Winter Burial

I've been watching this ordeal for days. It's kind of sad and melancholy but at the same time, strange, and downright morose. It's the coldest of all winter burials, a grim, macabre sort of ritual to watch day after day. I'm about to do something to stop it, but I can't. I just can't right now. Across the street, right across from my house, a neighbor has been trying to jar loose the large carcass of a dead dog which lays frozen in his driveway. In a pathetic effort to free the corpse, the frail little man takes jabs with the thin, sharp edge of a spade shovel. The cracks of the tool create high-pitched, irritating noises that reach my ears a split second or two after I see the hard strikes of the rusty shovel. Clumps of snow fall like white place mats as I look across the street. My front window is frosted like the outside of a big, white jellybean. From the outside, it would probably look much like a cover of a quaint little Christmas card. But being here is something else and not nearly as nostalgic. And I've been wearing my hands numb scraping the inside of the window so I can watch the grim festivities going on just outside my window.

I'd help him but the old man is antisocial, doesn't talk to neighbors and has never once even said "hello," to me, although I've nodded my head to him a few times, in passing, and smiled a bit reluctantly when I occasionally spot him. I don't know his name but on the mailbox at the end of his lane in rusty, stenciled letters is CA  T  R. For the longest time, I tried to figure out what the third and fifth letters are. It bugged me. Finally, one day the postal driver had to deliver a mailed box of specialty auto parts to my door. Funny, I remembered my fascination with the name on the neighboring mailbox and asked the mail carrier what my neighbor's name was.

"Caster," he said. "Some mail comes with R.L. Caster on it and other mail comes with Jude Solomon Caster on the envelopes. I think R.L. Caster was his wife. Maybe it was his girlfriend. Maybe even his sister. Anyhow, she don't live there now. She died years ago."

The hermit's run-down shack has been a public eyesore for the three years I've lived here, and most likely, longer. Although his house never bothered me much, the Wilsons, two drives up, and the Hoppertons, who live at the end of the street, tried to get the weird little guy's place condemned a couple years ago. And just recently, I heard they've begun petitioning city officials to raze the dump. In the past, efforts of these well-to-do neighbors have proven fruitless. The city zoning official recently decided that 113 Cooperton Drive was just fine, having all the right structure, foundation, framing, electrical wiring etc. in place and running adequately. I got a letter through the mail from city hall informing me of this. I think everyone on Cooperton Drive got the same correspondence. 

The bureaucrat was quoted in our little, local weekly paper that the recluse's rattletrap of an abode was a bit unkempt and needed some improved grass cutting, garbage collection and a good slap of paint. On a more positive note, the house was indeed fit to be condemned, then razed and finally reconditioned into what probably would turn into a weedy, empty lot overrun with rodents and garden snakes.

See, a few years ago, our little provincial rag published a front-page story on this little controversy and the city manager was even quoted, saying something to the effect that we don't live in a lily white, pristine society where everyone can afford to live in a castle. And since this little town, too small to be a city, is anything but prosperous and affluent, there's more than the old hermit's dwelling that is in dire need of repair and a good clean up. The village council probably felt if they condemned the old man's house, because of some kind of quirky precedence, they'd might have to put the black `X' on a lot more houses in town. Where to draw the line on an issue like this is sort of like drawing the line on the First Amendment, so it's better to draw no line at all.

That was five years ago. And five years is a long time for a couple angry neighbors to fuss and fume about things. Ted Wilson, a prominent local attorney, and Dr. Dean Hopperton, who is the chair in the liberal arts department of a state college in the area, haven't stopped their caustic criticisms of my neighbor's eyesore. There's been a constant bantering at city hall about having the property placed on the "black list" and torn down. Both Wilson and Hopperton complain the property values on their handsome Victorian houses have bottomed out because of the shack.

I feel sorry for the old hermit. I can't say he's a victim, though -- he can do some things within his control, like mow grass, patch up some rotten siding and slap a coat of cheap, bottom-shelf hardware store paint on the cracked siding every couple years. But at least he has enough sense to bury the corpse of a very large animal on his property. Mother Nature has her grip on the dead animal. The frail little weirdo can't break the hold of her strong grasp. The frozen precipitation, which began early this morning and continues into the afternoon, has resulted in a heavy buildup of white, soft flakes. It's sort of warehoused anywhere an everywhere. The old curmudgeon's thin, leather jacket is covered with a dusty smattering of white. His beard is a frozen mess of gray, black and brown. A tobacco chewer, frozen spittle has built up around his beard like frozen water builds up around a drainpipe in sub-zero weather. His appearance disgusts even me, a hospital lab technician turned over-the-road truck driver.

One of the reasons I quit being a lab tech was because I got queasy seeing the sight of blood, and all that goes along with the carnage of an ever-growing subculture of violence. That's why I'm not all that eager to go over there and tell that old relic I'll help him bury his extra-large canine critter pal. I know I wouldn't take well to the sight, smell, or feel of a long-deceased corpse of a very large dog. But maybe I could. Since I've been a truck driver, I've witnessed some horrible highway catastrophes, even horrible fatalities, including the decapitation of a trucker who jackknifed his rig inside a tunnel under a mountain.

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The hermit's been out there for a good couple hours today, and it's a Wednesday and it's past dark.

The dim light of his porch light acts as his guide.

 The whacks he takes with the shovel get weaker and weaker.

We've had three inches of snow so far today and two inches yesterday. The early January days of 2001 came biting and clawing to Ashtabula, Ohio. Just the other day, there were some people with ASHTABULA OHIO signs on the morning news. I'm talkin' the national news with that jolly, roly-poly weathercaster.

Ashtabula really should have been named "Snow, Ohio," or "Rust Belt, Ohio," since the economy is so bad here. Perched at the top, right hand tip of the Buckeye State, this town, which lost a lot of population over the last couple decades, was once an industrial-based stronghold and a blue-collar family sort of place that had a pride and dignity, a work ethic and a community consciousness. Now, there's a lot of retirees and subsidy drawers of younger ages existing around this little neck of the Cayahoga.

Meantime, the corpse of the Irish wolfhound has been lying in the driveway for a good week or so. Digging a grave for a dog that large in this sub-zero weather would be impossible -- a backhoe would be needed. The old man should just use that flimsy little spade to dig through a six-foot layer of concrete. I have all the time in the world to help him, too. I just don't want to. And I have a buddy across town who could get a backhoe out here in a half hour and in a half hour more, have the whole doggie burial thing done and over with. It'd be that simple -- one call to Bo. Yep. He's not up to anything except sleeping in and watching CNN and TNN. Construction and excavation is slow -- how can you do anything in this Arctic ice cap?

I've been around the house a lot the last week. Truck driving has been put on standstill in the Midwest and the East until this long blizzard plays its course. The old man and his spade routine has been my main source of entertainment. Since the wind's been blowing Yukon blasts and the snow keeps falling every day, I've sort of been nurturing a good dose of cabin fever. That old guy and his daily ritual of trying to free the wolfhound from the pavement -- it's been a grizzly sight, but it goes along with my overall mood. My live-in always mistrusted the old hermit. God, she was afraid of him -- there's been rumors around town that he has skeletons -- human skeletons -- in that shack of his. Shit, the stupid woman would believe any old wives tale that came down the pike at the beauty shop. Anyhow, she's gone. I don't believe wives tales. True, the old man's no holy man, but he's not a werewolf or a vampire, either. He's just a fucked-up old eccentric misfit. And now that I have all the time in the world to help the old man, I really should get my ass over there and help him.

Lying on the cold pavement, the Irish wolfhound looks smaller than he did in real life. I used to watch the big, awkward animal trounce across the hermit's weedy, overgrown yard. The dog looked as big as a pony. And to think he was a canine -- the direct descendent of a predatory breed -- with teeth made for ripping and tearing flesh. And this breed once hunted and killed wolves (although I've found by living here for five years that the dog was always been nothing more than a big, jovial, plaything -- it would have had a hard time gnashing teeth with an Irish Setter or a Labrador Retriever and coming out a victor).

The purebred Irish-breed pet, as unkempt as a run-of-the-mill mutt, had matted and mangy long hair with a grayish-white sort of salt and pepper coat. The dog looked like a reject from the pound! The purebred looked like a first-rate mongrel that couldn't win a dog show held in a junkyard! The Irish wolfhound is a high-maintenance pet that needs a lot of grooming. For a man who can't even keep large stacks of garbage from piling up outside his door, this seems very unfeasible and a mismatch. Anyhow, the big animal died in late November. That's when the old man drug the big, hairy mess out of his rattle-pit dwelling. I swear I saw that dog in the yard just a few days before, so it couldn't have been dead all that long. It was just depressing to watch my feeble neighbor's pathetic attempts to free the dog from the frozen cement. I should have helped him. Anyone with a heart would have volunteered to help him. But instead, I sip a beer and look out the window. The snow's flying around out there like the atmosphere's possessed and needs exorcised. Ole' Castor uses his spade shovel erratically, taking desperate jabs at the carcass. From where I stand, I can see piss and shit coming out of the dog's rear end. What used to be his prize pet doesn't even budge a fraction of an inch. The dead piece of large meat is welded to the driveway through nature's frozen curse. And what an expensive piece of mammal furniture to find itself affixed to the driveway. I saw in the classifieds the other day that purebred, AKC Irish Wolfhound pups, three months old, were selling for more than a grand each.

           I think Castor might be digging a hole for the animal near the side of his lean-to of a garage. Mother Nature and Father Winter are making love. It's piling up deeper and deeper. There's no stopping in sight. The old man hits the frozen, furry carcass again and again with the sharp edge of the spade. I drink beer and watch from my front window. Like something out of an old Jethro Tull song, things get more and more hideous and perverse as this strange melody progresses . . . .It appears that with a recent swat of the sharp-edged digging tool, a big chunk of flesh and fur broke off the canine's cadaver. I take a swig and smile a weird sort of smile. I'm miserable because my girl left me and seeing the hermit's misery just compounds my own. It's funny how my sick mind works, sometimes.

With a quick phone call, I know I could get my buddy, Bo Wellington, to bring over his truck and trailer, with backhoe perched on top of the trailer. He could easily fire up the beast and free that dead, frozen monstrosity from the pavement in one swat. And with the backhoe attached, he could bury the dog in a fraction of a day. Then, me and Bo could go down to the bar over the hill and kill a better part of an evening drinking beer and telling bullshit lies all night.

Hell, at the old man's pace, it looks like the chore will be completed by mid-summer.

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Snowed-in days and nights in the Snow Belt sort of run together like different flavors of melting ice cream. The next day after I woke at 10:30 after a good sleep in, the first thing I did was draw my blinds and look across the street. Drawing the blinds and looking out the window had become habitual now. Anyway, there was Castor, sitting on the carcass. He wiped some sweat from his brow and sighed. His frosty breath gushed from his lips, with the steam dissipating I saw the spittle on his frozen beard was built up so great it almost looked like a stalactite or a stalagmite (whichever one of those damn things that hangs down, not up -- I always get them confused). Castor rose from the frozen seat and again, took swats at the dead dog with the spade. Again and again he struck the carcass, to no avail.

I went over to my closet, got my old working coat (with the battery acid stains burned clear through the left shoulder and the grease and grime covering its front, from changing oil Old Betsy, my classic Mustang GT). I pulled on my work boots after donning my coveralls and walked across the street.

"I got a dolly over there. I think we can pick him up and get him to that grave you dug," I told him.

"Naw. Don't wanna bother you," I said.

"You've been out here for hours. How's about coming over to my house. I'll get you a beer. It'll warm you up inside."

He looked at me a little leery. I couldn't help but notice how pathetically frozen his beard was. The tobacco juice he was trying to spit out of his mouth covered the strands of hair in such a way that compounded with the freezing mark; it made the bottom of his face look like a long, black icicle. He looked like a character off a cover of one of those J.R. Tolkien novels.

"You got a dolly huh?"

"Yep."

"I've been trying to bury Bull Dumb forever now, it seems. He's the only friend I've had for a long spell. I wanna make sure he's way under so the rodents and bugs don't get him. He deserves better than that," he said.

"What's his name?"

"Bull Dumb."

"Why'd you call him that?"

"His name used to be Bull Durham. I named him after that old brand of roll-your-own cigarette ta'bacca. But he did such stupid things I changed it to Bull Dumb. Out of affection. Nothing mean to it at'll. I really loved that dog," he said.

"I understand."

I took the old man by the shoulder and led him across the street to my house, cracked him open a quart of Miller High Life and got the dolly from the basement. When I got up on the first floor, I could see him warming his hands by the coal furnace in the living room.

"You're a lucky man. Franklin makes a good stove. Good coal and good fire make for a good winter stay," he said.

He took a big gulp of beer and smiled. The ice from his beard was beginning to unthaw and the liquid from spittle and tobacco was streaming down his neck, in an ugly display of his unequivocal curmudgeonism. I got a little queasy feeling looking at him. He was an ungodly sight. I let him warm himself a bit longer as I used some WD-40 to oil down the joints in the dolly which had moving parts, particularly the wheel joints.

"You got a woman, boy?" he asked.

"Not right now. I did. The bitch moved out last week."

"Why?"

"Lots of things, really. She was funny."

"I never liked living with women too much. They make too many demands. They want to create you into something they want to live with. They find you, like you for what you are and then, they decide to change you. They want you to be what they want you to be, not what you are. Nope. Never mind what your wanna’ be. Men's gots dreams. I don't wear no funny little booties for any woman," he said.

"Never heard it put that way before," I said.

"Now if I only had one who looked at me with those big, innocent eyes. Bull Dumb used to ogle me up. No woman never talked back and never complained like Bull Dumb," the hermit said.

"Well, now he's dead. You ready?" I asked, as he held his hands over the open flames, with the door of the furnace wide open.

I could tell the old man enjoyed the warmth inside my place. Although I long suspected it, I knew by his actions of relishing the heat that the old man had no heat in his house.

##################

After wheeling the dolly to the side of the garage, I put it under the carcass and with the leverage of the spade shovel, wedged the dead animal up into the air. It took some finagling at first, since I had to break free the carcass from the pavement. But after I did it, it was an easy drive wheeling the dolly from the side of the garage to the grave, which was only fifteen feet away.

"That's it, easy now, I think you have it. Man, you do. I'm sure glad you came over. You sure know how to use those muscles," old Castor wheezed ecstatically, as he saw me unload the carcass on the side of the shallow grave.

"This won't do," I said. "The hole needs to be deeper, at least 4-1/2 feet deep or you're going to have rats and other rodents, like muskrats, sniffing and poking around here, trying to fetch Bull Dumb out."

"It's too frozen to dig," he said.

"I have a friend who has a backhoe. We'll call him," I said.

"It'd 'preciate it," the hermit said.

"I've seen you out here. Your way's not working, Castor," I told him, sort of matter-of-factly, talking with the voice of an expert. I didn't want the wild-eyed little madman to give me any flack about having his dog shoveled up with a backhoe. Honestly, I just got sick of watching him, day after day, striking that mutt's corpse with that spade.

Anyhow, Bo came out, after bitching and moaning a little bit, and had that hole dug nine feet deep and that mutt buried within an hour. The backhoe purred like a kitten all the time and the job went as smooth as any high-paying union work could go. It was sweet, all right.

After the burial, the old man looked at us both, with funny, beady little eyes and thanked us with a grunt or two. He said something to the effect that he was going to put a wooden marker on the dog's grave. We pretended to care a bit, then put the backhoe back on Bo's trailer, chained it down and we both jumped into the cab of the truck and went down the street to the corner tavern and had a few brews.

That was a week ago. The snow's starting to ease up and the woes of the first quarter are coming to a screeching halt. I got a call from my dispatcher today. He said he's got three back-to-back loads for me -- from Erie to Kansas City, from Kansas City to Dallas, then from Dallas to Cleveland. It'll keep me out there for a few weeks.

By the way, I mailed some bills today. Guess who I ran into? I saw old Castor at the Post Office. He spied me, looked down at the floor and didn't nod. He walked quickly out of the building and spit a big wad of tobacco onto the sidewalk, jumped into his little old jalopy and drove off.

He's a funny little man. Some things will never change.

Sam Vargo has an MA in English from Youngstown State University in Younstown, Ohio. He has worked most of his adult life as a newspaper reporter. Today, he makes his living as a public school teacher in an urban school district. He was fiction editor of Pig Iron Press, Youngstown, Ohio, for 12 years. He has had poetry and fiction appear in the following: Red Dancefloor, Verve, Reed, Clark Street Review, Connecticut Review, Licking River Review, Higgensville Reader, Lynx Eye, Poetry Motel, Late Knocking, Ohio Teachers Write, Small Press Review and other presses and literary journals.

Email: Sam Vargo

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