Velociworld

RETURN OF THE KING

I have returned from the gulag archipelago, where I was subjected to every form of criminal manual labour save busting rocks and laying crossties. I swear I found myself muttering Swing Low, Sweet Chariot on more than more occasion.

The place was fumigated while I was gone, however, and now smells faintly of wisteria and aloe. Very nice. Very fucking nice.

Here's a question: have you ever found your dog dead? And I don't mean dead. I mean week-old dead? As in, where that boy be? And you finally run across his carcass in the field across the way? With maggots commuting through his eye sockets, and blue-bottle flies swarming around his burst belly?

Yeah, me too. I hate that. I found my old boy like that when I was 12 or so. It was very sad. We dragged him to the pecan orchard on a very long rope, due to the smell, and buried him with full honors, which included me playing Taps for him on my trumpet. Not regulation, I realize, but bugles were scarce.

That dog was crippled from puppyhood due to a car swipe, and extremely poor bone-setting from our alcoholic veterinarian, who later got popped flying one of the Senator's planes back from Mexico with a ton of weed. That another story.

So he was a gimp, but he ran fast. A Special Olympics dog. We called him the Running Corpse, which, believe me, was gratuitous flattery. Always sad to find your pet with the breakdown process already well underway.