Dog Murder
If you venture back into the interior of the South End — and I guarantee you very few do — you’ll wander up on illegal buildings, Aryan nation signage, lost homesteads and small forests covered by English ivy, making it feel as if you’ve found some ancient civilization gone to rot and ruin. The last few miles of the island there are no roads running across from east to west, just a few dirt ones that lead to xenophobic neighbors. Most of the roads on the South End that pierce the interior give fair warning you’re not welcome. There are more No Trespassing signs than there are Trump/Pence, which is to say, there are plenty.
Behind our little Shangri-La-La there used to live a man who, if you met him, you’d think to be a very polite, well-mannered person, someone you might enjoy a conversation with over a beer late in any given afternoon. You’d be wrong. He holed up back in the woods, raised a few farm animals and shot anything that came onto his property. One of my neighbors, painter John, rang me up one day, this would be back twenty years or more ago, to ask if I’d seen his dog who’d run off. I said I hadn’t, but … and I hesitated to tell him this … but maybe he should go see Tyler, the man who lived behind us back in the nettle jungle.
“Why’s that?” John asked and I told him because Tyler would shoot his dog if he happened to wander onto his property. John, being a peaceful sort of man, declared that he doubted anyone would do such a thing. But he would ask, if nothing else, see if Tyler had seen his shepard. When John drove up there, Tyler said sure, he’d killed the sonofabitch, seen it menacing his chickens, put a bullet right into him, shot him dead. Now John loved that sonofabitch and you best believe he was upset to hear this turn of events, kind of a shock to his faith in his fellow man. John hadn’t even heard the story of two other dogs found near Tyler’s place, hogtied with baling wire and left to die. Shooting a dog for trying to kill your own animals is one thing, killing them in a slow heinous way is quite another.
However, John heard Tyler’s wife say to Tyler, ‘that dog wasn’t bothering the chickens’. One hard look from m’lord shut her up right then and there, little doubt that a beating was coming once John drove off, but it told John all he needed to know. ‘What you planning, John?’ I asked when he told me he’d found his dog.
I lived for a time in a hardscrabble place in Northern Wisconsin where my neighbor and good friend had found his beagle drag itself home after being shot. Eddie was ex-Marine, a kindly sort, but not when it came to someone shooting his dog Barney. Eddie followed the blood on the snow all the way down to where the road took a turn and knocked on the door of the guy who’d put a bullet in Barney. The guy said he didn’t shoot no damn dog and went to shut the door in Eddie’s face, but Eddie held the door open. ‘If my dog dies,’ Eddie told him, and I have no doubt, knowing Eddie, this was a blood vow, ‘you’ll be dead too. ‘
Barney lived. And so did the man who shot him. I told John this story, but John only shook his head. Like I said, John’s a peaceful man. He did take Tyler to court, got a settlement, if I remember correctly, of 500 dollars. I’m not sure he felt vindicated, I know I wouldn’t have been. I do know this, I’m glad it wasn’t my dog. I loved Gonzo more than most people I’ve met. Sometimes, I have no doubt, it’s best not to know what you’re actually capable of.
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Tags: Animals Behind Me, Killing the Neighbor's Dog, Revenge Stories