Just a Dog

by Gerard Michael Bauer

  Moe didn’t die, but the vet said if he wasn’t so big and strong it might have been a lot different. He was still hurt pretty bad. He had three broken ribs and some other bad cuts and bruises, so he had to stay at the vet’s for a while. Dad said he had no idea how we were going to pay for it because we had ‘nothing in the bank’. But the vet said that Moe was good company and there was no hurry and we could pay her back when Dad was working again. Mum cried and hugged the vet when she said that.

  When Mister Mosely was strong enough to come home he had to wear another bucket-thing. That was because he had lots of stitches in his side. They were in a big ‘V’ shape and all the hair around them was shaved off. And he had blobs of orangey-yellow stuff painted all over his white body to help the other cuts heal up. Mum said the vet had turned poor old Moe into one of those albino tigers. Dad said more like an albino tiger that had been ‘caught in a blender’.

  We had to move Mister Mosely’s bed downstairs in the laundry until he got better, because there was no way he could make it all the way to the porch. Mum said Moe was a good patient because he just rested and waited and didn’t try to do too much before he was ready for it. ‘Unlike your father,’ was what Mum said. When he did get better we put Moe’s bed back on the porch and after a while he started fetching the paper and waiting for me out the front of the house same as always.

  The only other thing I remember about the day Mister Mosely got hit was how the lady in the car gave my mask back to me. She must have found it on the footpath. I waited till she left and then I ripped it up into little pieces and threw it in the rubbish bin.

  19 Mister Mosely and Mum

  Mum used to say that Mister Mosely had a ‘sixth sense’ about things. That meant he knew stuff when no one else did.

  Dad didn’t think so. He said he was pretty sure Moe didn’t have a sixth sense about newspapers anyway. But I think Mum was right, because one time Mister Mosely knew something about her before anyone else.

  It all began about a year ago. It was the last day of school before the holidays. I was walking home. My bag was really heavy because it was packed up with all the junk from my locker. I didn’t care but. I was too busy thinking about all the things I was going to do and how me and Moe would muck around together. But when I got to the top of the street and looked down at our house, Moe wasn’t there waiting for me. I was scared straight away. I thought maybe he got hit by a car again, so I ran home as fast as I could.

  I found Moe in the backyard under the clothesline. He was just watching Mum peg out the washing. When he saw me he came over and jumped around a bit, but then he went straight back to Mum. It wasn’t like Moe at all. Mum didn’t know what was wrong with him either. She said he’d been ‘under her feet’ all day ‘hanging around like a bad smell’. I don’t think she really minded too much because she was smiling when she said it.

  Moe kept hanging around Mum pretty much all the time after that. It was like he was her bodyguard or something. He’d sit at the back door waiting for her to come outside and then he’d follow her around everywhere she went. Even if me and Moe were playing together in the yard or if we went down to the park, you could tell all he really wanted to do was to get back to Mum. Mum said it was even worse when she was home by herself, because then Moe stuck to her ‘like glue’.

  None of us knew then that Mum was going to have a baby. Mum only found out for sure later. But I reckon Mister Mosely knew all along, and that was why he was acting so weird. Mum thought so too. She said Moe must have known about Grace coming just like some other animals knew about storms or earthquakes before they happened.

  I think it was pretty cool how Mister Mosely knew about Grace before anyone else. And there was other stuff he knew about too. He could always tell when something was wrong. Like one time when he woke me up in the middle of the night with his whining.

  I went to see what was worrying him but I couldn’t work out what was wrong. Then I heard some voices. They were coming from Mum and Dad’s room. That’s what Moe was whining about. He knew something wasn’t right even if he didn’t know what any of the words meant.

  I couldn’t understand many of the words either, just the loud ones. Like Dad saying, ‘How could it happen?’ He didn’t sound happy when he said that. I thought he might be talking about Mum having a baby, except he knew how that stuff happened because he was there when Mum told me all about it.

  I listened some more. Dad kept going on and on about having no job and no money and not being able to afford stuff. Then it went quieter. I could still hear voices but they were all blurry. They sounded angry but. And sometimes sad. The last thing I heard was Dad swearing, which he doesn’t normally do. Then Mum and him stopped talking. I waited but I didn’t hear anything else. It was all just quiet and still and dark.

  I didn’t go back to bed right away. I stayed out there on the porch with Mister Mosely. He had his big head on my lap and I wrapped my arms around him to stay warm. It made me think of when I was little and there was a storm and we’d be hiding under the bed together.

  Moe was always good to hold on to when things started to get a bit scary and you didn’t know what might happen next.

  20 Mister Mosely and Grace

  Grace ended up being born four weeks before she was supposed to be. No one knew that was going to happen. No one except Mister Mosely.

  Moe had been acting funny all that day. Mum said he wasn’t lying down on the porch, which is what he normally did. He was standing up all the time and looking in through the screen door and walking around ‘like he was on hot coals’. She said every time Mister Mosely saw her he’d start whining for no reason.

  When Mum was making tea that night she started to feel funny and she knew right away something was happening with the baby. Dad wasn’t home then. He had a new job helping build a dam somewhere. Uncle Gavin got that job for him. It was a long way away so Dad only got to come home on weekends. Anyway, because Dad wasn’t there, Mum had to ring up Uncle Gavin to take her to the hospital. Amelia and me stayed with Mrs Nguyen from across the road.

  Grace was born that night. Mum said it was lucky she wasn’t born in Uncle Gavin’s car. The funny thing was, most of the people at the hospital thought that Uncle Gavin was Grace’s father because Dad didn’t get there until after it was all over. Uncle Gavin made lots of jokes about that but I don’t think Dad thought they were so funny because he didn’t laugh much.

  Dad had stopped laughing at a lot of things since he lost his old job. I was hoping that Grace being born would make him happy again. Way back when he found out Mum was having me, he was so happy he picked her up and carried her all the way out to the front yard to tell the neighbours the good news. Mum’s told me that story plenty of times. And if you look at the photos of when Amelia was born, Dad’s smiling and laughing in every one. But when Grace was born Dad didn’t do any of that stuff. He just looked tired and worried.

  We couldn’t bring Grace home straight away. She was so tiny and red when she was born she had to stay in the hospital in a special plastic cot with all these tubes in her till she got bigger and stronger. Seeing how Grace was so little and Mister Mosely was so big, Nanny and Pop were worried about him being around her. They thought Moe might hurt her somehow even if he didn’t really mean to.

  Mum wasn’t worried but. She kept saying Mister Mosely would be fine and we just had to ‘introduce’ Grace properly to him so that he knew she was part of our family. And that’s what we did. On the first day they came home Mum sat on a chair with Grace and then Dad and Amelia and me brought Moe in to meet her. Moe never looked bigger. Just his head was about two of Grace.

  Mum spoke really softly. She said, ‘Mister Mosely, this is Grace. She’s the newest member of the Ingram family. Grace, this is Mister Mosely. He’s a special part of our family too and he’s been waiting to meet you for such a long time.’

  You could tell Moe was super excited because his body was all sort of twitchy. But when he saw Grace he
didn’t whine or bark and give her a big fright, which is what I was afraid he would do. And he didn’t jump all over the place and whip his tail around either. He just stood there like a big statue looking at her and sniffing a bit without hardly making a sound. Then he just sat down and rested his head on Mum’s knee and the only thing that moved were his eyes. Mum said there was nothing to worry about because Moe was ‘as gentle as a lamb’ and he wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  That was true. Except there was this one time when I thought Mister Mosely was going to hurt a lot more than just a fly.

  21 The Day Mister Mosely Changed

  The day I thought Mister Mosely was going to hurt something more than just a fly was the only time he ever scared me. And I don’t think it was just me who was scared.

  It started out like just a normal sort of a day. I was mucking around with Moe in the backyard. I was throwing a tennis ball way up in the air and he was trying to catch it before it bounced. Amelia was at Nanny and Pop’s. While I was playing with Moe, Dad’s car came down the driveway. That was strange because Dad had his new job then at the dam and he wasn’t supposed to get home till the weekend.

  When he got out of the car Dad looked angry. I figured that was because Uncle Gavin’s car was blocking the driveway and Dad couldn’t get into the garage. Uncle Gavin came to our house a fair bit when Dad was away. He was always dropping in to see if Mum was okay or if we needed anything. Sometimes he gave us some money because he said he knew we were ‘doing it tough’. We weren’t supposed to tell Dad about that for some reason.

  This time Uncle Gavin brought a big box filled with ‘special treats’ just for Mum. There was a proper coffee maker and some wine and stuff like soap and perfume. The best thing was a huge box of chocolates, but Mum said we couldn’t open them till later.

  I guess it was pretty annoying for Dad not being able to get into the garage, but you couldn’t really blame Uncle Gavin for parking in the driveway. He didn’t know Dad would be home before Saturday morning either, so he didn’t think he’d be blocking anything. But Dad wasn’t looking too happy when he had to drive on to the grass just so Uncle Gavin would be able to get his car out.

  When I went over and asked Dad how come he was home early, he just shook his head and said something about a ‘bloody strike’. He didn’t even look at me when he said it. He just kept looking up at our house. Then he headed for the back stairs. I was going to go with him but he said, ‘Stay there.’ I didn’t know why he said that, but he sounded like he really meant it, so I did and I went back to throwing the tennis ball for Mister Mosely.

  Moe and me were playing right up the back near the mango tree. We had to do that because Mum had clean sheets on the clothesline and we were supposed to stay away from them. That was because once me and my cousins were playing cricket with a tennis ball and I guess it must have hit Mum’s sheets a few times and put dirty marks on them. After that Mum said, ‘No ball games near the sheets.’ Now she says that every time she does the washing, even when I’m not thinking about playing with a ball.

  Anyway, what happened next was, while I was playing with Mister Mosely, all this noise and yelling started coming from inside our house. Then the back door banged open. Uncle Gavin came out first, then Dad. He was looking really mad now. Mum came out last. She looked frightened. I didn’t know what was going on. Mum was calling out Dad’s name over and over and saying, ‘Stop it!’ and ‘It’s nothing!’ and Uncle Gavin was shaking his head and holding his hands in the air and telling Dad he was ‘being bloody stupid’, which just seemed to make Dad even madder.

  Then they all came down into the backyard. Mister Mosely tried to run over to them but I didn’t think it was a good idea so I held on to his collar and told him to stay. Dad pushed Uncle Gavin in the back and told him to ‘clear out’. He told Uncle Gavin that we weren’t a ‘bloody charity’. He said he could take care of his own family. Dad was still shouting stuff when Uncle Gavin told him to stop ‘acting like an idiot’. I think it was that last bit that Dad didn’t like too much, because that was when he grabbed Uncle Gavin by the shoulder and he spun him round and punched him really hard right in the face. I had to hold on extra tight to Mister Mosely then.

  I’d never seen someone get punched for real before. It wasn’t the same as on TV or in the movies. It didn’t even sound the same. It sounded sort of squishier and like it would really hurt. I think it did too, because it made Uncle Gavin’s head go right back and he grabbed his face and said the same swear word about ten times. Then big blobs of blood started dripping between Uncle Gavin’s fingers. When he took his hands away his nose and his mouth were all red and I think one of his teeth was missing. Uncle Gavin spat on the ground and sort of flicked his hands to get rid of the blood and a big spray of red went right across one of Mum’s clean sheets.

  Mum had her hands over her mouth. She looked like the lady in the car did after she ran into Mister Mosely. Then she pushed in front of Dad and tried to help Uncle Gavin, but Uncle Gavin held up his hands to stop her. They were all bloody and his nose was big and twisted all wrong. Uncle Gavin wiped his face on his T-shirt and put a big smudge of blood on that too. Then he got into his car without saying anything or looking at anyone. He had one hand over his face as he backed out. There was still tons of blood dripping everywhere.

  Mum started to cry then and Mister Mosely made one of his howly whining noises and pulled away from me. I tried to stop him but he was too strong. He ran over to Mum and stood beside her wagging his tail the way he did when he wasn’t sure if it was me coming down the street or not. I wanted to be over there with him but Mum and Dad started yelling stuff at each other and I was scared. Mum said, ‘He was only trying to help.’ Dad didn’t say anything. He just started to walk away. Then Mum said, ‘Why are you acting like such a child?’

  I didn’t like the look on Dad’s face then. He turned round and started heading straight at Mum. That’s when Mister Mosely jumped in front of him. Then Moe changed. It was like he was a Transformer or something. All the hair on his back stuck up and it made him look even bigger than normal and the skin around his mouth stretched back till all you could see were long pointy teeth. Then he made this really loud growling sort of noise that I’d never heard him do before. For a couple of seconds he wasn’t Mister Mosely any more. He was something scary and dangerous.

  What Moe did made everyone just stop and stare at him. Then he sort of went back to his normal self and just started wagging his tail at Dad and licking Mum’s hand. Nobody was saying anything. Then I heard Grace crying upstairs in her cot. Dad heard her too. He looked up at Grace’s room and then at Mum and he said, ‘Maybe you’d all be better off if he really was the father.’ Mum opened her mouth but no words came out. It looked like someone had punched her really hard in the stomach and she couldn’t breathe.

  Dad got into the car and left then. You could tell he was still mad because he put big skid marks on the grass when he backed out. When Dad was gone, Mum started looking around everywhere like she didn’t know where she was. Then she saw the sheet with Uncle Gavin’s blood all over it and she started ripping it down from the clothes line. She didn’t even take the pegs off first. She just pulled at it until they popped off. Then she sat down on the grass with the sheet all wrapped around her and started crying and rocking and hugging it like it was a baby or something.

  I’d never seen Mum cry so hard before. It made me feel sick. I went over and stood beside her. I didn’t know what to do. But Mister Mosely did. He pushed in next to Mum and licked her face. Her nose was dripping and she wiped it right on the sheets. Then she grabbed Mister Mosely and she grabbed me and she pulled us in tight and hugged us both. I hugged her back. Moe couldn’t hug anyone so he just licked our faces some more and thumped us both with his big tail.

  Mum kept telling me how she was sorry I had to ‘see all that’ and that it was just a ‘big misunderstanding’ and Dad and her were ‘under a lot of stress’. She told me not to worry about it
, and that sometimes mums and dads fight and say things they shouldn’t but everything was going to be fine and nothing was going to change.

  But that wasn’t really true. Some things did change. Like how Uncle Gavin stopped coming to our house and we stopped going to his place and how Dad stopped making those jokes about his ‘little brother’. And even Mum and Dad changed. They went sort of quiet. I know that sounds better than yelling. But sometimes it’s not.

  One thing that didn’t change was Mister Mosely. Even after he did that scary Transformer thing, he was still exactly the same old Moe.

  22 Mister Mosely and Dad

  Mum always said Mister Mosely was a ‘good listener’. He was. Amelia used to talk to him nonstop when she was dressing him up. I talked to him too. All the time. I still do. But I never thought Dad talked to Moe that much. I was wrong.

  I found that out one night when I was bringing Dad’s dinner down to him. It was after Dad quit his job at the dam and got another one working for the council making roads. He’s still got that job. Now he comes home every night instead of just the weekends but he’s always tired and dirty and covered in black road gunk. He gets home late too. That’s because he does heaps of overtime on account of Grace being ‘an extra mouth to feed’. I guess that’s why he started eating his tea downstairs in the workshop all by himself.

  What happens most times is Mum wraps Dad’s dinner in foil and leaves it on the stove while we eat ours. Then she takes it down later when Dad’s had a chance to ‘unwind a bit’. Mostly Mum takes Dad’s dinner down to him, especially when Dad has overtime. But sometimes if it isn’t too late, Mum asks me to do it.