Mr. Komiticki, Please!

           My wife and I lived in cities, our entire, young, adult lives. Kay was a ballet trained, modern dancer and I was a musician. In pursuit of our passions, cities were where we needed to be. Once we began living together, we continued to share basement apartments, lofts in bad neighborhoods, and tiny, student, like rentals.            When the time came to start a family, we borrowed money and bought our own small house, downtown. Soon, we had two, young boys and a third child on the way. Around that time my wife said, ‘I think we should get a place in the country, with a big driveway, and a yard for the kids to play, and a big garage where you can have your workshop and music studio?’  ‘Ok I said, I’m ready.’ I’d seen the writing on the wall; stardom was not in the cards for me.  So we found a big, old, fixer upper, one hour from the city, and went to work on it, turning our dream, into a reality.

           We moved, in the early springtime and loved our new house. Our yard was bigger than the parks we used to take our kids to. There were no fences, sidewalks or pedestrian traffic of any kind, only lush, high cedars for privacy. We had no neighbor behind us, and the ones on either side of us were tucked neatly, behind old, giant, pine and maple trees. Across the two-lane highway, there was one mysterious neighbor. His name was Mr. Komiticki. 

           We loved our neighbors to the west of us, they were a young family with four daughters, similar ages to our own. The parents, Jason and Katie had lived there many years; He had grown up in the house. Jason and I would meet in the evenings and drink beer and smoke cigarettes and try to find things in common, to talk about. Cool nights were best, because we could have a fire, right there in our own yard, something we could never do in the City.

           Near the end of that summer, as my wife entered her third trimester, she told me Mr. Komiticki’s dog was driving her insane, with it’s constant barking and crying. 

  ‘I haven’t heard it.’ I said.

  ‘You’re kidding, right? It never stops, I swear, I can’t take it!’

  ‘Maybe your just over-sensitive with the pregnancy?

  ‘Like my hearing has improved, are my ears getting fatter too?

  ‘I’m just saying, maybe you’re starting to get a little short on patience? You know with the stress and the fatigue?’

  ‘Its been there since we moved in, I can’t believe you don’t hear it, it’s because your deaf from your bloody music.’

  ‘Well that is true, but I haven’t been bothered by any dog. In fact, I love the peace and tranquility out here.’

           On that note, I grabbed my acoustic guitar. I went outside to the porch, tuned her up and fell into some gentle picking.  I was in the zone, but not more than ten minutes later, Mr. Komiticki’s dog started barking, this real low, gravelly, mean sounding bark. I couldn’t believe I had never heard it, until now.  It was awful, and loud. I went inside, to make it disappear?  No! Still there, through centuries old, double-brick construction, and every bit as violent and gruff as it had been outside. It must have had pneumonia or something, god it was painful to listen to. I was losing it. 

  ‘Well I sure can hear that damn dog now, thanks.’

  ‘Like it’s my fault?’

  ‘This is exactly why we left the city, the noise, the constant buzz of people, cars, sirens, planes, trains, and music. And now, I got some damn dog hacking and wheezing like he’s fixing to kill something or someone.’

  ‘Jesus, relax!’

  ‘This is not something I can ignore, it sounds distressed?’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t said anything.’

  ‘I’ll go over and say hello and ask him if he can turn his dog down a little?’

  ‘Funny?  Katie warned me about him, said he’s a real asshole, and dangerous.’

  ‘Dangerous, What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Walks around with a shotgun sometimes, they’ve heard shots fired.’

  ‘I’ll go talk to Jason tonight, I’m sure Katie is exaggerating?’

  ‘Don’t you find it a little odd, he or his wife hasn’t come over to welcome us?’

  ‘Yes, Yes I do, speaking of wives, Jason told me Mr. Komiticki ordered her from The Ukraine, or Russia?

  ‘Are you serious?

  ‘Yes I am, and she never leaves the property, same as the kids.’

            I tried to be reasonable and see if I could ignore it, but a couple days later, I’d heard all I could stand, I had to do something about that damn dog, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I suggested Kay bake one of her homemade, cherry pies, which I could bring over on the weekend to ease into a friendly discussion about his dog.  Friday evening I caught up with Jason working on some recreational vehicles in his garage.

  ‘Hey neighbor’ I said, with a handful of tallboys.

  ‘Hey Bud, how’s the country life treating you?’

  ‘All good, just one little thing, kind of bothering the wife and I?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Mr. Komiticki’s dog.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Maybe you don’t hear it from your house?  But it’s driving us crazy, it never shuts up, barking and crying from sunup until sun down.’

  ‘Oh we hear it! But there’s nothing that can be done.’

  ‘Well I’m going to have a chat with him.’

  ‘You best just leave it alone, stay away from him, he’s a nut job.’

   ‘Come on, he can’t be that bad?’

   ‘Listen to me! He is a crazy bastard, a drunk, and he has a violent past, he can’t be trusted, or reasoned with.’

  ‘I’ll call the Bylaw Enforcement or the Humane Society, if necessary?’

  ‘You see all those broke down cars and trucks and tractors over there on his front lawn, they’ve been there for years, the Bylaw Officer came by and gave him a ticket and a notice to remove them, he lit the fucking thing up in his face and told him to get off his property.’

  ‘He can’t do that!’ I said, laughing.

  ‘He can and he did. You see that shitty-ass addition?  He put that on without a permit, used his own wood, milled from trees he cleared on his property, no heat-treatment, and no kiln dry. The inspector came by when he was working on it, handed him the Stop-Work Order, and Mr. Komiticki went into his garage and came out with a shotgun. No word of a lie. He went back to work with the guy filming him from his phone, after he high-tailed it back to his car.’

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding? They never came back? No police?’

  ‘Never. Not that I seen anyways, and he finished that shitty-ass addition, exactly as he planned. I know its backwards, but things are different out here, he grew up in that house, after his father died, he got the property, he has two brothers and they’re just as crazy, their father was a rich man, nobody knew exactly how rich, but word is, they are all multi-millionaires.

  ‘See how he treats that dog and leaves it chained up, in all weather?’

  ‘He leaves it out, all winter too. Doesn’t care buddy.’

  ‘Kay baked him a pie, I’m going over tomorrow morning, to have a word with him.’

  ‘Let me know how that goes!’  Jason said while laughing hysterically and cracking a fresh Tallboy.’

           As I tucked the boys into bed, the sun was just going down, and even after a few beers the barking seemed louder than usual. I started to feel the way I did in the city, helpless. Expectations were conspiring against me. I had assumed, out here in the country, things would be different, people would be kinder and folks would trust each other and thereby respect one another, more. But, I was wrong.

  ‘Wow! That smells delicious, did you want to bring it over with me tomorrow?’ I said.

  ‘Why don’t you take the boys with you, Mr. Komiticki will probably be as sweet as my cherry pie?’

  ‘Now Honey! Nothings as sweet as your cherry pie.’

  ‘Turn off the T.V and come on up to bed, my back is killing me.’

  ‘You need a little rub?’

  ‘I sure do!’

  ‘Excellent that makes two of us!’

           While massaging my wife, I found myself peering out our window, and carefully surveying Mr. Komiticki’s property in the evening’s dim light, what a mess? His house was a run-down remnant of a cute, brick bungalow, ruined by neglect and cheap alterations. Fifty feet away stood a giant, warehouse structure clad in different colored aluminum siding, the roof was rusted and peeling back at the seams. The front lawn was more weeds and gravel than grass, covered in a cluster-fuck of sordid, broke-down vehicles. 

           The funniest thing of all was the roughly, welded, steel sign sprouting up through the wreckage. The letters in stenciled, black spray paint read, ‘John’s Auto Service’. There was no number. The longer I looked, the less I wanted to go there, ever. The place should have been condemned. After Kay fell asleep, I layed awake thinking about my pending confrontation, while the dog whined, as if mortally wounded. It was a long, moaning wail, sad. I had loved dogs all my life, but this one was driving me insane.

           I woke up early Saturday, in my sleep; I had built up courage to speak to Mr. Komiticki.

  ‘Morning honey! Whispered Kay.

  ‘Good morning, how is your back?’

  ‘Much better, thank you, I was having a great sleep until the dog woke me, before seven, on a weekend?’

  ‘Well I am going over, right after breakfast.’

  ‘And the boys too?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea, best if it’s just me, man to man.’

           I finished my coffee and grabbed the pie, and left feeling good about resolving this little problem. The day was calm and the sun was shining bright. As I reached the end of Mr. Komiticki’s driveway, the dog bolted out of its plywood doghouse and started charging me, like a hungry lion, hunting its prey. I stopped dead in my tracks, without time to reverse course, before it lunged at my throat, choking itself on its thick, steel chain, it went flying backwards a couple of feet. I was paralyzed, by fear. It could have killed me? it was only inches away. I stood frozen, and wiped its spit off my face.

  ‘What the hells going on here?’ screamed Mr. Komiticki.

  ‘Mr. Komiticki, Please! I need to talk to you.’ I said, trying to catch my breath.

  ‘We got nothing to talk about.’

  ‘Mr. Komitcki, Please! Calm your dog down! I have something for you.’

  ‘Whatever you got? I don’t want!’

  ‘Mr. Komiticki, Please! I just want to introduce myself and have a quick word about your dog.’

  ‘My dog ain’t none of your concern!’

  ‘My wife and I are tired of hearing your damn dog barking and crying every day and night, we will have to call the town By-Law Enforcement and Humane Society if you won’t do something about it.’

  ‘Call whoever you want, mister!’

  ‘Mr. Komiticki, Please! Reconsider? My wife has gone to all this trouble to bake you a pie, I can assure you, it’s the best! As you can see, I am a man who likes eating pie.’

           Mr. Komiticki walked slowly towards me and reached out his hand to take the pie. He was younger than I had expected, and I could see a hard life, trapped in those cold eyes, and I could smell rum on his breath. The dog settled down a little.

  ‘Now understand this’, he said, ‘ I don’t much care for strangers and I got no reason to be doing what you want me to. I will treat my dog anyways I see fit.’

  Mr. Komiticki, Please! You will leave me no choice; I will have to make a formal complaint about your treatment concerning this dog. It is cruel and irresponsible!

  ‘Irre what? You city folks are all the same, think you come on out to the country and change things for us people, who was raised here. You don’t know nothing about nothing out here. You’ll stay a year or two and then take your little, pretty family back to the city, and I’ll be right here, where I was born and where I‘ll die.’

  ‘Mr. Komiticki, Please?’ Tears were welling up, in his bloodshot eyes.

  ‘You want to tell me about cruelty? You don’t have no idea, what cruelty is? 

           By now, I was fed up and done trying to reason, Kay was standing on the porch in a beautiful, Paisley, print Maternity dress with my two boys tight beside her, they waved and I smiled at them. I said ‘good-bye’, to Mr. Komiticki. As I was about to walk away, he ripped the pie from the plate and threw it to the dog, which attacked it, like he might have, my throat?

  ‘Hey neighbor, take this with you!’ he laughed.

           He threw the empty, pie plate at me, but I just kept walking. As I crossed the two-lane highway and started up my own drive, my wife came running down, from the porch, crying! NO! NO!

Then I heard the shotgun blast.