FLASH STORY: Dog Math

(350 words I wrote in bed early this morning.  Something that might be filed, and turned into something longer later)


In that way the old man considered himself righteous: full of
properly scaled contempt for the ignorant, he would take one of the poor saps under his wing despite it, and this protege' would serve a term to learn a few things.  In this case the Wall youngest, Demmy Wall, this particularly precocious little tweety bird of an already abnormally precocious lot of dirty neighborhood kids had crawled under the fence of the Old Man's neighbor to the east, Elton Farr, and been bit a good one on the forearm by one of Elton Farr's Rottweilers, Mr. Pickleboy Jr., and thus had come sniffling over to the Old Man's place to the west, and thus had been taken in for a bit of doctoring, (the Old Man could still mend a wound; an amateur mend, a professional wound), and thus he
said to young Demmy, "Would you like to learn something about dogs?"
"Mr. Pickleboy I play with!"
The Girl had her feelings hurt worse than her arm.
"Yes, yes, outside the yard you have played with him.  But inside the yard he is inside his yard, and more than that, he is with Augustus and Cicero.  Can you imagine how difficult it must be for him to be with his brothers Augustus and Cicero when he is called Mr. Pickleboy Jr.  There was no Mr. Pickleboy Sr."
"There was.  It was Mr. Farr's cat."
"A worser travesty couldn't be perpetrated to a dog.  And even so Pickle is quite sweet outside of his yard, Si?
"Yes." She said.
"Dogs are math, my dear.  One dog is a person.  You see him, and he sees you.  He cares for you as you would like.  Two dogs are dogs.  Don't expect two dogs together when they smell another dog peeing a mile away to care as little for it as a human would.  Now here is your lesson, girl: Three dogs are wolves.  Never forget it.  Three dogs together will never get the smell of meat out of their noses when you are around them."
"I see." Demmy Wall said with such earnestness that the Old Man loved her.  She calculated his advice, and he smiled.  She thanked him, and he hurried her out of the house.  She waved at his figure in the window, and he waved back.  
Children can have a similar math is what he thought.