<B>Essay</B> – Putting down pooch

Abstract

Cyril Johanssen chipped away underground for a quarter-century as times changed overhead. Men and their moods didn't occupy his mind. Cyril Johansen inched along in incremental unconcern, pick pick pick, as the bosses slid to oily irresponsibility for their workers. Claimed we didn't live in a mining town but a town with a mine in it. Hack hack hack. Smooth respect to raggedy greed. Cyril Johanssen had finished with rolling and roaming and big movements. He underscored this in an act of the sea, by being disgorged on our shore one morning in winter. The loner forsook events on the earth's surface and came to an edge. The edge. Nothing. Mattered. Except. One. Thing. His dog, Kip. I knew about earth's-end-as-magnet, animal love and responsibility. The journey was a gnawing yearn which everybody here tried to placate with different offerings. The love, well, I had my boys now. I couldn't deny them anything. Like a dog. One Saturday afternoon outside football season, two metal wheels — miner and medico, weeper and reaper — spun out and skidded. Responsibility marked us forever. To loved ones. To patients. I'd taken Pimpant, the children's German shepherd, for a stroll. Huffing up the mountain was getting harder for both of us. We were resting when the mobile phone jangled. ‘Yeah.’ Oh no. ‘Okay.’ Oh no. ‘I'll meet Cyril at the surgery in about an hour. Don't know if I'll do what he wants, but send him down anyway and we'll see.’ I clicked the phone case shut …