The Continuing Sasha's Gang Adventures - Chapter Six

Sasha's Gang Adventures

This slightly irritates me.  Everyone struggles from time to time I wanted to argue.  But before I did she retorted: “You are friend.” She looked at me compassionately with her inviting cocoa eyes, maybe even watering slightly.  “When you struggle.  We struggle.  We talk”.

Suddenly, this feels like a referendum on me. 

“You alright?” Spouse asked, sensing my confusion as the din outside slowly retreated, making sleep a real possibility in spite of the periodic aftershocks. 

“You friend,” Mama whispered inside my head.

 “A friend is one of the nicest things you can have.”  Socrates came awake to share momentarily. “And one of the best things you can be.”

“That no fart,” Hoss contested.  “Grandma say fluff.” 

“No more fluff,” Mama reprimanded. “Are you a dog? You smell more like a fish.”

“A dogfish!” Eisenhower teases.  Fondly nicknamed after the famous WWII general and U.S. president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, he had lived contently and joyfully as an army brat at Fort Lawton in Washington state all his life until the previous year.  However, his military family of nearly ten years was transferred to Japan and sadly, Eisenhower wasn’t allowed to continue his life with them.  An aged and significantly overweight mix of Blue Healer and something else not quickly discernible was destined for euthanasia control.  It had been a sad predicament indeed. 

But as fortune would have it, a retiring radio operator who had never surpassed the rank of corporal and was similarly portly, had taken a liking to Eisenhower and charitably whisked him away from the military-industrial complex as his namesake had so famously warned. 

“Twenty million strays in this country and we get you as our comedian?” Hoss retorts.

Spouse reads my calisthenic eyebrows as they wriggle in and out of the dogs’ conversation like peeping Tom’s.  “They still talking?” she asks, her breath a plume of pearl.

 

“Yes,” I chuckled, though still overwhelmed by the absurdity of the moment. Reminded me as a child when I would lay awake in my bed at night and listen to my transistor radio with a single ear plug which (yes, I’m asleep, mom) faintly pulled in radio stations from around the globe.  Some even broadcast in foreign languages!  Magic in real time!  The magical mystery tour of the 50s. I brought spouse up-to-speed on the current narrative as she pulled the covers tightly around us.  

Infused with a few calories of levity, she chuckled, “So Hoss is a dogfish?” Dogfish found in the Puget Sound are spiny sea creatures that very such resemble small mud sharks. In my younger years when I scuba dove these waters one night, startling I came face-to-face with one of these darlings and you could have tracked me just by following the avalanche of air bubbles escaping from my regulator to the butt area of my wet suit.  Oxygen abandoned ship through every orifice available as if the Titanic! With the dogfish’ grotesque face but inches from my mask, I found God…or at least prayer…at 30 feet below the surface of salty Elliott Bay.  The mud shark appeared lifeless, likely knifed by a disgruntled fisherman who had grown tired of his bait being hijacked by these freeloading leeches.

 

 Spiny dogfish. Credit: National Ocean Service

“By way of Eisenhower’s assessment,” I underscored the canine thread.

“And Turquoise?” spouse asked.

“She doesn’t much seem to engage with the others,” I explained.  “More like she’s just a spiritual conduit of sorts.  Maybe a grand antenna that simply amplifies and translates conversations…I don’t know.”

“Interesting,” Spouse ruminates, uncertain how to decipher this insanity.  Either I--her husband--for whatever reason, has become a person of interest in this paranormal carpet ride…or God forbid, has been afflicted with a strange flavor of delusionary dementia.  Although the unique conversation I had conveyed to her hopefully supported the paranormal explanation, I didn’t know myself the answer at this point to that conundrum.

“And Sasha?” she probed.

“Don’t know.  Just that brief glimpse of her…uh, spirit or whatever it was…hopefully more to come.” 

“At the right time,” Mama Cass interjected.  “Which is not now.” 

“Later mama says,” I translated the silence.

“She answered that quickly?” Spouse responded in amazement.

“Yep.”

“Best to  meet the rest of our gang,” Mama says, as the dogs settled back into our group accommodations for the night.  “This sweet girl with the million-dollar smile is Bambi.”

 

Bambi, a slim American Foxhound at 52 pounds and eight years, is a Monday-Friday daycare girl, residing with her loving dad in the condos across the street. She arrives early in the morning when dad goes to work so she can lay first claims to the night manager’s bed.  she usually spends her entire day there except for her occasional breaks to join the rest of the gang downstairs for treats, her favorite being the whipped cream socials in the afternoons. 

A loving girl until her internal tilt wire is tripped like a drunken pinball machine by any canine that dares contemplates taking her spot on the bed.  Perhaps a maladjusted temperament from her early days in the shelter, but so antithetical to her mild-mannered appearance.

“Never thought we’d ever talk.” Bambi says with a glimmer of a smile, visible even in the shadow of the flickering candles.

And finally last but certainly not least is the enforcer: Blink. The same name as the Seattle Seahawks mascot.  A coal black labrador retriever with an internal combustion engine that can rip a man’s arm from its socket at 50 paces of a restraining leash.  Blitz seldom suffers fools lightly.  A slender and sinewy 75 pounds but with the mindset of a collegiate reveler during Florida spring break. 

An enforcer most definitely, be it beast, foul or intoxicated college sophomore. In the basketball realm an enforcer’s role was not that of assists, three-point plays and rebounds. Rather it was to either decapitate or immobilize the other team’s best shooter or two.   

A few years back Blitz spied a couple of teen-age hooligans about to vandalize Sasha’s plastic wading pool which was brought indoors during the summer months.  With sharpened tree branches, their apparent intent was to puncture as many holes as possible in our August entertainment.

Unbeknownst to these miscreants, Blitz took such thinking to be an affront to his protective nature which was apparently fueled by some puppy-inflicted anger issues.  He exploded viciously as he leapt over the six-foot-high chain-link dog-run in a single bound, snarling and drooling.  These boys, without a thought for the other, unilaterally abandoned their mission as Blitz glowered at them, threatening pursuit.  They spotted the threatening contrails in Blink’s murky jet stream as they beat it down the street. You did not employ Blitz to make nice.  Relied on him instead to inspire others to tow the line.

I quietly relayed the introductions to spouse.

“They told you all that?”  She was impressed with the thoroughness of the canine CVs.  If only her human patients were as voluntarily meticulous and comprehensive.  Maybe she should have been a vet instead of Florence Nightingale. 

“We all want to thank you,” Mama said sincerely. 

“For…” I started.

“For loving us,” Mama replied. “We know the terrain.  Can’t find daily whipped cream treats at Petco.”

“Or someone that loves us as much as you two do,” Bambi further sweetened the air. 

“We love all you guys,” I said, suddenly on the verge of tears.

"Where there is love there is life." Socrates shared.

“But highly overrated,” Blink offered, his words muddy in hue.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Mama interjected.  “There is more than meets the eye here.”

“Okay?” I questioned with actual verbiage. 

“All of us dogs…we’s a gang,” Mama said.  “Sasha’s Gang.”

It was an endearing term that both spouse and I used often in referring to our paid flock.  “Mama says they call themselves Sasha’s Gang,” I whispered with delight. 

“How quaint,” my wife took similar joy, her teeth on the cusp of chattering.

 

“But legally,” Mama added.

“Huh?” I was confused.

“Sasha’s Gang.  We’re a legal corporation in the state of Washington.”

My confusion quadrupled.  This day just got even more insane.

“I mean how…” I started.

“Or better yet,” Mama suggested.  “Or why?’

“Okay I’ll play your silly ass game,” I challenged.  “So why?”

“The seven of us have all been ‘round here for over a year now…and well, just like you folks, we too have dreams“

“Dreams do not come true just because you dream them,” A dozing Scocrates chimes in. “It's hard work that makes things happen.”

 

“I hear you,” I acknowledged.  Though the dogs don’t speak in decibels, their concealed voices are individually distinctive, making it easy to recognize who is talking.  And Socrates always seems to be equipped with a philosophical perspective as well on everything from Big Macs and climate change to rabies and leg of lamb.  But mostly, he likes to sleep.

Another aftershock briefly shakes the building as we hold our collective breaths until it wanders off.

“So tell me if you will,” I challenge.  “What is this dream that Sasha’s Gang is in pursuit of?” 

“Our mission if you will,” Bambi speaks in a voice of innocence.  “Is to invent a cure for short lives.”

My nose crinkles. “Say what?”

 “What she is trying to say,” Mama intercedes.  “Is that you and your wife are essentially a book to us.  But our lives are but a chapter to you folks.”

“We want to live longer!” Mark Spitz exclaims.   

Hoss speaks up, “At most each of us have maybe three or four good years awaiting us.  That’s a bathroom break to you…” (to be continued)