Sugar Mule Literary Magazine, ed. M. L. Weber - ezine with poetry, fiction and essays

Dog Lying in the Snow

I met Saurr at Spiders in Hull. Two Pink Pugsleys later, we were inseparable. I scrawled my number on his hand with chap-stick.

Months later, standing close behind me in the kitchen of his Brooklyn Street student house, scrambling eggs, Saurr tried to impress me, failed to make his point. I didn’t know to blame myself.

***

We went to the Gardener’s Arms on Cottingham Road. I remember little of the conversation. Fag in hand, a friend of Saurr’s planted himself next to me and did most of the talking. He made some comment about me wearing one of Saurr’s tee-shirts and little else.

The pints racked up, cluttering the table top like the terracotta chimneys on every rooftop outside. Saurr took a puff of his mate’s cigarette. The tip glowed, the colour of his hair. Then he suggested going on to the Student Union bar, making a night of it.

A thin covering of my namesake made the city beautiful.

The Union bar was rammed. A guy resembling a paintbrush touched me up while I bought drinks with fowl names. When I got back to our table I pointed him out. Saurr said he was on his course, said he had him marked, said he wanted another Speckled Hen.

We walked back through the car park. Saurr howled when he found paintbrush’s MG. I was shivering, wished I had worn my own clothes, a coat. Saurr unzipped his flies, fed his dick through and aimed into the keyhole on the car door. The piss steamed, burned the shape of a yellow dog into the snow.

Saurr skid-ran back to Beverley Road, made himself an angel. Illuminated by Lucozade streetlight, snowflakes fell, each one different from the last.

The Thirsty Dog

Kath looked up when she heard the yapping.

She said, ‘Should have known it was you,’ and bent the corner of the page she was on in case Murray went on like last time and she forgot her place again.

‘My bark’s worse than my bite,’ he laughed.

Kath resumed reading.

Murray fished a handful of change from his trouser pocket and started counting. The coins clinked on his out-held hand each time his dogs strained their leashes and he had to start over.

‘You’ve chosen a good spot for it; turning out a blinder.’ His dogs were tying his legs, chasing tails. ‘What’s that saying?’

‘“Mad dogs and Englishmen?”’

‘“Red sky at night”; last night’s sunset was –’

‘“A blinder?”’

‘It was a corker.’ Murray smiled, but Kath wasn’t looking, so he said, ‘Mind if I pull up a pew?’

‘It’s a free country.’

Murray looped the leashes under a chair leg and went inside the café bar.

The dogs looked pitifully at Kath. Letting her specs slide, all the better for distance, she peered over them, asked,

‘He been teaching you new tricks, eh? Where’s your mummy, eh, where’s she?’

Tongue lolling, the younger dog wagged the dust up from the pavement and the grey one set to scratching behind its ear, knocking the chair.

When he returned from the bar, Murray was holding a number two on a stick, a water bowl and a plain muffin. The younger dog, giddy with anticipation, lunged and almost pulled the chair over.

‘Easy, Virginia,’ Murray said. He wedged the stick between his knees. The dogs lapped the bowl dry before Murray had broken the muffin in two.

Kath put her book on her knee.

‘I think this one’s got fleas.’ She reached down to show where.

The grey dog snarled.

Murray dropped the muffin.

Steady, Vanessa. It’s alright.’ He scratched the dog’s chin.

Kath moved her chair back.

Scratching himself now, Murray said, ‘She wouldn’t hurt a flea. She’s just jealous.’

‘She needn’t have worried.’

‘Since their mum passed….’ He shuffled his feet.

The dogs licked the pavement.

Kath tilted her cup, scratched her arm, stood.

Murray asked, ‘Donne?’

Kath showed him the dregs.

Murray smiled, shrugged. ‘Be seeing you.’

‘I don’t get this way much.’

Murray nodded, watched Kath shrinking down Karangahape Road. He moved his feet off her book, opened the dog-eared page and grinned.

Author's statement:

"Dog Lying in the Snow", takes its title from the painting by Franz Marc, a work that was part of a 2010 exhibition of European Masters at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Although living in New Zealand at that time, I didn't see the exhibition, but I saw this short critique of Marc's painting, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22UO4foLJ44, which stirred memories from my student days in Yorkshire, England, when my time was split between poring over the Masters, Marc's work among them, and travelling to see friends.
My memories provided the emotion, props and setting for my re-take on the painting's subject, which I populated with characters drawn from my interest in the Scandinavian myths of The Dog King.
My "Dog Lying in the Snow" is one of a series of short stories I have written as an exercise in reimagining works of art. I like the framework (pun intended) art provides as well as the limitations.
Marc limited his colour palette to two primary colours, yellow and blue, and their hues. I chose red and yellow, therefore, where I describe colour, I include pinks and oranges, and of course the yellow of the dog.
Every element of Marc's painting is crucial to its composition; the image has what it needs and no more. Likewise, there's no superfluous detail in my fiction. Once I had the outline of the story in place, I researched to ensure the objects I describe are not only historically accurate to the period and location I've created, but that they work together with the location and characters, stacking together like chimneys, like glasses, like snow, like brush strokes, to build a relevant and structurally interesting whole. For example, "Speckled Hen" is a brand of ale, named after an MG car, and it's made by a Morland Brewery, whose brand include "Old Masters" in a nod to George Morland (an Old Master painter), and whose advertisements feature a fox (wild dog). I could go on an explain every choice I've made, however, in short, everything I've depicted in my story is there for a reason, right down to the hair of the dog.

The Thirsty Dog is the name of a café bar on Auckland's Karangahape Road. The road, better known locally as K Rd, was once part of a thriving red light district, and frequenters of Poetry Live evenings, held at The Thirsty Dog, may still on occasion witness the odd nighthawk. Inspired by the social milieu, I wanted to write a story re-enactment of John Donne's poem 'The Flea'.
I think Donne, like most of the poets of his time, understood the necessity for puns and word play and their value in a society where to criticise those of a higher social standing than yourself could cost you dearly. Double meanings are at the very heart of the English language. They enable you to court without losing face, to insult without repercussion. In short, language represents a freedom to move between social classes, a freedom otherwise not afforded to those of low social standing.
I named my characters after Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murray, the dogs after Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Mansfield's short stories have been a great influence on me, since before I moved to New Zealand, and I remembered reading a quote from Woolf in which she said Mansfield's were the only stories she had ever been jealous of. I thought the playfulness of my name choice, the irreverence and audacity of it, quite fitting.