Dog Tales

by Jack Dann

  The ASPCA auxiliaries were supposed to have been men interested in seeing that dogs were taken into custody, and later treated, in a humane manner. Care had been taken to weed out volunteers whose motivation was to assist the city in ridding itself of dogs as quickly as possible. The auxiliary program failed utterly. As many as a third of the recruits were DIM supporters who had successfully masked their true sentiments. Dozens of auxiliaries abused and actually killed animals in their charge. Others were dog lovers who had planned from the start to sabotage the operation, and still more, essentially honest men, were horrified by the slaughter they saw and began releasing confiscated animals. Hundreds of dogs were set free on the streets, and they provided both factions with additional objects of contention.

  Two false reports of catastrophic consequence were broadcast on most of the city’s radio stations between 8:00 P.M. and 9:00 P.M. Announcers stressed that the information was unsubstantiated, but most New Yorkers, already inflamed and their critical faculties at a low, accepted them as fact. The first claimed that members of DOG had captured four policemen, lined them up against a wall and executed them. The second alleged that the Police Department, in retaliation, was moving its cars up and down the streets killing dogs and their owners with submachine gun and shotgun fire. There was no truth whatsoever to either report, but New Yorkers were spurred by them to actions that rocked the sensibilities of the nation.

  On East 34th Street, John Hanck and his wife placed their collie in their car intending to drive the animal out of the city to safety. Hanck became hysterical when a large group of club-waving anti-dog people barred the intersection of 34th Street and 1st Avenue. He punched the accelerator to the floor and ran down three persons, one of whom was fatally injured. Police Sergeant Dennis Toombs killed Hanck with a single shot from his service revolver, and the car careened into a lamppost. The mob tore its doors open, stabbed the collie to death, and beat Mrs. Hanck severely before Sergeant Toombs could rescue her.

  An unidentified woman who boarded the IND F train to Queens with her cocker spaniel was accosted by Transit patrolman George Halina, who, according to witnesses, gently informed her that it was against the law to bring dogs onto public transportation vehicles. The woman sank a bread knife into Halina’s heart. Although her dog was killed by incensed passengers, the woman escaped in the confusion.

  Isman Silverberg, a tavern supplier from the Bronx, parked his delivery truck on Amsterdam Avenue near 96th Street and left his Doberman Pinscher on guard in the vehicle while he wheeled cartons of potato chips into the Red Hook Bar & Grill. Hearing gunshots, Silverberg ran outside and found his dog dead in the front seat. Armed men were marching up the streets shouting “Death to dogs!”

  On Thompson Street, dog supporters dragged two Guardsmen from the cab of their truck, then opened the hood and ripped loose the distributor wires. They were driven off by a larger band of anti-dog people, who decided that since the dogs in the disabled vehicle could not be moved, it was better to destroy them rather than to risk having them set loose. They fired the truck, and 27 animals were burned to death in small wire cages.

  Nine-year-old Magdalena Torres of Mott Street, the daughter of a plumber, filled a saucepan with sulfuric acid she had taken from her father’s kit, and hurled it into the face of Patrolman Anthony Corniel when the police attempted to remove the family’s pet mongrel. Corniel was permanently blinded.

  A mob attacked DIM’s headquarters, seriously beat a watchman and the 12 staff members who were on duty, then went on a rampage causing an estimated $400,000 in damages to equipment and to the building itself.

  A gang of juveniles, spurred by adults, ran through several buildings on West 83rd Street, bursting into apartments and flushing dogs into the halls. The frightened animals were driven up the stairs to the roofs, where gang members cornered them one by one and threw them over the parapets to their deaths on the concrete below. Fifteen-year-old Thomas Simmons was killed when an 80-pound Weimaraner sank its fangs into the boy’s arm and dragged the youth off the roof with it.

  Helmuth Steinbraun, a psychoanalyst, nailed shut the doors and barricaded the ground floor windows of his West 88th Street brownstone. He threw pots of boiling water from the upper windows at policemen and civilians who tried to breach his defenses. After two officers had been badly scalded, reinforcements were summoned. The analyst and his family were finally driven from their home with tear gas. Their pet schnauzer, who ran out with them, was shot by an unknown civilian, and the brownstone was set afire.

  Jim Buck’s Dogs, a kennel on Madison Avenue and 80th Street, was stormed by a mob. Buck, a hefty six-footer who breeds and trains dogs in addition to operating his kennel, met the invaders with a lead-weighted baseball bat in his hands and two attack-trained Great Danes at his side. The dogs bloodied half a dozen men before they were killed by blasts from a 12-gauge shotgun. Buck laid several more low and was then beaten unconscious. The group entered the kennels and the man carrying the shotgun, aided by another with a Luger, walked slowly up and down the ranks of caged animals and systematically shot to death 31 of the helpless creatures.

  Several dogs—some formally attack-trained, others simply large and vicious animals—fought for the lives of other canines as well as their own. Rick Faller of East 26th Street, a construction worker, attack-trained his German shepherd, Turk, during July and August with the aid of a military manual. The massive dog took to his lessons avidly and by September 13 had metamorphosed into a nightmare beast eager to destroy anyone who approached within 15 feet of his master. “I made damn sure nobody was going to take him without a fight,” Faller said. Faller went out to see for himself what was happening on the streets the night of Bloody Tuesday. “It was sick! They were murderin’ defenseless animals right on my own block!” He called a friend who owned an attack-trained bull mastiff, then the two men and their snarling dogs undertook to patrol their immediate neighborhood. “We rescued six dogs,” Faller said proudly. “We drove off four bunches of them gutless bastards, maybe 60 guys all together. Turk chewed up a dozen by himself. He caught one guy in the leg and I heard the crunch when the guy’s kneecap went to pieces. I tell you. that’s one mother that’ll never walk right again!”

  Philip Brouton, stockbroker, spent most of the night sitting in a chair which faced the door of his penthouse apartment on Lexington Avenue and 69th Street. A small marble table with a pot of coffee stood nearby. Brouton’s wife was in the bedroom moaning; not even the triple dose of Seconal she had taken was able to quiet her anguished mind. The Brouton’s Yorkshire terrier whimpered on the pillow next to her, and occasionally licked her face. Brouton, who had never in his life committed an act more hostile than tongue-lashing a rude cabdriver, was holding a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun. In a choked voice he said: “I don’t care if it’s a Black Panther or the Commissioner of Police. I’ll blow anybody’s head off who comes to take away our Pericles!”

  Patrolman David Ottley, twenty-one years old and a member of the force for less than six months, went berserk when he witnessed one member of a gang tear a dog from a woman’s arms and begin swinging the animal by its hind legs against the pavement. The young officer emptied his revolver into the group, killing two and wounding another, then attacked them with his nightstick. He was subdued by other police, and rushed to Bellevue where he was put under restraint and held for observation.

  Riot squads were summoned to the Sheep Meadow and four times had to lay down heavy barrages of tear gas and nausea gas to repulse large numbers of persons who rushed the staging compound attempting to free the dogs there.

  More than 1,500 dogs actually were taken to the Bronx and Queens holding depots. Violence occurred there, too, as an estimated 2,000 persons from neighboring communities and states converged to “rescue” the abandoned canines. Many bereft owners also appeared, intent on reclaiming their pets before they could be placed with adoptive families or put to sleep. Traffic blocked several streets and thoroughfares for hours; near
ly 200 dogs were loosed from their cages by saboteurs; and pro-dog and anti-dog forces battled each other, as did ex-owners and out-of-towners who had come to adopt animals.

  Violence did not abate in Manhattan until the small hours of the morning. Occasional screams and gunshots were still being heard when dawn, as if in sympathy, broke in a crimson flood over the wounded and bleeding city.

  Many officials, particularly Mayor Spinelli, were harshly criticized for not having ordered an immediate stay of Section 161.05 and clapping a curfew on Manhattan as soon as the direction of the day became evident. James Carlson, an aide to the mayor, testified that Spinelli had been urged to do so several times, but that he had refused, allegedly saying: “I don’t give a damn if they destroy half the island. The law is the law, and they’re going to comply if I have to send tanks down Fifth Avenue.” Carlson was promptly dismissed. Spinelli denied the charge and accused the ex-aide of attempting a political smear. In an official release, the mayor stated: “Our fair city will bear the scars of this tragic day for generations to come. We must each of us look into our hearts to determine the extent of our own personal responsibility and guilt, and we must resolve to a man that nothing like this shall ever occur in this city again. The consequence of disobeying the mandates of legally constituted authority and taking the law into our own hands can only lead, inevitably, to catastrophe.” A movement to impeach Spinelli flourished briefly, but it soon lost its momentum; the mayor’s attorneys are still considering legal action against Carlson.

  Whatever the case, the City Council finally did convene in emergency session at 9:00 A.M. on Wednesday morning. With few preliminary words, they voted unanimously to retire Section 161.05 for an indefinite period of time. Their action was immediately endorsed by the mayor. Every local television and radio station was broadcasting the news by 9:45.

  Spinelli appointed a blue-ribbon committee to investigate and report on the occurrences of Bloody Tuesday. Chaired by Clayton J. Brodie III, president of Chase Manhattan Bank, the committee has taken the testimony of more than 400 witnesses to date. One member, who wished to remain anonymous, told this reporter: “It is going to be a three-pound document not worth the paper it’s printed on; a thousand people explaining in great detail the errors and crimes everyone else committed.”

  Sociologist Henry Wade Williams of Columbia University insists it was simply typical mass behavior. “Riots are as old as towns and cities,” Williams said. “We’ve always had them, we always will. There was nothing unique about this one. Its basic patterns were entirely consistent with the classic examples of mob behavior.”

  Philosopher James R. Madden of the same university said: “New York is a seething hell of hate and despair. It is a knife that flays each of us daily, reducing us to raw, quivering nerve ends. Such a witch’s caldron of agony, terror and rage can’t help but to boil over sooner or later. I’m only surprised that it wasn’t much worse.”

  Psychiatrist Elliot Frankel of the New York City Psychoanalytic Association said, “It was a projective response. Dogs are fawning, will-less creatures who are at the mercy of the whims of their masters. The average man in our society feels precisely the same way. By destroying dogs, these people were actually attempting to destroy those qualities they find so hateful in themselves.”

  The most unusual interpretation was offered by Dr. Karl Droter, director of the Institute for the Development of Human Potential: “As strange as it may sound, Bloody Tuesday was a positive rather than a negative event, vastly more constructive than destructive. In a sense, it was sacramental. For years we have been a divided people, isolated, singular, awesomely lonely creatures desperately needful of connecting with our fellows, of coming together in mutually succoring and enriching harmony. There were admittedly two ‘sides’ involved, but what is important is that within each of these ‘sides’—widely disparate groups such as the poor and the rich, the radical and the conservative, white and black—set aside their differences and bonded together for one glorious day in mutual love and camaraderie. Bloody Tuesday was in fact an agape!”

  Dr. Paul Ehrlich, population biologist, explained: “Every experiment of record demonstrates conclusively that creatures forced to crowd too close together—even such docile examples as rabbits—will eventually disintegrate and turn in fury upon each other. American cities are intolerably overcrowded, and New York, especially Manhattan, is the worst. We simply must give ourselves more room if we are to have any hope of saving what remains of our sanity.”

  Committees and learned speculation are all well and good, but the dogs are still here, and so are the passions of those who love them and those who hate them.

  A survey conducted by this magazine last week reveals that the city’s locksmiths are working 16 and 17 hours per day installing steel doors, iron window-grills, and the heaviest dead bolts and bar locks that can be purchased. Construction firms are supplying citizens with sandbags at the rate of 350 per day. Sporting-goods stores and Army and Navy Surplus outlets report gun sales that have averaged triple to quadruple the normal rate for the last five weeks. Dog schools specializing in attack work are, for sheer lack of space and manpower, turning away large numbers of prospective customers each day. DIM boasts 75,000 new members. DOG’s membership has doubled.

  No one in New York wants to see a recurrence of Bloody Tuesday. Mention the idea, and people recoil from you in horror. But everyone is preparing for it.

  The Hounds

  by Kate Wilhelm

  Here’s a disquieting, resonant story, both oddly beautiful and deeply disturbing, about two silent, silver-haired hounds who come to inhabit the restless dreams of a woman named Rose Ellen . . .

  Regarded as one of the best of today’s writers, Kate Wilhelm won a Nebula Award in 1968 for her short story, “The Planners,” took a Hugo in 1976 for her well-known novel Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, and added another Nebula to her collection in 1987 with a win for her story “The Girl Who Fell Into The Sky.” Her many books include the novels Margaret and I, Fault Lines, The Clewisten Test, Juniper Time, Welcome, Chaos, and Oh, Susannah!, and the collections The Downstairs Room, Somerset Dreams, The Infinity Box, and Listen, Listen. Her most recent book is the novel Huysman’s Pets. She lives with her family in Eugene, Oregon.

  * * *

  Rose Ellen knew that Martin had been laid off, had known it for over a week, but she had waited for him to tell her. She watched him get out of the car on Friday, and she said to herself, “Now he’s ready. He’s got a plan and he’ll tell me what we’re going to do, and it’ll be all right.” There was more relief in her voice, that was in her mind only, than she had thought possible. Why, I’ve been scared, she thought, in wonder, savoring the feeling now that there was no longer any need to deny it. She knew Martin was ready by the way he left the car. He was a thin, intense man, not very tall, five-nine. When worried, or preoccupied, or under pressure, he seemed to lose all his coordination. He bumped into furniture, moved jerkily, upsetting things within reach, knocked over coffee cups, glasses. And he forgot to turn things off: water, lights, the car engine once. He had a high domed forehead, thin hair the color of wet sand, and now, after twelve years at the cape, a very deep burned-in suntan. He was driven by a nervous energy that sought release through constant motion. He always had a dozen projects under way: refinishing furniture, assembling a stereo system, designing a space lab model, breeding toy poodles, raising hydroponic vegetables. All his projects turned out well. All were one-man efforts. This afternoon his motion was fluid as he swung his legs out of the car, followed through with a smooth movement, then slammed the door hard. His walk was jaunty as he came up the drive and around the canary date palm to where she waited at the poolside bar. Rose Ellen was in a bikini, although the air was a bit too cool, and she wouldn’t dream of swimming yet. But the sun felt good when the wind died down, and she knew she looked as good in the brief red strips as she had looked fifteen or even twenty years ago. She saw herself reflected in his eyes
, not actually, but his expression told her that he was seeing her again. He hadn’t for the whole week.

  He didn’t kiss her; they never kissed until they were going to make love. He patted her bottom and reached for the cocktail shaker. He shook it once then poured and sat down, still looking at her approvingly.

  “You know,” he said.

  “What, honey? I know what?” Her relief put a lilt in her voice, made her want to sing.

  “And you’ve known all along. Well, okay, here’s to us.”

  “Are you going to tell me what it is that I’ve known all along, or are you just going to sit there looking enigmatic as hell and pleased, and slightly soused?” She leaned over him, looking into his eyes, sniffing. “And how long ago did you leave the office?”

  “Noon. Little after. I didn’t go back after lunch. I got the can, last Thursday.” He put his glass down and pulled her to his lap. “And I don’t care.”

  “May they all rot in hell,” Rose Ellen said. “You! You’ve been there longer than almost anyone. And when they come to you beggin’ you to come back, tell them to go to hell. Right?”

  “Well, I don’t think they’ll come begging for me,” Martin said, but he was pleased with himself. The worry was gone, and the circles under his eyes seemed less dark, although he still hadn’t slept. Rose Ellen pushed herself away from him slightly in order to see him better.

  “Anyway, you can get a job up in Jacksonville tomorrow. They know that, don’t they? That you’ll not be available if they let you go.”

  “Honey, they aren’t Machiavellian, you know. The agency doesn’t want to break up our team, but they had no choice, no money, no appropriation for more money. We did what they hired us to do. Now it’s over. Let’s go to bed.”

  “Uh-uh! Not until you tell me what’s making you grin like that.”