The Grave Digger of Lost Pets
May. 5th, 2015 02:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonUnderwater, curled in a ball, at the bottom of the pool at the East Lake Y I screamed for as long as I could while around me children splashed each other and old folks doggy paddled the lanes. I ran out of breath long before I ran out of scream though and had to come back to this world for air. If instead of a sword, the Lady in the Lake bore a sledgehammer, that would be how I rose from the waters now contaminated with my unheard rage. Tonight all those who swam in that pool after me will find their dreams possessed by howling tempests and whirlwinds of flame. Muscles sore, nicotine lungs panting, the bright sunlight through the wall sized window on my skin, the shrieks of kids horsing around in defiance to shout of parent or whistle of life guard. I was out of what little time I had both for and from myself.
Once home, clothes damp from insufficiently drying myself off, I get to work.
Though I struggle to be a writer, though I am employed as an office manager, my true occupation as revealed by experience is that of burier of dead pets.
Maybe it's my Tor Johnson good looks, maybe it's my grave-digger physique, maybe it's my epitaph diplomacy amongst the bereaved or maybe it's because I'm the only one who'll do it. At least the only one the people I know who will do it.
Back when I lived with Violet Larue, over there on Saint Chuck between Midtown Posh and Little Five Funk. It was late at night. We had just come back from Outta Control at Spring 4th. Our friend and neighbor, Sparrow sat on the steps of our front porch weeping deep from her shadow. In her lap was a five month old kitten that had been mauled by a different neighbor's dog, a big black nasty one, who escaped while their owner was out and somehow found its way into Sparrow's pad. We got this story from Sparrow's then boyfriend, an ex-pimp from LA hiding out on the East Coast from charges unspoken. Sparrow really knew how to pick them.
After hugs and bummed cigarettes, Sparrow point-blank asked me to dig a grave for her kitten, right there in the front yard of the house quartered into apartments we would soon no longer be able to afford. I asked her boyfriend why he couldn't do it, but he just shuddered and said something about it dredging up rough memories. Where am I going to find a shovel?, I asked and hey, what you know, said boyfriend just happened to have one in the trunk of his car despite making his living from selling shitty stepped on X.
So there I am, all Goth-ed up in my polished jackboots and black vinyl coat with my lady looking like the sweetest, saddest vampire in all Terminus and what can I do but get to work. Rusted steel hits the soil while somewhere a few blocks away the neighbor's dog barks with bloodied jowls and around me the other three watch silently smoking cigarettes.
From there I've been called on periodically to step in when a pet is lost. Guys who'd cold boast about smoking fools, dropping suckers, and curb-stomping snitches would call me up out of the blue. Dealers, low-level muscle, amateur criminals, hardcore pain junkies and bad drama addicts who each had Hamlet numbers for dead bodies witnessed. Yet upon losing the only measure of true loyalty some of them had known in their lives, they sobbed and begged me to come over and do the work only one of us could do.
So I come by.
They always have a ride for me to get there and a shovel ready when I do. They always have a patch of earth cleared away and if not then at least a dumpster. The hole never comes easy, as you can only dig so much of another's grave without unburying thoughts of your own. Around me they cry, they pray, they read poems, or as with that first job, smoke silently. Finally in shoe-boxes, in old blankets, in bloodied towels, in sentimental t-shirts, in garbage bags with a single paw sticking out of a rip I give back to the earth those from which it came.
They always pay me in bus fare, in a sprinkling of buds, in a few bills peeled from the wallet or just a shot from the last of the bottle.
Tonight was a different sort of job. One for my mom this time. A little Pekingese, just under three years old and adopted by my mother to help her with the passing of her last dog, who went one week before my father. The little guy was fearless, growled with aristocratic disdain at me even while demanding I scratch his belly. I used to worry that when I was gone and mom was left alone here in this neighborhood where nightly gunshots ring out, that he would be unable to protect her. But that was because I misunderstood what he was really protecting her from, the full brunt of the grief and loneliness my mother was exposed to.
The job itself was simpler than others in that there was no body to dig a hole for, but hard in that the task at hand was to find and remove all his belongings before burying them up in the attic.
This I did quickly, while mom smoked a cigarette outside on the porch, tear drained and shell shocked.
Now I sit here and this house seems far too quiet, far too big for my thoughts to fill. The last of the scream pebble grinded into words and vomited up here. Very bad thoughts fill my head. I want to get fuck-you drunk. I want to find the nearest woman who will let me do what I should not. I want to pick a fight and know I broke something in someone permanent, even if only their tin pride.
But those are the thoughts of a man who has buried a scared and angry child in the shallow waters of his character. That's not my job. My job is to bury that which loved without words or conditions during a life so short it renders the difference between a god above or a devil below indistinguishable. My job is to bury what others cannot and try to ensure I don't get lost down there in the hole with them.
Once home, clothes damp from insufficiently drying myself off, I get to work.
Though I struggle to be a writer, though I am employed as an office manager, my true occupation as revealed by experience is that of burier of dead pets.
Maybe it's my Tor Johnson good looks, maybe it's my grave-digger physique, maybe it's my epitaph diplomacy amongst the bereaved or maybe it's because I'm the only one who'll do it. At least the only one the people I know who will do it.
Back when I lived with Violet Larue, over there on Saint Chuck between Midtown Posh and Little Five Funk. It was late at night. We had just come back from Outta Control at Spring 4th. Our friend and neighbor, Sparrow sat on the steps of our front porch weeping deep from her shadow. In her lap was a five month old kitten that had been mauled by a different neighbor's dog, a big black nasty one, who escaped while their owner was out and somehow found its way into Sparrow's pad. We got this story from Sparrow's then boyfriend, an ex-pimp from LA hiding out on the East Coast from charges unspoken. Sparrow really knew how to pick them.
After hugs and bummed cigarettes, Sparrow point-blank asked me to dig a grave for her kitten, right there in the front yard of the house quartered into apartments we would soon no longer be able to afford. I asked her boyfriend why he couldn't do it, but he just shuddered and said something about it dredging up rough memories. Where am I going to find a shovel?, I asked and hey, what you know, said boyfriend just happened to have one in the trunk of his car despite making his living from selling shitty stepped on X.
So there I am, all Goth-ed up in my polished jackboots and black vinyl coat with my lady looking like the sweetest, saddest vampire in all Terminus and what can I do but get to work. Rusted steel hits the soil while somewhere a few blocks away the neighbor's dog barks with bloodied jowls and around me the other three watch silently smoking cigarettes.
From there I've been called on periodically to step in when a pet is lost. Guys who'd cold boast about smoking fools, dropping suckers, and curb-stomping snitches would call me up out of the blue. Dealers, low-level muscle, amateur criminals, hardcore pain junkies and bad drama addicts who each had Hamlet numbers for dead bodies witnessed. Yet upon losing the only measure of true loyalty some of them had known in their lives, they sobbed and begged me to come over and do the work only one of us could do.
So I come by.
They always have a ride for me to get there and a shovel ready when I do. They always have a patch of earth cleared away and if not then at least a dumpster. The hole never comes easy, as you can only dig so much of another's grave without unburying thoughts of your own. Around me they cry, they pray, they read poems, or as with that first job, smoke silently. Finally in shoe-boxes, in old blankets, in bloodied towels, in sentimental t-shirts, in garbage bags with a single paw sticking out of a rip I give back to the earth those from which it came.
They always pay me in bus fare, in a sprinkling of buds, in a few bills peeled from the wallet or just a shot from the last of the bottle.
Tonight was a different sort of job. One for my mom this time. A little Pekingese, just under three years old and adopted by my mother to help her with the passing of her last dog, who went one week before my father. The little guy was fearless, growled with aristocratic disdain at me even while demanding I scratch his belly. I used to worry that when I was gone and mom was left alone here in this neighborhood where nightly gunshots ring out, that he would be unable to protect her. But that was because I misunderstood what he was really protecting her from, the full brunt of the grief and loneliness my mother was exposed to.
The job itself was simpler than others in that there was no body to dig a hole for, but hard in that the task at hand was to find and remove all his belongings before burying them up in the attic.
This I did quickly, while mom smoked a cigarette outside on the porch, tear drained and shell shocked.
Now I sit here and this house seems far too quiet, far too big for my thoughts to fill. The last of the scream pebble grinded into words and vomited up here. Very bad thoughts fill my head. I want to get fuck-you drunk. I want to find the nearest woman who will let me do what I should not. I want to pick a fight and know I broke something in someone permanent, even if only their tin pride.
But those are the thoughts of a man who has buried a scared and angry child in the shallow waters of his character. That's not my job. My job is to bury that which loved without words or conditions during a life so short it renders the difference between a god above or a devil below indistinguishable. My job is to bury what others cannot and try to ensure I don't get lost down there in the hole with them.