The Three-Day Dog
Finally, after much cajoling, Dad agreed to give me driving lessons. Every morning we would drive from our house in Cherry Gardens to Excelsior School on Mountain View Avenue. I’d be driving, Dad reading the Gleaner and occasionally raising an eye. On this morning, as the car approached the top of Mountain View, despite the stifling heat we all hurriedly rolled up our windows, in preparation with our rendezvous with “the three-day dog”.
As anyone who knows Kingston will know, one of that city’s less salubrious attributes is its large preponderance of dogs – dead dogs. When a stray dog – of which there are very many in Kingston – gets killed by a car/truck/bus, soon enough someone will employ the Jamaican solution to dispose of the carcass; with the help of an old tyre and a gallon of gasoline. That is, if said dead dog happens to die within sight or smell of human habitation. If however, the canine corpse lay “out of sight, out of smell”, then it would just languish there in the fierce tropical heat for days, until nature’s solution – flies, maggots and john-crows – dispose of the carcass. Eventually.
Now it just so happened that for the last three days, one such rotting carcass had lain on the central divide of Mountain View Avenue, stinking up the place. As we passed the gruesome apparition, windows tight, we caught a glimpse of a strange sight. Standing directly over the stinking carcass, was a woman – a white woman! We both did a double-take. Dad said:
“Wait, isn’t that Mrs. Walker?”
Mrs. Walker was a fresh-faced English teacher at Excelsior, recently arrived with her two daughters.
“Turn around,” he said, “at the next intersection do a U-turn, quickly!” It wasn’t easy with the fast-moving traffic, but with the help of Dad’s frantic hand signals I managed to do a quick turnaround and come up in the other direction, to get a better look. And sure enough, it was Mrs. Walker, standing directly over this stinking, writhing mass of worms, looking down at it. What the hell is going on? We did yet another U-turn, passed her again, before making our way to school. What the hell was that all about?
A couple of days later, I asked Dad if he had found on what was going on with Mrs. Walker and the dead dog. He then regaled us with a strange tale. As it turned out, Mrs. Walker had a dog, Spot, whom they had brought over from England. Spot had been missing for the last three days, and that morning, Mrs. Walker had recognized the carcass of her beloved Spot, by its spot. Dad was about to leave it there, but curiosity got the better of him.
“So … what did you do then?” he asked.
“Well,” she said, “I couldn’t just leave poor Spot lying there, could I?”
Dad’s eyes widened.
“So … what did you do then?”
Mrs. Walker and her two daughters got a large sheet of plastic and some rubber gloves, returned to the carcass and lifted the thing into the back of their station wagon. Dad was aghast.
“So … what did you do?”
“Well, we drove it home.”
“You … drove it home?”
“Yes, it smelled awful, but we had to give Spot a civilized burial, didn’t we? But there was no place in the garden to dig a big enough hole, so we decided to cremate him.”
“You … cremated the dog?”
“Yes, well we tried. We made a bonfire and put Spot on it, said a prayer, and lit the fire. But after a while, the fire went out, leaving a lot of smoke.”
By this time, the stench the half-burnt rotten dog had become unbearable; neighbours came running to see what the hell this stupid Englishwoman was doing. Someone took charge, fetched some gasoline and an old tyre and whoomp! Up went Spot, in a blaze of purifying fire.
Mrs. Walker profusely thanked her pissed-off neighbours, and she and her daughters buried the ashes of their beloved Spot.
The next morning, Spot came home.
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