Killing A Dog

Fall has finally come to the trailer park. Though we spent the better part of two days this past weekend basking in what was no doubt the last 80-degree days of the year, there’s been a shift in the wind and damp fall is now upon us. Not that I mind all that much. To tell the truth I find myself starting to miss the cool damp mornings come mid August so I’ve spent the past month and a half pining for this change to come. I guess I miss the fields covered in fog and dew so heavy it looks like overnight rain.

Earl and Heather have started on a remodel of their kitchen and back porch. Right now it’s in the garbage pile phase of reconstruction, where what used to be is gone, replaced by what seems to be an outsized pile of insulation and particleboard. They’ve hired a friend of Corlis’ who’s done a number of singlewide remodels and is certified by the Manufactured Home Association of America and the American Trailer Craftsmen League. Personally, I think he drinks too much, but in truth I can’t say his work suffers all that much for it. Besides, if anyone can update their 1970’s country kitchen, he can.

It’s been a wild few weeks around the park, no doubt about it. Starting with a level three sex offender moving in for a while and ending with a dog being beaten to death with an axe handle. Tino and Carla, who own the park, have a twenty-foot trailer that they keep down by the mini-mart and rent out on a month-to-month lease. I noticed a new family move in for about a week and then they were gone. Two days later there was a notice in the paper that a level-three sex offender had moved into our park. At first it was all just a major freak out. Everyone had their shotguns loaded and were putting them under their beds at night for protection. People kept their blinds down and doors locked so tight that it looked like the place had packed it in and gone on vacation.

Come to find out the family wasn’t still at the park anyway. I guess not many people take kindly to sex offenders living in their midst so they have to move pretty often. I spoke with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department who filled me in a little on the guy’s back-story. Not all that bright, he had a fourteen-year-old girl friend when he was nineteen and was booked for statutory rape after being arrested for possession of stolen property. I guess statutory rape is automatically level two and the possession bumped him up to a three. So though he was no doubt prison hardened, I’m thinking in the end he was not quite the boogieman we had all made him out to be. I guess he’s married and has a six-month-old baby, living most of the time in the transient motels down in Fife.

A few days after the guns all went back in their closets, someone took an axe handle to the head of their dog. It screamed so loud that I thought a car had hit one down on the highway, but I later heard it was the people who live on the edge of the park near the creak. Judy called the Police and we all called the Humane Society, but after everything was all said and done they couldn’t ever find the dogs body so no charges were ever made. Tino and Carla are aware of the situation, but are legally stuck to the lease for now.

This weekend I run into Judy grocery shopping and she tells me they’ve got a new pit bull puppy running around down there.

Well that’s fucking great. They’ve got a new puppy and I get to keep waking up at night with the sound of that screaming dog stuck in my head.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Listing

Image
We’ve started making The List. Somehow lately in trying to keep our head above water, we’ve forgotten the usefulness in keeping up the Big Check List. There are things that need to be done and like all things that one keeps trying to juggle in the air, errant balls will veer off their trajectory and disappear under sofas and wing-back chairs for weeks until cleaning day where they manage to get swept back out into the open. Sometimes it to late and the moment’s past and sometimes they never get found again. So Sunday night we gathered up our calendar and tried to put all the balls back in motion. Of course today is only Wednesday, and while we have achieved some degree of juggletude, there are still many balls to get up in the air. The best part of this new approach is that the Disney Trip is back on. We’ll be heading down to Anaheim for the Halloween weekend, taking the boys out of school for a few days to take advantage of the midweek rates. Sweetie is also ...
Read more

The To-Do List

Well it’s been a few days since I last posted, I know, I know. What with Sweetie being out of town this past weekend and the calendar being all stuffed full, there just hasn’t been all that much time to write. Not that there hasn’t been things to talk about. Both boys had their first ride on a pony, I got in an argument with another parent dropping the older boy off at school after she had a fit that I had parked to close to her car. The older boy got to hold his new cousin and we all got a good meal out of the deal. Met with Colin Saturday morning and got the artwork back (finally!) for the Prairie Dogs upcoming CD, Brand New Heart, It looks GREAT, now I just need to find out how to pay to get them made up. Started working on a switch-activated Lazy-Susan for Ike so he can sit and spin himself in his chair. Called the paramedics to come and rescue my mom after she fell off the last step leaving the trailer Sunday morning. We all wound up in the emergency room commiserating...
Read more

Breaking up in the fog

I noticed them as I was getting Ike’s wheelchair out of the back of the 402. A young couple; her standing about five feet or so from him and facing away, looking down, and he, sitting on the park bench, shoulders down and elbows on knees. She was crying. The Older Boy took no notice of them, and was asking if we could go into the park after the party, but since I was trying to both listen to his question and suss the couple’s situation out it took me a while to answer. Later, while we were at the party in a house that overlooked the park, I saw that they had moved to another bench, but that she was still crying and he was still seated with his elbows resting on his knees. The party was a surprise birthday celebration for Heather that Earl put together at the last minute the day before. We drank Mojito’s and red wine, and Earl’s mother put some chicken and potatoes in the oven to bake. Both Heather and Earl’s mothers have been staying with them for the past few months since He...
Read more