The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1961, Page 40

38
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Summer 1961
The Old Man's Story
“Ugly! I’ll say he was ugly,” the old
man said as he tipped his chair back
against the weather-beaten side of the
store.
We had just stopped off for a drink
and were standing in the shade of the
store when his words caught our at-
tention. Thin, weather worn to a
deep brown, with a deep voice broken
by age, he made an intriguing picture.
We moved closer as he continued,
“The first time I saw him was on a
cold, wet day one spring. He was a
sorry sight, soaked to the skin, his
hair plastered wth mud, and trembling
with cold. There he was,” the old man
said, pointing down the road, “stand-
ing all alone at the side of the road.
He was one of the most sad sights I
ever seen.”
He looked up at the crowd of
loungers and asked, “What could I
do? I just couldn’t leave him. So I
picked him up and tucked him inside
my jacket.” He laughed silently at the
recollection. “My wife gave me ‘what
for’ for that,” but you could tell that
it had not bothered him any.
“Well sir,” he said drawing on his
stubby pipe, “well sir, you should have
seen the commotion when I brought
him into the house. My wife sure
scolded me, but I noticed she put some
milk on to heat.”
“He wasn’t much to look at, let me
tell you. Fact is, as I told you, he was
as ugly as they come. It wasn’t until
some time later on that we figured out
that he was part wolf and part dog.
But ugly as he was you couldn’t deny
that he was cute. And the way he act-
ed! tie lapped up his milk, then just
like he belonged, walked to the corner
of the stove,—we had a wood stove
then,—and lay down between it and
the woodlbox and went to sleep.”
The old man stopped to scratch a
match on the bottom of his chair and
relight his pipe. After puffing the
tobacco to a red glow he continued.
“Now, where was I? Oh yeah! Well,
we decided that come morning we’d
get rid of that animal. Come mornin’
though it was still rainin’ and no mat-
ter how hard the missus’ tongue, her
heart is in the right place.. When I
went to put him out she said that you
couldn’t put nothin’ out in that rain.
So I shrugged my shoulders, put the
dog back behind the stove, and kept
from smilin’ as best I could when I
turned around. When Timmy got up,
—he was four and a half then,—any
plans the ‘old lady’ had went out the
window. You know somethin’,” he
said, chuckling deep in his throat, “I
don’t think she really minded.”
“Those two! That kid and that dog,
if you can call him that? You never
saw anythin’ like it. Take to each
other! You’d a thought they were
brothers.”
The old man paused. Everyone wait-
ed while he shifted to a more comfort-
able position on the wooden drink
case.
“I’ll tell you what I mean. One day
Spook, that’s what we called him ’cause
of the way he moved around, chewed
up a pair of slippers. The ‘old lady’,
she said he had to go. There wasn’t
any changin’ her mind either. Timmy
was five now and the two of them were
inseparable. I went out to the yard
and took Spook by the scruff of the
neck and dragged him along with me.
Timmy stood in the doorway with
tears in his eyes, and I swear there