The Dog with No Name

The Dog with No Name

© Grace Bridges 2015

Cover Design: Grace Bridges

Published by Splashdown Books, New Zealand

All rights reserved

http://www.splashdownbooks.com

The Dog with No Name

Grace Bridges

Perhaps the dog had had a name, once, long ago, when children christened the puppy they'd begged for. Perhaps it had been Christmas, with shiny baubles hung on a fragrant tree, or somebody's birthday, and he had burst out of a barely-wrapped box with the same brown ears and grey patches that he still wore, to be greeted with delight by the little ones and a certain disapproval on the part of a busybody aunt.

He almost remembered his name, through the haze of babyhood when he had been the centre of their attention, but now he had not heard the name in so long that he would not know it if he heard it. No doubt in the beginning they had called him by it a hundred times a day, called him to play or snuggle or eat. Nobody had spoken that name now for years.

The good times were long gone, those days before they'd grown tired of cherishing him, had sunk into the virtual worlds of their gaming consoles and the concerns that their attire be exactly as calculated and slovenly as that of their peers.

They didn't care for the dog now grown to full size and having lost his infant cuteness, the inherent puppyness that had made them ooh and aah and tickle his little grey-speckled belly, the playfulness now tempered into a fondness for fetching sticks—of whose throwing they quickly wearied.

Their mother was gone, their father too often drank his pay and yet it was he who fed and walked the family pet. Between the two was a familiarity that fell some distance short of friendship. He called the dog by many names: mangy cur, fleabag, bloody mutt, or son of a bitch, if he felt like being funny—but there was no real name among the varied appellations. So the dog went on well enough without.

As they wandered the streets of Belfast late at night, the man with a bottle in one hand and in the other the frayed old rope that served as a leash, it was the dog who knew the way home although his master did not like to let him lead. Something to do with being the one in charge for once, although he had lost control of everything he had ever called his own, so now he domineered over the dog who was not really his but his children's, whom he could no longer control.

The man had a real name of course, but it was never heard on these nightly excursions as the booze loosened his tongue and he groaned to himself at the ruin of his life. The mournful sound echoed down back alleys and along brick-fronted terraces wherever he went.

Residents in the houses he passed would awaken, shuffle to their windows and open them with varying creaks according to difficulty and age of the structure—maintenance was not a priority in this part of town, or indeed any part nowadays—and they would stand there in their faded nightshirts and shout at him. "Move along there, ya wastrel! Bleedin' idjit." They called him many more names besides.

He was particularly enraged this night because his teenage son had defied him, or so he thought—the boy refused to go fetch a few beers from the store—but he muttered as he went, about kids these days and the sheer nerve of it all. Surely it had not been an unreasonable request of his. After all, he had always required the youngsters to go and buy what he needed, never mind what it was. And now to be rebuffed all of a sudden?