One
EVE
I have the dog to thank. If it wasn't for him I might still be there and none of this would have happened. That may sound strange given that the place teems with life. But it's a hurried life that doesn't veer off its chosen track: cyclists in streaks of neon, joggers chasing personal bests, harried parents tailing their offspring. Not a chance they would have spotted me twenty or so meters away, hidden in dense woodland. I was easy to miss, which was the point after all.
"It's immaterial now." This is the echo of my mum's voice from years back. She wasn't a fan of my hypothetical musings.
"You should have been here five minutes ago, I could have been kidnapped," I'd say when she rocked up to Brownies five minutes late.
"Well you weren't, were you?"
"But I could have been."
"Why do you always think the worst?" she'd ask, as if the worst could never happen.
* * *
Sunday, September 15, 2013, a shade after seven o'clock in the morning. It was a fine morning, one to snap in a picture and post on your Facebook page if you did that kind of thing, which Jim Tierney didn't. Mist rose in columns from the ground. The vast sky was tinged red. He gazed out across the park, studiously ignoring the early thrum of traffic. He liked to think that he had the world to himself in these early hours, walking through a wilderness, albeit one at the edge of the city within striking distance of a café and a cooked breakfast.
Sure, it's a bugger dragging yourself out of bed, but here's your reward, Jim boy.
By rights the dog, a red setter, should have been on a lead because it was rutting season and deer can feel threatened by dogs. I know this courtesy of a Year Six project when my class went on a field trip to Richmond Park and a park ranger told us how the large males roar and clash antlers to attract as many females as possible and we laughed at the thought of them having a shag and then laughed even more when Peter Kelly fell over and landed in a pile of deer shit. Our teacher Mr. Connolly marched us all back to school and said we were a disgrace and he would never take us anywhere ever again.
He would be surprised that I retained that fact seventeen years after the event.
So I know that from September to October dogs should either be walked outside the park or kept on a lead but I'm also thankful that Jim Tierney disregarded the rules that morning. It wasn't a blatant disregard, more of a lapse that came with the territory. At sixty-seven and having been retired for three years, the weeks and months all seemed to roll into one. As far as Jim was concerned it could still have been July. Added to that he was long-sighted and couldn't read the signs that would have alerted him to his misdemeanor. Wellington was free to roam.
Jim was well aware that Wellington was a ridiculous name for a dog.
It wasn't even his dog. His daughter left it behind when she decamped to Seattle with the family last summer. "Keep you company," she said, as if it was adequate compensation for not seeing his grandkids once a week. "That," he has told his wife more than once, "was a bum deal." To everyone he pretended the dog was "a royal pain in the arse," but he loved these walks, the purpose they gave him, and he'd grown fond of Wellington, even if there were too many syllables in its name for a man with a heart condition to pronounce repeatedly.
"WELL-ING-TON, come back here."
He was off.
"Daft dog."
It had been hard at first when Jim first took him out. The dog was lithe, too fast for him, but over time they had found their rhythm. Wellington would run ahead and then run back to Jim, who would chuck him a stick or a ball in reward.
Not today.
He was streaking ahead, his shape shrinking in the distance.
"WELL-ING-TON!" Jim shouted again, but the exertion left him breathless. He used the stick to beat his way through the long grass. Ahead he could just about see the dog, running in the direction of the park's huge iron gates. He needed to quicken his pace to stop him but he was aware of the familiar whistle of his chest.
Wellington had gone from sight now, disappeared through the gates that opened and closed at first light and dusk.
Wait till I get a hold of that dog.
Jim headed down the hill, grateful for the unusually light traffic outside the park. Wellington was daft enough to run into the road, he didn't doubt it.
When he was through the gate himself, he heard the familiar bark. Turning to his right, to the strip of common land, he saw him further down the muddy path, running into the bushes and then back out again. Thanks to an overnight downpour mud oozed and squelched underfoot as he slid along toward the dog. His hand was raised in readiness: give it a whack, put it back on the lead. In the event he did neither. When he reached it he simply looked and saw. Wellington's barking faded out, or at least it did for Jim, whose world stilled. He stood, hands hanging by his sides, because he had lost all power to move them. His instinct was to turn away, as if he was looking at something he had no business seeing, but his eyes remained there, transfixed. He felt the sky dip and turn, like he himself was being spun around. The context: that was what he was struggling with. He was only taking the dog for a walk and the day was too fresh and young and the sky too bright for this to happen. No, he thought managing to pull his eyes away. This has no place here.
He waited, counted to ten to allow the scene enough time to disappear. The dog started barking again.
Jim looked once more.
"Sweet Mary mother of Christ."
Minutes elapsed until he remembered there was something he needed to do. Only then did he call the police.
Copyright © 2015 by Colette McBeth
