Once I was mugged at dog-point. I was twelve years old, biking through a park after school, when the huge animal was suddenly right alongside me, snapping at my ankles. I got off and put the bike between me and him, a barricade of Schwinn, while he barked and bristled and in general made me understand he did not much like my living looks, and would do his best to turn me inside out. I was at that time maybe five feet tall. The dog may have been as heavy as me. Of course when you're talking about a dog that size, he might as well have been an archangel. I shook. Every inch of me.
Then, at a command, the dog retreated. Two men came near. One of them demanded money.
I turned the pockets of my pants inside out and there was precisely nothing in my pockets except a few pieces of lint, so he told me to get going you little shit. I got back on the bike and pretended to be off.
Though actually I did my best to track the three. I doubled back and followed at a distance. In a parking lot bordered by trees, the three of them got into their two door sedan. The dog jumped in first. It still kind of breaks my heart to think of that moment: the creature jumping into the back seat, in that eager scrabbling way that dogs often have of getting into cars. Enthusiastic. Full of the desire to please. He was just like any dog that knew his way around his life, and his owner's life. He might as well have just come from an innocent hour at the beach, catching Frisbee tosses. Though in fact he had just been used to mug a twelve year old boy.
Nothing came of my trying to get close enough to read the license plate. When I got home, I told my mother what had happened. She called the police, and an officer arrived. He asked a lot of good questions, the ones you'd expect, among them:
"Did they take anything?”
“Five dollars,” I said. Which yes, was embellishment. Why did I lie like this? Why did I say that the men and the dog had taken money? There's only one reason, I think: I wanted to be taken seriously. And the only guarantee of that, I thought, lay in saying that money had been subtracted from my pockets. Otherwise no one would really care. So I thought.
Later that afternoon, I went to catechism class—getting there a little late on account of everything that had happened. All my classmates had been apprised of events by the pastor, who, when I came in through a door in the back of the room, was sitting in front, at a lectern, on a tall metal stool. His eyes, filled with kindness and concern, found mine across the distance of the room.
“How are you?” he asked. Fine, I answered quietly, fine, though of course this was not precisely true. I took a seat, not far from a girl I liked, but not too close to her either, because there's a certain distance from what you love that helps you believe in its continual perfection. Class proceeded. Maybe we were talking about the creed: "We all believe in one true God."
(Who is not the god of Money.)
HB
No comments:
Post a Comment