Each year rather than a “in other news this year the thing on my back stopped bleeding and my petunias are just lovely!” Christmas letter I send a “Substantively True Christmas Story”. I was a bit stumped this year but then I remembered Corky, who came to us on Christmas and had a very interesting resolution and afterward and whose story I’ve always wanted to use, so this year he stars in the story-letter. Since it’s mundane and pointless I thought I’d share it.
THE ODD BUT TRUE TALE OF CORKY THE COWARDLY CHRISTMAS DOG, or **KITTY & CARRIE’S MOST UNLIKELY PROTECTOR AND THE COMING OF THE FUZZY BITCH NIMUE **
Part 1
12 Days or So Before Christmas, 1976
My sister celebrated the third hour of her second Saturday at her first job by quitting on the spot and bringing home a filthy psychotic homeless purebred and buying a Reese’s bar. It was her freshman year of college and she had taken a weekend job at Kimball’s Novelties & Gifts at the Eastdale Mall in Montgomery, Alabama to earn her first ever “own” Christmas money. When she pulled into our driveway that Saturday, several hours before she was supposed to be home, she told our perplexed mother “the boss was a jerk and wanted me to do something morally repulsive so I walked out… but look what I brought home!”
My mother was too busy trying to get her to elaborate on “morally repulsive” to notice what Becki had brought home when she noticed not the dog but its olfactory carte de visite. “If he tried to force you to… what in the hell is that stench?”
“Oh, that…” said Becki. “I may not have Christmas money this year, but…”
“Well, you’ve got the money you earned for the two days you worked…”
“I don’t care about it. I’m not going back in that place to get my check. But…”
“What do you mean? It’s your money, they owe it to you…”
“It’s not worth it. I’ll sell my hair first. But anyway, I was upset about not having Christmas money because of the asshole manager and about to cry and I was walking out the back door by the dumpsters back to my car and you remember how in Genesis Abraham was crying because he had to sacrifice Isaac and then he sees a calf tangled up in the bush?”
“It was a ram” I volunteered.
“Whatever, the point is God sent an animal in a thicket. Well He did it again! I don’t have the money to buy you gifts so God sent me a calf to give to the family for Christmas…”
“Oh God no! No Becki!” my mother said, putting her foot down. “You are not bringing another wild cat into our house again! That last one damned near killed your brother!”
When my sister started driving the year before she was almost immediately seen as the prophesied Deliverer to every stray cat rummaging in dumpsters from Weokahatchee to Montgomery, a distance of forty miles with a stray cat to mileage ratio of about 1:4. The last one had been a mostly pure Siamese, Mordecai, whose presence had majorly pissed off our existing stray Siamese Bela, a feline Pol Pot (I know, Cambodian, etc.) who though he had long been banished from the house for partially blinding the Pekingese still had a major proprietary interest in the place. Unfortunately with Bela not allowed inside and Mordecai not allowed (or inclined to go) outside they were only able to scratch and “mrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrlllllll” at each other through screen doors and glass windows until a heat wave the summer before. That was when my brother decided the air conditioning and fan would work better if he cracked his bedroom window one night.
The entire house woke at 4 a.m. to my 15 year old brother Daniel’s cries of “Holy shit motherfucker goddamn piss motherfucker motherfucker! Mama! BRING ME A fucking GUN AND KILL THESE COCKSUCKERS!” occasionally muffled by and occasionally overpowering hellish feline shrieking. We all came running, my mother with the gun her oldest son had asked for (when an 18 month old cries for a bottle at 4 a.m. in the country he may or may not get it, but when a 15 year old child yells for a gun at 4 a.m. in Weokahatchee it’s on its way immediately). On his bed and around his legs and arms and chest the title match was still raging.
Bela had come through the window. Mordecai had come into the bedroom and both chose teh bed as the high ground. Both cats had drawn blood from the other but it was nothing like the amount oozing from my brother’s chest and arms. Those looked like he had slashed himself in one of those ancient Baal worship rituals depicted in the *Reader’s Digest * book on People of the Bible.
As my brother lay bleeding and cursing a blue streak from pain and shock and as Becki screamed “PLEASE DON’T SHOOT MORDECAI! SHOOT BELA IF YOU HAVE TO, BUT NOT MORDECAI!” as my mother was raising the .38 to fire a shot out the open window to scare the raging ball of catfight that was more pissed than ever now that my father was flailing at them with a belt grabbed from Daniel’s dresser (for it’s not a good idea to separate two entangled Siamese, they’re Betta fish with claws) I was having a thought I can still remember well. It was “Man, I wish I could draw like those people who drew the Baal worship rituals in that Reader’s Digest book… that would be so cool to be able to draw ancient buildings and pagan rites and tents and Abraham and all”. This is as good a segue as any back to whatever God had sent Becki in a thicket by the dumpster.
“No, no! He’s anything but wild! And he’s not another cat. I promise I’ll never bring home another cat. Unless it’s white or a Persian.” She opened her back door and removed the present acquired from Yahweh’s Ye Olde Christmas Thicket & Dumpster. “Look at him… isn’t he pitiful?”
Pitiful was halfway to a down payment on a description of him. The little dog was filthy, stinking, obviously starving and damned near comatose, making no sound and offering neither resistance nor assistance other than to roll on his back and raise all four legs and tail in a “make no mistake, I am completely submissive and will not fight for my life, take what you want and do what you will, please just make it quick” plea as Becki reached onto the seat. She scooped him up and held him, still on his back like a baby. “Look at him? Did you ever see a little dog so peaceful and tame?”
My mother looked at him and answered “Yeah. Freckles. Just after I ran over his neck”. This dog was less tame than near death, his eyes dilated and glazed in an unfocusing stare. “Is he sick? He looks like he’s almost dead… honey I don’t know that he’s going to live…”
“Oh he’s got plenty of life in him” Becki assured us. “You should have seen how fast those little bitty legs could run when I tried to get near him at the dumpster! If he hadn’t run straight into that light pole and conked his head I’d never have caught him, would I pwecious?”
“Why were you trying to catch him?”
“Because I saw him there last weekend. He was standing by the dumpster when I was coming in last Saturday. He was hungry then but he was cleaner, but when that Chinese lady from the buffet place tossed him some pieces of chicken he ran away from her. I don’t know that he’s had anything to eat since then, cause I couldn’t believe it when he was still there this weekend. Look at him, you can feel his ribs, see… feel…”
“I’ll take your word for it. Baby, that dog is absolutely filthy. He cannot come into the house. There’s not any nametag on that collar?”
“No, I checked first thing once he knocked himself out. Just the collar… and it’s not even a collar really, just an old belt, see…”. Belt and dog had both seen better days. The dog had lost enough weight that it’s a wonder the belt could stay on his neck anymore. This was clearly a dog who was enough of a veteran to the streets that he was starving but not enough of a veteran for anything remotely like survival skills to have formed.
By this time a whole impromptu pack had formed around us, a congress of far healthier and more alert dogs, representatives from every major size category and age and ranging from family retainers of more than a decade like Kitty and Carrie’s visiting delegate Bear VII* to recent transients of the sort who saw our farm as a hostel with vittles on their way home from the war. Only our chosen dogs had names, the others just had temporary designations based on identifying characteristics (“One-Ear”, “Nutless Bob”, “Pregnant Red”, etc.). They all sniffed and stared but none barked and the new dog the Virgin Becki was swaddling did not seem to notice them. Or anything else.
“I think he’s some sort of collie” I volunteered. “See, he’s red and white like a collie… I think… under all the dirt.”
“He might be a Collie mix” my sister allowed, “but he’s got dachshund or something in him too. See how long he is? And those little bitty legs.”
“If he’s a Collie he’s a midget one” my mother observed. “With rickets or something. Hold him upright…”. Becki repositioned the little unfocusing dog with the look of one approaching the guillotine and too resigned to it to be terrfied. Seeing him held vertically, his legs were indeed tiny, and his underbelly was white but you couldn’t
“ARF! ARR!” came the Basset-tine bass from below, for in moving to get a better view of the Dog from the Thicket my mother had accidentally stepped on the tiny tail that gave Nutless Bob his last name and he’d expressed discontent just under New Dog.
“Shut the hell up you good for nothing no sac son of a bitch!” Odd that the same sentence worked on both dogs and my father. “Anyway I was trying to see if that’s a tattoo on his ear or if AAHH! OH GOOD GOD BECKI! That dog just pissed and shit all over itself!”
“No he didn’t… it… well yeah, I guess he did but it’s Nutless Bob’s fault for barking at him! Jon go get Mama a damn towel! But you know he’s got to be scared. He’s probably never been in a car before and he’s hungry and all… Look at him, he’s obviously a house dog and he was out having to fend for himself and didn’t know how! He’ll be a new little dog before nightfall, you’ll see…”
My mother was annoyed, not as much at having to wipe a ricocheted pee splotch from her cut-offs as she had been about to change them anyway (she’d been sweating in the yard all day making camp stew in the pots and decorating the columns to look like candy canes) but more at the prospects of yet another stray. In any given year we hosted a dozen transient dogs in addition to the half dozen or so of our own. Most showed up starving, abandoned by hunters who couldn’t find them when they withdrew or tossed out as unwanted puppies by “town folk” or had been born to dogs from the previous categories or were dogs of the dead from a few miles away.
New Thicket Dog’s catatonia was the exception as most came to us plenty friendly and happy. We’d simply go out to fill the trough with the cheapest brand of dry dog food and see a new canine face poking his or her head in just as if they ate here everyday while wagging, even managing a “not to complain but the scrap bucket wasn’t nearly as full as it could have been tonight was it? How ‘bout some canned food to supplement…” look of entitlement somehow by Day 2. Even the cheapest dry food bought in hundred pound bags at the non-profit Cattleman’s Cooperative got expensive when you had to feed as many welfare dogs as we did, but the alternative was to let them starve and that also just wasn’t… Well, fucked up we may have been but made of the granite outcroppings from Locksley Hall we weren’t. (In case you’re wondering, there was no such thing as a county pound at the time; the nearest humane shelter was in Montgomery 40 miles away and without a Montgomery County address they charged almost as much to drop off a dog as they did to adopt one.)
On the other hand the little thing was just so, the word again- pitiful. And he looked like he might be pretty or cute when cleaned up. And there was a vacancy for a housedog at the moment, Favorite Fritz having been the first housedog ever to voluntarily- at his insistence even- abdicate his position to become an outside dog, while Niko the Half-Blind Pekingese had taken to wandering last year and consequently had seen only half the truck coming, and poor little Freckles the year or so before that having learned permanently and for the third and final time why it was not a good idea to take naps under tires. (If dogs in Weokahatchee had been required to have death certificates the forms would have had lines for make and model.)
So the house was, very unusually, dogless. Even my father had opined that “there’s a certain void… especially at Christmas time- without the presence of an interior dog”. There were far more pictures of dogs from Christmas Past than there were of my brother (as he still points out bitterly whenever a photo album is pulled). And though my mother did bite her bark was worse, especially where animals were concerned, for she really was big softie with anything hungry or aching and we knew it. And it’s not like Becki could just take the starving thing back to the dumpster. He could stay, but only on probation.
“Well… give him a bath" my mother instructed. “I’m sure there’s some of Fritz’s shampoo left somewhere.” Baths had been a major reason why Fritz relocated himself, though the main reason was his love for Bee-Bee the St. Bernard, an ambitious but doomed love considering that he was half dachshund and half poodle. There’s is an interesting love story with a strange and unresolved outcome, but since it wasn’t at Christmas I’ll resume.
"Scrub him good, get all that dirt off and those tangles out, and I mean out here in the yard! Well no, the garage, the sun’s gone down so it’s gonna get cold, but not in the house, you hear me? The garage. And close the door to it so the other dogs can’t get to him. There should be some old blankets in there you can use for a towel, because I mean it, he can’t come inside like that. I don’t want to smell cedar and filthy shit covered Collie mutant all through the holidays, I’m putting my foot down on that one. I will not have that dog thinking he’s home! Jon! Stop laughing at that dog pissing on your sister again and go get her some clean pants. And on your way in put him a couple of hot dogs in the boiler. I’m going to go take a bath myself. Don’t bother me for a while.”
My mother left to go inside but as an afterthought she turned to pass another ultimatum, delivered to me but clearly intended for Becki to let her know that she was *absolutely serious * about not wanting this dog to be treated like a pet. “And when I say cook him some hot dogs for that dog I mean the cheap ones! And get the ones that are already red at the ends. That dog’s not getting any beef wranglers, I don’t care how pitiful he is! ”
We took him into the garage where Becki cooed to him while I boiled hot dogs long enough to take the chill off and brought them back along with her clean pants. We offered him the wieners as he sat motionless on the cold floor, staring blank and straight ahead like the captured Samurai waiting to disembowel himself from the first episode of Shogun that would premiere a few years later. He would not eat even when we broke the wienies into bite sized contingents and tried to put them into his mouth, which our attempts to open met with completely passive resistance. He did not growl or even change expression, but neither would he open or eat, though he could smell the wienies and he was salivating even as he trembled.”
“Well if he’s not going to eat we might as well do the bath. Help me bring the tub in” Becki asked. We went outside to get the galvanized tub, returned less than a minute later and the dog was still sitting motionless save for a tremble and staring straight ahead. The wienies however were gone and it was obvious that where they had been sitting had been licked.
He endured his bath with closed eyed Stoic terror, then the drying with trembling that was obviously not just from cold. Occasional whimpers as he let Becki brush him were the first evidence he could make sounds, but again with Zen monk peasant resignation and discipline he endured it without changing position.
He was even skinner than we’d originally realized. This dog had been homeless for a while though clearly not long enough to get the knack for it. While my sister continued to bathe and groom him and anoint him with the Charlie! (“there’s a fragrance that’s here to stay and they call it…”) from her purse I went back inside and boiled two more wienies. I briefly thought of substituting the beef franks, but I was positive my mother had counted them for it was in minor details rather than major issues that she would usually choose as her own Daniel’s Chest battlefield, so I stuck to the cheap ones.
Again he would not eat from my hand or even my sister’s. The latter particularly appalling as all dogs loved my sister and still do. Even Mad Rex, a beast of significant if not primary lupine ancestry, the only dog who ever had to be chained (the alternative was to shoot him) and who hated everybody but Kitty & Carrie (in whose yard he was chained) had made Beck-Beck his third exception and even let her put a ribbon in his hair when she was a little girl. (Mad Rex’s death of natural causes was the most surprising as the dog had “Use for Target Practice” written all over him, one of the few dogs I’ve ever hated.)
Nevertheless Thicket, his temporary name, was the exception. He did not like her, trust her or want her near him. Once again I crumbled the hotdogs, left them on the ground in front of him and my sister and I backed up a few spaces and watched from the corner. He still would not eat or even look at the wienies. We drug out the tub, emptied it, and once again returned to find the hotdogs gone and this time the dog licking his lips, until he saw us, whereupon he stopped immediately.
