If you aren’t following comics legend Jim Steranko on Twitter, you shouldn’t be using Twitter. If you’re not using Twitter, reading Jim Steranko’s tweets make it all worth it. In the last 2 days alone, he’s regaled us with stories of pimp slapping Batman creator Bob Kane at a San Diego Comic Con (a must read) and using an ice-pick to draw a full body portrait of a woman onto the hood of car! The man’s stories are as larger than life as he is!
This morning I found a Steranko story on Twitter that I had to share, both as a Steranko fan and a dog lover. I won’t spoil it for you here, but I was so moved by it that I had to piece it together as prose and post it for you all.
When I was in my early teens, I was in a neighborhood gang, generally a reasonable group of guys. And we often did good things for the neighborhood. But darkness falls regularly and it’s easy to become part of it. Old man Krott fell into that category. He was a blight on even my neighborhood. Burly, thick-lipped, with a European accent, he ruled his household like a tyrant. His wife (who was never heard to have said a word in public) trundled off to a factory before dawn every morning, always walking no matter what the weather to save busfare. Their only child was not allowed to play with the other kids. Krott had no job and stayed home listening to the radio during the day, except when taking walks to nose into other people’s business. He was shunned by neighbors fed up with his twichy, noxious rants. His face was a scowling mask and and he only seemed pleased when he was bullying someone—primarily his family. He was a coward in confrontations.
The Spartans initially ignored the hulk, but I had a growing concern I could not ignore, one that deepened my anger on a primal level. In Krott’ s cluttered backyard, he kept a dog on a four-foot chain, a dark Newfoundland-Mastiff mix, a beautiful animal whose entire world was an eight-foot semi-circle and whose meals consisted of whatever garbage Krott threw him. Dogs are born to chase, play, explore, catch. This one was never allowed to run, never taken for walks. Gaunt, ungroomed, never bathed, but still noble, the animal spent his entire life a prisoner of his sadistic master. Any approach from the back alley was greeted with a savage attack that not only tested the chain’s strength, but threatened to break the animal’s neck as well. Krott would burst from the back door, grab a shovel or rake, rush to the fence to intercept any intruder; if he saw no reason for the outburst, he’d crack the dog over the head or spine with the tool, yelling at him to shut up.
The dog was never taken inside, even in freezing rainstorms or blizzards that would blanket an open-front shed, his only retreat from weather and the brutal master who had obviously terrorized him from the time he was a pup. Krott was committing a crime against nature, the most reprehensible aspect of which was that he never gave it a second thought. He had turned a fine animal into a snarling beast. Although the dog had never heard a kind word or experienced a gentle touch in his life, a strange rapport began to develop between the animal and me. I walked the alley often and, when possible, would talk to the dog, whose attacks eventually subsided to a few warning barks. I helped my cause by saving half a hot dog or a few crusts from dinner and throwing them into his area.
As his aggression subsided, the dog seemed to look forward to my attention—not to mention the small snacks offered. He quieted down, and in doing so, gave me an opportunity to take a better look at him. Between fence railings, I watched the dog for a long time, staying very still and finally realizing that the animal, head as huge as a small bear’s, had the kindest eyes I had ever seen.
The visits continued unabated, with Krott often running into the backyard, shouting, “Get the hell out of here or I’ll break your neck, you little bastard!” Sometimes I’d would just continue walking: sometimes I could not overcome the urge to respond: “If I looked like you, I’d let you do it!” or a simple, elegant “Kiss my ass, gorilla-face!”
Predictably, Krott developed a run of bad luck. His old car, rarely used because gasoline cost money, frequently had its tires go flat and its door locks become impassible. In the summer, toothpicks were wedged into them and broken off. In the winter, water—which froze instantly—was somehow squirted into the keyholes. Limburger cheese would be tucked neatly into the engine block to be melted & smelled after any drive.Sugar & Draino were found in the gas tank. Roadkill would mysteriously appear wedged into the glove compartment, sometimes undiscovered for several very hot days. Poison ivy was mysteriously rubbed onto the backyard fenceposts where Krott often leaned. Small stones, apparently dropped by passersby a handful at a time, would transform his front yard into a rock quarry by the end of every week. At times, when he was watching a certain gang of kids create what might be called a diversion in the back alley, something nasty would occur in front of his house. A sizable pool of tar materialized on his front porch one night. His windows were painted black from the outside another time. Once, when he could not open his front door, he discovered that it had been glued with resin epoxy to the door frame. Notes, with words cut from magazines, were slid under his front door, saying, “Move out or die, Nazi!”
Krott spent many sleepless nights behind his window shades hoping to intercept the phantom who was making his life as miserable as he was making those around him. He was cursed and everyone in the neighborhood sensed it. What no one knew was that someone was gradually able to enter the back yard without the dog barking, although he did not pet the animal, something he very badly wanted to do. They needed more time, so the dog could trust the stranger. Meanwhile, he could stand in the shadows without being seen from the house. Moving out of them would, of course, reveal his presence, but he always knew when it was safe or not because the dog, using a sense that cannot be explained, would always look at the back windows when Krott was hiding there. The dog became the stranger’s ally and his instincts never failed.
The following winter, after a brutal snowstorm, the dog was discovered one morning frozen to death, curled up in his shed. Part of me also died that night. That spring on one dark night, someone apparently removed all the nails holding Krott’s back-porch steps together and he broke his hip falling from them into a pile of rubble. Not long afterward, he vacated the house and the neighborhood forever.