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Case of the Boneyard Dog
Our "Take Your Pick-Axe" Contest Winner
Option A
by
Carl Palmer
The case started with a complaint of a growling dog out at Saint Matthew’s Cemetery on Old Mill Road. It seems this hound was protecting a bone, later identified as a human thumb bone…not a major issue out in the sticks, but then we received a call the very next day that the dog had returned, this time with a shoe containing a human foot.
This was now big news in Ridgeway, but then on day three..... yes, the dog was back.
This time with a knee. That evening I got the letter from Barbara Kay. She’d warned us back in 1982 that her old man would roll back home one of these days…that we should’ve taken stronger action when he was suspended from the school district for going too far with a student’s punishment, a British term for spanking that he’d called a pattywhack.
She had gone as far as to show us his collection of weird mementos and sick souvenirs, his knick-knacks, out on the shelf in his utility room, but he’d left town and the boy’s parents hadn’t pressed charges.
It was obvious in Kay’s letter that he was back, that he’d gotten his revenge on his kindergarten student.
Her Letter read:
This Old Man. He Played One.
He Played Knick-Knack on my Thumb
With a Knick-Knack Paddywhack,
Give a Dog a bone.
This Old Man Came Rolling Home.
TO COMMENT ON THIS STORY CLICK HERE© Palmer, 2006
Carl Palmer, a stay-at-home Papa, retired and loving it, (who wouldn't) lives without an alarm clock or cell phone in his bedroom community of University Place. He is a member of The Puget Sound Poetry Connection, Tacoma Writers Group, Writers Round Table and Striped Waters of Auburn. Carl has recently published "Telling Stories," featuring poetry and flash fictions performed at open mic events around the Puget Sound Region of the
Pacific Northwest in Washington State.