A Fight For Jersey

A Fight For Jersey

They met the girl that changed their summer coming home from a concert.  On that hot North Carolina night in a convertible on the highway, David Herb and Vinny DeFazio pulled into a massive gas station that was lit up like an airport.  They had gas but were in need of snacks and beer.  When they returned to Vinny's car they couldn’t believe their eyes.  There was a dog in the backseat.  The dog was sitting up right, ready to go, all but buckled up.  Dave spoke first, “Dude, is that a dog?”  Dave had consumed a bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms earlier in the night.  He was seeing things unseen and was having trouble navigating worlds.  “Uhhh, yeah.  He must have just jumped in,”  Vinny guessed.  Vinny approached the dog cautiously but it was a sweet pup.  Ears back and licking his hand.  “Good doggy.”  Vinny said as he pet their new passenger.”  “Hey!” yelled a woman’s voice from the gas station entrance.  “Is that y’alls dog?”  “No, he just hopped in our car” Dave replied.  It was the lady that rang up the beer and chips.  “That dog has been hanging around for weeks.  We don’t know who the owner is, her tag is blank.”  Vinny looked at the dog’s  tag, she was licking his hand.  “So weird” he said as he saw the tag was blank on both sides.  “If y’all want her you can take her, just give me your number and address in case her owner comes callin’.  

The boys were pumped.  The drive to the mountains was easier now.  They had a furry friend.  She was like a person.  She sat upright, looking out at the mountains and up at the stars.  “How about a name?”  Dave asked, “Molly?”  Molly was a drug that Dave took regularly before concerts, parties and inexplicably at his brother’s wedding in Atlanta, where he gave a best man speech that was more of a Ted Talk on Bigfoot.  

Vinny was driving and thinking.  He came out of thought and said, “Jersey.”  “We saw Bruce Springsteen and she chose our car on this night.  She’s our Jersey girl.”  “That’s it dude!”  Dave yelled.  When they got to the house she jumped out of the car, did a pee and waited on the doorstep to be let in.  She was smart.  After a quick run to the Super Store to get dog supplies the guys found her sitting next to the TV.  She was watching an old boxing match in black and white that was randomly on.  Neither Dave or Vinny remembered leaving the TV on.  Over the coming weeks they learned that Jersey really enjoyed watching boxing and that boxing related programming would come on magically if she was in the room.  Vinny fell asleep once watching a documentary on JFK and woke up to a documentary on Rocky Marciano, Jersey’s eyes were peeled, riveted by the life of the undefeated heavyweight champ.

It was summer term and the boys were having fun.  They were going to class and throwing parties at the house.  It was really a perpetual party with people, kegs of beer and now dogs coming and going.  Now, people in the neighborhood who weren’t students would walk to the front porch to say hello and what’s her name as they pet her and how old is she and she seems so smart.  They would bring their dogs to play in the backyard while they had a beer or a joint with the boys out front.  

Up until this point there was an animosity between the folks in the single family homes in the neighborhood and their student neighbors.  Wild parties, police getting called at all hours.  The older folks remembered their college years and they empathized but there was a lot of God almighty boys we need to get some sleep, some of us work.  But now with the presence of Jersey the two worlds began to meet, the animosity melted away.

Nobody loved this new dynamic more than the Old 45s.  The Old 45s were 3 men in their 40s that lived down the street.  They were all recently divorced friends, friends since high school.  It was rumored the same wild bachelor party in New Orleans torpedoed all three of their marriages.  They liked to have parties Friday thru Sunday but during the week they worked.  Real estate agent, stock broker and drug dealer.  The Old 45s had two Rottweilers named Siegfried and Roy, named so because soon after their arrival the cats and bobcats that roamed the neighborhood disappeared. The two dogs loved to play in the backyard with Jersey, digging and play fighting all day. 

Then, one day when the Old 45s and a couple of older couples were over at the boys house having beers the incident occurred. The incident that would turn friends against each other and would start a fight that became a neighborhood event. Dave had recently purchased a giant bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms, magic mushrooms as he called them. He had gotten them for his upcoming Widespread Panic concert where he estimated one must be under the influence of drugs to have the best of times and to really “hear” the music. Early one morning, Dave went into a panic himself…he couldn’t find the magic mushrooms. He looked all over the house and searched all of the usual hiding space places and he couldn't find them. Then, in his closet he found Jersey trembling in the dark. Next to her an empty plastic bag.  He realized that the poor dog had eaten all of his magic mushrooms.  Vinny walked into Dave’s room.  It was all black lights and lava lamps.  “Where’s Jersey?”  “Dude…she ate all my mushrooms and she’s tripping out in my closet” Dave told him.  Vinny opened the door to Dave’s closet.  There was a German Shepherd acting like she had WW1 PTSD.  Vinny snapped.  He threw Dave up against the wall and said, “I should kill you!  I’m gonna have to take her to the vet.” “First of all,” Dave said, she isn’t your dog she’s OUR dog.  Vinny unhanded him.  “Second of all I didn’t leave them out they were in a shoe box in my closet, she got into them, I didn’t feed your dog mushrooms.”  “Whatever” Vinny said, “ I’m gonna take her to the vet and if she dies I’m going to kill you.” Vinny picked up Jersey got her leash and carried her out to his car.  He drove her to the emergency veterinary clinic. After a 20 minute wait the vet saw Jersey. Vinny was honest with the vet, he felt like he had to be. The vet said he had seen situations like this before, it was a college town after all.  He said to make sure she keeps hydrated and he gave Vinny some medicine. Vinny was relieved that Jersey would be fine, but on the way home his anger grew at Dave.  “It might be time to break out the gloves,” Vinny thought. The gloves were boxing gloves, two pair that were given to him by his grandfather for a high school graduation present.   His grandpa told him, “Sometimes a good scrap is needed to clear the air.”  After putting Jersey down on the couch he walked to Dave’s room where the air was filled with smoke. Dave was smoking a joint the size of a burrito. He was staring at a poster of a giant mushroom with the black lights on. Vinny let him know the score.  “There’s going to be a boxing match tomorrow night and it’s gonna be in the backyard and it’s gonna be between you and me.  I’ve got the boxing gloves and we’ll make an event out of it, we’ll make it into a party but there's no way I'm not gonna punch you in the face for what you did to my dog.  The winner of the fight gets full custody of Jersey.  Dave began to laugh hysterically.  “Vinny, first of all again I’m sorry about the dog, second of all I’m gonna kick your ass and OUR dog will be mine.”  

The fight was on, word spread throughout the neighborhood that there would be a full on boxing match in the backyard where the neighborhood dogs played and the fight would be for sole ownership of the German Shepherd everyone loves.

The morning of the big fight Jersey stopped shaking.  Dave and Vinny worked all day to get kegs of beer, to  let people know about their boxing party and create a makeshift ring.  No one would be able to tell that these guys would be fighting later that night.  Ironically, they were very professional that day before fight night.  As people began to arrive at their house and file into the backyard, two of The Old 45s took it upon themselves to act as corner men.  One said the key was hits to the body.  The other simply said, “Hit him in the face as often as you can.  While doing that, try not to get hit in the face.”  “OK, I’ll try,” Dave said.  He grew increasingly nervous as fight time approached.  9pm.  He smoked more weed and ate a hit of acid his new trainer sold him.

At 9pm a tractor trailer pulled up behind the line of parked cars leading to the house.  A man emerged that looked like a comic book villain.  He was bald and mustachioed and a giant.  6’6” at least.  He had a smirk on his face that turned to a smile when through some fence behind a home he saw what looked to be boxing ring ropes.  “That’s it.  She’s here.”  He said to himself.  People gathered on the front porch saw him coming and parted to let the giant through.  “Hello, I’m here for my dog,” he announced in an accent possibly Scottish.

The boys were in the ring sitting on office chairs dragged out from the house.  The first round was over, with no clear hits landing.  Vinny was too drunk and Dave too high to put a fight strategy to work.  One of the Old 45s said whispering to Vinny, “What the Hell is that?”  Vinny looked to his left towards the back door to see what that was but instead saw a who.  The giant spoke, “I hear you boys are fighting over my dog.”  Vinny, out of breath, struggled to reply.  “Jersey?  We found her at a gas station.”  “I know,” said the giant.  “I’m Gerard, I lost her there 5 weeks ago.  Lady at the station said you boys had her.  I thank you for looking after her, makes perfect sense you guys are fighting, she loves the fights.”  Vinny and Dave felt deflated.  It looked like neither of them would win the Jersey prize.  “I’ll tell you what…you boys like boxing?  Know anything about boxing history?”  The boys shook their heads, still out of breath from round one.  Gerard climbed in the ring, everyone was quiet.  “Here it is…” He announced as he took off his shirt.  He was covered in tattoos.  All of them of boxers.  Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali to Ricky Hatton and Oscar De La Hoya and many fighters the boys didn’t know.  One fighter was seated on a throne wearing a crown on the right shoulder blade.  “Who’s the king on your back?” Dave asked.  Gerard smiled, “That’s my dog’s favorite fighter and namesake Jack Dempsey.”  “Her name is Jack?” Dave asked.  Gerard shot him a look that could stop a watch.  “No, her name is Dempsey and she’s listened to all of his fights on old radio broadcasts.”  Vinny felt confused and sick.  Jersey was actually Dempsey and she belonged to this crazy dude.  “Sir, we love that dog.  Is there any way…”  Vinny trailed off,  too exhausted to plead a case for keeping Jersey.  Gerard the giant thought a minute.  He paced, looking at the ground like he was searching for something dropped.  “How about this lads, you fight one more round and give it your all and you can watch after Dempsey when work takes me out west.  I’d be gone for weeks at a time and I’d feel good if she was here with ye both.”  Dave and Vinny silently agreed and the crowd of neighbors and students began to applaud, whistle and yell.  Gerard exited the ring and a boxing bell found at a garage sale rang out for the 2nd round.  These friends, roommates, fighters began to throw punches wildly.  Punches with no direction and no strategy flew. Gerald made faces like he was witnessing a brutally violent fight but it wasn’t.  It was simply the worst round of boxing he’d ever seen. "It's hard to box with your eyes closed," thought Gerald.  The last 30 seconds both boys took a knee, exhausted and defeated by the sport itself.  Gerald laughed outloud.  “Lads, you showed heart in there.  Dempsey can stay with ye.”  The crowd erupted, Dempsey barked and wagged her tail.  Like a referee Gerald grabbed each of the boys arms and raised them both in victory.  Dave, now in a state of maximum hallucinations saw a tattoo on Gerald’s side begin to move.  It was Muhammad Ali pointing down at Sonny Liston.  Ali looked at Dave and pointed below Liston where he lay on the canvas.  Below the stars around Liston’s head were the stars in a sky beneath him.  There, were two guys in a convertible with a dog in the back, driving towards cooler mountains on a hot summer night.