01/24/01

Yeah, I’d say the best dog I ever had was my Holstein bull Yin-Yang. He was about 15 years-old in September when he was shot dead. It was the day of Francois’ film shoot and Taciturn Vern’s heart attack.

Kills me to recount this one. . .

Francois paid me, Taciturn Vern, Stash Skim, Porch Rot and Starvin‘ Marvin--- foul, simple-minded woodchucks all--- a hundred dollars each to stand along a split rail fence out in my pasture and bullshit away as farmers do while he filmed us.

He kept yelling that he needed our best Delbert Ward. He keeps yelling, Just give me Delbert Ward, God damn it, that’s all I’m asking for people!

I knew from the start that some deception was involved. I’m ashamed I ever agreed to play along. If there was a crime in anything that I did it was that--- going along with that shitty stunt. I knew that Francois’ whole point was to catch a genuine look of astonishment on our faces as gawkers. But I didn’t know Francois would take it as far as he did. He told me beforehand he planned to have pretty girl gallop by us on a white horse, but he didn’t say she would be that supermodel from Kazakhstan they want beheaded for immodesty. Francois certainly didn’t say she would be completely naked.

The site of that girl's bouncing breasts, her flowing hair, her taunt limbs---her luscious, Allah-insulting forbiddance----my fucking goodness--- that sublime vision which has replayed innumerable times in my head since that blessed moment--- proved too much for Vern, who crumpled up on the ground as if struck by a bolt. Francois got exactly what he wanted, I guess. Of course I felt terrible for what I helped do to poor Vern. Thank God he survived.

911 was called. Chaos continued. Never did see the girl leave. It was like she existed for a glorious instant, and then she was gone. Call her naked singularity. To this day I’m still left wondering whether she was real.

Yin-Yang was only approaching the crowd because he was curious about what was happening on the place, with all the sirens sounding and the lights flashing-- not because he had any intent to attack anyone. On first glance you might take him as a menace, but in reality he was so arthritic he couldn’t even mount cows anymore. Well, in actuality he was the last bovine the farm has seen. I couldn’t bring myself to put him on the truck after Cornelius’ attempt at farming crashed and burned in ‘99. Centuries of continuous cattle keeping on the farm ended in that blaze of gunfire from Officer Funk. As the joke goes with him, he Funked up again with that one.

Yin Yang was something else, I tell yah . When it came time to bring the herd in from the pasture, no dog could have done a better job of rousing the cows from their slumber to drive them in towards home. He seemed to know what the deal was on the place and was willing to do his part, just like any farm dog. When he was born I had no intention of keeping him, thought I’d put him on the next truck to market, like all the other bull calves I didn’t need, but then I noticed that he had the perfect black and white markings of a yin-yang symbol on his scrotum, and I thought maybe I could get a few extra bucks for him from a novelty hunter some day. Well, a year came and went. And then another year came and went. And by then I thought for sure he’d turn ugly on me. But he settled all the cows, and even threw nice small calves with the heifers, and I thought, hell, let me see if I can get another year out of him. Wouldn’t you know the damn thing stayed docile. And then another year passed and then another year passed, and still he stayed as quiet and calm as could be.

The cops were annoyed with me for a lot of reasons that day. They weren’t showing much sympathy for the situation I was in, mourning a geriatric pet bull minutes after setting up my old friend for a heart attack. I was sternly told by Funk Face to make sure the carcass was properly disposed of or else I could expect a summons. Meanwhile I had the flight out of Newark the next day to contend with. Couldn’t get Cadaver Dog to come out on short notice. You tell me all that money from his windfall didn’t go to his fucking head! Couldn’t get Smokey the backhoe running. I had used him earlier in the summer on a hot day and got him vapor locked. Tried blowing through the fuel line to prime the carburetor with gas but I couldn’t muster the PSI. Phebe doesn’t believe me, but I think my lung capacity was diminished from all the chemo I got in ‘98 to fight the male chest cancer.

My daughter has always had the best luck with that chore blowing the fuel line. I always say to her for some reason, I don’t even want to know where you developed that skill.

‘Course that would be right about the time she would tell me to go fuck myself.

Somehow we missed out on all that good Puritan ancestry from New England.

So anyway, I just started heaping up brush and debris on Yin-Yang’s carcass as best as I could. Then I thought to haul out some years old mulch hay bales from the chicken house and heap that on the carcass too, and lo and behold what do I find hidden beneath the bales but a whole shit load of stolen copper--- spool after spool of copper cable. Probably $20,000 worth. I don’t know why Rocky never mentioned it to us after his arrest for all the other stuff. Maybe like Claudius Smith’s gang of Tory bandits and the cache of silver they planted on the farm during the Revolution, Rocky had plans of coming back and retrieving that portion of copper---secreted so considerately on my side of the property line--- after he got out of the pokey.

Not the most considerate offspring that Rocky. The fuck.