L.R. Bonehill |

Archive for the ‘L.R. Bonehill’ Category

THEY MAKE GREAT PETS: By L.R. Bonehill

Friday, September 4th, 2009

She’s stopped putting the water out now. Makes me wonder how long it will be? I guess it depends on the weather. It’s been dry for a long while, but we’re forecast rain by the end of the week. Sometimes the forecast is wrong and that may well be for the best.

I can’t help thinking a part of me would be more than a little sad though.
The garden has been wild and overgrown for years. Maybe I should have said something, complained. It’s intrusive and inconvenient after all, but then I’ve never been one for confrontation. I like to leave people to get on with their lives as they see fit.

It’s no business of mine.

Other than the branches, brambles and weeds that creep over, under and through the fence and into my garden, that is.

Once a week, I prune and snip and lop until the divide is razor straight again. I even put the cuttings in my own compost bin. I could throw them back over, but that would be rude. It’s no trouble.

It was all cut back four or five years earlier. Volunteers from a local community group came armed with spades and shovels, mowers and trimmers, forks and rakes.

No wait, they weren’t volunteers exactly. Maybe young offenders or community service workers, something along those lines I think. They made a lot of noise, but seemed friendly enough.

There was some fuss about one of them disappearing one break time, never to be seen again.

They did a fine job and restored the garden to beautiful condition. The smell of freshly cut grass lingered for days.

Still, it didn’t take long for the mess to build up again until, eventually, it was worse than ever.

I’d been hearing noises for a while; rustles in the overgrowth, the occasional nudging of a fence panel, strange animal calls in the night.

Foxes maybe, badgers possibly, who knew?

One night, when the wind was up and the rain was lashing, the fence banged louder than ever. It was an insistent, rhythmic thumping that drew me from my bed.

I looked out the window, down into the garden. It was too dark to see much, other than the vicious rain and dense shadows.

Fern’s bedroom window was open and I could just make out the pale skin of her arm in the darkness. She pointed down into the garden, jabbing her finger violently. I heard her shout something too, but couldn’t tell what.

That’s when the banging stopped and beneath the wind and the rain, there was a low whimpering sound.

The next day, Fern pulled the Hummer onto her drive and unloaded bags from the hardware and pet stores a few miles down the way.

I was busy watering the hanging baskets on my wraparound porch. Fern waved and winked at me as she took the bags straight through to her garden.

‘Rough night, eh? Hope I didn’t wake you? I’ll be drilling for while, hope that’s OK?’ Whenever Fern spoke, it was in questions.

That afternoon, I saw there was a length of chain reaching from the back of her house, over the patio and into the mass of tangled overgrowth. There was some slack coiled in a corner, but not much.
A couple of silver bowls and a huge sack of dried kibbles were out there too.

I love dogs, haven’t had one for years, but that whole sorry business wasn’t my fault anyway, no sir. Sometimes things just don’t work out as you expect them to, I guess.

I couldn’t wait to see Fern’s. Seemed strange she was putting it right outside though, especially with her garden being the way it was and all. Maybe it wasn’t a puppy, maybe it was an older dog, a rescue dog even.
She hadn’t mentioned it, but despite it being just the two of us in this little corner of town, we didn’t talk much back then.

I stayed by the open window, half-heartedly polishing my brass horseshoes, looking down into Fern’s garden.

The tall, tangled grass and brambles twitched. The chain slinked across the ground. I heard that strange whimper again.

A pale, trembling arm reached out of the overgrowth onto the paving stones, followed by another. They were painfully thin, as if the skin clung tightly to the bone.

The rest of him followed slowly, warily. A gaunt, withered, naked man, his feet shackled and a collar pulled taut around his neck. Dried mud and grime covered his body; his face was a rainbow of bruises and cuts. Some of my favorite shades of yellow and purple and blue.
He dug his face first into one bowl, then another, his shoulders rising and falling, his legs twitching, chain rattling. I could almost hear those dried kibbles crunching between his teeth.

Fern stepped out from her doorway and stroked his head, ran her hand down his back. I heard her clearly from where I stood; I think she even raised her voice a little. ‘Good boys don’t try to run away,’ she said.
Then she looped some of the chain back, attached it to a hook on her porch and stepped out of sight again.

I should have looked away as she came back with an aluminum baseball bat that glinted in the sun like an executioners axe, but I didn’t. I didn’t look away either as she raised it in a two-handed grip and brought it down in a brutal arc. Nor did I look away as the man cowered on the floor, his whole body shaking.

Fern turned to look up at me and put a finger to her lips. God, her eyes looked beautiful.

The bowls are still there, but she stopped putting the food out a long time ago. There’s enough to scavenge in that garden. The occasional scraps I throw over must help too.

It’s the water that bothers me, though. Everyone needs water.

Maybe it will rain soon.

L.R. Bonehill never meant to hurt anyone all those years ago. He just wanted to play, that’s all. Forgive him online at http://bonehillsboneyard.blogspot.com/.