To Live Again
by Trina Allen Home Blog
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Sitting on her back
deck, Allison nearly choked on sweet tea when she saw the letter from
Jerry had shown
absolutely no remorse during his trial, which may have surprised the press but
not Allison. On the witness stand he said that he felt no guilt about leaving the two
children motherless, which confirmed Allison’s belief that Jerry Schultz lacked
a conscience. The jury must have
believed it too because they found him guilty of both second-degree
manslaughter and robbery. The judge
sentenced Jerry Schultz to forty-five years with no option of parole.
The sound of children’s
laughter startled Allison back to the present.
Two neighbor boys were playing a game of tag with Sam, her cocker
spaniel. She waved at Dave Johnson as he
lit his grill next-door. The pungent
odor of burning charcoal mixed with the sweet smell of forsythia.
Allison stroked Van’s
neck, grateful for his company. Fighting
scars crisscrossed the pit bull’s face and a large scar ran from the tattered
remnants of one ear all the way to his jaw.
Van, once known as The Vanquisher, licked her hand and laid
his yellow head in her lap. Then he
whined, looking toward Sam, who was now chasing scents at the edge of the
yard.
"Go on,
then."
Van shuffled off the
deck and loped toward Sam. Van nuzzled
the cocker’s neck, then growled and nipped Sam’s shoulder playfully.
Allison sorted today’s
mail and looked up from reading a letter to see a red fan of dirt flying from
Sam’s paws and a similar red brown avalanche behind Van’s front feet. Sam darted in and out of the hole in the
ground, sniffing and barking. Van’s head
disappeared in the hole he had dug and came up with something in his
teeth.
Curious, Allison put
the letter down and walked down the steps.
Across the yard, Van shook the object in his teeth, growled, and then
shuffled across the yard, Sam at his heels.
Sam barked and whined, jumping and snapping at the object in Van’s
mouth, but to no avail. He was not about
to let go.
She spoke one word,
"Drop."
Van immediately dropped
the object, licked her hand, and then scampered across the yard. He seemed to melt out of sight.
Sam whined, his black
body straining toward Van.
"No boy, you stay
here." When she looked at the
object that Van had dropped, a sense of disbelief filled her. She scanned the yard.
"Come Sam. Show me where you found this." She followed the cocker to the hole he and
Van had dug. When she looked down, her
stomach lurched and her temples throbbed with pain.
There was no
explanation for what she saw.
##
Two years ago, Allison
had been awake just before dawn after another sleepless night. A car had pulled into her driveway, light
from its headlights filtering through slits in her window blinds. She laid still, her breath coming in rapid
bursts. She willed her heart to stop
beating so loudly so she could hear Jerry’s boots crunching gravel if he got
out of the car.
During five years of
marriage, Jerry had beaten her without mercy or remorse, once for talking
during the football game he was watching.
A small scar ran across her upper lip where his fist had opened it. Her nose remained crooked after numerous
blows. Twice he’d
broken her wrists when she’d used her hands to defend herself.
In desperation, two
years ago Allison got a 50B order of protection and a court-ordered
separation. Jerry could not come within
500 yards of the house or her. Even so,
Allison believed Jerry would disregard the restraining order. She knew Jerry well enough to know a court
order meant little to him. Consequently,
she had the locks changed and an alarm system installed. A motion detector scanned movement in the
hall. If her husband somehow got into
the house, an alarm would sound, summoning the sheriff. Even that did little to ease her fear.
When the whine of the
car’s retreating engine became smaller, fading into the darkness, she rose up
enough to peer out the blinds. The
newspaper in the driveway left little doubt who had visited. Although relieved, she lay in bed saturated
with perspiration. Her arms and legs
were dead weight. She was afraid to
move. She needed fresh pajamas, but the
dresser was too far.
It was that sleepless
night, like many before it, that sent her to the Guilford County Animal
Shelter, desperate and tired of living in fear.
She herself say, "I’d like to adopt a dog,
something big."
"My name is
Tina. I’m sure
we can find the right dog for you. We
have one hundred thirty dogs here."
Small puppies licked
her fingers through the bars of their cages.
Cute little dogs tilted their heads and posed. Didn’t Tina
understand? She didn’t
need cute. She needed vicious. "I need
a big, scary looking dog!" Her
voice cracked with frustration.
Her distress grew as
they passed dog after dog, some lying dejectedly in their cages. She watched a dog urinate and then lie in
it. She felt defeated. Even the dogs had given up.
Then they stopped in front
of a disfigured yellow-blonde dog with unattractive scars. The dog didn’t bark,
but wagged its tail.
"What about this
dog?"
He cocked his unsightly
head, whined, and licked her fingers through the bars.
Tina shook her
head. "Vanquisher. He’s not for
you. He’s slated to be
euthanized."
"Why?"
"He’s a fighting
dog." Tina said. "That dog has
the stocky body of a pit bull. He may be
part boxer, and he looks like he has some shepherd in him. But, mark my words
he’s a pit bull. We won’t adopt him
out."
Allison remembered
stories of vicious fighting dogs that turned on their owners.
The ugly dog cocked his
good ear. He barked and backed up on his
haunches, his scarred front legs stretched out in a doggie bow. He barked and bowed again.
Allison laughed for the
first time in years, the sound of her own laughter startling her. "I’ll take him. I’ll call him Van."
Van rode home in the
back seat and the front seat. He sniffed
the whole interior of the car, leaving slobber marks on all the windows. And he stank.
She
thought, what have I done? She knew nothing about dogs.
Van made himself at
home in her house, drooling and scratching himself. His first meal was sneakers amandine,
followed by compact disk praline–he broke up the CDs within seconds and
swallowed the pieces whole. She wondered
what the plastic would do to his digestive system.
She naively laid a soft
blanket at the foot of her bed and put a chew bone on it. Van had other ideas. He lumbered into the bedroom, grabbed the
rawhide bone in his huge teeth, and jumped onto the bed.
Allison dragged him by
his collar to the floor.
Seeming not to
understand, Van jumped right back onto her bed.
She tried again, but finally gave up in defeat. When he licked her face, the smell of his
awful breath overpowering, Allison felt something she had not felt in a long
time. She felt safe. Van and his large teeth were sleeping next to
her. He gnawed the dog bone, leaving
slobber and rawhide fragments on her pillow.
The next morning, when
Allison stepped out of the shower, she heard Van chewing something. She had seen how quickly he demolished the
rawhide so she ran toward the sound to find him chewing the bedroom wall as if
it were Chicken Kiev. Slivers of
wallboard littered the floor and white plaster powder covered his face. The dog looked at her, seemed to smile, and
then growled at the wall and took a fresh bite.
She had to do something about his voracious appetite or there would be
nothing left of her house.
Van immediately
enrolled in Allison Schultz’s crash course in behavior management. His first trick-the
sit command. She pulled him up by
the collar until he sat, and then fed him pieces of dog biscuit. She stroked his scarred neck and praised him,
told him what a good boy he was. Twenty
times in a row. Until
he sat.
He quickly learned
other commands, like stay and down. With
time, he mastered even the command to heel, his leash a formality. Her furniture was safe. She was safe.
He slept in his own bed at the foot of hers. Gradually her night terrors stopped and she
slept through the newspaper’s arrival.
Allison had found the
strength in that ugly, scrappy dog to learn to live again.
##
One morning she let Van
out for his bathroom ritual, as always.
After several minutes he did not bark to come
in. Worried, Allison opened the door and
called, "Van! Van, come here
boy!" Nothing. She yelled his whole name,
"Vanquisher!" She called him
repeatedly, to no avail.
He had always come when
she called him. Where was he? No one would steal him–he was too ugly. And then she went
numb with fear. Unless someone wanted a fighting pit bull.
Or worse, he was hit by a car. She pictured him lying in the road: hurt and
bleeding or dead.
She couldn’t
get the image out of her head as she walked the streets calling him, tears
streaming down her face. "Vanquisher!
Here boy, come home." A car honked, breaks squealing, stopping
barely inches from her. She didn’t hear the angry driver’s curses.
Desperate, she drove
the streets with tear-blinded eyes, afraid she would find him smashed in the
road, relieved that she hadn’t.
She checked the animal
shelter twice a day, with hope in her heart each time, and placed a lost dog ad
in the same newspaper whose early-morning delivery had terrified her. She posted fliers offering a reward and
called animal control, grateful they had no dogs of his description.
Finally, after two
weeks, as she listened in vain for Van’s bark amongst the din of barking at the
shelter, she knew. He was gone. The Vanquisher had disappeared. She’d never again
hear that marvelous bark. What could she do without him? That ugly
pound puppy meant everything to her.
She slid to the floor
and sat on the concrete next to a small yappy dog’s cage, put her head in her
hands and sobbed.
The toy dog’s yapping
finally broke through her consciousness. She noticed the sign on a cage across
from her. "Sam. Friendly … cocker spaniel." She looked
at the fine-looking black dog, as beautiful as Van was ugly. Large brown eyes looked intelligently at
her. Sam barked and licked her fingers
through the bars, his tail wagging.
She took Sam home. He was a well-behaved boy, never jumped on
furniture. He slept on the floor, knew
how to sit on command. He was a good
companion, but he never bowed; never once made her laugh. Allison gave up. She quit leaving the house, spent her nights
in a cold sweat too afraid to get up and turn on a light.
As she was preparing
for another sleepless night, she heard his familiar bark. It couldn’t be him.
Steeling herself for disappointment, she opened the door.
Her old friend stood in
the doorway, much too thin and covered with red
Sam barked and Van
touched his nose.
"Sam, this is
Van. He’s come home." That was nearly two years ago.
##
Van barked and shook
the object in his teeth. Looking at him,
the letter from
I don’t
have any regrets except one. I wish I’d killed you instead of that ugly sack of shit you called
a dog. It was fun watching you look for
that dead mutt. I was excited when I
came back for you the next night, ready to make you pay for throwing me out of
my own house. But
that demon of a dog stood there on your porch growling. The damn thing bowed to me.
It was dead, damn
it. I killed it.
The mutt wouldn’t let me close to you. If I stepped on our property it attacked me,
damn near ripped my arm off with its fucking teeth. It was everywhere you went. If you left the house, it went with you. I couldn’t get close
to you.
Now, I’m
seeing the demon cuss here in my cell at night, growling and bowing to me. Call off your dog, bitch.
Jerry Shultz was trying
to scare her. Van was alive and well,
digging a hole in her yard.
Still, she climbed down
the deck stairs anyway and told Van to drop what was in his mouth. The sight of that object made her heart
pound. At her feet was a dog collar,
Van’s own. Allison looked at his collar
and then stared across the yard toward the place where he had disappeared.
She told herself that
he was fine. He’d
been playing in the yard just seconds ago.
Dogs didn’t die and then live again.
She walked with Sam to
the edge of her yard. The faint odor of
decay filled her nostrils. She closed
her eyes once and then forced herself to look into the hole that Van had helped
dig. She stifled a gag reflex. Partially unburied was the decomposing body
of Vanquisher, the scrappy pit bull terrier that meant so much to her. She ran to the edge of the yard and vomited.
End.
Publication
Information
Winner of Write Around the
Block's January 2008 short story contest.
"To Live Again.” Fully Bully, IX,X (March, May 2005).
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