TEZZER’S DOG
His name was really Terrence Barclay Headford so no wonder everyone called him Tezzer.
Tezzer and his wife Toni lived in the hills for a few years, had a third of an acre block that sloped down into a gully and a creek, through some sweet stands of stringybark and acacia. It was a place full of wildflowers and green-shoot bracken in the Spring, and visited by haunting swirls of mist-wraiths in the Autumn, koalas up in the trees, occasional echidna at the back step.
For nine months of each year it was a beautiful place. Beautiful until one mid-summer, February 1983. Wednesday 16th. Ash Wednesday. It would be years before it was a beautiful place again.
Their bungalow was a Californian style, split level and long and cool and up on legs on two sides to get the best of the view down through the trees. It was a joy to sit out on the deck with a beer on a soft day, listen to the parrots and the kookaburras.
Tezzer had a reputation for being unflappable, one of those people truly fazed by nothing. Many could tell the story of how, on Ash Wednesday, he’d stood on his roof with a garden hose, waiting for Hell to arrive from over the next ridge. Toni and the kids were well away but Tezzer wasn’t a leaver by nature. If his house was going down it was going down with him on the roof with his hose. The hose that by then was pissing water with a fraction less pressure than your average back alley drunk at closing time, AND with a forty degree northerly blowing it sideways.
His wild-eyed, panic-stricken neighbours, next up the hill, were throwing things into their car, watching a sunless, airless, blood-red sky full of eucalyptus oils at flash point, full of smoke-haze and falling ash, full of the chobba chobba chobba of helicopters straight out of Apocalypse Now. He called out to them.
“How’s it goin’? I’m thinkin’ of making a brew, would y’like t’come over for a cuppa tea?”
These were good friends, but still looked at him like he was mad, although oddly enough it had a pacifying effect, made them pause long enough to find a hollow laugh, recognising gallows humour at its best.
“Nah, thanks anyway Tezz, take you up on it tomorrow, if...”, and they were gone. Not that there was anywhere to go by then, anywhere that wasn’t part of the hell. But thanks to unfazable Tezz they at least went with easier minds.
But there was one time that Tezzer lost his natural laid-back-ness. It was just before Ash Wednesday.
Tezzer had a dog. It was part vagabond and part something big but the rest of it was about ten lesser things, but brains wasn’t amongst any of their gene pools. Tezzer’s dog had free range of the block and the district, rogering anything that’d stand still long enough. It paid to keep it down from your leg. Its only redeeming feature was that it loved people unconditionally and it loved Tezzer most of all, had a habit of looking up at him in complete adoration with tongue hanging out and tail happy. Thought Tezzer was God.
The people over the road also had a dog. One of those Pomeranian-type things called Buttons that are fluffy and mostly kept inside. Carried around a lot. It had cost them a bundle and had arrived with papers to justify it. They were careful to keep Tezzer’s dog at some distance.
They seemed nice enough people but they didn’t mix no matter how often Tezzer and Toni opened their door to them, or asked did they need anything down the shop, or offered to mow their lawn seeing as how they had the mower going anyway. They just weren’t natural mixers. Until one day they had a phone call, were told the woman’s mother up on The Gold Coast was dying and was asking for her.
They suddenly appeared on their doorstep with Buttons in arms and – with some reluctance – asked please could they look after their dog for three days as it was an emergency and ... but Tezzer and Toni didn’t need to hear all the why-fors, they were happy to do a favour for any neighbour no matter what.
They gave them a carton of expensive dog food, three of Buttons’ preferred toys, her bed, a list of instructions (that Tezzer lost the first day), her poop-tray, and a tactful but firm request that Buttons NOT be let outside, PLEASE. Meaning at the mercy of Tezzer’s dog’s and his legendary equipment. Toni could see they were in a bind, and assured them Buttons would be safe, with Tezzer nodding like he wasn’t sure what the fuss was about.
For the first two days they kept Buttons inside. Fed her gourmet stuff from ring-pull tins. With Tezzer’s dog locked outside. But on the third day Tezzer was home on his own and reckoned the dog needed some fresh air, so he tied his dog up at one end of their deck and tied Buttons up at the other end. Tied her up with a four foot piece of rope. At the edge of his six foot high deck. Then went inside to get a few beers and to look for his transistor radio so he could kick back on the Li-lo and catch up on the footy and watch the wildlife. It was his favourite Saturday thing.
It took Tezzer half an hour to find the radio. Actually he was distracted by the Footscray-Geelong match update on the TV, then changed into his Saturday arvo shorts, put three cold ones in the esky, then had trouble finding his stubby holder.
As he finally flopped into the Li-lo his dog was doing a sort of a dance, and yipping in the general direction of the other end of the deck. Where Buttons wasn’t any more. Just the loop end of the rope, around the bottom of the corner post. Pulled tight.
It took a second or two for it to register, then Tezzer let out a yelp, dropped the beer and the radio, did a stumble-lunge to the end of the deck, and there was poor little Buttons, just hanging around, back feet still six inches from the ground. Dead as a maggot.
Tezzer hauled her up like a lobster pot, swearing to himself all the way, untied the rope, spread the dog out, cast around for any solution that may be at hand, decided to thump the poor little thing in the chest several times like he’d seen on the hospital shows, then tried puffing into its face. Nup, still dead as a maggot. Now with several broken ribs.
This wasn’t Tezzer’s finest hour. And deciding to do a cover-up rather than admit he’d failed a grieving neighbour in their hour of need surely wasn’t going to help. He didn’t even intend to tell Toni. I’m really sorry but I simply opened the back door and your dog just bolted, he’d say. She was probably stressed from being left with strangers, he’d say. Haven’t seen her since. But I’m sure she’ll come back, and I’ll be happy to put up all the lost dog notices. Something like that.
He found his shovel, untied his own dog, and with heavy hearts the two of them went way down to the bottom of the block and gave Buttons a solemn but decent burial. Put a sprig of wattle on her. Tried to apologise to the disturbed patch of earth.
Toni was appalled that he’d let the dog run off. Berated Tezzer something terrible. Wrung her hands and called him a useless bloody idiot while their two kids stood there between them in their footy togs, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. But that was the easy part. The people from over the road were absolutely bereft. As if things weren’t terrible enough with the woman’s mother dying, when Tezzer handed them the bad news, then Button’s bed and Button’s poop-tray and Button’s favourite toys but no Buttons, the woman grasped her throat and made a strange noise and fainted clean away on the lounge room floor. Her husband’s face went as red as a house-brick.
Between them they brought the woman around and got her back on her feet, and Tezzer found himself repeating his story, over and over, handing it around in short pieces slipped between the woman’s sobs, all the time feeling like a total bastard. But God-help-us things were about to get worse.
At the front door the husband half carried his wife and angrily brushed away Tezzer’s and Toni’s attempts to help, telling them over his shoulder as they went to bring Button’s things and mumbling something about four hundred and fifty dollars, just as Tezzer’s dog arrived, and deposited Buttons’ very stiff and very soiled remains at their feet. Stood back and wagged his tail and waited for the applause.
The woman let out yet another terrible moan and collapsed all over again and the husband found himself beyond words. He stepped over Buttons and picked up his wife like a newlywed and stomped off without another thing being said.
The Aftermath? Well, Toni didn’t believe for a second that Buttons must’ve been hit by a car down the road, so in time Tezzer came clean and took it on the chin. The people over the road never spoke to them again, or even came back for Buttons things. Or for Buttons. It was like Tezzer’s block had become contaminated space. Like a nuclear accident zone. Full of horrors.
So, no surprise after that whole sad thing, they packed and left and put the house up for sale. Just before Ash Wednesday. Which was just as well as the house burnt right down to the floor raft along with everything in it. Including the For Sale sign.
And Buttons? Three more times Tezzer had to bury poor little Buttons, down the bottom of the block, and three times Tezzer’s dog dug her up and brought her home again. In the end Buttons was looking a touch bedraggled, and it became a matter of getting rid of his dog or getting rid of Buttons. So Tezzer took Buttons about fifty miles north and buried her in the scrub. Put some stones on top. Apologised one last time. And never quite lived it down.
© T. R. Edmonds 2018
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