“What the devil do the neighbors say when they see your dirty underwear?” he thundered.
Mutt woke so suddenly that he banged his head painfully against my desk. Champlain vanished from my thoughts, and I wracked my mind frantically for memories of guilty deeds connected with underwear. Then we heard mother’s voice, soothing and quiet, dispelling the echoes of the blast. My heartbeat returned to normal and my curiosity led me out into the hall to peer through the living-room door.
My father was pacing again, with a sergeant major’s tread. He was waving an open magazine in front of him and I caught a glimpse of a full-color, full-page advertisement which depicted an unspeakably dirty pair of drawers swinging like a flag of ill fame from a clothes-line. Running across the page in broad crimson letters was the mortifying accusation:
THESE MAY BE YOURS!
Mother was sitting quietly in her chair, but her lips were pursed. “Really, Angus!” she was saying. “Control yourself! After all, everyone has to live, and if that company can’t sell its bluing, how can it live?”
My father replied with a pungent, and what I took to be an appropriate, suggestion, but Mother ignored him.
“Perhaps it is a trifle vulgar,” she continued, “but it’s just intended to catch the reader’s attention; and it does, doesn’t it?”
There could be no doubt that it had caught my father’s attention.
“Well, then,” Mother concluded triumphantly, “you see?” It was the phrase with which she always clinched her arguments.
The magazine was quietly consigned to the incinerator the next morning, and Mother and I assumed that this particular storm had blown over. We were in error, but neither of us had much knowledge of the working of the subconscious. We never guessed that the incident was still festering in some deep and hidden recess of my father’s mind.
Summer drew on and the sloughs again grew dry and white; the young grain wizened and burned, and another season of drought was upon us. A film of dust hung continuously in the scorching air and we were never free of the gritty touch of it, except when we stripped off our clothing and went to soak in the bathtub. For Mutt there was no such relief. His long coat caught and trapped the dust until the hair became matted and discolored, assuming a jaundiced saffron hue, but he would not, in those early days, voluntarily turn to water to escape his misery.
He was a true son of the drought. I suppose that he had seen so little water in his first months of life that he had a right to be suspicious of it. At any rate he shied away from water in any quantity, as a cayoose shies from a rattlesnake. When we decided to force a bath upon him, he not only became argumentative and deaf, but if he could escape us, he would crawl under the garage floor, where he would remain without food or drink until we gave in and solemnly assured him that the bath was off.
Not the least difficult part of the bath was the devising of a plan whereby Mutt might be lured, all unsuspecting, into the basement where the laundry tubs stood waiting. This problem required a different solution each time, for Mutt had a long memory, and his bath suspicions were easily aroused. On one occasion we released a live gopher in the cellar and then, encountering it “unexpectedly,” called upon Mutt to slay it. This worked once.
The bath itself was a severe ordeal to all who were involved. During the earlier attempts we wore raincoats, sou’westers, and rubber boots, but we found these inadequate. Later we wore only simple breechclouts. Mutt never gave up, and he would sometimes go to incredible lengths to cheat the tub. Once he snatched a piece of naphtha soap out of my hand and swallowed it, whether accidentally or not I do not know. He began frothing almost immediately, and we curtailed the bath and called the veterinary.
The veterinary was a middle-aged and unimaginative man whose practice was largely limited to healing boils on horses and hard udders on cows. He refused to believe that Mutt had voluntarily swallowed soap, and he left in something of a huff. Mutt took advantage of the hullabaloo to vanish. He returned twenty-four hours later looking pale and emaciated—having proved the emetic efficacy of naphtha soap beyond all question.
The decision to bathe Mutt was never lightly made, and we tended to postpone it as long as possible. He was long overdue for a cleansing when, in late July, I went away to spend a few days at a friend’s cottage on Lake Manitou.
I enjoyed myself at Manitou, which is one of the saltiest of the west’s salt sloughs. My friend and I spent most of our days trying to swim, despite the fact that the saline content of the water was so high that it was impossible to sink deep enough to reach a point of balance. We slithered about on the surface, acquiring painful sunburns and bad cases of salt-water itch.
I was in a carefree and happy mood when, on Monday morning, I arrived back in Saskatoon. I came up the front walk of our house whistling for Mutt and bearing a present for him—a dead gopher that we had picked up on the road home. He did not respond to my whistle. A little uneasily I pushed through the front door and found Mother sitting on the chesterfield, looking deeply distressed. She stood up when she saw me and clutched me to her bosom.
“Oh, darling,” she cried, “your poor, poor dog! Oh, your poor, poor dog!”
A lethal apprehension overwhelmed me. I stiffened in her arms. “What’s the matter with him?” I demanded.
Mother released me and looked into my eyes. “Be brave, darling,” she said. “You’d better see him for yourself. He’s under the garage.”
I was already on my way.
Mutt’s grotto under the garage was his private sanctuary, and it could be reached only through a narrow burrow. I got down on my hands and knees and peered into the gloom. As my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I could discern a vague but Muttlike shape. He was curled up in the farthest recess, his head half hidden by his tail, but with one eye exposed and glaring balefully out of the murk. He did not seem to be seriously damaged and I ordered him to emerge.
He did not move.
In the end I had to crawl into the burrow, grasp him firmly by the tail, and drag him out by brute force. And then I was so startled by his appearance that I released my grip and he scuttled back to cover.
Mutt was no longer a black and white dog, or even a black and yellow one. He was a vivid black and blue. Those sections of his coat that had once been white were now of an unearthly ultra-marine shade. The effect was ghastly, particularly about the head, for even his nose and muzzle were bright blue.
Mutt’s transformation had taken place the day I left for Manitou. He was indignant and annoyed that he had been left behind, and for the rest of that day he sulked. When no one gave him the sympathy he felt was due him, he left the house, and he did not return home until evening. His return was notable.
Somewhere out on the broad prairie to the east of town he found the means with which to revenge himself upon humanity. He found a dead horse in that most satisfactory state of decomposition which best lends itself to being rolled upon. Mutt rolled with diligence.
He arrived home at a little after nine o’clock, and no doubt he trusted to the dusk to conceal him until he could reach his grotto. He was caught unawares when father leaped upon him from ambush. He made a frantic effort to escape and succeeded briefly, only to be trapped in the back yard. Squalling bitterly, he was at last dragged into the basement. The doors were closed and locked and the laundry tubs were filled.
Father has never been willing
