The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid_ A Memoir - Bill Bryson [68]
“You know, maybe your boss isn’t paying you the right amount each month,” I would sometimes pleasantly add.
“Yeah—hey, yeah,” they’d say and look really unsettled.
The other danger of rich people was their dogs. Poor people in my experience have mean dogs and know it. Rich people have mean dogs and refuse to believe it. There were thousands of dogs in those days, too, inhabiting every property—big dogs, grumpy dogs, stupid dogs, tiny nippy irritating little dogs that you positively ached to turn into a kind of living Hacky Sack, dogs that wanted to smell you, dogs that wanted to sit on you, dogs that barked at everything that moved. And then there was Dewey. Dewey was a black Labrador, owned by a family on Terrace Drive called the Haldemans. Dewey was about the size of a black bear and hated me. With any other human being he was just a big slobbery bundle of softness. But Dewey wanted me dead for reasons he declined to make clear and I don’t believe actually knew himself. He just took against me. The Haldemans laughingly dismissed the idea that Dewey had a mean streak and serenely ignored any suggestions that he ought to be kept tied up, as the law actually demanded. They were Republicans—Nixon Republicans—and so didn’t subscribe to the notion that laws are supposed to apply to all people equally.
I particularly dreaded Sunday mornings when it was dark because Dewey was black and invisible, apart from his teeth, and it was just him and me in a sleeping world. Dewey slept wherever unconsciousness overtook him—sometimes on the front porch, sometimes on the back porch, sometimes in an old doghouse by the garage, sometimes on the path, but always outside—so he was always there, and always no more than a millimeter away from wakefulness and attack. It took me ages to creep, breath held, up the Haldemans’ front walk and the five wide wooden creak-ready steps of their front porch and very, very gently set the paper down on the mat, knowing that at the moment of contact I would hear from someplace close by but unseen a low, dark, threatening growl that would continue until I had withdrawn with respectful backward bows. Occasionally—just often enough to leave me permanently unnerved—Dewey would lunge, barking viciously, and I had to fly across the yard whimpering, hands held protectively over my butt, leap on my bike and pedal wildly away, crashing into fire hydrants and lampposts and generally sustaining far worse injuries than if I had just let Dewey hold me down and gnaw on me a bit.
The whole business was terrible beyond words. The only aspect worse than suffering an attack was waiting for the next one. The lone redeeming feature of life with Dewey was the rush of relief when it was all over, of knowing that I wouldn’t have to encounter Dewey again for twenty-four hours. Airmen returning home from dangerous bombing runs will recognize the feeling.
It was in such a state of exultation one crisp and twinkly March morning that I was delivering a paper to a house half a block farther on when Dewey—suddenly twice his normal size and with truly unwarranted ferocity—came for me at speed from around the side of the McManuses’ house. I remember thinking, in the microsecond for reflection that was available to me, that this was very unfair. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. This was my time of bliss.
Before I could meaningfully react, Dewey bit me hard on the leg just below the left buttock, knocking me to the ground. He then dragged me around for a bit—I remember my fingers scraping through grass—and then abruptly he released me and gave a confused, playful, woofy bark and bounded back into the border shrubbery whence he had come. Irate and comprehensively disheveled, I waddled to the road to the nearest streetlight and took down my pants to see the damage.