Sunday 27 March 2022

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 8th 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 7th 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 8th 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

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