Beech Tree News Network

Garey and I have a friend—we’ll call him Joe—who has a fairly tough nature.  He grew up in difficult circumstances, which gave him a rough edge, and because he came out on the other side of those circumstances and made something of himself, he doesn’t suffer fools very well.  He has zero tolerance for two particular groups of people: those who steal and those who won’t work.  Joe has worked construction most of his life and has taken odd jobs along the way, such as working as a bouncer in a bar.  He is one of Garey’s and my best friends, which makes me happy, because I sure wouldn’t want to be on his bad side, which is where this story begins when two ne’er-do-wells found themselves on that particular side of Joe.

At the time, Joe was living in a house that adjoined a piece of property that housed a rental trailer which the land owner leased to renters of questionable reputation.  Several had come and gone without incident when Joe first moved into the area, which is why Joe was a bit taken aback to come home one day and find the latest two tenants fishing in his lake without permission.  He had noticed that they had been cooking over an open fire in the yard by the trailer, so he reasoned that they probably didn’t have electricity and were just catching fish to eat because they were hungry.

A few days later, the two guys knocked on Joe’s door and asked to use his phone.  Joe told them to come on in and before the guys left, he even gave them some packaged meat from his own freezer.  One of Joe’s friends, who had been visiting at the time, watched this scenario take place, and after the guys had gone, he said to Joe, “You do realize that you’re just fattening those guys up to steal from you, don’t you?”  Joe reprimanded his friend for being so suspicious of everybody, and told his friend that not everybody is a thief.

At this point in the story, I need to tell you about the dog.  He was a small black and white Terrier.  One of Joe’s former girlfriends, who obviously never stayed with him long enough to understand his abhorrence for destructive canines, had left the dog when she left Joe.  Joe came home from work one afternoon to find that the arms on his new sofa were no longer a symmetrical pair—one had been chewed to bits by the little dog, which Joe promptly removed to the out-of-doors.  He continued to feed the little fellow, but set upon the task of finding it a new home.

The day after the two new renters had used Joe’s phone, Joe came home from work and decided that he would relax a bit by fishing in his lake.  He went to the storage shed where he kept his fishing gear and discovered that his tackle box and both rods and reels were missing.  He drove over to his neighbor’s house and asked if he was missing anything or if he had seen anybody suspicious hanging around.  The neighbor said he hadn’t noticed anything unusual that day.

Joe decided to pay the two renters a visit.  First, he asked politely if they had seen anyone pilfering around his place.  When they said they hadn’t noticed anything unusual, he gave them a warning that they had better not be involved with the theft.  The two vehemently denied that they’d had anything to do with the missing property.  Joe left, and as he was driving up to his house, he saw his friend out by the lake, fishing with one of the missing rods.  Joe approached his friend, who also happened to own a pawn shop, and told him he didn’t know that he had borrowed his fishing equipment, and now he felt really bad about practically accusing the guys next door of stealing it.  The friend told Joe that the guys had stolen the stuff alright, but when they tried to pawn it, he recognized the equipment as Joe’s and brought it back to him.  Joe’s friend apologized for selling Joe’s two weed eaters, TV and stereo the guys had brought in before they had showed up with the recognizable fishing equipment.  

Joe was livid.  He hadn’t had time to miss those items, and come to think of it, where was his dog?  At this point in the situation, it didn’t matter that Joe didn’t like the dog or that Joe was planning to give the dog away, all that mattered was that someone had stolen the dog.  Joe drove back up to the tenants’ trailer.  There would be no polite knock on the door this time.  Before the unfortunate guy who got to the door first knew what hit him, Joe had him outside on the ground, unleashing upon him a flurry of physical abuse, reminiscent of his days as a bouncer.  “And another thing,” Joe shouted at the man, as he continued to pummel him, “I want my dog back!”

“I don’t have your dog.  We sold it to somebody in Hopkinsville,” the guy pleaded, “We’d have to steal him back.”

“You stole him the first time, didn’t you?  I get home at twelve o’clock tomorrow,” Joe said, “At twelve-0-one, I’m gonna be up here, and he’d sure as hell better be here!”

True to his word, Joe arrived at the trailer at 12:01.  As Joe reached to jerk the front door open, he noticed it had been fitted with a new lock.  A hole just large enough for a small Terrier had been cut in the bottom of the door.  Two trembling hands passed the dog through the opening and out onto the porch.  A voice from behind the door said, “I hope you’re happy.  We had to steal this dog to get him back, and we could be in a lot of trouble.”

“I have even better news for you,” Joe said, “I bought this sorry piece of real estate from your previous landlord this morning, and as of twelve o’clock tomorrow, I’m pouring that five-gallon can of gas I got in my pickup on this sucker and it’s gonna go up in smoke.  So, I advise you to vacate the premises before that time.

When Joe returned home the following day, the renters and all of their belongings were gone.  Late into the evening, Joe and his little terrier admired the large bonfire from their spot on the dock by the lake.  So maybe he wasn’t such a bad dog after all.