This story happened about 12 years ago. I did change the names of the people.
I saw the black dog while walking home from the bus stop. I didn’t think
much about it at first, there were a lot of dogs that ran around free in
this part of the country. It was sitting down in the shadow of a large
post. As I walked by, it followed my progress with its large yellow eyes.
I kept my head down and glanced at it every few seconds to make sure it
wasn’t going to come after me. It didn’t, and as I rounded a corner,
putting the dog out of sight, my breath came out in a whoosh. This
surprised me a little, I hadn’t even been aware that I was holding my breathe.
I laughed at myself for being spooked by the dog and tried to put it out of my mind. The thought pretended to go but it really didn’t. It wiggled around in my subconscious. The more I tried not to think about the black dog the more it wiggled. My brain started to make things up about the dog. It was rabid, like the one grandpa and dad had to go shoot a few years ago. It was running up behind me, saliva flying from its massive jaws as it opened its mouth, showing a row of pointy yellow teeth. Teeth that it would sink into the back of my leg the moment it caught up with me.
I wanted to turn around and check but I forced my self to look straight ahead and keep walking. By the time I got to our long dirt drive way I thought that I would die of fear. I stopped in front of the faded road sign that bore my last name, and turned around slowly. It was sitting in the middle of the road about 100 feet away, silent and staring. I stared back, then turned and ran down my driveway.
The road was wet from the recent rain and the mud squished under my new school shoes as I ran. I imagined I could hear the dogs heavy breathing as it raced behind me then I realized that it was my own ragged breathing echoing hollowly in my ears. My backpack beat painfully into my lower back with each step, but I didn’t slow down. I clambered up the wooden steps of the front porch and whirled around, certain that the dog would be either racing up the steps after me or sitting silently in the middle of the driveway. It was neither, the dog was gone.
I stood inside the front door and shed my hat and coat, hanging them both on the rack next to the door.
“Nelly? Is that you?” My mom’s voice echoed down the hall and into the
front foyer where I stood. She appeared suddenly from out of the kitchen
and stared at me. She was tall and thin, just like me. Her red hair was
tied back at the nape of her neck. Some of it had come loose and hung
around her face giving her a slightly wild look.
“Nelly! What did you do to
your school clothes?”
I glanced down and saw that, besides the mud that caked my shoes, small
brown spots clung to my jeans all the way up to my knees.
“Did you decide to hit every puddle between the school and home?”
“Jenny, a chroi, let the poor lass alone. I remember you did much the same
thing when you were 10.”
My grandfather stood behind my mom and winked at
me over her shoulder. My mom clucked her tongue then turned and went back
into the kitchen. She called over her shoulder and said,
“Change your
clothes and put them in the wash, then come help me in here.”
I smiled my thanks to my grandfather and ran up stairs to change.
The kitchen was warm and smelled of peaches. I wore the apron that had once belonged to my grandmother; it hung down to my ankles. I stood at the sink slicing and peeling peaches. My mother was at the stove boiling the jars and lids that we would use to can the fruit. My grandfather and dad sat at the table playing cards. Grandfather was losing and every so often he would mutter Irish insults to my father, who didn’t understand a word of Gaelic. I sometimes think my father felt left out because he was the only one in the house who couldn’t speak it. Whenever grandfather had given the dinner toast in Gaelic, father would have to lean over and ask me what he had said. After a while I had asked Grandfather to give the toast in English, he said he would think about it but had yet to fulfill my request.
Now I heard a shout of triumph from my father who had apparently just won at whatever game they where playing.
“Go n-ithe an cat thu’ is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat.” Said my Grandfather.
“Papa!” mother said giving him a reproachful look.
I giggled. Go n-ithe an cat thu’ is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat,
meant, May the cat eat you, and may the cat be eaten by the devil.
Father just smiled smugly at grandfather and asked him what game he would
like to play next.
“You keep smiling like that laddy,” grandfather countered, “and the
pooka will come teach you a lesson.”
I dropped the knife I had been using as the realization came to me. It
clanked in the sink and my mother looked up from the stove.
“Nelly,” she
said, “Are you all right? Your face looks awfully pale.” She wiped her
hand on her apron then placed it on my forehead. “You feel warm. Do you
want to go lie down before dinner?”
I smiled at her and nodded, glad for a chance to get out of the kitchen. Up stairs, I took off my grandmother’s apron and let it fall on my bedroom floor.
“The pooka,” my grandfather had told me one night when I was 8, sitting curled up in a blanket, on his lap, “is the barer of bad deeds. He will appear to a person right before a loved one dies.”
My eyes had gotten bigger and bigger listening to his tale about the horrible pooka until my father had announced it bedtime and took me to my room, grumbling about how I would have nightmares. I didn’t have any nightmares that night.
“What does the pooka look like Grandpa?” I had asked right before my father had interrupted.
Grandfather stood up and passed me to my father. I went willingly wrapping my arms around his neck, but I kept my eyes focused on my Grandfather, waiting for my answer.
“Most of the time a great black steed,” he said putting his hands in his pockets, “billowing blue flames from his snout. But, sometimes it will come as a black goat or a huge black dog.”
You don’t really believe all that Irish myth stuff do you? I said
to myself as I stared at the crumpled apron on my floor. But I knew that I
did. I believed everything my grandfather told me. Even when I was six and
he told that my grandmother hadn’t really died but had been a selkie, a seal
which can shed its skin and become human. He said that she had just decided
it was time for her to return to the sea. When we went to the sea that
summer I had pointed to the seals playing in the surf and shouted to my
father
“Look daddy it’s grandma, it’s grandma.”
My father took me aside
after that and told me that stuff like that couldn’t really happen, that it
was all just fairy tails, like Cinderella. I had pretended to listen to him
but secretly I knew I still believed all of my grandfather’s fairy tales
about Ireland.
I thought about mentioning the black dog at dinner but then decided that my father would get upset. I decided to wait until my grandfather came in to my room to say good night.
Before dinner Grandfather gave the Irish toast. It was usually something like “Here’s to a long life and a merry one, a quick death and an easy one, a pretty girl and an honest one, a cold beer and another one.” Or, “Land without rent to you, a child every year for you, and if you can’t go to heaven, may you at least die in Ireland.” That night it was “Now sweetly lies old Ireland, Emerald green beyond the foam, awakening sweet memories, Calling the heart back home.”
I know my Grandfather missed Ireland very much, but after my Grandmother had died, 8 years before, he had no other family left there. My mother was an only child, like me, and had moved to America 16 years earlier where she met and married my father. I myself have never seen Ireland.
My parents stood by the edge of my four poster bed. Mother pulled
the patchwork quilt all the way up to my chin then kissed my forehead.
Father smoothed my blonde hair back and said
“Good night Chanelle Ann
Patkins.”
This was the same ritual that happened every night in my room.
When they had left my grandfather came in. He sat down on the edge of my bed.
“Are you going to tell me a story?” I asked pulling my arms from under the quilt and folding my hands across my belly.
“No not tonight Nelly.” He didn’t say anymore, just looked at me in silence as if he knew I had something I wanted to tell him.
I studied his face as he looked at me. His eyes were a bright green, his hair had once been the same fiery color as my mothers but the gray in it had dulled it making it look orange.
Finally I said, “I saw a black dog.”
“I know,” he said surprising me, “I saw him too.”
“Is something bad going to happen?”
“Everything happens for a reason.” He said.
Even though I was only 10 and a half I knew he was trying to dodge
the question so I asked it again.
“Is something bad going to happen?”
“I don’t know Nelly.”
He was lying, I could tell. He stood up and walked to my doorway.
“Oiche mhaith a ghra’ mo chroi.”
“Good night grandpa. I love you too.” He flicked off my light switch
and walked down the hall.
That night I dreamt I was being chased by a huge black dog. No matter how fast I ran it was always right behind me. I could feel its hot damp breath on the back of my neck and the ground shook with every step that it took. Finally I could run no longer and I fell to my knees.
“What do you want?” I screamed at it.
“I want to eat you.” It said in a surprisingly normal voice, “so that
the devil may eat me.”
I woke up the next day with a fever of 102. My mother made me hot soup and condemned me to stay in bed the whole day. I got up once to stand at the window and watch as my father and grandfather drove to work in the old ford. Grandfather rolled down his window as they drove down the lane and waved to me.
The phone rang two hours later. I crept down stairs and hid against
the hallway wall to listen.
“What happened?” My mother asked into the phone “Oh my god! Are you
all right?. . . Okay, okay, we’ll be right there.”
She hung up the phone
and then turned into the hallway. She stopped when she saw me standing
there. “Get your coat.” she said.
The hospital was a large white three-story building; mother parked the station wagon in the visitor section and then dragged me into it.
I stood in the middle of the deserted waiting room in my pajamas. My
shoelaces had yet to be tied and my hair stuck out at odd angles. I stared
out into the green tiled hall at my parents. Mother was hugging father and
crying. Every once in a while she would look up at him and say,
“Travis, oh
god Travis why?”
then she would start crying again. Father just smoothed
her hair down her back and whispered things that I couldn’t hear. He looked
tired, his blonde hair was matted and the white bandage wrapped around his
head made him look curiously like a ninja. There were bloodstains on the
collar of his shirt.
A flash of light drew my attention to the window. A moment later I heard a deep rumbling. I walked over to the window and stared out.
“Grandfather is dead.”
I said the words out loud, trying them on for
size. Maybe I thought saying it would make it seem more real. It didn’t
work. It started raining and I couldn’t tell if my blurry vision was caused
by drops on the glass pane or the tears welling up at the corners of my eyes.
I looked down at the sidewalk. The dog sat there, in the pouring rain, looking back up at me. I knew then that my Grandfather’s legends would die with him. I will never tell my children the beautiful stories. I say to myself that it is because I will marry a man much like my father who would not appreciate them, but the real reason is that I believe the old cliché that ignorance is bliss.
I saw a few people hurry by with umbrellas but none of them gave any indication of seeing the dog. I watched as it stood and started trotting up the sidewalk.
“What happened?” my mother had asked when we first got there.
“A dog.” My father said. “This big black dog, it ran out in front of us, I tried to swerve to miss it but the truck just flipped.”
The dog stepped off the sidewalk and ran across the empty street, disappearing into an alley.
