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My Account > > Personal Information > > Julie
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All about Julie |
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Feb 28, 2009 |
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Southwestern Indiana | | Last visit: |
19-May-2013 |
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Semi-professional Photographer |
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Poetry, Photography, Singing, Reading, Painting, Telling children stories, Watching documentaries. |
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| Julie's recent Blog entry. | THE DRIFTER......A DOG.......AND A BURRITO ( 248 reads) | Saturday, April 27, 2013 (05:20:00) | | | Inspiration for this came from Foglethorpe's "Sonorian Haiku series 2...I told him it begged for a story. ;0)  I hope it does his series justice. 
The small, soaked and shivering, female mongrel limped slowly along the sidewalk in the icy drizzle. People with kind thoughts, but not kind enough to stop to help the poor creature, would exclaim to themselves from the warmth of their cars, “Aww..I hope that is someone’s dog and it’s just going home.” Or “Poor thing! If I see it on the way back, I’ll stop and try to pick it up and take it to the shelter…”.
One stupid teenager, obviously used to abuse himself, waited until he was adjacent to her before he laid on his horn, causing the weakend and pitiful animal to jump away from the sound and fall into the bushes…flailing to remain upright, with her ears down and her tail tucked safely between her legs….and all the while the teen laughing his senseless head off.
He drove on one block, still grinning..very pleased with himself at the humor and satisfaction he felt in further torturing an innocent animal, and then pulled into a Taco Bell, to get a couple of meals for himself and his girlfriend. As he got out of his old Ford, he noticed a man sitting with his back against the outside wall under the eaves out of the sleet, a little further down from the door. The man was not moving. That got his attention. ‘Must be a passed out drunk or crack-head ’ the boy thought. As he was headed to the door, he kept his eyes on the sitting man. He took note of the man’s dark grey slicker and noted the man was wearing soaked, but expensive Nikes and that the man had on two pretty fancy gold rings. The man still had not moved a muscle, the teen said to himself, ‘Yeah, he’s gone alright, strung-out bastard.”. He hesitated as his hand was on the door handle…a split decision…his hand dropped and he turned towards the man with every intention of relieving him of any money he might have in his wallet. His plan was to squat down in front of his victim, and pretend to be solicitous and even ask out loud, “Hey buddy! You all right?” if someone would come out the door. And then with his body blocking the view of anyone driving by on the street, he would search the guy’s pockets for his wallet and when he found it, he’d slip it down the front of his jeans, stand up and just pat the drunk on his head, go ahead in and order his food. No one would be the wiser, for the dumb-ass guy himself wasn’t gonna even know till he sobered up.
He was standing right in front of the drunk and had reached down to lift the man’s hood so that he could see his face, when the man suddenly lifted his head and stared directly and knowingly into the boy's startled eyes. What he saw in those eyes was hard, blue, determined steel. The boy started slightly, but recovered in the next instant and with his best concerned expression, asked the guy if he was alright. He told him that he was worried that he’d maybe fallen or was sick or something and asked him if he needed any help. And all the while the boy was asking…the man still had not moved other than lifting his head, and that steely-eyed expression did not soften at all. When the man just continued to give him that same stare and didn’t answer any of his questions, didn’t say one word, the boy, feeling decidedly uncomfortable and slightly afraid, shrugged his shoulders, turned, and walked away from the man, then entered the restaurant.
A few minutes later, the teen left the restaurant through the front door to by-pass the stranger. He almost reached the Ford never once looking the man’s way. Then he saw the little dog come limping along, passing in front of his parked car…probably headed for the dumpster, which reeked of old food aromas, at the back of the lot. The boy's need for sadistic thrills far outweighed his fear of the sitting man so he reached down and found a couple of rocks at the side of the parking lot and threw them as hard, one right after another, as he could at the poor unsuspecting dog, which, when hit with the first rock on her hind quarters, yipped shrilly in the night and tried to run behind another car, but not before the second rock hit it’s mark on the side of her temple, instantly bringing blood and the poor dog down in an instant. The boy, who’d been in the throes of sadistic ecstasy for the few seconds it had taken him to gather and throw the rocks, looked sidelong toward the man who had not only gotten to his feet, but was already nearly half way and running towards him. The coward of a boy, in the act of whirling around to get safely in his car, dropped the sack of food on the wet pavement, slammed and locked his door, started the car and had time to put it into reverse before the man who’d quickened his pace when he saw that the boy saw him, reached the side of the teen’s car. The man only had time enough to pound his fist into the side of the driver’s door window, causing the kid to emit a high-pitched, decidedly un-masculine, scream from within. The frightened teen then dangerously accelerated while backing the rest of the way out, floored it again to roar out of the parking lot and out into the street but not before he looked back once and gave the man the rudest of hand gestures.
The man reached down at his feet and snatched up the boy’s sack of food and immediately turned and hurried over to the suffering little dog which, by now, was back on her feet, but was much more shaky than before and seemed a little dazed, while blood dripped down from her brow. He squatted down, noted she was female, and as he spoke soft and soothing words to her, he gently scooped her up and carried her with him over to the spot where the overhang would at least keep them out of the sleet.
As he sat down and placed the violently shivering dog on his lap, the rattle of the sack and the odor of the food got her attention and she became sharply agitated and began to sniff desperately all over the bag. The man hurriedly opened the bag and pulled out a burrito, quickly pulled off the paper wrapper and gave it all to her. She wolfed it down in a few bites and was clearly ready for more. It was obvious to the man, then, that this dog did not have a home to go home to. She’d most certainly been on her own for some time and had not had many hand-outs……He knew that feeling well enough.
He then took the second burrito out of the bag, unwrapped it, and split it into halves whereupon he gave her one, and he began eating the remainder. He himself had not eaten since the night before, so this was much needed fuel for his body also. The man looked into the bag again and found that there were two more burritos left. He decided to close the sack up tightly and save them for tomorrow. He put the now double-wrapped burritos up under his hat to keep her from eating those too.
He'd become thirsty, and knowing she must be doubly so, he picked her up again and walked with her across the street to the gas station, where he put her down right outside the door and told her to “stay”. Whether she knew that command or not didn’t matter, for she was not about to let him get out of her sight if she could help it, so she ‘stayed’ until he came back out, bent to pick her up again and as he passed the waste container along the front of the store, out of habit now, he looked inside and saw two newspapers. The man reached quickly in and removed the papers and he, his new canine friend, the two burritos under his hat and the two newspapers under his other arm disappeared around the corner of the building.
The man had noted on the way across the street that an outbuilding was almost right up against the station itself, with a wooden fence behind that. It was where he took himself and the dog. The overhang of the building had kept the narrow space between the buildings relatively dry, so he put the dog in first..then turned around and crawled backwards inside the narrow space, dragging the news papers with him. When he’d pushed the dog back far enough that he could not be seen from the parking lot, he pulled her between his knees so that she was in front of him, maneuvered his legs forward so that he could sit cross-legged and could lean back against the fence to rest the remainder of this cold night. The man put her in his lap, under his rain slicker. He then reached into the inside pocket of the slicker and pulled out the large Styrofoam cup he had poured water into at the drink fountain inside and walked out with without anyone noticing. He himself took a long gulp, and then put the cup down for her to drink too. While she was noisily lapping up the water, he began opening the newspapers and lining their sleeping quarters for the night with one, and then he blanketed the second over him and his new sleeping companion for added warmth and protection from the damp air.
When he’d done the best he could of cocooning them both against the cold night, his next task was to tend to the rock wound on her temple, which had stopped bleeding, but needed cleaning. He tore off a corner of one of the papers and dipped it in what little water they had left and began tenderly and carefully wiping at the split in the skin over her left eye and cleaned it as well as he could, all the while crooning to her to keep her calm and to let her know she was in good hands with him.
After he was finished and the dog had finally made her bed and settled down within the warm circle of his lap and all was quiet in their ‘Little Marriott’, he pondered upon a name for her and finally decided upon the obvious. He would call her Burrito. And as if testing it out like he’d never said the word before, he said it out-loud. He frowned and quickly decided to change it to Burrita. He chuckled softly and began massaging her cold ears, the action of which, caused Burrita’s tail to wag, though weakly, for the first time. He spoke her new name softly and lovingly, and as if in a response to acknowledge to him her acceptance of it, the exhausted Burrita looked up and stared right into the man’s eyes for the first time with such grateful and unconditional love that it caused the man’s eyes to fill with tears.
He would have his own gratitude, in return, to her, and would convey that to her for the rest of their lives together.
Little Burrita let out a long heaving sigh, and the man leaned back into the corner, closed his weary eyes, heaved his own sigh and was instantly transported to the most peaceful sleep he’d had in weeks.
THE END
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