The Wrong Side of the Fence
Recently, my nephew and I were discussing the attributes that hold a sane society together , attributes that have formed over centuries of trial and error. Attributes like honesty, sacrifice, character, values, bravery, courage, etc. We wondered if any were inherent. Or are they instilled after birth onto this earth? I then remembered a short story I wrote a number of years ago. Is sacrifice instinctive?
The day, with high-riding clouds etched against a cobalt blue sky, was so beautiful, it was inconceivable that me or my friend might not be alive at the end of it.
We lay in the grass watching a ball about 3/4" in diameter and perfectly round. I didn't believe her when Sandy first told me about them, but there it was.
“They're called dung bugs.”
“Get out of here!”
“No, they really are.”
“Why?”
“I told you. That ball it's pushing is cow dung.”
As we watched, a large beetle pushed this ball along with hasty determination.
His human-like peculiarities astounded me. When it came to an obstacle, by trial and error, he always figured out a way to overcome it.
Once, the ball came to a halt in tall grass and wouldn't budge. Out of nowhere, another beetle appeared. He positioned himself on the opposite side of the ball. He jumped up, grabbed hold and pulled backwards while the first beetle pushed. Whala! The ball moved on.
“Where are they going with it?” I questioned.
“I don't know.”
“What do you think they'll do with it?”
“I don't know.”
“I thought you knew all about these bugs.”
“Not all!”
They obviously had a very serious purpose. We watched for over an hour, but we never discovered their destination.
Finally Sandy said, “My mother says they're just like human beings — in a big hurry to carry a bunch of shit nowhere!” I laughed and grabbed the tennis ball out of her hand and threw it against the garage. Sandy jumped up and ran for it. It fast became a contest, as did everything between us. We were tomboys and the best of friends.
She grabbed for it and missed. I tripped and slid in the dirt, but came up with tennis ball in hand. This time I threw it harder, using all the force I could command. It slammed against the clapboard siding and went zooming over our heads into the next yard.
We watched it sail over the fence. We stood for just a minute, then simultaneously and hesitantly eyeballed each other. That was all the challenge it took.
Laughing, the race was on — who could get there first, whose toes could withstand the pain of the chain link fence, who could brave the danger of the barbs sticking above the top rail — I was winning.
I reached the fence first. Climbing was slow going. I had to work to keep from putting my full weight on my toes. I carefully placed my hands between the barbs, then dropped to the other side.
Head down and running all out, I was almost to the ball. But something got there first — and it wasn’t Sandy!
I heard a noise that went beyond anything I had ever heard before. It exploded in my ears and brought me up short. I stopped so quickly I crashed to the ground and slid across the grass, inches from the tennis ball. As I looked up, the furor of play choked in my throat.
There bearing down on me like a locomotive were the deep snapping cavern and green teeth of a charging bulldog. He had raging yellow eyes and a greenish slime that splayed from his mouth in every direction. He wasn’t sizing up his prey, circling, planning. He was a full-on destruction machine of everything in his path to get to me.
At 11 years old, I knew real terror for the first time in my life, and to a degree I have not felt since.
A mind beyond mine — some oversoul that invades us and makes us act at crucial moments — jerked me to my feet and put power in my legs beyond their capacity.
As I ran for the fence, it seemed to telescope away from me. I would never reach it. But then, of a sudden, it was closer. What had been miles was now only yards away as I passed my friend.
“Hurry Sandy, run!”
Yards became feet. There were no painful toes this time, for they never touched the fence. I had the top railing in my hand as I leaped. I was going to make it!
Then, as I flew through the air, I heard a scream that was recognizable by some link to a ancient past of predator and prey and caused spontaneous vomit to spew from my mouth. The vicious sounds of the dog that accompanied my friend’s scream would bury themselves in my most visceral memory. I was going to make it, but my friend was not!
Hanging suspended in space for just a moment, I saw safety slip away as I dropped to the ground — on the wrong side of the fence. I whirled blindly, grabbing a large stick, and rushed past my friend.
I began swinging with all my strength. My efforts were as aimless and frenzied as the dogs attacks.
“Ahhhhg!”
I yelled and blubbered with every pass of my club. The dog caught it in his mouth and literally splintered it. As he swung his head, pulling it out of my hands, yellow foam splattered my face and chest. He jerked the stick from my hands with such fury it knocked me to the ground.
The adrenaline that had given me super-human determination exhausted itself, and the impact of my fear physically stunned me. Like an animal, inescapably trapped by its predator, I went limp in a semi faint.
Gray began to turn to black, when out of that deep well of ebbing consciousness, I heard a noise. It was one short word repeated over and over, but it was enough to bring me back, and the world snapped into focus.
“RUN! RUN! RUN!”
Not caring who yelled my salvation, I tore across the yard and over the fence. As I lay on the ground heaving, I watched an old woman battling her pet with a broom handle. One arm was in a sling. The side of her face was heavily bandaged, as was the calf of one leg. When she, herself, reached safety, she looked at me. With grief that verged on torment, she said, “He's rabid. The police are coming to kill him today.”