The Mad Dog

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THE MAD DOG

a story and illustration by John Shklov

Three years after the dog bit me, my friend “portagee Bob,” told me a story that made my hair stand on end. By the time I heard the news, the incident had long passed from my mind and the scars from the dog bite on my leg that had been bright red were now fading and not too visible. When he told me what had happened to the dog I was very interested. Like a lot of things in life it was because I was trying to do a good deed that I put myself in the path of that disgruntled animal in the first place. At the time, I owned and operated an ART gallery and one of my artists, a rather senior fellow, was without a phone and I wanted to set up an appointment with a potential buyer who wanted to “meet” the artist. It was definitely above and beyond the call of duty since no extra commissions would come to me as a result of the visit.

But, Joel Hadley was a good old boy, his life always woman and art centered, still even now in his old age, a second retirement, he was staying with an ex stripper and sex worker, Ethel, and her various literally snotty kids, in an old quonset hut out in the boonies. There was no physical intimacy between them as far as I know but she did have her hand in his pockets through his social security and disability payments. As these things often go she too was on the public dole herself through her own disability reimbursements a result of a violent and traumatic automobile accident. The signs and scars of this catastrophic auto accident plagued Ethel Festian for quite a while and 4 or 5 years later, the day her dog bit me she was still not a particularly healthy or attractive woman. Often when I saw her I noticed she seemed dirty, her clothes always crumpled and soiled. In person, when I saw her, I always thought the same thing, that she was wearing dirty underwear. I had several phone conversations with Ethel previously and on this, my first visit to her home, I saw her in the doorway the moment before the dog set his fangs into my meaty lower leg muscle and pulled back as my leg was going forward.

The dog bit me, just as Ethel partially opened the ratty screen door and peeked out, her eyes met mine briefly and I knew in that instant that she hated me for some reason I couldn’t at that moment comprehend. The dog bite took only a moment and I knew I would be spending my precious time, the rest of the sunny afternoon at the hospital emergency services getting my leg stitched up. The dogs tooth had painfully penetrated to the bone and I needed several shots but only six stitches. Because it was a weekend the hospital would charge more and I had no health insurance, no money and it would cost quite a bit. I was immensely angry.

My encounter with Ethel’s evil eye and my good intentions on Joel’s behalf and the dog bite all became jumbled up an intense desire in my mind to somehow strike back at Ethel and her dog. Only a few miles away, at my friends house further back in the tropical boonies, I could borrow a 22 pistol that I thought I would go and get and come back and shoot her dog. Dead. Instead, I sucked it up, put on a brave face and made as if I believed Ethel’s sympathetic words and crocodile protestations. She asked that I forward the doctors bill which I did which she of course ignored. At the time she told me how unusual it was for the big German Shepard to act so aggressively. Other folks in the neighborhood told me later that the dog in fact was pretty aggressive. She took my message for the absent Joel and I went to the hospital.

Well, in the end, I figured I couldn’t take a gun to Ethel’s dog or to Ethel or I would end up incarcerated. I had some experience with jails and prisons and I didn’t want to be locked up but I was still angry, and I wanted revenge, and thought I could work it out of my system by ritually killing the dog in my mind.

So that’s what I did. Every night as I lay down to sleep. I made a picture of the dog in my mind and led it down the country lane, past the banana patch, up the little hillock and into the advancing traffic where I saw it in my mind’s eye, he would be killed by a speeding car. I told no one. I was dedicated and serious. I reviewed my evil little scenario regularly every night for about two months. Then as suddenly as it manifested,my anger and intensity was diminished and gone. I forgot the dog, my scar healed, I forgot Ethel and I saw Joel less and less. The whole incident faded. I didn’t betray my thoughts and emotion and because this is a small island and people talk, I didn’t tell anyone the preceding story.

A fews years later over a few beers, “portagee Bob” who lived down the little lane from Ethel, told me that shortly after my biting incident, the dog had taken uncharacteristically to wandering off in the evening, away from home. This new behavior he said was unusual and the dog became increasingly disoriented. Finally, Bob said, a couple of months after the biting incident, the dog wandered out on the highway one evening and was killed by a speeding car.

 

The preceding story is fictional. Any resemblance to circumstances, persons living or dead is unintended and entirely coincidental.
Images and Words: Copyright: John Michael Shklov. Kapaa, 2007

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