Charlie Dog is Dead

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Charlie Dog is Dead

The Death of God and Charlie Dog

So this is about God and a boy.

My father had a difficult time with his father.

I had a very difficult time with my father.

In those days the truth was obvious; My father was “Not OK” so things went wrong.

I will not try to pretend that my father was OK. When the job promotions brought him to the rank of Director with car, house, all expenses paid, he considered that God was one of his rather stupid and undisciplined workers.

He went through that phase which apparently all directors have gone through, he could not eat any normal food, everything had to be “special”.

Being a director, he considered that he had a pre-emption right on all females. Which Director has not considered that? What is the point of being director if you do not have that right?

But that is not the problem

When you are a young boy, you grow under the protection and in the glow of God.

God can whistle through his finders.

God can hit a tennis ball so fast that you cannot even see it.

God can add 257 plus 4672, and get the result right.

God knows how to carve boats out of the bark of trees. He can even carve a whistle out of a hazel tree branch.

God can swim over the water, under the water and can even swim when you are perching on his shoulders.

God can speak in languages.

God is not afraid of policemen.

God can drive a motorcycle even if he says that it is very bad to drive a motorcycle.

God lets you hold the wheel when you are driving.

God has so much money that you can have a double ice cream even when it is not Sunday.

God can explain why the referee blew the whistle

God shows you how to tramp down an opponent without being caught by the referee.

And then one day everything goes wrong.

God is unfair

God is angry

God punishes you for something He has not done.

Worse that all, God forgets that you are there.

God becomes an ugly spitting roaring monster.

You learn to hide under furs and to hide behind the vegetation to avoid the wrath of God. Especially as you have no idea of why God is angry

And when God is angry, mother cries.

You know as little boy that you are guilty, God would not be angry if you had not been wrong, mother would not cry if you had done been the cause of the broken thing.

One day you become God yourself

A reluctant God

You do not want to be s bad and painful God as the previous one but in your mirror you see that you are the image of your God

You cry

You do not cry aloud, is not allowed to cry

You cry, the tears go down the ducts, enrobing the heart.

Breathing becomes so difficult, so you laugh, it is a way to get air in and out.

You Cry

You say

Hey Charlie, what about making some balls?

He says

Can't you see I am at Speed Box or whatever they call it. So much despise, anger, incomprehension, as when you have uncorked a very famous wine, waited for hours that it gets used to free air, taken a glass, where going to taste it, the phone rings and you wife calls you saying, that it is the contractor.

I call dog, He hesitates, the brewing chicken smells so good, then he comes.

We jump into the car.

It looks such a large car now that Charlie Dog is not with us. It sounds so silent now that Charlie Dog does not ask us such important questions as to why Postmen have yellow bicycles, where has the strong rain of yesterday gone and who filled if before it emptied on our fields.

I step out with Dog who is quite happy. He waits for Charlie Dog to bat a ball as far away as possible to show him that whatever ball he bats, he can run even faster and catch it before the second bounce.

I try to do the same, obviously Dog thinks that something is missing, he must have been right; the ball ends up squeezed between two branches and Dog jumps up and down braking more and more angrily.

One day my father tasted the Hazel and declared that this was the right moment to curve hazel whistles. W>hen He had nearly finished and was testing the tome, I took out of my pocket the Official Replicate of the Grand Game Whistle and blew all I could. All birds got afraid and flew in a great flapping noise and father said that he thought he could see a small defect in the Hazel whistle and that he would finish it later in his workroom.

It is still there in from of me, you are welcome to come and look at it for as long as you can and should you be able to find any defect, you can carry it with you.

Charlie Dog was so curious about all these plants growing along the footpath. For a long time He called all cereals for “grass”. One day I did with him what my father had done with me, I placed a head of barley in his hand with the tip barely touching the hem of his field shirt, the one he carries when He thinks he will have to defend us against fierce Indians, telling him to call me this evening to show where this barley head had managed to climb up.

Charlie Dog wanted to know why potatoes grow into the soil and Corn grows outside the soil? I cannot even remember what answers I gave him? Do potato grown inside the soil so that rabbits and potatoes grow accustomed to one another as they will finish their life in the same pan?

Little Charlie Dog was such a brave fighter. I would have to hold to his bicycle saddle and he would again and again demand that I endure that I was not going to let of, that I would guaranty his safety, even the day when he had been running all by himself for more than fifty yards he continued demanding the reassurance that I was holding to his saddle.

From that day my constant worry was that he would not cross the road in front of one of these mad Mel Gibson like Truck Drivers.

Little Charlie Dog was very suspicious of water. Nothing wrong with water, but each time he went to the water front to fill his sans bucket some treacherous wave that had been in wait for eons of time would jump out of the dark death depths and try and grip his beach shoes. Charlie Dog deeply resented the unfairness of that lurking vicious behaviour and always took me to witness that it was not Charlie Dog that had tainted the shoes.

Charlie dog saw that there was more to sea than being a building material for sand castles, so one day he tried his luck, clinging to my shoulders. He would accompany me so long as I reassured him that the sea was so shallow that he could easily stand upright if he so wanted, and he trusted me in a see two fathoms deep.

One day Charlie dog lightened his grip on my shoulders and shouted to everybody

“See only with one hand”

That hand began making splashing movements, this being so inconvenient the second hand joined in to splash up the sea, Charlie Dog at the dame time demanding reassurance that he was floating in safe water and that he could at any time grip at me.

It all went so fast that I cannot remember anything. The only memory that reminds if the tightness and warmth of his arms around my neck, nowadays he is far out there both on the water, in the water, over the water, seldom alone.

The day is so enjoyable, Charlie Dog must have killed all the Extra terrestrians, I ask him if he wants to come with me on a bike down to the River and then to the lock. He shrugs his shoulder and takes his Trail Bike with which he will join this friends and schuss down the slope, he might even survive.

Poor little Charlie Dog, yesterday he was crying in my lap because anybody could see that you could not subtract 267 from 52. Today, when he is around with his friends he wonders whether we have reached the limits of our capacity with the Gaussian Mathematical Physics.

Charlie Dog used to run up to me, even when he was a sturdy 40 pounds heavy and jump to my head grabbing my grey hairs and shouting in me hears “See what I sound, see what I sound!!!”

He still finds plenty and plenty finds him and my presence is not wished.

Time to take Dog out for his walk

I say Dog as a kind of armour against the tears I know any dog brings to your home when He decides that this is his home. When the day comes, in those times, I had the strength and would do the necessary, at the cost of a bottle of the strongest, which would be buried with him.

Do Dogs also keep a bottle for the Day when it has to be accepted?