Bits And Pieces

A Dog's Name

     Believe me, after two years of retirement grocery shopping with my wife really was a bore.  Susan loved comparing prices and taking an hour to buy a few items, but not for me and finally, I got into the habit of wandering to the pet store next door to the supermarket.

     A man and his wife ran the place.  It was always a constant din of yapping puppies of various breeds, kittens that were usually offered free and did a lot of meowing, fish tanks that bubbled and gurgled along one glass wall, and birds that screeched, sang and yelled in their assorted cages.

     Hank and Sally were a bit younger than Susan and me but we all liked animals and if we lived any place but in a condominium, I would have had me a dog like Shadow, my Irish Setter that had retired from life long before we'd even moved to St. Pete's Beach, here in Florida.

     Hank was a big guy just a bit stooped, with a shock of graying red hair and the youthful ruddy complexion that went with it.  He liked to talk, boy did he like to talk!  Sally, his wife, always liked to see me come in because she'd take off and head for the supermarket to do some shopping and get in some woman talk with my wife.  I got so I really looked forward to the 3 or 4 times a week we'd do some shopping and we'd gotten friendly enough with them to even have a dinner or two together.

     Now, I'd been noticing a young boy in Hank's store (it was called The Gilted Cage , a name I'm sure Hank never thought up).  But anyway, this young fellow was about 6, maybe 7 and the reason I noticed him was that I saw his mother drop him off at the pet shop while she hurried into the grocery store herself.  She seemed thin and kinda sad.

     Now Hank had become rather testy about his enforced baby sitting as he called it but I kinda liked the kid.  He reminded me of Ray, our grandson who we saw all too seldom since we moved South.  He was sorta thin, skinny I guess you'd call it and freckles ran into each other across his cheeks and nose.  He was sure a little guy and his knees were usually full of bruises, his hands were dirty and he annoyed the heck out of Hank because he sniffled a lot and never used a handkerchief.  But I liked him especially because he and I liked the same pup, a fine brown eyed long legged flop eared Irish Setter that for some reason no one seemed to buy and he was getting pretty big for his cage.

     Now this kid would come in and walk right up to the setter's cage and poke a couple of dirty fingers through the bars and kinda talk to the dog and they sure acted like they were meant for each other.  Well, this went on for three weeks I guess it was and I kinda talked with the boy, found out that his name was Jimmy, and he was just 6, his father was dead, loved dogs, hated school, and didn't care much for grocery shopping either.

     He wanted to know what I was called and I told him Ralph would be fine--somehow it didn't seem disrespectful.

    That's why I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw Jimmy deliberately pick up a rubber animal toy and shove it in his pants pocket then wander to another spot where those rawhide bones were for sale in a big basket and pick up one of those, select one and with it in his hand as calm as you please walk out of the store.

     Well, Hank had been sprucing up the fish tanks with some kinda green stuff and he hadn't seen a thing.  Sally was gone as usual and I had been the only one to see Jimmy take this stuff.

     He'd never done this before that I'd ever seen anyway.  So I took off out of the door after that small figure about to enter the automatic doors of the supermarket.  Sure I caught up with him right inside and all the time I had been racing to catch up to him, I kept thinking "What if this were Ray, how would I handle it?  He was so young, so doggone wide eyed and innocent, his eyes as brown and wide as that Irish Setter in there that we both admired."