the verizon tower and the dog
I’m talking to the guys who service an internet Verizon tower by the apartment.
That tower scares the hell out of me.
Not because it’s there.
Because I’m afraid of heights and men climb it.
That to me is crazy, climbing that tower and working up there on top of it. That tower doesn’t even have a good ladder. Its ladder is just weird little metal spikes.
It’s the owls’ tower, too, and I wonder what the owls do when men are climbing their tower. I wonder where the owls go.
The guys I’m talking to are the guys on the ground with the dog.
The dog is their mascott. They take the dog to every job. They used to take a different dog to every job, they tell me. But that dog got old and earned its retirement so now that dog stays home and they bring the new dog to every job.
It’s a beautiful dog. A kind of lion of a dog. All brindled coat and muscles and blue eyes. The dog is only a few months old too. It’s a puppy right now and only about 100 or so pounds. I would have guessed 80. They say 100 for sure. It’s all muscle so that makes sense.
The dog [puppy really] will probably be more hundreds of pounds when it is grown. Already it is huge. And beautiful. Like I said, a lion more than a dog.
The guys are interesting. One guy is covered in tats. Most of them prison tats. In places it really hurts to get tats. Like fingers and arm pits. The other guy doesn’t have a lot of tats. His mother asked him to stop. His father had tats all over. His father is dead. He’s missing two teath. He loves his mother. He talks to her every day. He stopped getting tats. He never did time, I think.
Sometimes I wonder why people tell me all these things. They always have. When I tended bar, I thought maybe it was just because I was the body behind the bar. But, I don’t tend bar now. I’m just standing on my balcony, watching two guys with a dog go by. And they tell me these things. Because I like their dog. Because I am there.
I am some sort of secrets wisperer. People tell me their secrets. And their stories.
That is a really beautiful dog.