People sometimes ask me why I have little brass jingle bells on my key chain. I sound like a Sioux Grass Dancer when I'm coming down the sidewalk. The bells give spiritual protection, lend cadence to my pace and on the many mountain trails dotting the rim of the North Shore’s Lynn Watershed they announced my presence to bears and cats. I began wearing them shortly after an incident I'll relate here, which occurred in my first year of delivering mail for Canada Post.
My position at the time was a Sick Relief Letter Carrier and as such I worked a different route everyday. One day I was in among the avenues in the lower teens off of Fraser St. in East Vancouver. I had recently been issued a proper woollen government uniform after an awkward learning curve dressed in old jeans and a tee-shirt. Hence, I was feeling pretty good about day to day life.
The neighbourhood I was working in was comprised of tight-packed, low-income houses with rusty, neglected gates, leaning fences and decaying stairs. I had a fair load of mail for the day that contained lots of parcels, but the weather was fine and the bits of blue between cottony clouds went far to absorb the cares of my road.
I pried open an ancient gate and pushed hard against the oxidized spring. A fine ochre-hued powder dispersed into the faintest of breezes and fell to join a stain on a root-heaved slab of home-made concrete. It snapped shut behind me like a leg-hold trap, expelling another puff of iron spores and like a character in an H. P. Lovecraft story, I mounted the bowed wooden steps up to a remarkably unfriendly front door.
I bore a parcel for this address and fished around the spent rubber-bands in the bottom of my jam-packed mail pouch for a little brow-paper wrapped box when both legs were on the porch. I noticed a fig tree growing in the yard and guessed the residence to be an Italian household. While checking the name on the package to confirm the address and the heritage of the recipient, I heard a light tapping that was in perfect unison with consonant muffled thumps. These two sounds were accompanied by the flat tinkle of cheap metal on the off-beats. I knew the complete three note chord very well, indeed.
Of course, it was a good sized canine and the unseen animal was approaching at a trot from it’s back yard, coming along the right-hand side of the house. After immediately turning my head in the direction of the growing sound, my ears captured a second set of similar sounds into the auditory information my brain was already processing. Which ignited the questions, “What kind of dogs are these? How big are they? Why was there no warning sign on the gate?
Two of my questions were answered in less than a second. They were classically cut Doberman Pincers with mutilated ears and amputated tails. A big female was in the lead and a younger, non-castrated male was a body length behind her. As the girl rounded the corner and began climbing the smooth-worn wooden stairs, she slowed her pace to a stalking slow-motion, gnashed her teeth and revealed her gums. The boy joined her only a half-body length in arrears.
Two slavering maws asperged the tread of their master’s stairs with insane slobber as I took three sliding steps backwards. When my back and shoulders adorned the front door of the house like a flesh-wreath, I rapped knuckles three times and fumbled the doorbell for three cold rings. No one was at home and the female dog began to mount the stairs with a concentrated menace. Her walk was the obscene dance of an arrow of hate attempting to fly through a molasses of fear.
Many years later, when I encountered the lyrics of an Emily Barker song, Nostalgia (the theme of a TV series from Sweden called Wallander), they reminded me of that moment.
“...My knuckles bleed down a tattered street on a door that shouldn't be in front of me.”
I put the package on top of one of my two mail pouches and adjusted their straps so as to make their combined bulk cover my vitals as best as was possible. I flattened myself against the door and my usual perception of time ceased. Like a sun-dancer hanging by chest thongs or Odinn hanging upside down from a windswept tree, I entered a place that was entirely different.
The female crept up one stair at a time and paused on each tread. The male stayed down at the bottom, in position to cut off any retreat, should such tactics be called for in the operation. The counterpoise of soft floppy gums retracted into maniac grimaces, copious flowing drool and cold, dirty-white fangs was the perfect accompaniment for the massive dose of adrenaline that had been dumped into my bloodstream.
I remember stealing a brief look at a benign blue patch of sky, after ascertaining the relative positions of my two attackers and offering up the fleeting questions, “Why today?” “Why here?”
My next concern was that of preserving dignity, so my ancestors wouldn’t suffer a humiliating spectacle. I was a hundred percent sure that this experience reflected the I-Ching hexagram known as, The Pit. It is a situation in which any action taken will only serve to worsen the odds of survival. I decided to stand as rigid as a tree, no matter what ensued because I could not conjure any vision of two dogs tearing apart an inanimate vertical object. Not that day. I became an inanimate vertical object.
The female stood fully on the porch now, quivering with constipated rage, bloated with fear and blinded by aggression. The male came halfway up the risers and moaned a hellish series of low register growls, as if he was in mortal pain from waiting for blood. A person passed by on the opposite side of the street, oblivious to the drama only thirty yards away. My predicament precluded any sudden noises or movements which I reckoned would pull the trigger of my foes. I let the person pass without calling out.
Time began to move in reverse. That is, my experience of it did so. I vividly remembered watching professional military guard dog trainers at work in Sugarland, Texas when I was a boy. It was during weekly visits to my father’s own Malamute pup, which he had placed in such capable hands. His work office was getting robbed at gunpoint nearly three times a week and he had had enough.
I watched a man dressed from head to toe in a thick, leather padded suit, threaten, antagonize and terrify the young pup. When necessary, the dog was struck with a stick in order to elicit the desired aggressive response. It was clear to me after two such visits that man's best friend, is just that. The amount of abuse that is necessary in order to get a dog to be homicidal is staggering, albeit, depending on the pedigree.
A normal hunting animal is something quite different from the gibbering mass of fear-fuelled hate that is an attack trained dog. The berserker behaviour can be turned off with a word or a gesture just like a light switch. Such animals are nothing more than automatons, as their spirits are broken in their making.
The female, now only inches from my body and wound up tighter than a bull in a rodeo chute, called me out of my memories. The male was holding steady at the mid-point of the stairs and whining between growls, as if seeking relief from the stress of the situation. Every piece on our chessboard promised blood.
It occurred to me that I might have to stand fast until the owners returned from their work, which was likely near seven hours into a future that existed in a realm where time stretched like Silly Putty. I, like the young male dog, became impatient for a conclusion. I upbraided myself for losing focus. A compromise ensued.
Glacially slow, I extended my right hand, fingers tight together and pointing down. It consumed several eternities to cover the six inches distance to the top of the head of the hysterical Cerberus before me. My fingertips contacted the shiny fur between her sharp-shorn ears. Her response was immediate and quite unexpected.
The girl whipped around, backside first, as if struck by an invisible stick and placed herself in a stiff, strict heeling position to my left. Her cacophony of snarls, ghoulish whimpers and guttural mewling ceased. The boy came to rest in the exact same position on my right, so quickly that he slammed into my leg with some force. I placed my two hands on both their napes and stroked them slowly.
The three of us, deadly silent, now scanned the street out front for any enemy in common. I stifled the giggle of “a man unhinged by fear.” We remained that way for some time. I spoke softly to them while waiting for a good idea to come into my mind. I dared not try many of the things which first paraded through my thoughts. I wished for a smoke or a sip of water. Presently, I could detain destiny no longer.
I began, very methodically, to dismount the stairs. The dogs kept their cheeks pressed tight to my thighs, just as their training must have demanded. They were absolutely tranquil beasts, now that our combined form fit their experience and expectations. We slow-waltzed down like tight-rope walkers traversing the Grand Canyon and crossed the five yards to the old gate in a dignified manner. I commanded the pair to, sit and stay, opened the old gate and stepped into the balance of my life. The gate slammed shut and by dint of its massive spring, made a loud bang that shattered the spell.
Two things happened simultaneously at that juncture. The dogs, seeing me on the other side of their chain-link, realized that they had been duped. Their renewed display of hellish snarling and gnashing of teeth was levels beyond what I had already witnessed while inside their lair. They gnawed on the rusty metal gate, nipped each other’s flanks and carried on like demon Banshees.
I saw and heard the damned duet from only a few inches away, on my good side of their fence. My legs had turned to aspic after hearing the gate-hasp close and I lay unceremoniously on the sidewalk not more than a foot away from those beings who would have done me harm. I shook uncontrollably as my unused adrenaline spent itself in muscle contractions.
When I finished laughing, I began to cuss in earnest. I spewed a random multilingual string of expletives that would have cowed a Phoenician military stevedore. After a smoke and a sip of water, I thanked my Creator for my life. I bought my brass jingles on Commercial Drive that week-end so any dog fit enough to be a worry could hear me, long before I opened it’s gate.
fin