I was heading out to the hunt field when the furry ball of rambunctiousness bounced out of the passenger seat to maul the air vents and the dashboard.
"Jesus Christ, Bashiro, pull up a drag," I turned in my seat to light a smoke but she was too quick across the dashboard to her doggy door and hustled out the smoking side of the car. At that point I realized that I hadn't paid my gas bill in quite some time and the need to get back home became greater than any sort of dognapping. I put my foot to the floor and gently accelerated to the appropriate park entrance before dropping off Bashiro in the little concrete lot that overlooked the open fields on the hunt grounds.
The French bulldog ran with a wild abandonment that was matched only by her nocturnal escapades. She was a rather small dog, only about forty pounds, and about as big around as her name. I was quickly finding that the name suited that little golden doggy.
"Bashiro!" I called to the small dog who ran along the grass escaping the detection of any foot patrol of the park. I was already on to what I wanted to do. I wanted to find a nice, dark place, somewhere that felt safe, or at the very least someplace that Madeline would feel safe inside of. I strolled up the buckboard path to the open field and sat down in the grass some distance away from the drive. The dog smelled the air, twitched at the breeze, and then, eventually, resumed her search for a squirrel or two to play with. I tried to count back my change in fortunes. I had walked into the office expecting the worst and walked away with an extra twenty bucks for some shelter and some medical attention for Madeline. For the first time in a long time I felt invigorated by a job.
"Good job, Buddy," I said to her. She wagged her stubby little tail and bounced out of the grass to put a little gas bomb in the black plastic bag next to me. I looked at the dog and then at the bag. I didn't mind the company, but this was a very big bag for a very small problem. It took me a moment to figure out that I was just being too formal. I said, "Good job," again. This time it didn't feel as strange, even though it was. I wasn't into thinking it was strange.
I looked at the bag and thought about the job at big game out looking for that legendary beast, the great white. I needed to think about it. I needed to think about all of it. I had come here in the dark to reflect on the hunt which had been successful, yet troublesome, and now I had the problem of a litter of French bulldogs to worry about as I swung the pickup east toward the coast. The road was long and the trip would take a while.
I thought about the job in the hunt field in the dark, and then I thought about the situation at my house in the daylight. I thought about the woman, my wife, outside in the backyard, all orange and red and tan. I was remembering how she giggled as she cut the grass and I imagined the sound of the spades getting stuck in the dirt. My wife was a good woman. She was a good wife and, at a distance, some people might have thought she was a good mother. I liked to think that she was a good mother, but the fact was that she was not at all. She was not the kind of mother that you would think about taking the advice of, or going to for help, or that you might go to for advice and ask for help. Which is not to say that she wasn't a good person. On the contrary. She was a good person. She just had a daughter that was an idiot.
For the most part, the mother and daughter changed the grass on the side of the yard in their yard and did not cut the grass of the back or the front. I would pick up Madeline from school and we would go home for a meal. They never talked to me about what happened at school or what Madeline was doing at school. I was the strange one, in my mind. So I had no idea what the usual day-to-day events were like for this family, the only real outsiders that I could imagine connecting us to each other. It seemed like a nice family. It seemed like a fine American family, other than the fact that the daughter was the sort of person you wouldn't want to rely on for anything that really mattered.
Once home, I would walk into the living room to my dog, a little boxer mix named Tank, a big dog in a little body, who would happily jump and run around the house while I flipped through cable news or I preferred the local news station for a long sit on the couch. Sometimes I would watch ESPN if there was nothing going on, if Mary was outside or if I had taken Madeline with me to the store or run her to the doctor. On the rare days that I spent with Madeline, I would carry her shopping at the hardware store or for fast food. It had only been a handful of times. And always dinner was a bit of a struggle. I was a bit of a stranger and an odd man out, and it showed. I wasn't a bad person. I was a good person and her independent, yet good person mother, had seen good in me to bring us together. It wasn't the worst thing imaginable, but it wasn't a completely ideal situation. This wasn't what we hoped for and the onus for a more traditional life had fallen upon us since bringing our daughters together, but it wasn't a bad life. It was just a bit different from what we had hoped for ourselves.
I sat on the couch and drank a few beers and watched the animal rescue channel and dreamed of having a bigger home. I watched every show I could. I taped them and watched them every Saturday night when we had dinner with the family. We never missed a single episode. I looked forward to that show every week as my only contact with the rest of the family.
The rescue channel shows made me feel a lot like I was not alone in the world. On a given day there were people doing heroic things, and a good amount of them were for the benefit of the domestic dog. Usually, these people were mothers and fathers of small children. I had never wanted a small child. Mary would make the comment that that was because she was too selfish, but she was not. I would be a good father, in all other areas but him, but the truth was that I wanted nothing to do with the single thing that she wanted. I loved Mary, the mother, but I was her husband. Talking to her about what Mary wanted would actually be a task since I never went along with it and neither had the father.
We weren't exactly close, but we were close enough that it would have been hard to tell him about her behavior sometimes. I doubt that I would have even earned complete trust, and I was still trying to earn that, and I had no interest in what she wanted not that I wouldn't have liked a small child, but because I was his dog walker. I knew that he would have hated me for not sacrificing myself. He wouldn't have seen the truth behind it all, so I kept silent about it all. I didn't want to be the harsh and rude father in the family. I had my limitations and I would have just as soon done everything possible to overcome those limitations, but I didn't.
Instead, I took it upon myself to watch every episode of all of the "worst pets ever" shows and I laughed at the idiocy."
I liked to watch the animals purposely make heinous mistakes, stuff that was downright annoying and sometimes dangerous, and the owners. I enjoyed watching the owners get really mad at their pets and screech and yell and use physical force to get the dogs to behave and obey. I didn't yell or use physical force in my own home, but I did employ the use of a squeaky toy or a can of tennis balls to get my dog's attention sometimes.
