Butch (Little Gangsters) ...

 

“You know Butch?” Frankie asked as we pedalled hard up the alley.

“Errol’s dog?”

“Yeah.  That’s the one.  I love that dog.”

The Peterlichans lived on 8^th Avenue halfway between Kevin’s house and Commercial and had one of the coolest dogs in East Vancouver.  Butch was part Spitz, part Husky, part god’s-own-mystery.  And let me tell you; Butch was the mob boss of the dog world in that neighbourhood.  No census taker would be able to calculate how many pups he’d sired because whenever there was a bitch in heat, Butch was first in line.  The other male dogs would part like the Red Sea when he trotted up and they would keep their distance and quietly wait their turn while Butch claimed his latest bride.  None of them messed with Butch.

Butch would sneak off to the alley behind the Buy Rite Market once in awhile and peer through the loading dock door waiting for his opportunity.  When he saw the butcher go into the walk-in cooler, Butch would bolt into the store past the cooler and steal a roast or a porterhouse steak out of the meat display cabinet and tear for home.  Errol’s mom would get a phone call from the butcher telling her that Butch was at it again and sure as hell she’d look out in the backyard and see Butch polishing off a pretty expensive piece of meat and she’d tell the butcher to put it on her bill.

Once, when Errol was eight years old, he was walking home from a friend’s house when a neighbour’s dog – a boxer – got out and attacked him.  Butch came running and scared the boxer off and escorted Errol home.  Errol wasn’t hurt, just pretty scared from the boxer knocking him down and ripping at his clothes.  As soon as Errol was safely back home in his mom’s arms, Butch took off and didn’t come home that night.  Errol was worried sick about his dog and hardly slept all night.  In the morning, Errol went into the backyard and found Butch sleeping under his favourite tree, the thick fur of his bib caked with blood.  Errol screamed for his mom and together they carefully washed Butch’s fur clean of the blood, but they didn’t find any wounds.  The blood wasn’t his.

Some neighbourhood kids found the boxer in the grassy field of the 7^th Avenue Park.  His throat had been ripped out.  The boxer’s owner found the pickets on his backyard gate chewed through and the gate half off its hinges.  There must have been one hell of a struggle to mess up a gate that bad.  Errol told me that when he saw the pickets all chewed up he knew it was Butch, because his dad had to replace their picket fence with a wrought iron one to keep Butch in.  He’d always chew through the pickets when he wanted to take himself for a walk or commit his particular crimes of choice.  Near as anyone could figure it, Butch waited until late at night and went down there and dragged the boxer out of his yard and killed him for messing with his kid.  

Given Butch’s talents as a thief and assassin plus his appreciation for vengeance, it was no wonder that Frankie loved that dog.

Frankie skidded to a stop behind Errol’s house and was off his bike before the wheels stopped spinning.  I was hard pressed to keep up with him as he hopped Errol’s back fence and scooted around the side of the house.  Butch was out in the front yard, keeping an eye on his neighbourhood through the wrought iron gate when Frankie and I arrived.  Butch looked at us and decided we were friends and went back to scrutinizing his domain from inside his prison.  Frankie motioned for me to crouch down and we both crawled on our knees and hid behind the bushes by the latched front gate where Butch stood.  Frankie wrapped his arm around Butch's shoulders and gave him a hug.  Butch wagged his tail, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.

“Hey, Butchie boy.”  Frankie whispered, “You hungry for a snack?” then to me:  “Denny – where’s Kevin.”

I pressed my face close to the wrought iron fence and saw Kevin walking toward us on the other side of the street.  “About three houses away – on the other side.” I reported.

With his other hand, Frankie unlatched the wrought iron gate, but held it closed.  Butch went on alert then; his ears forward, his tongue back inside his mouth, his tail curled over his butt – he knew how gates worked and sweet freedom from that unchewable fence was inches from his nose.  You could see that he was aching to be outside of that gate, his eyes fixed on Frankie’s hand holding the gate shut.  It was eerie the way Butch was in tune with Frankie – it was like a couple of hoodlums in sync with each other, waiting to pull a job.  Butch couldn’t have known the caper, but he was totally willing to participate in whatever Frankie had in mind if it meant he could have even a few moments of freedom.  The tension was killing me as I peeked out every few seconds to report Kevin’s progress to Frankie.  That’s when we heard Errol’s front door open and Beau, Errol’s greaser older brother, came out in his tight cuffed jeans, his Dayton boots, and white t-shirt with a pack of smokes rolled into the left sleeve.

Frankie turned and shushed Beau by pressing a finger to his lips.  Beau looked down at us and Butch, then across the street at Kevin approaching with his big bag of groceries and his fat bandaged fingers.  Beau looked back at Frankie.

“You’re such an asshole, Marrone.” Beau said smirking, then hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and leaned against one of the posts on the front porch to watch the show.

Frankie could see Kevin now, lumbering up the sidewalk on the other side of 8^th Avenue.  Frankie was giving Butch a play-by-play;

“That’s the mug, see him Butch?  See that bag he’s got?  That’s from Buy Rite, yer favourite joint.  Here’s the deal, Butchie boy, in a few seconds, I’m going to open the gate and you can make your move, see?”

I swear to god that Butch understood him.  I could feel Butch tensing, lifting and setting his front feet, getting ready and leaning forward.  The scene reminded me of the horses in the starting gate at Hastings Park racetrack, simply known as ‘the track’.

Besides being a degenerate drunk, my dad was also a degenerate gambler.  And because my mom drove cab all day, it left my dad free to go to the track for the afternoon races on Saturdays, but he had to take me.  I was a track-rat, one of the twenty or so offspring of gamblers who went to the track on a regular basis and brought their kids with them.  My dad would give me a couple of bucks and I ran with the track-rat bunch.  We’d pick up discarded tickets and compare them with the tote board.  Once in awhile we’d find a winning ticket that some careless drunk dropped or threw away and share out the winnings.  I spent hours at the track.

I still recall the smells of the horseshit and frying onions and French fries.  And when I close my eyes I can still hear the announcer, calling out; “They’re at the post.” – meaning that all of the horses had been spurred into the starting gate.  That’s when a hush would fall over the crowd and heads would turn to watch.  An alarm bell would ring and the gates would all crash open at once and the horses would bolt outward with the announcer calling; “And there they go!”

I expected a bell to ring when Frankie pushed open that gate and Butch leapt out onto the sidewalk and across the road.  Butch was like a missile aimed right at Kevin, his four feet kicking up dust as he accelerated in a perfect straight line growling and barking at that ginger haired bastard.  If his feet had been made of rubber they would have screeched as Butch accelerated toward his target.  Kevin screamed and dropped his bag of groceries and jumped over a neighbour’s fence.  Butch skidded to a stop and buried himself shoulder deep in the overturned bag of groceries and came out with a long string of wieners that he brought right back through the gate and scooted around into the backyard, not willing to share with anyone.

Frankie pulled the gate closed then he and I rolled behind the bushes and tried to muffle our laughter by clamping our hands over our mouths.  We could hear Kevin cursing as he picked up his groceries and walked toward us.  We couldn’t see Kevin and I’m sure he couldn’t see us, but we could see Beau who lit a cigarette and stared down at Kevin standing outside his front gate.

“Your dog took my wieners.” Kevin complained.

“Yeah?” Beau answered.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I think he’s in the backyard.”  Beau said and smiled, “Why don’t you go get ‘em back, Tinkerbell?”

“Fuck you!” Kevin screamed and stomped off.

“Don’t get fresh, kid.”

“I’m telling my dad.”

“You do that, kid.  He can come by for his ass-whipping anytime.”

“Fuck you.”

“You wish, Tinkerbell.”

Beau watched Kevin disappear down the block, then looked down at us.

“You’re still an asshole, Marrone.”

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Queen Anne and the Geek ...

The rides at the Pacific National Exhibition’s Playland were the main thing that attracted most kids, but for me it was the sideshows.

There were always the assorted oddities, magicians, sword swallowers, fire breathers, all in shows that drew you in and sometimes made you squirm.  Especially the freak shows.  These were people who were physically odd in some way; midgets, giants, Siamese twins, bearded ladies, tattooed ladies, blockheads, and reptile men with chronic skin conditions.  Even as a kid I knew that most of these people were born with handicaps and were trying to make the best of their lives, so the freak shows often made me feel sad.

On the other hand I’d see them backstage amidst their cluster of trailers as they interacted with each other like everyone else; relaxing between shows, talking, laughing, reading the paper, just living regular lives.  They looked like they were a family – not one like mine, but a regular one like Timothy’s, so I wondered who was really lacking; the freaks or people like me.

The penultimate of all the freaks was the Geek.  The Geek was a living horror show and designed to scare the living shit out of you.

See, the way it worked was; You paid your dime to the barker out front and lined up behind a red rope at the foot of a metal staircase that was shrouded by canvas walls painted with creepy depictions of a wild-eyed half-human creature biting the heads off chickens and such.  Then when the barker decided that he’d drawn as many people as he could muster up, he’d lift that red rope and usher you up the stairs with warnings not to get too close to the cage inside and that by paying your dime you released them of all responsibility for your safety and your life itself.

But here’s the thing; there was no way not to get too close to the cage – it was designed that way.  The whole set-up was built inside a trailer with a set of bars running down the length of it.  The bars formed one wall of a narrow corridor that the audience would line up in.  On the other side of the bars on a raised floor was the Geek.

These Geek shows were always dimly lit with creepy coloured bulbs so there was more shadows than light, and the corridor for the audience was so narrow that if the Geek tried to grab you through the bars, you had press your back up against the wall to avoid him.

It was getting late and the rest of the gang had hopped the bus to go home, so Frankie and I headed down the midway and I told him about the Geek and he was up for it.  We paid our dimes and lined up with the rest of the audience and it was pretty popular because the audience grew pretty big pretty fast.  When the barker was satisfied, he came down off his podium and limped over to the red rope and unhooked it.

“Straight up the stairs and turn to the right, folks!  Be sure to stay as far from the bars of the Geek’s cage as you can!” he said ominously, “And remember, you enter at your own risk … the Geek is the most unpredictable wild man ever captured in the jungles of Pau-pau New Guinea!”

So we filed up the stairs with the rest of the audience and entered the Geek’s dark lair.

It was dim inside that trailer and it stunk of sweat and stale body odour and dirty feet.  The Geek’s cage was littered with straw and all manner of ripped up crap, including some half chewed bones and some human skulls that kind of looked real on account of the creepy green lighting.

We all slid down the wall, with our backs against it until we were packed in pretty tight.  Everyone was silent as we waited for the Geek, but as we stood there and our eyes adjusted to the dim light, I realized he was already there.  It was easy to mistake him for a pile of rags because that’s what he was wearing.  But I could see his eyes peering out at us under heavy dark brows.

He sat crouched and huddled in the corner, his arms tucked in against his body and his feet drawn up so his knees almost touched his face.  With his head down, he stared at us under his bushy eyebrows and sat in silence and the tension was crazy – I could feel the hair prickling on the back of my head.

“Where is he?” Frankie whispered to me.  It was then I heard a couple of adults;

“There he is.”

“Where?”

“Right over there.  In the corner.”

“Jesus Christ.” and a gasp.

That’s when the Geek charged us.

He let out an animal shriek and came straight at us, bounding across the cage like a gorilla on all fours.  His eyes were wild, his lips pulled tight across his rotten teeth, the cords on his neck standing out like taut cables.

He threw himself at the bars and I felt the trailer shake from the impact and he reached through the bars as far as he could and almost got ahold of a woman’s arm.

The inside of that trailer became chaos.  People were screaming, yelling, cursing, and running for the exit.  I got jostled pretty bad by adults as they panicked and ran for the doorway, but I stood my ground, pressing my back firm against the wall behind me, my eyes fixed on the Geek.

In the midst of this sudden exodus, I heard Frankie yell; “Fuck this!” and he ran along with the rest of them.  But unlike the rest of the kids and all of the adults who kept running, I saw out of the corner of my eye that he stopped at the doorway and stood aside, looking back at me.

I don’t know why I stayed.  I was as startled as the rest of them by the Geek’s sudden fury and wild attack.  I wasn’t frozen like I had been under the lilacs the day Kevin and his cronies wrecked the Goddess of Speed.  I stayed deliberately and let my fear wash through me.  The Geek rushed me and slammed himself against the bars once more, his arms reaching for me, his hands clawing at me, trying to grab hold of me.  I could feel his fingertips brushing the front of my t-shirt, but I didn’t move and I didn’t look away.

A weird sort of calmness came over me.  It would later happen throughout my life when I faced down truly dangerous people and situations, but this was the first time I felt that way.  I liked the feeling, or actually the lack of feeling.  Fear was gone – completely gone.  So was every other emotion.  I would later learn the word ‘dissociative’ and that’s as close as I can come to describing how I felt – or didn’t feel.  But my mind was sharp and clear as I stood there, which was a contrast to the mental confusion I felt during my episodes.

I stared the Geek down as he shrieked and slavered and strained to push his arm through the bars to be able to reach me.  I stood my ground and after a few more seconds the Geek gave up – I could see the realization in his eyes that he wasn’t going to make me run like the others did.

He calmed down and half crawled, half shuffled back to his corner and hunkered down with his face turned away from me.  It was only then that I stepped away from the wall and walked the length of the trailer to the exit, my right shoulder only inches from the bars.  Frankie was staring at me with wide eyes as I passed him.

“Jesus Christ, Denny”

I just kept walking and as I did I realized one of the reasons I wasn’t scared of the Geek was that he was just a drunk.  I could smell Queen Anne Scotch on his breath as he was screaming at me.

The same shit my dad drank.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website