his slight paunch bidding for gut-hood over his shorts. He threw back his head and eased it back down resolutely, exhaling deeply as he did. Bryan figured it couldn’t get any worse and took the plunge.

I’ll be serializing my unpublished book “Being Burley” every Friday for paid subscribers this summer. Chapter 1 part one is free for everyone, see the original post for more details.