The first fictional dog I ever knew was the Kid, “the best fighting bull terrier of my weight in Montreal.”
Long before Lassie came to my home, or Buck heard the call of the wild in Alaska, I listened to my father read (over and over) “The Bar Sinister,” the 1903 short story by Richard Harding Davis. Knowing my old man, who loved the sound of his own voice, he probably whispered that tear-jerking tale into my crib.
Whenever dogfighting hits the headlines, as it did late last week in Ramona, the Victorian rags-to-riches story comes back with a nostalgic blow to the heart.
I can hear the catch in the old man's throat as the Kid, a pure-white street dog with royal blood from his father's side, is separated from his mother, a lowly “black-and-tan” who slinks away from her son out of shame.
Left to fight for survival, the 1-year-old Kid hooks up with the Master, a drunken lout who takes note of the dog's “punishing” jaw and puts him in the ring. The Kid knows a prizefight is coming up when he starts feeling hunger pangs.
“I had had nothing to eat for a day and a night, and just before we set out the Master gives me a wash under the hydrant. Whenever I am locked up until all the slop-pans in our alley are empty, and made to take a bath, and the Master's pals speak civil and feel my ribs, I know something is going to happen. And that night, when every time they see a policeman under a lamppost, they dodged across the street, and when at the last one of them picked me up and hid me under his jacket, I began to tremble; for I knew what it meant. It meant that I was to fight again for the Master.”
To my eye, the weirdest detail of the Ramona story was the confiscation of trophies that investigators suspect were awarded at dogfights, not dog shows.
In “The Bar Sinister” – the title, which comes from heraldry, refers to the Kid's illegitimate canine royalty – the stakes are a lot more basic than a trophy.
“I don't fight because I like fighting,” the Kid says. “I fight because if I didn't the other dog would find my throat, and the Master would lose his stakes, and I would be very sorry for him, and ashamed.”
One fight, however, proves too much. “As soon as they carried me into the ring, I saw the dog was overweight, and that I was no match for him. The Master should have known that I couldn't do it.”
After being mauled half to death, the Kid is bought by a kindly “little Irish groom” and taken to a fancy estate in Long Island. The owner, “Mr. Wyndham, sir,” grows suspicious when he looks at the Kid's chewed ears and demands to know if he's a fighting dog.
“I could have laughed,” the Kid says. “If he hadn't been holding my nose, I certainly would have had a good grin at him. Me the best under thirty pounds in the Province of Quebec, and him asking if I was a fighting dog! I ran to the Master and hung down my head modest-like, waiting for him to tell my list of battles, but the Master he coughs in his cap most painful. 'Fightin' dawg, sir!' he cries. 'Lor' bless you, sir, the Kid don't know the word. E's just a puppy, sir, same as you see; a pet dog, so to speak. E's a regular old lady's lap-dog the Kid is.'”
Passing that entrance test, the Kid plays Cinderella to the estate's kennel of champion St. Bernards who've won so many trophies there's a special house for the awards.
Mr. Wyndham, sir's daughter takes a shine to the Kid and, on a lark, enters him in a big dog show in New York. After defying the odds and winning his division, the Kid is taken to compete in the winners' class, where he confronts Regent Royal, his father.
“I never see so beautiful a dog – so fine and clean and noble, so white like he had rolled hisself in flour, holding his nose up and his eyes shut, same as though no one was worth looking at. Aside of him we other dogs, even though we had a blue ribbon apiece, seemed like lumps of mud. He was a royal gentleman, a king, he was. His master didn't have to hold his head with no leash. He held it hisself, standing as still as an iron dog on a lawn.”
Well, the Kid outpoints his champion dad, the pure-white aristocrat.
Now living the life of pampered luxury, the Kid goes out for a buggy ride one day. “In the road before us three dogs was chasing a little old lady-dog. She had a string tied to her tail, where some boys had tied a can, and she was dirty with mud and ashes. She was too far done up to get away, and too old to help herself, but she was making a fight for her life, snapping her old gums savage.”
Yes, it's Mother.
The Kid lights into her tormenters, whipping them good and proper. “Then mother and me we dances and jumps and barks and laughs, and bites each other and rolls each other in the road.”
And from then on out, “It's a Dog's Life,” the title of the 1955 movie based on “The Bar Sinister.”
It's anyone's guess what's going to happen to those 10 Ramona pit bulls with their “punishing” jaws. We're conditioned by horrific news stories to fear those oversized heads on muscle-bound bodies. As in the Kid's day, pit bulls are the dogs of choice for some terrible Masters.
But the kid in me hopes these dogs are given at least a fighting chance to be as good and gentle as the Kid. Who knows? One of them might end up a regular old-lady's lapdog with show trophies on the shelf.
Postscript: To read “The Bar Sinister,” which is out of print, online, Google “bar sinister and project gutenberg australia.” Remember Kleenex.
Logan Jenkins: (760) 737-7555; logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com.
