Beloved One

“Beloved One”

Originally Recounted by PB

Retold by Mudd

I have since been asked on numerous occasions to explain what the night of the fire must have been like. I think everyone’s curiosity might have been attributed to my apparent lack of emotional scars. After all, when one loses your family home, the natural assumption is that the trauma would (or perhaps should?) be etched on the face forever. Forever is a long time to be sure.

Cold. Above everything else I remember that numbing cold. Having grown up in Timmins, cold is really a relative term, one that truly isn’t appreciated by those sun-baked folks south of the 49th parallel. In those idyllic places folks can let the car idle for a minute and are quickly on their way. The kind of cold I was used to was in a place where your biggest challenge would be simply getting the door handle unfrozen. If you were foolish enough to remove your gloves to gain entry, you had better not touch any exposed metal, lest your flesh be fused to it.

I was just 10 years old the winter of the fire. The fire that consumed my childhood home, and all of my most cherished possessions. I don’t think you ever really get over that kind of a loss, but I am sure that the younger you are, the easier it is to move-on. Me, I wish I had been a bit younger. Six would have been a good age to go through that kind of crap. I don’t remember anything before I was six years old. I do remember everything about that night in Timmins though. Oddly enough, it isn’t the fire in all its red fury that keeps coming back to me. It’s that yapping mutt Charlie.

Well, you’re probably thinking oh Christ, while I was prepared for the life-changing house-fire-saga, I really don’t want to read about the crispy remains of the beloved family dog. No, this isn’t a story about the beloved family dog, but my Uncle Bub’s yapping Chihuahua. And as strange as it would turn out, that fire would draw us both dog and ten year old together in a bonding exercise that I would never forget.

Oh man, uncle Bub loved that emaciated little dog. I suppose it’s unfair to pass judgment on the poor animal’s physical attributes, as I do not recall ever seeing any Chihuahua look robust. The breed is a sad one indeed, one that was likely selectively bred to produce a pathetic specimen of canine. (I am certain a short-haired rat, figured predominately in the original breeding plan). Likely this deliberate conspiracy to breed a sub-standard pet was so as to create an animal that might appeal to the Mother Teresa’s of the pet-owner world. And my Uncle Bub fit that bill.

Nope, no cute fluffy cocker spaniels for Bub. Give us your ratty, your impoverished, and Bub would be your savior. And while his mutt Charlie and I were on an inevitable collision-course of disaster, it was Bub’s willingness to help the less fortunate that would ultimately draw us together. When a soot-covered runt of a ten-year-old kid showed up on his doorstep, he simply had found another runt to add to his collection.

My mom and I didn’t follow the time-honored tradition (kept alive by all fire victims), of watching our home consumed by the flames. Every time you tune into the news, and the highlights feature a residential fire…(you know what I’m taking about)…you always see the distraught owners huddled on the street corner, watching as their possessions dissolve away with the thick smoke.

Not my mom and I.

Without fanfare, or any undue emotional outpouring, we got into the TFD van (that’s the 6-man Timmins Fire Department) leaving the two-bedroom bungalow to burn away into the night. Mom and I slept in the local high school gym, under the glaring florescent lights that nobody seemed to know how to turn off. The good folks of the TFD rustled up a couple cots for us to sleep on, and we were given a few moving blankets to keep warm. I still remember how warm those musty smelling moving blankets were – much more so than the threadbare covers we had just surrendered to the flames.

My mom snored away like we had just spent a long day snow-shoeing or something, but I never once closed my eyes. Mickey Ferguson tipped his big red fire-hat on his way out, and when he pulled those huge steel gym doors shut, I remember hearing the reverberation echo for what seemed like an hour. I stared at the little sparrows nests way up in the steel girders till dawn, all the time wondering “well, what now?”

We showed up at Uncle Bub & Auntie Faye’s house at about 8:30 the next morning, and they were expecting us. Without any other kin in town we had little choice really. Besides, there was a big basketball game in the gym that very afternoon, so we had to roll our cots into the ball-room just as the cheerleaders were starting their practice. As we walked out they all looked at us like they were examining a dead deer on the side of the road. Kind of a strange mixture of both pity and wonder.

As my mom & I stood there on Uncle Bub’s front porch, Charlie barked. Actually Charlie didn’t ever bark, he yapped. And man that yap would drive you fucking nuts. The only thing more nerve-racking than that incessant yap was everyone’s attempts to quiet him down. It was not like he ever did shut up when you told him to, so I could never figure out why Bub would always try. The yapping would simply run its course until Charlie would become exhausted, jump up onto his smelly little pillow and collapse. His little rat-like belly heaving up and down. Their cat fluffy, would usually dart out the door, just as it was closing behind the visitors that prompted the dog’s outburst in the first place.

I don’t recall just what was said that day, or how it was all decided that we would live in the sewing room. I don’t remember feeling relieved or thankful, just confused and acutely aware I was inconveniencing everyone.

Bub was trying his damnedest to integrate us into his family’s routines as quickly as possible. This would naturally include suiting up and heading to the local hockey rink for practice. Every Timmins kid played hockey, and I was no exception. Not less than one week after the blaze, Bub and his eleven-year-old son Chris and I piled into the beat-up Ford Fairlane station wagon to catch our 6:10 AM ice-time. As I squirmed in Chris’s constrictive hand-me down uniform.

After the game we went straight back home for hot chocolate. We all marched through the mud-room to take off our gear, as Charlie yapped and yapped. I was exhausted, and could barely summon the energy to drag my borrowed equipment bag up onto the bench in the hallway. While I waited for Chris to remove his uniform, I took a pee in the bathroom just off of the family room. Auntie Faye had already started a big roaring fire in the hearth, and I couldn’t wait to get my hot chocolate and curl up in Bub’s big Lazy-Boy.

I finished my pee, and noticed that Chris was still struggling with his pants. Still wearing all my hockey duds, I shuffled over to the Lazy Boy to get a head start on my hot chocolate, which was now waiting on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. I put the steaming mug on the end table. I swung my arms down and pumped them quickly back up again to gain the momentum I would need to jump back onto the recliner. On that fateful morning at exactly 7:55 AM on February 12^th, my ass was the last thing that mutt Charlie ever saw.

A sickening muted yelp, and a tiny snap, (hardly audible really), drew Uncle Bub out of the kitchen in a flash. He stared at me, then quickly over at Charlie’s smelly pillow, then back at me again, and then dropped the spatula. Little platters of egg flying all over the shiny linoleum.

The funeral of loved ones previously deceased, did not elicit the tears and cries of emotion that this dog’s passing brought to our neighborhood. Every hour on the hour someone dropped by to express their condolences. Food was dropped-off, tissues were passed around the living room.

But Charlie’s life was not snuffed-out as soon as he had ‘become one’ with my ass. No, that would have been more humane. When I speak of humane, I am referring to my humane treatment, not the damn Chihuahua. If Charlie had died immediately under the crushing weight of my posterior, then Bub would have been spared the worst of it…and come to think of it, ditto for the dog. Unfortunately, as luck would have it that diminutive dog was tougher than he looked. After I extricated him from my hockey pants, he was lovingly swaddled in a tablecloth, loaded in the Fairlane, and driven at breakneck speed to Doctor Hooper’s house, the local vet.

Dr. Hooper tried his best to explain the seriousness of the injuries, tried to explain the hopelessness of the prognosis, but Bub would have none of it. Liver damage, six broken ribs (I couldn’t believe he even had six ribs) and complete renal shutdown. “Any and all measures possible to save him” was Bub’s directive to the vet, even as Faye begged him to reconsider.

Hell, is the only way I can describe the last days of Charlie life. And once again, I am referring to my agony, not the damn dog’s. And as I sat in silence in the family room, waiting for everyone to return from the doggie cremation ceremony, I wondered how it could get any worse.

I mean, it was bad enough I had lost everything, my hockey-card collection, my bike, and that my mom hadn’t uttered a word since the fire. It was bad enough that I felt a constricting sense of guilt having put my relatives out like this. But to have killed precious Charlie, and to do it in such an unceremoniously inept fashion, was almost too much to bear.

I wanted to leave everyone behind, and start somewhere else. But where to go? I packed up all my things (which didn’t amount to much) into the smelly borrowed hockey bag. I actually went so far as to open the side door to leave. The icy February wind sliced at my face, just as Fluffy ran through my legs into the night. I collapsed into a heap on the floor, and sobbed.

After the funeral, Bub, Auntie Faye & their son went to some friend’s homes to commiserate and leaf through the scrapbook his loyal owner had assembled over the years. “Man’s Best Friend” was embroidered on the cover, and until this evening it always sat at atop the fireplace mantel.

After my little boo-hoo session at the front door, I unpacked my pathetic little escape-bag, got into my pajamas and waited with dread under the covers till they got home. I lay there for what seemed like an eternity, and finally sleep took me away.

I awoke to the sound of a blood-curdling scream.

At first I thought I was just having another nightmare. Since the fire, I would often hear screams in my sleep, but this one was different. It was far more mournful, more of a disbelieving cry of outrage. I ran out of the sewing room to find Bub, Chris and Faye huddled at the side-door. At first I couldn’t see what they were looking at, and Faye’s howling was taking on Charlie-esque proportions. Then in all its horror, it became clear.

Stuck up against the brass kick plate of the side door was Fluffy. She was frozen cock-stiff, but thawing out fast. When Auntie Faye swung open the door, Fluffy swung with the door as she was actually affixed to it. Her little feet dragged four little sweeping arcs of snow across the doormat. Her face curled into a snarl that vividly seemed to beg the question “why?” That same sneer was also slowly making its way across my face.

And then I remembered. I remembered the warnings from everyone not to let Fluffy out after dark. The warnings about how quickly her little body would freeze-through. The warnings that I clearly forgot all about, when I was sobbing at the front door, feeling sorry for myself for killing the family pet. The first family pet, that is.

As everyone turned around and glared at me, I remember thinking that whatever should become of my life from that moment forward, would be a huge improvement over the current shit I was in.

I also was rather thankful that only two animals lived at my aunt and uncle’s house.