By: Larry Molina II
The summer of ’99 my family uprooted me and my sister from the urban inner city of Fort Worth, Texas down to a small town 20 minutes south of Dallas on Highway 67 called Midlothian. At the time Midlothian was fairly rural with a population not exceeding 3,000 set in a heavily wooded, undeveloped area.
We had always moved around during my early childhood. I had three different kindergarten teachers, two 2nd grade, and two 3rd grade teachers. However, in Fort Worth, staying from 3rd grade to 5th seemed like an eternity. It was a third of my life after all! I had friends whom I would ride the school bus with, play together all summer in the apartment complex parks and pool. I was devastated for this move. It hurt me more than the one time we moved during Halloween and I did not get to trick-or-treat.
With a month left of school, transitioning to my new facility left me little time to make any new friends before being let out for summer. I had already earned that “odd new kid in town” title because I was unaware that the town of Midlothian was also known as the “Concrete Capital of the Nation”, and used dynamite to blow into the bedrock it sat on. The first time I heard the unannounced bang of an explosion in the distance carried across the land by the silent wilderness I was sitting in class and immediately hit the floor under my desk. In the city we were well aware of drive-bys and that bullets have no friends, in the country they thought I was just a “scaredy-cat”.
Of course the solution to a boy’s loneliness has always been found in man’s best friend, the non-judgmental beast, the dog. I had never had a dog, too big for an apartment. Instead I had my cat Kali who lasted 18 years in our household. I loved my cat, still am a cat person, but a dog in the country to a boy who never had one offered a great deal of bewilderment and joy. He was not a Christmas pup or a lanky stray that wanders onto the range, but rather an act of spontaneity on my mother’s behalf.
The day we got that dog was just like any other day as far as I can remember. I say that because before picking up the pup I do not remember anything in particular about the morning. My mother was taking just me to a WAL-MART grocery store located a town over. Perhaps that was unique because it was rare that my mother ever spent much one-on-one time with me. It was always my sister and her as a pair, or at least in the group’s travels. My father was most likely working in his usual character. I can tell you more about the man’s well worn, work boots than describe his face by memory.
As we drove that morning, perhaps it was that I was brooding in a silent gaze out the passenger side window of my mother’s car that gained her attention. Perhaps it was a trend of silence unusual for a child, but for whatever reason, my mother said, “Let’s cheer you up some” and instead of turning into the WAL-MART parking lot, she took a right into a feed store and tractor supply’s lot. The parking lot at the Feed Store seemed to be a weekend gathering place for locals to sell fresh harvest or animals. We browsed right over to the “Free Puppies” sign, and there in the back of someone’s truck was a lump of whimpering, little puppies. They were an array of markings, all including a base white with either black spots or brown spots.
To me they all looked like Lassie with the Border Collie trait of a dividing white line down the front of their faces. It was not until a while later we found out they were English Springer Spaniels. When my mom told me to pick one, I could not hide my happiness from Ray Charles in the Louisiana Delta marsh. I was ecstatic. It came down to a little guy with a black patch over one eye or a brown and white boy with a peculiar exclamation point symbol on his side and a ring around his tail. A patch is a patch, but that punctuation marking was amusing enough to me to merit my decision.
He was flea ridden, whiney, and the size of a softball, but he was my favorite thing in the world during that drive home. My mother had exuberance about her as a result of making a big decision without consulting my father or seeking his approval. As we drove home without any groceries we hatched a plan of how we could introduce the dog to my father in a way that might fool him into believing he had discovered it and as result hopefully take pity on the little beast enough to let us keep him.
We arrived at the house well before his arrival and bathed the pup, recapping the event with my sister and fine tuning our “master plan” which was really just to leave the little guy outside near the side door that my father entered from so that they may cross paths. Sure enough, they did just that.
At the hour of my father’s usual arrival we set the pup outside and waited. Straining our ears we heard his truck, then his door slam. Sitting around the television acting nonchalant we waited until we heard him yell, “Come here!” My father was best described by a child actor in an old John Wayne film called The Cowboys. The boy was describing Wayne’s character saying that, “Mr. Anderson (John Wayne) is quiet; it just comes out loud.”
So in his booming Marine Corps voice, my father asked, “What do you know about this?”. He had the pup by the scruff.
“A dog!” we all squealed together, “where did you get him!?/you got me a dog?/ what’s his name?”
“I found him curled under the dryer vent,” my pop replied, almost proud to be its savior. As soon as he asked if we had anything to feed him I knew we were in the clear.
Next was the task of naming our new addition. Several unoriginal “Fido and Rover” names were thrown about. “Mister Freckles” was almost a winner until my father decided “Walter” in remembrance for the football player Walter Payton who had passed away that same day. I did not know who Walter Payton was, nor did I care for his passing, but I was very enthused that my new friend had a name.
Walter, not Wally or Walt, but Walter became my favorite being ever. He got me to run around outside so much that the neighbor finally came over to make an introduction, believing that the house was still vacant until finally seeing me out and about with Walter in the yard. As a puppy he got beat up by my cat Kali and learned to give her space. He just wanted to play with her so much that he even killed her “Romeo” tom cat that would sing for her outside the window she sat on at night, and brought it to her as an offering. Horrifying really, but it’s the thought that counts.
My father really took an interest in Walter, and as the master of the household, Walter obeyed my pop as we all did. He was quite a bit smarter than his slight overbite look presented himself to be. He could sit, lay, shake, “take a leak,” “load up,” “go to work,” and “go to your house,” all of which impressed the socks off of me and were taught to him by my father. “Load up” made Walter jump in the back of my father’s truck. “Go to work” was to jump out the truck. “Go to your house” made Walter sprint to his 15’x 10’ fenced in kennel which used to belong to a lamb.
For as bright as he was, he sure was dumb too. Definitely had more lives than a cat in the antics he’d get into. He got hit by a car once pretty bad and my parents foot the bill rather than make him sleep. He ate a king size Hershey’s bar worth of rat poison and came out on top. He even jumped out of my father’s truck while it was moving like some action hero in a tumble! Walter would also bark at bridges as we drove under them while he was in the back.
One night my sister and I were up late watching a movie in the living room when we heard Walter barking up a storm at the front door. We turned on the front porch lights and pressed our faces against the glass to peer into the darkness only to realize that Walter was directly in front of the door fixated on something at its base, blocked from our view. Feeling brave I opened the door and an armadillo raced between my legs with Walter pushing past me to chase it as well!
The commotion of an armadillo in the living room being chased about by a very excited dog and the sound of screaming children woke my parents rather quickly. Finally my father grabbed Walter’s collar to hold him as I got a broom and herded the scared little animal back out the way he came. With our new forest surroundings came new forest critters. So, on another night a few years later when we were awakened by Walter’s barking we came prepared with a shotgun.
The shotgun came out with us this particular night because we heard Walter not just bark, but yelp and growl in a succession that foretold he was fighting. We had seen coyotes in the area plenty of times, once even in the yard, but they usually loped on by. Big black wild pigs with tusks roamed freely behind our yard in the forest. The neighbor had told us that her housecat had an unlucky encounter with a bobcat under a shed even. So as we raced outside with a spotlight and 20-gauge we thought we were prepared enough to help our Walter.
I shot the beam of light to reveal what evil was hurting my dog to find that it was one of the fiercest animals in North America pound for pound- a raccoon. Skeptic you may be, but the raccoon comes equipped with five clawed fingers on each hand, a mouth of layered, long, pointy teeth, intelligence, and a mindset that he has already won because he is bigger than a grizzly. They are fast and it as even been told that raccoons can drown a coon dog that is chasing them.
This raccoon was medium, about the size of a house cat, yet he was scoring some good gashes in Walter’s face. My father, a brilliant marksman, could not get a clean shot in the fiasco of fur. In a short break between the two my father managed to get Walter to release and come by the gate so that I may grab his collar just like in the living room with the armadillo while he took the shot. I steadied the beam of light at the banded tailed beast, my eyes fixed on it rather than securing my grip on the collar. The animal raced to the opposite side of the pen and quickly scaled the enclosure. As it was at the top of the chest high fence my father took the clear shot just in time for Walter to escape his collar and make a last leap at the invader. Like a bodyguard to the President, Walter took the raccoon’s death ticket straight across the bridge of his muzzle. In an instant he was hurt really bad.
It was an ungodly sight to see. He rose with a snort and gurgling whimper. Red life escaped his missing nose at a rate I did not think possible. He walked to my father who was livid. As the years had come to pass my dependence on the dog for companionship faded as my always active father’s relationship grew. It was his dog more than anyone else’s and Walter lay at his feet gasping for breath with a wound inflicted by his own master. He still seemed to be comforting us more with an acceptance of his fate rather than a noisy struggle against the inevitable. In a state of shock, we got him fresh water in his bucket to examine what had just occurred. It just turned deep red, and Walter could not rise to his feet. He was bleeding out. My father raised the firearm again and I knew what had to be done.
“Well Walter, it’s the end of the trail boy. I’ll see you around,” he said with the Remington hoisted to his cheek, eye peering down the barrel focused over Walter’s heart. He held that form for a few seconds that seemed like an eternity, and then lowered the barrel, looking at his work buddy.
“I can do it for you, Sir.” I said to him. He did not even turn, just replied, “No.”
He pet Walter’s ears once more and said, “Go easy.” He then raised and emptied the remaining three shells into Walter’s side in rapid succession in order to ensure it was an instant death.
A click of the firing pin inside the empty chamber spoke that the deed was complete. My father turned and handed me the empty gun as he walked inside away from the darkness.
I felt horrid. Not just because I lost a friend, but greater in that my father had just lost one of his best friends. I could not bear to let him have to clean up the remains in the morning. I was too young to drive so I could not take the body somewhere and the “Concrete Capital” had a layer of rock close to the surface to deter any thought of a burial.
Common in that wooded area was the constant upkeep of the surrounding trees and underbrush leaving mounds of excess foliage that was usually burned at the end of a day’s worth of clearing. Thinking of how to erase the body, I reflected on how we erased the excess brush. I took Walter to the area we always burned our clippings and set his remains aflame. I stayed up most of the night outside, making sure to keep the fire hot enough to leave the area clean of any remains.
We never got another dog to replace old Walter. A few passed through but never hung around too long. It was some years later that I spoke with my pop and he thanked me for that night. It was quite a turning point for a boy into manhood.