It was the damned dogs that caused all the trouble.
If they hadn’t barked all the time, we wouldn’t have gotten evicted, which the wife said was the last straw. Well, it was the camping out to avoid being served with the formal eviction notice that got to her, to be specific. Things had already been tense, even before we had to move out of the house, what with the electric and water being shut off just because the checks kept getting lost in the mail.
As long as we weren’t served, we could leave everything at the house until we got a new place, including the dogs. She wanted to put all our stuff in her parents’ garage, but they wouldn’t have anything to do with the animals, so what was the point?
The dogs never bothered me.
Dogs are supposed to bark. I always knew when someone was walking down the street, as long as the dogs were in the backyard where they belonged. But the kids would let them in the house sometimes, as if they didn’t make enough noise by themselves. Those brats bickered and fussed and screamed at each other every waking moment if they were within two rooms of each other.
So the wife had a point about the tent being too small.
We took the dogs with us the first night, when we thought it would only be a few days, but the campground host was a prick and came by first thing in the morning to tell us the dogs had to go. He wouldn’t make an exception to his no-pets rule, just because the collie mix barked from dusk until dawn. He should have been glad. She probably kept someone from getting eaten by a grizzly bear or something. But he didn’t see it that way, so I snuck them back to the house and put them in the backyard. The fence would keep people out, and I could slip in after dark to feed and water them.
The dogs were well cared for, got food and water every day. If they spilled the bowl, that wasn’t my fault. It was a pain to have to go over there almost every night with a jug of water, except it gave me a chance for some peace and quiet.
The wife always whined that I took too long, that she only had a half hour between jobs. She thought I should be there every minute she was gone, babysitting those brats. She said they were all mine, but I never made that kind of racket.
Well, I was enjoying the peace and quiet at the house when the wife shows up with all the kids. She left them in the car and came in screaming that she was going to be late to work because I was using the damn dogs as an excuse to sit and do nothing. Then she started in about me not having a job, as if it was my fault I was stuck watching those damn kids all day, as if I could go back and get a job last spring or winter, when I was checking the paper every week or so.
Anyway, when she went off on me like that and told me not to come back to the tent, I lost it. We hadn’t had any real fights in a long time, probably because she was too busy working to start them, but this one made up for it. I finally punched her in the stomach to knock the wind out of her and shut her up.
She hit me back!
There wasn’t any thinking about it. The man of the house deserves more respect than that. I smacked her good. If she’d had decent reactions, she’d have had her hand out to break the fall, but she didn’t, and her head slammed into the corner of the concrete step between the kitchen and the garage. She made a mess with that blood gushing all over, but it stopped pretty fast, I guess when the pump stopped.
I had to get the kids into the garage one at a time then, so I told the younger ones to take the water bottle out back and put some into the dogs’ dish, and the oldest followed me to the garage to tell me which of his stuff could be tossed.
He was whining the whole way. I swung that baseball bat like a kid at T-ball. Crack—a home run and instant quiet. One by one I took care of them. The littlest one was harder to trick. She noticed it was too quiet. But she was little, after all, and she looked so much like her mother.
It took three days of starving before the dogs began to eat. I brought our stuff back from the campground and told the guy we were moving out of town. Then I hid in the house, figuring I’d have to get rid of the bones. When the owner came snooping around, I stayed in the garage. I knew he’d never open it with the dogs barking.
It was the smell that made him call the Humane Society, who called the cops. If the dogs hadn’t been so picky, you’d never have heard this story.
Damn dogs.
Impressions is a series of character studies – short sketches to wet your appetite. Think he’d make a good villain in a longer tale? Leave a comment.
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