Good Dogs Don’t
Die
Gene Lass
For Cindy
I woke up one morning when
I was about 4 and looked under my bed. My dog Daisy wasn’t there. She always
slept under my bed and the first thing I would do every morning is look down
and see Daisy. But for the first time, she wasn’t there. I looked all over my
room. She was gone.
I went to my parents’ room,
just to the right of my room. They were still in bed. My mom woke up as I came
in.
“Mom, where’s Daisy? I
can’t find her.”
Mom’s face got very sad.
“Oh sweetie, I’m sorry. Last night while you were asleep your dad let her
outside. She saw another dog across the street and she was hit by a car. Daisy
died.”
I looked at my dad, who
nodded. “I bundled her up in a blanket and your mom called the vet while I
drove her over there. He was waiting out front for her, but there was nothing
he could do. She died. I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t believe it. It
had to be a trick. But she was nowhere in the house or in the yard. She was
gone. The whole house seemed empty. She would follow me everywhere, all day
long. She even went with me to the bathroom. My mind couldn’t grasp it.
I knew from TV that when
people died they had bodies, and funerals, and graves that could be visited,
and I expected the same was true with dogs. My parents said she had a grave,
and we could go to it, but we never did. I expect she was cremated, which is
usually the case with dogs, and that my parents thought I would forget all
about it because I was little, but I never did. Instead, I cried, partially
because I missed her, but partially out of terror, because I was afraid I would
disappear.
In the corner of our
kitchen was a picture of baby me on the knee of someone I was told was “Uncle
Frank.” This was one of my grandfather’s two brothers, and I was told he loved
me very much, but he had died of cancer not long after I was born. I didn’t
remember ever meeting him, and aside from that picture had no evidence he ever
existed. Similarly, my grandmother, who died of cancer right before I was born
was, as far as I could tell, gone without a trace.
So, for me, dying meant you
disappeared. I knew that everyone and everything died eventually, which meant
I, too, would one day disappear, and that scared the hell out of me.
A few years later, the
movies gave me further evidence of this. In “Star Wars”, Darth Vader killed
Obi-Wan Kenobi, causing Obi-Wan to disappear. In “Halloween”, Michael Myers was
pushed out of a window and presumably killed, leaving only an imprint in the
ground. And in “Return of the Jedi,” Yoda died, disappearing just like his
pupil Obi-Wan did earlier.
By that time I was old
enough to know that dying wasn’t disappearing, and I had seen death around me,
but it was still meaningless. When my goldfish died, his body was floating in
his little bowl, so I flushed it down the toilet, which made it disappear. I
did the same thing with each fish after that, sending them to wherever dead
fish and toilet paper went. The same thing happened with bugs I killed, or dead
birds in the yard, or dead animals on the side of the road. They might be there
today, or even tomorrow, but eventually they were gone and the status quo of a
clean sidewalk, road, or lawn returned.
From that perspective,
death didn’t particularly bother me. It wasn’t a state of being, it was more
like a description of space. You’re inside or outside. Up or down. Alive or
dead. If you’re dead, you’re not moving, not breathing, and I can’t see you anymore,
or won’t see you for long.
That was where my mind was
in 10th grade, when I killed Dave Egbert.
I had known Egbert since
grade school, around 5th grade. He was shorter than me, but part of
a group of kids who gave me a hard time. Some of them were bigger than me, some
smaller, and there were about 5 of them. The big ones could beat my ass
individually, which they had been doing since kindergarten or first grade. The
smaller ones would mock me, or come at me together to overpower me for a light
pummeling, or, in winter, to give me a face wash by rubbing my face in a pile
of ice or snow, or to shove snow down the back of my shirt, or to give me a
nice classic grundy. Thanks to them, for years I always had several pairs of
underwear that had been stretched so far in back that they sagged, and it was
rare that I went a week during the school year when I wasn’t healing from a fat
flip, a black eye, a bloody nose, or a number of bruises.
I was easy prey for Egbert
and that group of assholes, thanks to my name, and for that I laid blame on
both my parents and my grade school teachers.
My parents named me Galen,
after my father, and his father before him. It’s a classic name, though not a
common one. It means “calm” in Greek, and there was a famous doctor named Galen
in ancient times, which was fitting since my grandfather was also a doctor. But
kids will pick on any name that’s unusual, and Galen is unusual, so they
latched on to it.
My parents can’t be blamed
for our last name, Gustad, but my teachers – all of them up through high
school, were to blame for how they pronounced it. Gustad is easy to pronounce –
GUStad, with “Gus” like “muss” or “fuss” and “tad” like “mad”,
“bad,” “sad.”
Like I said, pretty fucking
easy. However, being a teacher is no guarantee that someone is intelligent.
Quite the opposite, really. If there’s a way to fuck something up, a teacher
will find it, and they have a knack for making easy things complicated. So
every year, the first week of school, even though the teacher had already met
me and my parents at orientation and been told how to pronounce my first and
last name, and they dutifully took notes, they would ignore those notes, and
what they had been told, and say my name as, “GOOStad. Galen GOOStad, are you
here?”
I’d say my name currently,
and say, “Here,” but starting with first grade, idiots in class would start
giggling and saying “Goose! Goosestad! Goose!” This would be followed later on
with also saying I walked like a goose, and when I had bronchitis my coughing
was honking like a goose, and if I did something wrong it was because I was a
silly goose. Then think of the joy of having indoor recess when it rained or
snowed. Sometimes we’d play “Duck Duck Goose”. By default, I was always the
goose, at least when it was a boy doing the counting. Girls didn’t take part in
the teasing and other bullshit. Always the guys, usually the same guys, but no
one telling them not to, no one speaking up on my behalf, no kids, no teachers,
no one. I was fucked.
By fifth grade the kids
figured out that Galen sounded like “gay”, which gave them more to work with.
Now I was “the gay goose”, which they thought was a riot. I had enough, I tried
laughing it off, I tried fighting back, and sometimes I did okay, but mostly I
got beatings again, if not that day, then on another day when I’d be ambushed
with greater numbers, or maybe there would be an unfortunate incident in gym
class where I’d take a ball to the face in dodgeball, or a kick to the nuts or
shins in soccer.
Hormones kicked in in 7th
and 8th grade, and with them, zits and greasy hair, plus allergies
and sinus infections, which made me a pimply, greasy, awkward, uncoordinated
mess right when I started liking girls. High school didn’t make things any
better. Then I started to smell, with my arm pits sweating and stinking no
matter what deodorant I tried, even when I put deodorant on three times a day.
One day, Mark Calfi, one of my old tormentors from grade school, came up behind
me, ruffled my hair with his hand, wiped his hand on his shirt and said, “What
do you have there, goose grease?”
The other idiots were with him
and they all laughed. I took a swing at Calfi, aiming for his mouth. He dodged,
the other kids stepped back and started to chant, and I was pulled from behind
and slammed into a locker by Mr. Hofstedder, the giant gym teacher I thought of
as Lurch. He didn’t know or care that Calfi had started it, he just saw me
swing on him, and that got me a detention.
The next day, I was in Algebra
class, Dave Egbert was sitting in front of me. Right after glass started, when
Ms. Whalen was doing her thing at the front of the class, he started chanting,
just loud enough for me to hear and no one else.
“Goooossssse. Gooossssee.
Gay.
Gay Goossseee!”
“Shut up!” I hissed.
He said it again. I kicked the
back of his chair.
“Mr. Gustad!” Ms.
Whalen said.
“What’s your problem?”
“He’s whispering stuff at
me!”
“I am not!”
“He’s not!” Frank Adams,
one of Egbert’s friends, sitting a few seats away, said.
“Galen, if you do that again,
you’re getting a detention!” Whalen said.
As soon as she turned
around to write an equation on the board, he started again.
“Gay Goossse!”
I tried to ignore him.
Adams looked back at me and sneered. He knew they had me. As usual. Egbert
continued. I tried to ignore him. I couldn’t block him out. I could feel my
face burning in rage and frustration.
Fifteen minutes before the
end of class, the fire alarm went off.
Ms. Whalen turned around.
“All right class, this is a fire drill. I’ll head to the door and you can
follow me out in an orderly manner.”
The class stood. Egbert and
I were in the furthest row from the door, by the windows. He hadn’t gotten up
yet. When he did, I positioned myself behind him. When Whalen was out the door
and all the kids were facing that way, on their way out, I put my hands on
either side of Dave’s neck and squeezed.
He made a noise like a
stifled hiccup and put his hands on top of my hands, but he couldn’t pull my
hands away. Kids kept filing out the door, oblivious. The fire alarm kept going
off. All anyone else could hear was the alarm and hundreds of footsteps in the
halls.
After a bit Dave’s knees
got week and he started to slump to the floor. I changed my grip and got in
front of him, looking at his face as it turned red. His eyes were rolling back
in his head. His hands were still trying to grip mine or bat them away. I took
no notice. Foam started to come out between his lips.
I remember staring very
intently at him, trying to almost stare into his mind, get into his head. I
loved seeing his face like that. It was the most beautiful face, the most
beautiful thing I had ever seen. My hands felt powerful, like they were spring
loaded traps, like they’d never get tired. I leaned into my work, pressing down
from my shoulders, finally feeling like I was having the upper hand, like I was
a winner.
I heard another noise, a
pop that reminded me of when my mother asked me to help her debone a chicken
for dinner. She had boiled it for broth, and I was rendering the pieces. I
grabbed a thigh and when I pulled the leg out of it it made a popping sound
just like Dave’s neck, or his throat, or whatever was giving way at that
moment.
I could feel Dave’s pulse
beneath my hands, especially in my right hand, right at the base of my fingers.
It pounded so hard I thought it would break through the skin, then weaker and
weaker until I could barely feel it. By then he was limp on the floor and his
hands didn’t bat at me anymore. I kept on squeezing, my shoulders getting
tired. My face felt funny, tired. I realized I had been smiling the whole time.
Dave was dead.
He didn’t disappear like
Obi-Wan, or Yoda, or Daisy. He was still there, lying on the floor, and I was
crouched over him. I stood and continued staring at him, vaguely aware that
Dave had pissed himself right through his soccer shorts and gotten some on me.
He shit himself, too. I thought of that as a bonus. I wasn’t sad that he was
dead. I didn’t feel guilty. He had it coming. They all had it coming. All those
assholes, I knew I wouldn’t get the others, but I got Dave.
I spat on his face, kicked
him in the side, then sat down. I was tired. I waited for the class to come
back from the fire drill, then decided to just walk to the office instead. I
didn’t want to hear the girls scream, or worse yet, to have Ms. Whalen go into
hysterics. They were all so loud, all so stupid. I didn’t want to put up with
his stupid friends either. So I went to the office, sat down, and said, “I just
killed Dave Egbert. You should call the police.”
I don’t remember much of
the trial. There wasn’t much of them. I pleaded guilty. I didn’t ask for a
lawyer, I didn’t want to see my parents, though I did. Fuck that. I tried to
act catatonic. I was just done. I didn’t want to say anything to anyone. I just
wanted to get to the sentencing and be put away. I remember asking everyone if
I could get the death penalty. The lawyer they made me have didn’t understand
the question. He said, “You’re a minor and it’s your first offense. You won’t
get the death penalty. They won’t execute a minor.”
I said, “I want to be tried
as an adult. I want the death penalty. I don’t want to plea bargain or any of
that. I just want to be done. Tell them to execute me.”
My lawyer, and my parents,
took that as an indication that I was depressed and not in my right state of
mind. It was used in my defense. I hoped for life, then. I got 30 years to
life. I got my GED inside, started taking other classes. A lot of the guys
inside study law so they can get out. I don’t want to get out. I just want to
be done. The state wouldn’t execute me, but maybe someone with a shiv will.
I’ve already disappeared from the outside world. If I’m killed then I’ll
disappear from the inside, too.
Gene Lass has professionally
written, edited, co-written, or contributed to more than a dozen books, and has
published nine books of poetry and two collections of short fiction. His most recent
book of poetry, American, was one of the Amazon Top 100 Books
of American Poetry. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Every Day
Poems, The Albatross, KSquare, Electric
Velocipede, Schlock!, Coffin Bell Journal, and Black
Petals. His short story, “Fence Sitter,” was nominated for Best of the Web
in 2020.
