In the park two men were hammering posts into the earth. They were preparing the ground for the funfair. I went up to one and asked if they were the same team that ran this fair fifteen years ago. He said yes and I asked him if he knew a dog called Biscuit. It was, he said, his father's dog.
This is Biscuit's story.
***
You hear a thud and then the dog is yelping. You don’t know how many times you hear it, the yelping. Your brain seems slow but as soon as you realize it’s a dog yelping you’re running outside and the dog is running to you, dragging its back legs. You run to the dog and hold it as it comes on to the pavement and you lie it down and you stroke it. When it came to you, you saw its eyes, so full of a dog’s innocence and that pure pain and shock. One eye was bleeding from the impact.
It is as though all these things, the thud, the yelps, the dog running, its eye, all this happens again and again, both very fast and very slow and you don’t take it in until you’re kneeling on the pavement holding the dog.
You say, who does this dog belong to?
You are surrounded by kids – the kids that scare you outside your house late on Friday nights, scratching your car and kicking the wing mirrors off, and you’re shouting at them, where’s the owner of this dog?
One of the kids says the owner’s on his way. And then you say, I’m calling the emergency vet, whether the owner comes or not.
They’re not listening. The dog is being sick, or is it internal injuries? You don’t know. You hold the dog and then you say, one of you kids, hold this dog, comfort this dog while I call the vet and they say no. They’re too scared to touch him. His breathing’s light and rapid now, he’s not good. You run inside and get the phone, the pen, some paper and you call the vet. But you can’t take the dog there, you don’t have a car. The dog’s so still, but you’re holding his collar like he’ll get up and run away.
Here he is, says one of the kids, and the owner’s here in a four wheel drive and you tell him about the vet and tell him how to get there and he says thank you, thank you, he says, you’ve been a great help. He and one of the kids, they lift the dog into the back of the car and they drive away and it’s like you’re bereaved.
You go to bed and you can’t sleep. You hear the thud and the yelps, and you see the dog running and the look in its eyes.
Early in the morning, you call the vet and the dog’s still alive, but it’s critical and you feel bereaved.
Later, you find the owner, he works at the fair, the vet told you. They are putting up the rides, taking off the canvas and setting up the carousels and the dodgems, the swings and spinning tea-cups. He sees you and you notice that his eyes are more blue than the sky and he is short and balding and he doesn’t want to look at you. He says, thank you. He says, he’s a lovely old boy. There are no internal injuries, but they have to x-ray his legs again. He’s an old dog, and they have to see how bad his back legs are.
You hear the thud and the old dog yelping, dragging broken legs – and you see the car that hit him, its license plate hanging off.
The owner says, I’ll tell you what happens.
You nod, his eyes match the sky – you can’t see the darkness of space behind the pale denim of the sky. You go.
You’re going for a run. As you run, you think about the dog and wonder why you feel so complicit. You wonder why this feels like your dog and your pain. You don’t know.
The day is bright and the grass gleams with new growth. The birds sing in stereo around you and in the field, the bay mare grazes next to the grey. You hear the loud, hoarse call of the pheasants and the black on the magpies’ wings shines blue, purple and green.
You run over the bridge and dip down along the river underneath, then climb the other side to the track – and there’s a snake on the path. You stop. It’s so still. You wonder if it’s playing dead and you look at it more carefully. The middle of its body is missing flesh. The kids have killed it with a stick.
You stand, looking at a dead snake, and weep.
***
The owner did tell me: Biscuit died.
Strange that one of my last posts was a dead snake. Life cycles and spirals.
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