BRISCO!
by
Anthonystjoseph
There was a time in my life where I had
given up on all nonessential material needs.
It was a time that I basically just rested on my laurels, intelligence,
and wit to survive. I just simply
stopped buying into the mentally indoctrinated materialistic pattern that’s
ingrained in us by society that we have to have all the latest toys and gadgets
of the material world in order to consider ourselves a success. If you didn’t have the new car and the
biggest house you were considered a loser.
It was a time where you might just find Anthonystjoseph barefooted and
wearing unpolished cotton. I worked in a
convenience store, another one, in order to provide myself shelter and the
weekly twelve pack of beer. I was
genuinely taking a time out and enjoying the air, the sun, the moon, the earth,
and the people. I also spent a lot of
time studying the paranormal and the possibility of angels and spiritual
intervention since I felt I had honestly already encountered these concepts on
several different occasions. A great
friend who crossed my path during that time was named Brisco.
Oh-de-doh! Oh-de-doh! Clickity-clack,
clickity-clack. Oh-de-doh. That was Brisco. He would just be walking down the sidewalks
of Mesa, Arizona just loving life and smelling the wonderful air as he walked
turning his head left and right to proudly announce his presence and check out
the scene. Brisco was one of those dogs
who cherished every moment of his existence and just loved adventurous walks
through his familiar neighborhood. The
oh-de-doh seemed to be the rhythm that his heart walked to while the clickity-clack
was the sound of the nails on his paws hitting the cement as he walked. Oh-de-doh, oh-de-doh, clickity-clack,
clickity-clack.
I was the only one in the house that I
lived in who enjoyed the stars and the moon of Arizona as much as Brisco so it
fell to me to walk Brisco every evening.
It wasn’t that it was an assigned duty, it’s just that I looked forward
to the walk as much as Brisco so I got the assignment. I lived with a friend of the family who was
involved in several different lines of illegal activities. She had a gang of five men who took care of
different aspects of her drug dealing and larceny. Every now and then we would get a visit from
some serious felon that would make you realize that you should watch ‘America’s
Most Wanted’ more often.
In studying the possible existence of
angels and spiritual intervention I would often get my hands on any book that I
felt had something to offer on the subject and just devour its contents. You would be amazed at some of the true life
encounters that you can read about if you just visit your local library and
seek out the subject. I had gone to the
library downtown Mesa and found a really incredible book. It reminded me of a book I had read a long
time ago which was titled, ‘An Objective Inquiry into the Existence of Guardian
Angels’, written by Pierre Jovanovic.
Mister Jovanovic was a journalist from Paris who decided to travel the
world and gather firsthand accounts and true stories of people who had died for
a period of more than five minutes and had been revived. Some of the individuals in the book had died
for up to fifteen minutes or more. The
individual significance and difference in Mister Jovanovic’s book was that it was
the first time that I had read an account of someone going to a dark
place. Generally in all these stories
everyone goes to flowers and light and a garden of ancestors.
The book I found in the Mesa Library was
the same type of book giving more firsthand accounts of angelic encounters but
in this book the people didn’t have to die in order to be visited by angelic
intervention. I just sat on the couch,
with Brisco at my side, reading the short stories of different angelic visits
that people were sharing through this wonderful book. Brisco, who was an extremely small dog who’s
toe nails were half the size of him, which is why they made so much ‘clickity-clack’
noise when he walked, would just rest his head on my arm as I read. I was almost to the end of the book one day
when Brisco decides to start licking my hand.
When a dog starts licking your hand it’s cool for a minute and then it
goes to a weird place if it continues too long.
Well Briscos licking of my hand was rapidly approaching that weird place
at ninety miles per hour. I had to move
my hand and stop him or proceed downtown to get a marriage license so we would
be legal if it went further.
After I ended Brisco’s salivic marriage
proposal I returned to the story I was reading where it ended by saying that
angels can be animals as well and come as creatures such as cats and dogs. I look down at Brisco and just rub his back
as he enjoys the attention. I had no
clue that this would be the last day that I had Brisco in my life.
Later that day one of the felons who was
sure to make a future appearance on ‘America’s Most Wanted’ stopped by the
house and needed a desperate favor.
According to his Crystal Meth induced story, the authorities or his
neighbors were after his pit bull so he needed a place to stash him. My lovely gang moll of a roommate gave him
the okay to hide the dog in our, or I should say her, backyard. The lovely future felon of the world
surprisingly having all of his teeth still in his mouth goes to retrieve the
wanted pit bull. He returns to the house
with a dog that looked like he had spent five years in Michael Vick’s school
for future fight dogs. We all froze as
the future felon walked the obviously dangerous dog through the house and to
the backyard. The gang moll looks at me
all bug eyed and says, “Did you see the way that dog looked at you Tony!” I looked at her with wobbly knees and didn’t
answer. I was aware of the swastika on
the felon’s neck and the obvious fact that I was the only black person and
maybe the dog had never seen a black person or maybe it was just my hair but
the pit bull really did display some undesired attention in my direction. After the patio door was shut and we all let
out a breath finally exhaling since the clear and present danger was over we
returned to our conversation, all the while keeping a side eye on the patio
door in case it came crashing down as the beast decided to feed. This dog was obviously dangerous and capable
of changing your life if he got his jaws on you.
An hour or so later, ‘Skeeter the tweeker’
comes by with some bicycle that he stole from outside of a Taco Bell and wants
a bag of crystal meth from my roommate, the Mesa, Arizona version of Shelly
Winters as a drug dealer. We’re all
standing and sitting in the kitchen bravely making ourselves visible to the
ferocious monster of a pit bull in the back yard who’s just glaring at us
through the patio door window. ‘Skeeter
the tweeker’ is just rambling on, as most tweekers do, just babbling about his
latest petty theft while picking at a crystal induced pimple on his face. All of a
sudden, as he looks out the patio door and finishes his sentence he slides
the patio door open. The oxygen escapes from
the room as the pit bull from hell enters the room at a fast pace and everybody
freezes including dumb struck Skeeter who finally realizes he’s in the presence
of a death dealer, a pit bull who clearly had a history of steroid abuse. The pit bull heads straight for me, the only
African American person in the room. I’m
finished.
All
of a sudden little Brisco jumps in front of me and stands in front of the
pit bull. The pit bull stops on top of
Brisco and Brisco is just standing under all four legs of the pit bull and
nobody is moving or making one sound. We
all are frozen in fear as to what is going to happen next. Then the owner of the pit bull makes the
first move. He grabbed the pit bulls
tail and that’s when it happened. The
pit bull just made one quick split second move and Brisco’s head was in his
jaw. Brisco’s right eyeball had popped
out of the eye socket and was hanging down by a string of nerves three inches
long. I screamed in horror and ran to
the bedroom and threw myself down on the bed and began to cry. Why did this have to happen? Why was this world such a cruel place? Why? Why? WHY?
I gathered myself and went back into the
kitchen as the punk with the swastika and the animal steroids put his dog back
in the back yard. Bricso lay in a heap
on the dining room floor with his eyeball hanging on the side of him where my
overly licked hand had been just a few hours earlier. He was still breathing in little pants of
breath as his mangled body struggled to live.
Brisco had made the most heroic sacrifice that could truly be considered
an intervention and saved me from the pit bull. Without fear of his own harm and destruction
he stepped up to the plate and took one for the team. The book was right and the stories were
real. Angels can be cats or dogs as
well.
By
Anthonystjoseph
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