THE STORY THAT MADE THEM CRY: CHAPTER TWELVE

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

A BARK IN THE DARK

EARLY HOURS OF AUGUST 16, 1967

That night, after everyone in our household had fallen asleep, all was still except for crickets chirping away contentedly in the backyard.  The windows in each of the bedrooms were wide open to allow for maximum cross-ventilation—and, as it turned out, to allow a barking dog to wake everyone up.

I don’t know who noticed first—Dad or I—but odds are that Dad woke up first.  I woke up too and knew immediately that Björn was the offender.  I had already heard enough of his bark to recognize it, and besides, its proximity made it much louder than any of Caine’s dogs would sound.  But at that hour, what was I to do to stop Björn from barking?  While lying there, staring up into the darkness that filled my room, I heard the door of Mother and Dad’s bedroom open and Dad’s heavy footsteps coming down the hallway toward my room.

He opened my bedroom door with such force it created a wind that passed right across my bed and over my face.  “Eric,” Dad called out my name in an angry whisper.  “Eric!  Wake up!”

“Huh?” I said, feigning surprise.

“Hear the dog barking?” Dad said, no longer whispering. “You’ve got to go out there and stop him . . . Now!”  Just as Dad’s “no,” meant “absolutely not” his “now” meant immediately.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to untangle myself from the top bed sheet that I’d managed in my sleep to wrap around my legs.  Björn was still barking up a storm.

“Quick! You have to run out there and stop that barking before he wakes up the whole neighborhood!”

As Dad stormed back down the hallway, I got myself out of bed and down the stairway.  By the time I exited the back of the garage onto the back steps leading down to the yard, Björn was barking his head off.   I’d turned on the backyard floodlight, but it revealed nothing except the direction in which Björn’s barking was aimed.  Perhaps it was a neighborhood cat on the prowl or a raccoon or some other nocturnal creature, many of which probably frequented the backyard, silently and invisibly in the dark of night.

Meanwhile, back in Mother and Dad’s bedroom, the phone rang, disturbing Mother’s deep slumber.  Dad had just climbed back into bed and hadn’t yet even closed his eyes.  After the second ring, he sat up on the edge of the bed and picked the receiver off the phone cradle.  For a moment, he held it just off the cradle.  By doing so, of course, he’d stopped the ringing, but then what? Who was on the other end? Who would be calling at what must have been one or two in the morning?  Slowly, Dad brought the receiver to his ear.  “Hullo?” he said.

On the other end a man barked, “Woof, woof, woof!” and hung up.  The dial tone resumed. Dad winced and returned the receiver to the cradle.

“Who was that?” Mother asked, groggily.

“Wrong number, Dad said, but he knew exactly who it was.  The voice was unmistakable, and of course Fred Moore would dish out to Dad exactly what Fred had done to Bill Caine when Bill’s dog barked late at night.

Angry and embarrassed, Dad donned his bathrobe and slippers and stormed out of the bedroom.

By this time, I was in the kennel with a barking dog, wide-awake, and jumping all over the sides of the kennel. “Quiet! . . . Hush! . . . Stop it!” I yelled at him but to no effect.

Soon Dad appeared on the back steps. In his hand was a hose nozzle, which he’d grabbed from the garage.  He stormed down the steps, and strode across to the hose that was attached to the outdoor faucet on the back of the house. While Björn continued barking, Dad frantically twisted the nozzle onto the end of the hose and turned the water on full blast. In his haste, he hadn’t screwed on the nozzle as tightly as he should have.  There in his pajamas and bathrobe at one or two in the morning, Dad sprayed himself royally with a garden hose.  I burst out laughing, but fortunately Björn’s barking drowned out my outburst.

Dad lunged for the faucet and shut if off.  “Goddamnit!” he said, loud enough to be heard between barks. Dripping wet, Dad tightened the nozzle, turned the water back on, and dragged the end of the hose toward the kennel.  Too short.  On his way back to the garage in pursuit of another length of hose, Dad lost one of his slippers.  In anger, he kicked the other one off.  I laughed again under the cover of Björn’s continued barking.

Five minutes later, Dad was finally equipped to lay down the law.  Again, with an ample length of hose in hand, he charged across the lawn.  Stopping just outside the kennel, Dad yelled at me to get out of the way. He then turned the nozzle on full blast at the poor dog’s face.  Björn stopped barking immediately and lowered his head in what looked like abject shame. Whimpering, he made his way past me and entered his doghouse.  Dad turned off the nozzle, threw down the hose as hard as he could and stormed off.

Björn had retreated so far into the doghouse that in the dark I couldn’t see him.  I knelt down in front of the doorway to his quarters, and in a soft voice I told him I was sorry and that I would make it up to him somehow.

Once back in bed, I couldn’t fall asleep.  I was too upset by the image of Dad in his anger taking a hose to Björn.  If I had seen Dad angry before, I had never seen him engaged in kind of cruelty, but his turning that hose on a poor, imprisoned dog struck me as cruel.

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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson