The Shepard

I hope you enjoy this short story as much as I did writing it. I overheard a conversation once, where a person said that he was not against someone rescuing animals, but there had to be a limit. "My domicile is filled with miscreant mutts and frenzied felines," he said, and I took the story from there.

The Shepard

      Elizabeth leaned over the stove stirring scrambled eggs and prattling on about something. I sat at the counter and cupped my mug of hot coffee trying to warm my cold hands. I glanced at the atomic clock over the refrigerator: seventy-eight degrees outside, sixty-five degrees inside. If it was hot outside, Elizabeth kept it cold inside. If it was frigid outside, Elizabeth kept it burning inside. She controlled the thermostat, and I was never comfortable in my own domicile. As Mr. Bagnet once said, "Whatever the old girl says do—do it!"

      "Melissa said that it was gentle as a Labrador."

      I looked up.

      "What was gentle as a Lab, Lizzie?" 

      As usual, I had not been listening to her.

      She picked up the pan and scraped scrambled eggs onto a plate.

      "Honestly, Robert. You never listen to me anymore."

      Never Bob, or Bobbie, or Bert, or even Robbie. Always Robert.

      "Of course, I listen to you. Occasionally however, I miss a beat."

      She sighed, slid the plate in front of me, and dropped two slices of wheat bread into the toaster.

       I hated wheat bread, but that made no difference to Elizabeth. Someone told her that all the best people ate wheat bread, so she never bought anything else.

      "And when Melissa told me that, I decided it was the only humane thing to do." She glanced over her shoulder at me.

      I knew that expression. She had done something or said something with which she expected me to disagree. She gave me the same look when she invited her mother to stay with us without discussing it.

      "Robert," she had said, not looking at me. "I've asked my mother to stay with us. She's old and frail and needs my help." Then she glanced over her shoulder at me expecting dissension. I did not disappoint her, but it made no difference. Irene moved in with us and stayed for five years, three months, and four days before succumbing to pneumonia and dying. As horrid as it may sound, I was happy to be rid of her.

      "Humane? What's humane, Lizzie?"

      "Honestly, Robert. To take in the dog, of course."

      So that was it.

***

      Elizabeth took in strays. After her mother died, she became involved with a pet rescue group in town, and before I had a chance to protest, she had taken in two cats and a Chihuahua. I did not mind the cats too much, but the Chihuahua had something wrong with him. He mounted everything in sight: the cats, my shoes, couch pillows, visitors' legs. Elizabeth took him to a pet psychologist, and the incorrigible little mutt mounted the psychologist's leg. No wonder the owners abandoned him.

      Fortunately, the Chihuahua did not last long. When Elizabeth took in a male German Shepard, the Chihuahua immediately tried to mount it. Apparently, the Shepard did not appreciate the attention at all. He snarled, clamped his fangs around the little fornicator's neck, and with one mighty shake, broke it. Elizabeth consigned him to the backyard after that.

      The Shepard and I became fast friends. I enjoyed the manner in which he stretched out next to my feet and never bothered me for anything. I took to giving him a rawhide bone whenever we shared the backyard. I never assigned him a name—he was the only one of Elizabeth's dogs that I took out for an occasional walk, the only one I gave a treat to.

***

      We had three dogs, including the Shepard, now, and two more cats.

      "Not another dog, Lizzie."

      She pulled the bread slices out of the toaster, buttered, and placed them on my plate. I took a nibble and grimaced—as I expected, cardboard.

      "This one will be an outdoor dog, Robert. He won't be a bother. We'll keep him in the backyard."

      "But what about the Shepard?"

      "They'll get along great. You'll see."

***

       I spent four thousand dollars, a fortune on my salary, to fence in the backyard, but she always had a reason for the animals to stay indoors. Finally, I gave up, planted flowers, shrubs, and other plantae, and made the backyard my private sanctuary from Elizabeth's domestic animal shelter. The Shepard and I spent many a pleasant afternoon there, me, reading a literary tome, he, chewing on a rawhide bone, both of us comfortable with each other's company.

       He did not like Elizabeth's cast-offs either.

***

      "When are we getting this victim of human perversity?"

      "Honestly, Robert. You could be a little more sympathetic."

      "My sympathy is not limitless, Lizzie. When do we adopt this mistreated mutt?"

      "Sometime this morning. Melissa will bring him by before she goes to work."

      I concentrated on my scrambled eggs and scowled my response. Elizabeth fed the four cats and took the three dogs out for their daily walk but not the Shepard.

***

      It never occurred to me to ask what kind of dog she had adopted.

***

      I worked as a Data Administrator for the public library. I had a master's degree in literature and a PhD with a focus on Victorian Fiction, especially Dickens, but I had a mild case of anthropophobia, and all you could do with such a degree was stand in front of a classroom filled with students focusing on your every word, staring at your every move. 

      Now, I spent most of my days in front of a computer screen either entering or manipulating data. There was down time; however, and usually, I spent it daydreaming about a home where privacy and quiet were sacrosanct. In fact, I considered my little work space a refuge from Elizabeth and her raucous and obnoxious adopted animals.

***

       I met Elizabeth one cold February day on the campus of the University of Minnesota. I was on my way to a Shakespeare class; she was sitting on her posterior on an icy sidewalk. I offered her a hand up, and she took it. After that, we made our way to a small coffee shop nearby. It did not take long at all before we were living together. Two months later, we married. The marriage was what I wanted, I told myself. I was on the upside of twenty-five headed toward thirty. I needed to settle down, start a family, become an adult.

       Moreover, I was genuinely in love with Elizabeth. She was educated—a Bachelor of Science degree. She was beautiful, tall, and shapely with shoulder-length brown hair that framed a caramel-colored face, two light-brown eyes that could gaze into yours with the promise of innumerable pleasures, and two invitingly plump lips, usually painted red, that invited intimacy.

       Unfortunately, two months had not been enough time to acquaint myself with Elizabeth's idiosyncrasies.

***

       At first, I admired Elizabeth's compassion for animals, but I quickly learned that it was a curse. During our first year of cohabitation, she took in an orphaned parrot, a bitter little bird that only knew one word, shit, except coming out of its beak,  it sounded more like shee-it. I figured I could live with that obscenity. After all, birds were docile, caged, and neat. I was wrong on all counts. He was none of those things. Elizabeth would let it fly loose around the house, and it would wing around saying shee-it, demonstrating what he meant by defecating over everything: floors, tables, clothes—nothing was safe. Still, I tried to befriend the obscene little mimicker, but every time I tried to touch him, he would stab at me with his razor-sharp beak and draw blood.

       I did a little research on parrots, and found out that they could live eighty years. I was more likely to die before him, so there was only one thing to do. I would have to eliminate him. 

      Unfortunately, I did not have it in me to kill.

      However, the gods must have been on my side. One day, on my way out the front door, he shot by me and flew off into the wide blue yonder never to be heard from again.

      "Shee-it," I said to his departing form. "Beware of the indifferent universe," I added and prepared myself to celebrate my newfound peace and quiet.

***

       If only it had been so.

      After a few months of mourning, Elizabeth adopted her mother. a sharped-tongued septuagenarian who habitually napped and snored in front of a blaring television, a pusillanimous puppy she christened Plucky who whined incessantly, and a malevolent cat that used his sharp claws as deadly weapons. Then her mother died and our domicile became a sanctuary for every abandoned animal that appeared on the Humane Society's doorsteps. If nobody wanted the scalawag, fear not, Elizabeth would take it in.

***

       Now, she was adopting another cast-off canine.

***

       "Why don't you divorce her?" Caroline asked, once I told her about Elizabeth's newest adoption. She was a thirty-something who worked with me and with whom. I often shared some of Elizabeth's atrocities. "You have no children, do you?"

       "Would I bring children into that zoo?"

       "So, divorce her."

       "I don't like Elizabeth, but I did not marry her serendipitously. I entered into our relationship voluntarily. I take my marriage vows seriously."

       "Seems to me, you're taking a lot of shit too."

       I acknowledged her point with a nod. What could I do? My life with Elizabeth had become habit. Like the smoker who knows cigarettes will kill him, but cannot stop, I did not have the will to rid myself of her. Perhaps, I realized then, I was just as tenderhearted as she was.

***

       I arrived home after work that afternoon and found no one home to greet me, except for the usual menagerie of miscreants. Apparently, Elizabeth was on some mission to save another animal somewhere, so I grabbed my Dickens, my folding chair and a treat for the Shepard, and prepared to spend a pleasant couple of hours outside reading and enjoying the tranquility.

      However, that was not to be.

***

      The Shepard lay on the back-deck bleeding, and an enormous Rottweiler stood over him, his proboscis covered red with blood. I started to open the patio door, but the animal snarled at me, displaying an impressive set of blood-soaked fangs.

        I dialed 911 and told the individual on the other end that I had an enraged dog on my back deck.

       "What do you mean, sir?"

       "I mean that there is a vicious Rottweiler feasting on my dog on the back deck. When I tried to go out, he growled at me, and exposed his bloody fangs."

      "Don't go out there, sir. I'll send someone over."

      Five minutes after I called 911, Elizabeth arrived.

      "What is it, Robert?" she asked, after noticing my anxious countenance.

      "Your poor miserable mongrel just killed the Shepard and is currently making a meal of him."

      "What?"

      Just then, the doorbell dinged, and I answered it. Two officers stood on the stoop.

      "Someone just called saying that there was a rabid dog on his back deck?"

      "This way, gentlemen," I said and led them to the patio door where Elizabeth stood gawking at the scene outside.

The two officers stared at each other.

       "Only one thing to do," the smaller of the two said. "We'll have to put him down."

       "No," Elizabeth screamed. "You will not kill that poor animal."

       We all gaped at her in disbelief.

       "Ma'am," the officer said. "The animal is eating your other dog."

       "I don't care about the Shepard. He's Robert's dog."

I gave Elizabeth a menacing glare.

       "Shee-it," I said mimicking the parrot. Where was the compassion now? Where was the tender heart?

       "I suggest you officers pop-a-cap in that bloodthirsty beast's head," I told the two constables and disappeared into my bedroom, packed a suitcase, and walked out of my residence just as one of the policemen discharged his weapon.

      At this point, I hoped it was Elizabeth he had dispatched.