DOGS OF EBERLEIN STREET

Dogs of Eberlein Street

     I was sixteen. We lived in the Shasta View Apartments in Klamath Falls, another leftover WWII housing project that we lived in for most of my childhood because they were always the cheapest. The project was on the far side of town from the high school, and since it was winter and I was in basketball or wrestling practice every day after school and missed the bus, I walked home in the dark.

     I'd long since found the shortest way home. By the time I got to Eberlein Street, bordering  the northern edge of the project, I had it made. One night I turned onto Eberlein and was halfway along it, with only two or three blocks to go, when a dog came out and started barking at me. I tried to ignore it. They can smell fear, I'd always been told, so act like you're not afraid. 

     But the dog persisted. It wasn't your typical frontyard mutt sounding the alarm as you passed its territory. The dog seemed really angry, though I hadn't done anything, and hadn't strayed from the sidewalk. I got scared. The dog came in closer, barking and growling with real menace. It went for my ankles. I turned and kicked; it dodged just out of reach. It seemed to become even angrier. Other dogs in the neighborhood started barking. A second dog came out and joined the first. It seemed to have the same peculiar anger, as if the two of them had just discovered a kid who had severely abused them as puppies.

     They teamed up on me, making it difficult to move along the sidewalk. More dogs came. There were five or six. They all behaved the same way. I was terrified. I broke and ran. That infuriated them even more. Oh no you don't, they seemed to say. They worked like a wolf pack, cut me off. They got me in a circle. I broke out and ran. They cut me off again.

     I made it to the street light on the corner across the street from the project. They cornered me there in the cone of light at the base of the pole, barking furiously and growling and taking turns lunging in to nip at me. I was doing a frantic dance to avoid their teeth, trying to kick at them to drive them back, yet reluctant to actually kick one hard for fear they’d just tear me apart.

     I yelled at them, yelled for help. Porch lights were on all along the street, but no one came. I couldn’t believe that the noise the dogs and I were making didn’t bring people pouring out of the houses to help, or at least to see what was going on. But no one noticed. The human world was locked away inside those houses, and I was banished to some bestial zone outside it. 

     I finally flailed and yelled and stumbled my way across the street. The dogs peeled off and left once I entered the project. I ran into the apartment. I was shaking. I got out my .22 Ruger single action revolver, which Mom had let me buy on my sixteenth birthday, and just held it. I wanted to load it and go kill them. I knew I couldn’t just walk out in a populated neighborhood and start shooting, but every throbbing part of me wanted to. Mom tried to calm me down, and kept an eye on me lest I load the pistol and head for the door. 

     That night I went to bed and lay awake, holding the pistol, still shaking at times, looking out the window, looking for the dogs, wishing they would come up to the window, now that I was armed, wishing they would try to attack me again, right through the window, so that I would have no choice but to load and shoot, wishing I could shoot and shoot and kill them all.