Knucklehead & Other Stories (19 page)

At that moment, Ted seems to kick his way out of his house. He has one arm wrapped around an enormous stainless steel bowl that is mounded high with what looks like popcorn topped with gravy. In his other hand, he grips the Yorkshire terrier.

The sleeves of Ted's black AC/DC
T
-shirt have been ripped or hacked away, exposing beefy arms dotted with blue smudges of tattoos. His green sweat pants are greasy and stained. Grey jockey shorts peek through a collection of holes just to one side of his crotch, suggesting a long-ago accident with battery acid. Yellow bedroom slippers are wedged over his feet. His long hair, shot through with grey, is gathered in a loose ponytail. The whiskers of his thick beard have been gathered into braids, like dreadlocks on his chin. The small dog squirms in the man's encyclopedia-sized hand, emitting a breathy sound like an orchestra of cats coughing up hairballs.

A chain rattles on the neighbour's patio as the other dog, the rottweiler the size of a small pony, cautiously emerges from a collection of lumber, a lean-to-like kennel of boards piled against the side of the house. He slinks towards the man, the stump of his tail and anvil-shaped head kept low. “C'mere, Fuckface,” Ted says to the big dog. He puts the bowl down. “Here's your fucking snack.” Ted eats a couple of handfuls—it
is
popcorn covered in gravy—then offers some to the snuffling terrier clenched in his fist. The small dog slurps up the food, then hisses and snaps in the direction of the rottweiler. Fuckface hesitates, then inches forward. He slurps up the food in a few gulps, and then licks the bowl clean, keeping his eyes on the terrier.

Colm tries not to look. “Doxie?” he calls. He checks the gate latch and the door to the garage to make sure they're shut tight. He's aware that his neighbour is watching him, and he can hear the other man laughing with a slow chuckle, “Heh-heh-heh.” Colm ignores it. Ted leans on the low chain-link fence between the two yards, laughing harder. The terrier gasps in his arms.

Colm swings towards him. “What exactly is so funny?” He is much closer than he would ever wish to be. If he'd hold out the dog dish in his hand, the terrier would eat the food.

“I can see your shit-eatin' Doxie,” Ted says. “And she's not looking so hot. Heh-heh-heh.” Colm looks where he is looking, and sees a single paw protruding from underneath his deck. “Doxie!” he says with alarm. There doesn't seem to be enough room for a Labrador retriever in that narrow space. He scrambles to his hands and knees; with difficulty he pulls Doxie from her hiding place. Her chocolate-brown fur is matted with feces. Her eyes are half-open and glazed. Frothy drool hangs from her slack jaw. Colm puts his ear to her chest cavity. Her heartbeat is racing and irregular.

Ted still snickers, and his dog barks silently and madly. Colm turns on him. “Stop that! She might be dying.” He picks up Doxie, who makes an awkward bundle in his arms. “Doxie, girl, it's all right. We'll get help.”

The neighbour hawks and spits into Colm's peonies. “It'll serve you right if your fucking dog croaks.” He smashes his way back into the house.

Zelle
@
12 months
[
The Dogcatcher's Soliloquy
]
I am not the most popular person to appear on your doorstep. I am in league with those workers who are almost universally despised—the meter maid, the traffic cop, the clerk at the vehicle impound lot, the tow truck driver, the bill collector, the tax assessor, the security guard at the airport, gate, the clerk at the unemployment office, the customs officer. We are the low-level functionaries of the bureaucracy who are inevitably the source of your grief. If we don't cost you money, we cost you time. And we try your patience. If there is a positive result from your encounter with us (you get your automobile back, your unemployment cheque is issued), it is only achieved through hardship (your car was towed, you lost your job). I know only too well the bittersweet reaction engendered by my presence at your door.

I still call myself a dogcatcher, though my title is Animal Services Bylaw Enforcement Officer. But “dogcatcher” has an old-timey feel to it, like “chimneysweep” or “fishmonger.” When I think of myself as a dogcatcher, I can place myself in a tradition—my professional forebears helped keep the streets safe from rabid mongrels, protected children from packs of wild dogs. There was likely a dogcatcher in attendance when Socrates drank his hemlock (or perhaps on the tribunal that condemned him). I can imagine a dogcatcher in a Charles Dickens novel, during the plague of London in 1666, in Roman times. I'm surprised there is no “Dogcatcher's Tale” in Chaucer.

Mirabile dictu,
the dispute between Mr. Cope and Mr. Sinclair is not the most extreme to which I have been a party. I say “a party to,” because, alas, the dogcatcher is never a neutral player in these dramas. My part is usually that of the intermediary agent who holds the power, but who stands aside of the central conflict—Creon to Oedipus, Virgil to Dante, Merlin to Arthur, Tashtego to Ahab. As agent of the complainant, the dogcatcher does the duty of avenger, more often than not taking possession of someone's cherished pet; as the unwelcome messenger, the dogcatcher makes parley with the offending party, offering the terms and conditions for the return of the captive. Emotions can run high, and not infrequently these emotions are directed at me. I vividly recall the vicious dog court hearing at which I testified, where the judgment went against the owner. He went berserk—he threatened me, he threatened the neighbour whose Pekingese had been killed, and whose son had been bitten and required forty-two stitches in the face. He threatened the judge, he threatened the court bailiffs. His was the rage of Achilles who would challenge the very gods. The case of Sinclair v. Cope was mild indeed.

For one thing, Mr. Cope never attempted to lay a counter claim. In a barking dog dispute, particularly after multiple citations, the defendant usually turns the tables. I know Mr. Sinclair has his own dog, a fine-looking Lab, but it was never the object of my duty. Both, men, while harbouring obvious antipathy towards the other, remained civil. When I suggested to Mr. Sinclair, as is our policy, that the two could engage (free-of-charge) the services of a community negotiator trained in conflict resolution, he was polite but firm: “I don't speak with Mr. Cope. This is not a point for negotiation. His dog is a nuisance.” Mr. Cope's response was equally blunt: “I don't like to go out of my house,” he said. “And what's to talk about? My neighbour's a jerk, he harasses me, I could sue his ass. But I've got a thick skin. Like Shakespeare said, Is not a terrier a dog? And does not a dog bark?”

On the one hand, I sympathized with Mr. Cope—I issued a total of ten notices with fines and three warnings in a period of barely seven months. (Not that Mr. Cope ever made any effort to pay his penalties.) Yet I understood Mr. Sinclair's position too—the law puts the duty of controlling a dog to its owner, and the same law allows for citizen complaints, the levy of penalties and the intervention of the court. And I must add that I never attended Mr. Cope's home when his dog was not barking.

In the end, it was only when I fulfilled the destiny of my role that the situation escalated beyond the limits of civility. Having determined that Mr. Cope owed $2,700 in fines, having heard from his own lips that he had no intention of changing his or his dog's behaviour, having witnessed the dog and its never-ceasing barking, having consulted the Animal Services Department's Policies & Procedures, having discussed and documented the matter with my supervisor, I recommended that the matter be brought before the court and the dog be declared a nuisance dog. The law allows for this. By a quirk of the legislation, it does not allow for the entry to the owner's premises and seizure of a nuisance dog as it does for a dangerous dog. First we must catch it running at large. But I knew that was inevitable. It is what I do. I catch dogs.

Zelle
@
3 to 8 months
They spent several Saturdays arguing their way through furniture stores. Eventually, piece by piece, they bought:

☐ A queen-size bed with an arts and crafts headboard

☐ A refectory table at an auction

☐ An antique sideboard at an estate sale

They couldn't decide on a couch. As the months rolled by, they began to leaf through the flyers that arrived in their mailbox every Wednesday and Sunday. They found they needed:

☐ A lawnmower, hedge clippers, rakes, shovels, hoes, spades, garden forks, peat moss, manure, soil in plastic bags, a hammer, a drill, a saw, a tool box

☐ A coffee maker

Beverly made regular trips to children's stores:

☐ A stroller

☐ Toys, books for babies, and books for parents about their babies

☐ A nursing bra

☐ A different nursing bra

☐ A baby monitor

By the time Zelle was eight months old, they decided that Beverly should try to take on some work, even temporary or part-time, so they could reduce the balance on their line of credit and keep current with their credit cards. Beverly went out and bought:

☐ A breast pump

☐ A different breast pump

Zelle
@
13 months
It is a Friday. Colm is sick with a summer cold, working at home. He's got his laptop spread out on the refectory table in the dining room, working on a set of engineering specifications for a new computer science building at the university. Still in his bathrobe at two in the afternoon. Beverly and Zelle have gone to meet Colm's mother Gaddie for a picnic in Heritage Park and a ride on the steam train. Zelle loves trains. Doxie lies curled at his feet, twitching her ears and forefeet in her dog dreams.

The wail of sirens pricks his consciousness as they approach. Usually they slide by on Heritage Drive a few blocks over, dopplering in and out of range. But these zero in, he can hear the roar of the diesels on the trucks. Doxie pops her head up. When she rises and pads to the window, Colm follows. The Fire Department Emergency Response Unit is the first to pull up, almost parking on his lawn. An ambulance arrives from the other direction and stops in the street in front of the Copes'. Colm notices the Animal Services truck two doors down, parked where it has often been over the last month. Another fire truck and a police car arrive.

He counts two paramedics, three firefighters and a police officer who enter the house. Another five firefighters and a police officer stand around their vehicles, talking among themselves, leaning their ears to the radio receivers pinned to their epaulets. Colm moves out to the front porch to eavesdrop. Lydia pulls up in her battered Valiant and parks facing the wrong way in front of Gwyneth's. She rushes inside.

The police officer and two of the firefighters bustle out of the house. They retrieve the gurney from the ambulance and wheel it back inside. Then they come back into the-street. There is a brief huddle, then the fire vehicles and the police car drive away. From the porch, Colm can see Gwyneth at her window, the sheers pulled aside. Betty has come to the front of her yard across the street, and kneels facing the Copes' on a little pad while she stabs a small garden fork into a flower bed. Mr. Fish has turned off his lawnmower, and stands on the sidewalk, hands on his hips, attention focussed on the ambulance. Everyone waits.