When I was about eight years old, I had a dog named Harry. Harry was older than I. My mom tells me that when he noticed all the people paying attention to me as a newborn he jumped into my bassinet, scaring the living shit out of my family. Despite our inauspicious first meeting, he and I got on swimmingly. He was with me everywhere I lived -- New York, Guadalajara, Cuernavaca, and finally Austin.
Our house in Austin was in a quiet residential neighborhood; quiet, that is, except for the constant sound of barking. Almost everyone on the block had a dog. One dogless home belonged to a grumpy old bastard who lived three houses down from mine. My friends and I were so used to hearing our parents refer to him as "that grumpy old bastard" that we started referring to him as "Mr. Bastard." He was always complaining about people's dogs barking and shitting in his yard. In fact, nothing made the dogs bark louder than seeing him walking by or working in his backyard. He hated their guts, and the dogs knew it.
One day the dog next door to Mr. Bastard was found dead in the backyard. It looked like he had been dosed with meat stuffed with rat poison. The police were called and inquiries were made, but no proof could be found.
In the ensuing weeks, more dogs were found dead, all under suspicious circumstances. The police were called each time, and each time fingers were pointed, but there was still no proof and there were still no witnesses. They just told the parents on the block to keep their younger children out of their backyards so they would not get poisoned.
My best friend at the time was named Tomas. He and I were inseparable. We would spend hours playing with our dogs, inventing very odd games (like re-enacting our births, or episodes of Gilligan's Island, for instance), and getting into all kinds of mischief. A week before Thanksgiving, Tomas' dog was poisoned. A week later, on Thanksgiving, my dog Harry was hit by a car. We did not see it happen, but a neighbor told us that the car was a station wagon.
Mr. Bastard owned a station wagon.
After a few days of mourning, a steely determination set in. Our dogs were to be avenged. Tomas and I put our heads together and considered our options. We thought of cracking eggs on Mr. Bastard's A/C intake, or throwing rocks through his windows, or greasing his porch, or slashing his tires. None of them seemed quite right; and really, we were not very criminally-minded kids at that time. Although all of those things did end up being done by other kids, Tomas and I were destined to do something more memorable and symbolic. As we walked around the neighborhood trying to come up with ideas, inspiration hit me. Or, rather, I stepped in it.
"Crap!"
As I sat on the curb scraping the dog poop off my shoe with a stick, I shared my plan with Tomas. We would throw poop on the guy's porch. Hopefully he would step in it, and maybe even slip and break his hip.
Armed with a mission, we set out with our sandbox pails and little plastic shovels. Scouring the neighborhood for poop we got some odd looks, but everyone was used to us doing bizarre things; collecting poop in little buckets was not a shock to anyone. It was slow going, though. There weren't that many dogs left in the neighborhood, and those that remained no longer roamed free.
At one point, a beat-up old truck pulled up beside us. "WHAT ARE YOU CHILITOS DOING?"
It was Tomas' older brother, Jesse. He worked as a landscaper. We told him our plan.
He laughed long and hard. "YOU ARE TWO CRAZY FUCKING CHILITOS! GET IN THE TRUCK!"
We got in and sat down. Jesse wrinkled his nose and turned to us. "PUT THE CACA BUCKETS IN THE BACK, CHILITOS ESTUPIDOS!"
He drove us to the brothers' house and picked up a wheelbarrow, which he put in back of the truck. We then went to the local park where people walked their dogs. Jesse waited in the car while Tomas and I filled the wheelbarrow full of dog crap and any other crap that we saw laying around. We were giddy with excitement. Our cups runneth over.
Jesse then drove us to the end of our block and dropped us off, along with the wheelbarrow full of excrement.
"HURRY UP AND DO IT, BEFORE HE GETS HOME. AND MAKE SURE YOU CLEAN OUT MY WHEELBARROW, YOU NASTY CHILITOS!" He liked that word.
We listened to his laughter fade as he drove off in to the distance. Then we began to make our way down the street, toward Mr. Bastard's house.
It was a hot summer day, and most of the neighborhood parents were either at work or staying in their air-conditioned houses. Our audience was the other kids on the block. They came running over to see what we were up to, and then they fell in behind us. They had all either lost a dog or knew someone who had. It was a somewhat somber procession, considering that we were walking down the street with a load of poop. A girl who had lost her dog ran inside her house and told us to wait for her. She soon came running out with a piece of notebook paper. She had drawn one big circle and three small circles on it, making a crude paw print. That would be our calling card.
We dumped the load on Mr. Bastard's porch and affixed the paw print with a stick. Then we scattered to our respective houses. Tomas came with me to my house, and we spent about an hour taking turns walking out to the mailbox to "check the mail" and look up the street.
A little after five, Mr. Bastard pulled up. Not long after that, the police showed up. That spooked us, so we got out the Monopoly game and put hotels on all the properties so it would look like we had been playing a long time. We were certain that the fuzz was going to come banging on the door.
The police never did talk to us, nor to our parents. I don't know what they said to Mr. Bastard, but I am pretty sure they knew about all the complaints filed against him for dog killing. I like to think that they smiled at him and said that there was nothing they could do without proof and without witnesses, and then told him to pick up the poop before he got a ticket. Whatever happened, the cops drove off and Mr. Bastard starting picking up the poop and putting it in a large trash bag.
During one trip to the mailbox, Tomas saw a bag Mr. Bastard was lugging to the curb break open and dump all over his shoes. He ran back inside to tell me, and we laughed hysterically for what seemed like hours.
The harassment of Mr. Bastard got more intense. I would often walk by his house and crack a smile, because almost every day I would see two or three dog poops on his front walk. And every once in a while I would see, drawn in chalk or mud, one large circle and three little ones. After a few months, Mr. Bastard moved away.
