ROCKY’S REWARD
a short story ©Mary Ann Ronconi
Sometimes I get to go along. That beats staying home in my crate or hanging out on the porch with the dog door blocked. Still, that’s better than the crate. I am a big dog. My boss doesn’t need to block that door. I stay on the porch – unless the UPS man or the fuel truck pulls into the driveway. Then I go out all friendly, jump up on the door as the driver gets out and wait for the biscuit I know he has in his pocket.
Sometimes it’s a new guy and I gotta make sure he knows I am in charge of this place. I get all snarly and bark like crazy. Smart ones are cool and wait for me to settle down which I do when I see a hand go into a pocket. If it comes out without a biscuit, he might as well get back in the truck. No way is he delivering something on my porch. My boss is always asking me why her package is in the middle of the driveway or why something she’s been expecting hasn’t shown up. I don’t answer.
So yesterday she took me along though she didn’t look happy about it.
“Come on, Rocky. We may not get to do this together much longer. If I don’t find a job soon, you may go back on the rescue block.”
She got to where she needed to go and opened the back where I ride. “Ah, ah! Sit, Rocky.” I’m good with that command and sat while she put on my leash. Usually that makes me comfortable. I walk beside her like royalty. People tell her what a regal looking “pooch” I am. I don’t like that “pooch” part. I don’t look for ear scratches from strangers who call me a pooch. Irish wolf hounds are not pooches.
So yesterday I get out and start off with her just fine, but then I get the scent of something really good. I stop and sniff. She tugs on the leash. “Come on, Rocky, let’s go.” But that scent is way too much. I tug back and pull the leash out of her hand and run. I follow my nose to an alley behind the parking lot where I find it -- something I’ve seen a lot of, a big black garbage bag. I get my teeth into it, shake my head back and forth like it’s a wolf in my jaws, and out of the big slash I make falls a gigantic bone. Hot damn! The biggest, meatiest bone I’ve ever put my teeth around. I grab it and run back to the parking lot to hide with it.
I slink under a smelly old pickup. It’s dark and I’m almost black, so I think I’m safe to go at my bone. But then I smell a rat, a real one and a big one. That animal is the size of Harcourt, the cat that takes up half the couch at home. He comes sniffing over toward my bone and I let out a throaty snarl with as clear a warning as I can make with the bone between my jaws. Well that blows my cover. People show up like ants when I dig up their hill in the back yard. I hear a woman screech, “That big dog, he’s got a human leg bone in his mouth.”
I am a civilized hound. I don’t chew on humans and I know what, not who, is tasting so good. I figure I’m good as long as my boss doesn’t show up to go home, so I keep on gnawing. All’s well until some guy shoves a long, round black thing under the truck. It’s making a whirring noise. Just then the rat makes its move. I drop my bone and snap at it with a snarl. It scuttles away and then there is a yell and a big thump. Some bozo all decked out in a bright yellow padded coverall has tripped over the rat. He gets up on his hands and knees, glares under the truck at me and growls at someone to hand him something. My boss is always telling me to hand her something.
“Move back folks. Give me room to get hold of his collar.”
Between him on one side and the guy with the black thing whirring away on the other plus that woman out there yowling that my bone is a HUMAN leg bone, I am getting nervous. Then I hear my boss trying to take over. “Now listen. Rocky is a perfectly gentle dog. Let me get him out!”
“Look here, lady, I got lots of experience with dogs and when one has a fresh bone it won’t come out for nobody.”
Then that other one starts up again. “It’s a human bone, officer. I tell you it’s a human bone. That dog is a man eater.”
“Just get out of my way, will ya’, lady?”
I can’t see anything but boots and shoes shuffling around. Then there is this long pole with a hook on it poking at me. The long black thing on the other side of the truck has a bright light on it that is helping the padded bozo aim the pole at me. I can see his face hanging upside down all red and bug-eyed with his hair dangling on the oily pavement. He is prodding at me. I am growling at him. All of a sudden he yells “Gotcha” and starts pulling on my collar. I have to let go of my bone to snap and snarl at him.
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“Poor baby, you’ve had a rough day. Let’s give you a treat.”
When it is dinner time, I let her know. I go and sit in front of her licking my chops. She obeys and fills my bowl with kibbles. But this evening she outdoes herself. I did have a rough day.
“Rocky, I don’t know how much longer I can afford to feed you, but here, have some of my dinner.”
She puts down my bowl and goes to watch the box with a window in it like she does every evening after she eats. I smell roast beef in my bowl. Nice, but not my big bone. It’s going to take a long time to forget that, I tell you. I wonder if it’s still under the truck.
“Rocky. Come, Rocky! Look! You’re on TV!”
When I look out the window, cars and people are regular size, but in that window everything is little. And the people talk at you. They don’t even notice if I bark at them.
“It was a dramatic scene this afternoon in the parking lot of Gudnoy’s Hardware on Oak Street here in Watsonville. A large black dog, described by its owner, Moira Donegan, as an Irish wolf hound, pulled out of her grip and took off. It was seen shortly thereafter with a large, bloody bone in its mouth. One witness maintained the bone was a human leg bone!”
I see this dog that looks like me only all shrunk to the size of Harcourt, the cat. I can’t smell anything so I flop on the floor to sleep off my dinner.
“The big hound was dragged from under this pickup by animal control officer Harold Willsey.”
“Oh, Rocky, there you are and there’s that sadistic dog catcher. How humiliating!”
Hearing my name I look up.
“This is the bone the dog had under the truck. An unidentified woman at the scene maintained it was a human bone, but the Department of Health lab quickly ascertained it is a cow bone, so Ms. Donegan was allowed to take her dog home, but not the bone. Sorry, pooch.”
There is my bone all shrunk up. I whimper at the sight of it but it doesn’t smell, so it must be a fake. Then the voice of that loudmouth woman comes out of the box.
My boss doesn’t like her either and yells back at the box. “What’s with her? Every time they point the camera her way, she turns and starts braying in the other direction. What’s she look like? I’d like to find her and tell her she got you into a lot of trouble. Jerky woman.”
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I had a bad night. Kept dreaming about that bone. I’d get my teeth around it and poof! It was gone. I’d wake up slobbering all over my crate, go back to sleep and it started all over again.
“Rocky, your bed’s a soggy mess. You didn’t…? No, good boy! It’s saliva. You’re dripping with it. Hope that nasty bone didn’t make you sick!”
She lets me out of the crate and hurries me through my morning routine then leads me out to the car. “C’mon. Hop in. We have to go back to Gudnoy’s. I didn’t get what I went for yesterday. Today you stay in the car. I’ll put the windows part-way down.”
Waiting in the car is no big deal. I just stretch out on the back seat and snooze. But today I smell bone. I can get my nose out the window and I take a deep sniff. Oh, sweet scent of blood and meat and bone! I scratch at the door. The hound in me boils up and I start to whine and then to all out bay. Ah Ooooo. Ah Ooooo. People come running in a panic. Miracle of miracles, my scratching pays off. The door springs open. I leap out and beeline it for the alley.
There it is just waiting for me. A sweet-smelling garbage can. I knock it over, the lid comes off and I rip open the black bag inside. BONE-ANZA! I pull out a meaty shank and the world comes to a stop for me. I don’t even hear the truck screech up. I don’t see two brawny guys jump out. But just in time it registers that a big piece of wood is swinging toward my head. I leap out of the way and hear it smack the concrete where I was just crouching with my new bone.
Down the alley a bunch of people surge from the parking lot. Grabbing my prize, I turn and fly by the two guys who trip over the other bones scattered around and crash onto the pavement shouting, “Damn! Son of a bitch!” Well, yeah. You got that right. But I don’t stick around. I hightail it out of there.
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My boss found me gnawing on my bone under some bushes. Before the guy with the long, whirring black thing came puffing up, she “good boyed” me into giving up my prize. She quick took it and slipped it into the bag she was carrying. We’re back home and I am chewing on it right now. She and a bunch of people we know are looking at the window in the box. Little people are yammering away. Then there’s one guy looking right at us.
“Good evening. This is WPUP-TV and do we ever have a pup story for you on tonight’s news.”
“Rocky, listen up! You’re a TV star again tonight. This is unbelievable!”
My boss and the others all crowd around the window and I settle back down with my bone.
“WPUP-TV has exclusive video of the dog named Rocky who was almost on his way to doggy detention yesterday and has been hailed today as a hero. Here are the dramatic events caught on camera today by WPUP-TV.”
My boss tells everyone to quiet down. “Shhh! See, there are the cops arriving on the scene with the two hoodlums splat on the ground and the bag of bones Rocky ripped open all around, a whole cow’s worth. And that woman yesterday who was yapping that he had a human femur, she was just trying to throw them off the trail. Rocky blew the whistle on a gang of rustlers! And that woman was the butcher for their illicit farm-to-table operation. Can you believe that? Cattle rustlers in the 21st century. Watch. Here comes the best part.”
“…Watsonville police are hailing Rocky as the key to unlocking the mystery of the recent disappearance of livestock from cattle farms in our area. Here is what Rocky’s owner had to say about her remarkable pup sitting here by her side: ‘He didn’t just solve a crime. He gave the two of us a new lease on life!’ Ms. Donegan lost her job as a computer technician two months ago when GorFam Industries closed down. ‘I was truly afraid I was going to have to give him up. The reward Rocky earned today will keep our food bowls, his and mine, full for sure until I land a new job.”
Hey, that’s my boss’s voice. Did she say food bowl? I head for the kitchen but stop when I hear my name again.
“Good luck job hunting, Ms. Donegan, and Rocky, I hope you are watching, buddy. Before you check your food bowl, this breaking news has just come in to WPUP-TV: Long Horn Farms Meat Market has just added a bone-us [ha, ha, ha] to your $5000 reward, all the shanks you can gnaw for the rest of your life. Say, sounds to me like you landed in doggy paradise, old boy.
“And that brings to a barking good end PUP News at 6:00 on this Friday evening. Watsonville High football coming up next on WPUP-TV. Stay tuned.”
People are hard to figure. Here they are, my boss and her friends, looking at the guy in the box, he disappears and they start barking and baying and calling my name. I look from one to the next, give up on them and head for the kitchen to see what’s in my food bowl. Ω