one good dog and one disturbed boy

Most of the time, Pilot is a good dog. He has his moments of weakness, like anyone does, his mostly relating to critters smaller than himself. He can pounce on a mouse quicker than any cat you ever saw, and he’ll dig up a maze of gopher trails till his nose is caked clay-red and his eyes nearly crossed. Those aren’t the bad things, though.

Pilot’s taste for small creatures isn’t limited to mice and gophers. I once saw him swipe a bird right out of the air. Honest! Me and him were just sitting on the hillside one evening watching the sun go down (and pretending we didn’t hear Aunt Kitty hollering at us to wash up for dinner) when all of a sudden Pilot leaps straight up in the air. When I come to my senses–for a minute I thought he must’ve spotted a cougar–there’s a little bird caught between his teeth. Tell the truth, I think Pilot was surprised too. It was hardly a moment before he loosed his mouth and that bird went flying away. The two of us, we just watched it go, neither one of us quite believing what had happened, I think.

But what I’m trying to say is sometimes Pilot has caused us some trouble. Me and Ben and Aunt Kitty, I mean. There was the one time Pilot came home with a real working man’s tool belt and the hammer still dragging off one end. A truck come flying up the driveway that afternoon sending up a cloud of dust thicker than the tule fog. The driver didn’t even get out, just pointed at Pilot and hollered at Ben, “That dog stole my tool belt!”

We don’t have cats and you can see why. The chickens mostly stay in the coop. No bunnies. No guinea pigs. (Why anyone would want a guinea pig I can’t imagine.)

So you can see how it probably would have been a good idea for our neighbors across the creek to let us know when they decided to raise Jersey Giants. They may be big for chickens, but they’re still just chickens after all. I’m sure you can guess–when I tell you that our neighbors came outside this evening and found all but two of their Jersey Giant chickens dead in the yard and a certain dog stuck half in, half out of the chicken coop–I’m sure you can guess who that certain dog was.

Maybe there’s some people couldn’t love a dog after he committed a massacre like that. Maybe there’s some would gladly trade in that dog for half a dozen cats and chickens roaming free. I wish I could explain how it is that I love Pilot more every time he makes a mess of things, even a really big mess like this.

I brought him into my bed this evening and left the door cracked just a hair so I could better listen to what our cross-creek neighbors had to say to Ben and Aunt Kitty. I’ll admit I was afraid they’d demand we shoot Pilot or some other awful thing. I’ve read Old Yeller. I pulled the covers over us both and pretty soon Pilot was dreaming about chasing gophers and mice. I suppose he might’ve been dreaming about those chickens.

And outside my door those people weren’t talking about Pilot or the chickens at all.

“He’s a very disturbed boy,” the lady was saying.

“Julia!” the man loud-whispered back. He seemed to be shushing her, the way Aunt Kitty’s always doing to me in church when I try asking her ’bout repentance or sexual relations or other stuff while the preacher’s still preaching.

“Well, he is!” Julia said. “I don’t mean no harm by it. He just is.”

Aunt Kitty said something then so low I couldn’t make out a word and then I got distracted puzzling out who they might be talking about. I had just decided they must be speaking of that boy I saw across the creek a few weeks ago when I heard Ben turn the latch on the front door and realized I missed the whole rest of what was said.

What I want to know is, what’s disturbing that boy so much? And it better not be me, ’cause I done nothing but say hello to him, real friendly-like.