By Scott Holleran
The worst part of walking a dog is the scooping. This presumes you’re the type to clean up. Jule was the type. He took trash cans to the curb every Thursday as his dad asked him to do. He finished chores by sundown every weekend. He flagged improper comments on the high school’s social media. Jule did his homework, attended class on time and ritually said “good morning.” Scooping Shadow’s poop was part of Jule’s life.
This changed last winter. Every night at eight o’clock, 16-year-old Jule fastened Shadow’s harness under the fur, slid a can of bear repellant into his coat pocket and adjusted the leash while calling to his parents: “Walking Shadow!” Mrs. Goldstein, salting ice on the walkway across the street, often waved to the gangly teen-ager from her yard. Jule smiled, waving back. “Need help?” He’d ask. The elderly woman shook her head. “I’ve got this. But—thanks!”
Dog and boy walked along Duquesne Avenue at a steady pace until they came to 11th Street, when the sidewalk sloped down a hill. As they strolled, street lighting filtered and flickered through the branches of towering elm trees, which lined the avenue, leading into a dense forest on the other side of a creek. Shadow paused and sniffed every few yards, until Jule gave a tug and they kept walking down the hill. At the bottom, they stopped at the creek, where Duquesne Avenue ends at the narrow, winding Allegheny Lane. Jule liked to pause here. It was dark, so he could listen to water trickle as Shadow picked up any scents in the forest wind. Jule would close his eyes and breathe the night air before turning back to go home.
As Shadow and Jule stepped away from the creek to walk back up the hill, nearing the dark corner house, a rush of cold air swept down the hill. Shadow lingered on a patch of lawn by a small tree in front of the house, refusing to move as Jule tugged at the leash. “C’mon, Shadow,” he said, yanking the leash. Jule froze when he looked up.
A hulking silhouette loomed in the front window. Against the dim backlight, the figure appeared to be a tall, big man. From what Jule could see, the man held an ax, which he kept driving downward. Jule’s mouth fell open. When Shadow started barking, the figure stopped and, turning to face the front window, appeared to grow larger. Drapes quickly enshrouded the rectangular picture window. The house went completely black. Jule stood still as Shadow went into a low growl and they heard the creak of a door. Jule yanked the leash. “Shadow!” He commanded. Then, he dodged up the hill with Shadow trotting along.
Over the next few nights after dinner at eight o’clock, Jule walked Shadow to 11th Street, descending the hill and pausing by the creek at Allegheny Lane. Each night, they stood near the water’s edge opposite the house where, earlier that week, they’d seen a hulking figure strike down with an object and heard the front door start to open. Shadow whimpered, panted and smiled, waiting for something to happen, as Jule stood guard—over what he wasn’t sure—and fixed his stare on the picture window. Nothing happened. Drapes did not open. Neither did the front door.
Until, of course, it did. This happened two weeks after Jule had first seen the menacing figure, which is how he’d come to think of what he had seen. The stranger opened the front door as boy and dog stood at the corner facing the house, their backsides to the creek. Lights in the kitchen backlit the man—Jule determined that the figure was clearly a man that, by Jule’s estimate, stood at least six feet three inches tall—and, in his left hand, an ax.
The stranger stood. So did Jule. The man did not move. Neither did Jule. The standoff ended when Shadow started yelping. Jule slowly walked up the hill.
For weeks, as the season’s snowfall and decorations illuminated the darkness along Allegheny Lane, Jule and the mysterious stranger repeated this nightly showdown, sizing one another up, waiting for something to happen—always with the object or the yapping dog’s leash in hand. Shadow’s bark became more insistent. It seemed to Jule that the man’s grip grew firmer—as if he was becoming more resolved. To do what? Jule did not know.
He found out on December 27th. This is when, as Jule, fixedly watching the dark house, stood by with Shadow’s yelps accelerating in a rhythmic series of three loud barks as the dog went behind the small tree to do his business and the door creaked open. Suddenly, the hulking man burst forth running and screaming with the ax raised high above. Jule froze as the stranger neared Shadow—now in a mad, barking frenzy—with the ax raised above Shadow and Jule., Jule crouched, ducked and turned from the man only to see a grizzly bear behind him in the next instant rising on its hind legs with a roar. The lunging, screaming stranger threw himself into the space between the bear and the boy as Shadow pulled the leash, Jule lost his grip and the dog went after the beast. Startled by the commotion, the bear turned away, loping into the darkness. Shadow stood his corner ground and kept barking. The stranger had landed and rolled into a snowdrift. He got up, turning to see the slender boy shivering in fear.
“You alright?” The man breathlessly asked. Jule nodded. “Good,” the neighbor said. “I thought you were a goner.” Jule thought to himself, though he did not say, that he thought he was a goner, too. They both turned to see what Shadow had expunged—beside a larger pile of dung. Jule chuckled and looked at the man. He sheepishly smiled, pulling a scoop from his coat pocket, and said: “I’ve got this. And–thank you.”
Award-winning author, writer and journalist Scott Holleran lived in Chicago for 21 years and writes the non-fictional Industrial Revolutions column as well as short stories. Read and subscribe to his non-fiction newsletter, Autonomia, at scottholleran.
