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A Put Down

Norm Hudson

    “I have to put you down,” I said.
    I held his body tightly down on the cold metal table as I inserted the hypodermic needle through his skin. I could feel the resistance in him. He wasn’t going to give in without a fight. They were all like that. Wanted to go on living. Right up to the last minute. Despite illness. Or despite what they had done.
    I felt a submerged sob stuck somewhere. Submerged since the age of six. When my pet dog had died.
    That’s when I’d decided to become a vet.
    I should have been used to it. I’d trained for it. I was experienced at it. I’d done it many times before. That was a vet’s job.
    Saving lives. Or destroying them.
    But I couldn’t save this one.
    He’d done wrong.
    “You did wrong, you know,” I said, as gently as I could. “You know that, don’t you? We can’t let that happen.”
    His eyes were pools of despair. There was a jolt of his body. And then a relaxation of resistance as he finally realised the futility of fighting.
    “That’s better,” I said. “Give in to it. Don’t fight it.”
    A mistiness like a slow moving lava flow swallowed the pupil’s pools of liquid.
    I was glad.
    I could take my hard hand off him now.
    His body lay still on the table where only that morning I’d put another down.
    I wondered if he sensed it. Felt the stiff resistance of that other body hours ago. Felt the same desire to fight that had finally flowed away in utter futility.
    That other poor sod.
    “I don’t enjoy this, you know,” I said to the slowly, softening body, “any more than I enjoyed your predecessor. He did wrong too. But he could have been re-habilitated. Trained To be less aggressive. Given a second chance.”
    There was a pitiful pleading in the mistiness.
    I didn’t succumb to it.
    I thought of that other soft head that had rested against my breast longingly. Lovingly. Unexpectedly. Unaware of that terrible table.
    The table that turned on him.
    “You could have prevented this, you know,” I said. “Learned to be more controlled. More disciplined. Biting people’s not acceptable, you know. Even though there was provocation. You know all about that, don’t you? It’s all about training, isn’t it?”
    I felt his body slowly sinking into acceptance.
    “You’re not the first, you know. and you won’t be the last. This is what my training’s taught me. See what you could have aspired to?”
    I heard the exhalation of breath and saw the sag of the now sacked body.
    I lifted him off the table and carried him through the back door of the veterinarian surgery, down the winding path to the pet cemetery.
    He was bigger than the others.
    The interment was brief. I didn’t want to hang around for any longer than necessary. I had to join Jet.
    Jet. His dog. The dog I couldn’t put down. Despite the biting. The dog that had tried to run away. The dog I’d helped. His owner could have stopped the biting. Now he couldn’t stop anything. Not in the pet cemetery.
    I thought of Jet scampering through Black Bull Woods, his black coat camouflaged by the closeness of the conifers and the dense darkness of that moonless night. Free. To join the others. The others I hadn’t been able to bring myself to put down. It was wrong. Just as it had been when I was six and they’d put down my pet dog, Jack. For biting someone. I could have trained him. Like I’d trained me.
    They never gave me the chance.
    If someone was bad, you got rid of them. I’d learned that at an early age.
    I had the chance now. And I’d take it. I’d join Jet and the others. The others I’d set free. In Black Bull Woods. I pulled my hoodie over my head and closed the door of the veterinary practice.
    “Robert Hood. Veterinarian.”
    I smiled.
    Robert Hood and his Black Band. In Black Bull Woods. Training together. Fighting injustice. Wherever we find it.
    I thought of that other poor sod. The one I’d put down. Jet’s owner. Who’d treated him badly. Who’d got his just desserts.
    He was small fry. Compared to the real enemy. The one in authority. The one who’d given out the sentence of death.
    I parked in the car park of Black Bull Woods, removed the box from the boot of the car and walked the short distance into the middle of the wood. Jet was there. With the others. I saw the snarl start to form then slowly cease as I started to unpack the box of food.
    It was a beginning. There was more to do.
    I couldn’t spend long in Black Bull Woods.
    I had to go back.
    I had someone else to put down.
    The biggest enemy of all.
    The one who’d committed this injustice. The one who’d condemned Jet and all the others to die.
    The law.
    Sometimes you just have to take the law into your own hands.
    Except he wasn’t the law where I was coming from.
    Hood didn’t think so either.
    Some things never change.
    Take history.
    Everyone knows who Hood’s biggest enemy was.
    The most hated man of all.
    The Sheriff.

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