It was a late spring in a rural northern county, far in my youth. The era of the latch key kid was over but I was on my way home, alone. I was old enough to be responsible enough to know enough to try and be responsible. I guess.
By this stage in my life I had witnessed lung cancer and the slow painful death of my grandfather. I had experienced being the only responsible party present for calling 911 to aid my father during an episode of pulmonary heart failure, 10 years to the day after his quadruple bypass surgery. I had even witnessed my mother test positive for cancer and undergo a successful treatment of said cancer.
Though all of these things were of the utmost importance in my life, they were all for the most part, experiences comprised of the mental awareness of others suffering. I never really saw the physicality of these things because I was a kid and my parents were trying to shade me from the rough edges of life.
I was a pretty spoiled kid and always got a ride home from family up until this time, but we were going through hard times and it took an hour and a half for my dad to drive home from work, let alone pick me up on time. As a result, I rode the bus for a year.
So I get dropped off at my driveway after school. Its late spring, its nice out and I walk the 150 yards to my house. Nobody was home as I expected on this day but as I approach the front porch I find a dog. A BIG dog. a friendly dog though!
I grew up with dogs and thought I knew how to handle them. I actually quite liked dogs despite my childhood dog Ricky dying the year prior and my grandfather making me dig his grave as a life lesson, but I guess thats a side note.
Either way I was actually quite surprised and happy to find the nice stranger on my front step.
I went to the fridge and got a snack for the dog and the cordless house phone to call the owner as I had found his name and number on the pups collar.
We were hanging out and having a pet as I called. He wasn’t there and I got the classic answering machine message where the fella acted as if he was actually responding to a live phone call saying “HELLO? HELLO?” followed by a “just kidding, leave a message”. These types of things weren't uncommon in those days. In fact I remember all kinds of funny answering messages form back in the day.
I left a message. I said “I found your dog, heres my number…” and hung up. It was right as I was hanging up the phone that I heard the search party driving slowly down the road. “BINGO!! BIIIIIINGO!” I heard them shouting as they were just passing my driveway.
“Oh boy! It’s your people!” I said to Bingo as I let go of his collar. He excitedly took off running and headed down the somewhat long dusty dirt driveway to catch up.
By the time Bingo had made it halfway down the drive, the search party had made it well passed our property and were starting to disappear behind the curvature of the road and the pine trees in the distance.
I started after him, thinking the people might have seen him and would turn back. I was on my way as Bingo ran into the street. By now my hope that the search party was going to turn around had started to dim. Cell phones weren't a common thing for people to have at that time and I worried it may be hours before they returned home to hear my message.
As the late afternoon sun glistened through the trees and fields of grass, a very large 4x4 Ford Bronco came careening through my neighborhood and… THUMP, THUMP.
They didn’t miss a beat and just kept on rolling as if nothing had ever happened. Blood sprayed all over the street. I ran for my life up to Bingo’s nearly unidentifiable corpse. There was sooo much blood. I was horrified.
At 14 years old, I was in shock and had no idea what to do. Bingo was clearly dead, but he was a BIG dog. I didn’t want to mess with him so I walked back toward the house. My mind was racing. What do I do? I asked myself.
I decided to go get the phone just as the search party made its way back. I was in the house when I heard inconsolable crying. “What are we going to do?” I heard the distant voices ask with no relief.
“How are we going to tell him!?” I heard another voice ask.
I didn't know what to do. I was terrified. I stayed in the house and just listened. I didn’t tell my parents and my big brother was already off to college so I couldn’t ask him for help. We never received a return phone call from the owner.
At the time I had processed that event as a life and death “human condition” type learning experience. I felt tragic about the often grisly nature of death and thus life and felt I had gone through some sort of change that was akin to becoming an adult.
My edginess stayed edgy for the following years as my father died and I worked as a line cook to survive in the great north woods. I thought my lesson was learned even through the death of my mother when I was 26. It’s been 11 years now since her death as I write this and through other life events I have finally realized the real lesson of Bingos death.
It was never about my tragedy. It was never about me realizing the finite reality of our existence. It was about Bingo. It was about Bingo’s person, and it was about the responsibility I failed to take that fateful day.
