This is about a dog that caught fire. A cold, rainy day, in the north of the county, leaves already having given up, just mulch on the ground really, all crispness left and unreturning, this is about a dog that caught fire. Okay, caught is the wrong word, my cowardice already, leaves and wetness not what it’s about. The dog was set on fire. The dog was set on fire.
I am a teacher at a university. I teach literature to those that want to know it; not a great teacher, but not a terrible one either. Sometimes I get it right and feel some satisfaction, and sometimes I confuse them, dig deeper holes, make unclear what was clear in the first place: a Carver story, a Richard Ford delight, my pedantry mooring students in hopeless obfuscation. But I’ve learned to deal with this. We have our good rides, and we have our buckles and falls.
It was evening when I saw it happen.
I was in my chambers looking over my new timetable. It was to my
distaste, as all timetables are, one always feels an urge to subtract,
shuffle, rearrange, so it is with life too, options almost never
available. It was evening and three of them were over by the bushes
drinking, I saw the beer bottles in their hands, even in the fading
light. I could just make out their faces too, delighted in tormenting
the poor dog that ran in circles around them; maybe the mutt thought it
was about to have some fun, maybe play fetch, maybe get a good rub
from a new master, a few hardy pats on the head. I’ve never liked
dogs. But I’ve never disliked them either. They are mere domestic
animals, and deserve whatever goodness comes: food, companionship.
Two of the students smoked, cigarettes in the gloom a firefly
tarantella. One of them, the tallest one - I’d seen him in the
corridors, tall enough to be a basketball player, ungainly, un-muscular
- was the one that produced the lighter fuel. I don’t know how big
these canisters are exactly, I don’t smoke, the rooms forbid it, but he
proceeded to pour the fuel on the small dog. The others, stooges now,
began to help him in his endeavor. They removed their ties, and when
able to halt the writhing dog – which never bit, not once - began to
bind its legs together. My heart broke to this: a dog imagining the
way it was not going to be.
I watched it all. This spectacle. Man’s occupations and
preoccupations, man’s distractions, diversions, things I might even
proclaim in class, and all the while I…unmoving. How in my telling,
and is oft, I use these un words: Unfair. Unaccustomed. The beginning of my favorite work: I am an unattractive man.
Unbeknownst. Unmarried: I write this on application forms.
My fiction already was composing: Unbeknownst to the two smaller stooges the taller one reached in his pocket and pulled out a can of lighter fuel.
Can? Is that the right word? Tin?
The tall one emptied the liquid content on the dog’s back and with a quick flick of his lighter the fur went up in flame, the piercing yelp heard all over the campus. It somehow broke free of the ties and ran off into the hedgerow, the flame visible as it scampered, the dog’s whine fading under the rise of the laughter and merriment.
It ended at that. Such a short scene. They picked up their ties, tossed the lighter fuel into the bushes and sauntered off to somewhere else - who knew where: a party, a movie, more beer, women? I stood there for a while looking at my timetable and the new classes I had to prepare, the new things I’d have to say and do. I was unable to do anything for the rest of the night. I was unable to do anything when I should have, when it was required. My timetable looked busier than before, more of it, and all of it unfair to me; I was wrong in what I said before, I haven’t learned to deal with anything.