A Red-brown Dog Stands His Ground

Even if you don’t like dogs, you would soon or eventually warm to Jack. With his distinctive colour, Jack stood out among neighbourhood dogs; his coat was reddish brown and the pupils of his eyes had the same tint. 

Jack never came into the house; his kennel was located close to the large rubber bin on one side and to the outside drain on the other. This was convenient – when scraping waste into the bin, one could pick out leftovers and immediately toss them into the bowl. Township dogs subsist mainly on leftovers from plates and pots. For the rest, they were expected to hunt for moles, field mice or other rodents in the field behind the rows of council-built houses. Manti’s dad, however, a real lover of animals, made a point of buying bones from the butchery especially for Jack. He’d boil up the bones, creating a soup or broth to be combined with thick bread slices to be served up as dog food. An arrangement that suited Jack – or so it seemed, judging from the slurping sounds he emitted as he wolfed down such a meal. 

He wagged his tail, looking up briefly, when Manti and his brother Pascal returned from school. Some days the hound would wait for us at the top end of Almond Road, there where it joined Cedar Road. He’d wag his tail, look at each of them and then turn on his heel to start the homeward walk along the dusty pavement. At every other house, Jack growled at other dogs, often pressing up against a fence or a closed gate. Rebel without a cause, Manti thought. Jack’s gentleness towards humans and especially children was matched by belligerence towards other dogs. He boasted scars from fights with others of his species, and kids along the road generally held their dogs back as Jack passed. Needless to say, Jack gave Manti and his brothers street cred. It didn’t matter that he was a mongrel – taller than a Jack Russel, smaller and less hairy than an Alsatian and with strong resemblance to the Africanis dog. 

My last year of school had passed and Manti had progressed to first-year university studies. Jack no longer waited for Manti and his sibling at the top of the street in the mid-afternoons. Now he accompanied Manti as he set off for Friday-night Youth Club gatherings, but only up to the Cedar Road junction. Then the dog knew to turn and head back home. 

At university Manti had quickly become involved in anti-apartheid activities, mainly through the work of the Black Student Society. Manti didn’t occupy a prominent role. But he did become a point person for the layout and printing of pamphlets. The students had secured a small printing room downtown behind a row of shops and Mani sometimes worked there alone, making plates and then watching as the second-hand machine spat out the pages.

One afternoon, during a police crackdown and when student protests had brought the university to a standstill, Manti heard insistent knocking on the door of the one-room printing centre. He turned the machine off. Fortunately, Manti had remembered to lock the door. “It’s captain Mostert. Open up!” Mostert was a well-known security policeman. Mustachioed and otherwise clean-shaven, he had a nice-guy manner. The security cop had also taken student leaders in for questioning and been part of a pair that, it was said, detained young activists for weeks or longer at a time. Moving quietly, Manti opened a head-high back window and, standing on a chair, squeezed himself through the frame. For the next few days, he avoided the out-house print room. He laid out leaflets on campus and passed the master copies to another student to have them secretly printed at an uncle’s print shop. 

Manti was not home when Mostert and his partner, Van Zyl, arrived there, accompanied by a police dog. Jack rose from a snooze on the grass in the front of the house and immediately growled, baring his teeth. His gaze was less on the strange men entering the yard and more on the police Alsatian. Soon the two dogs were entangled in combat. Snapping, biting, then stepping back. They rushed forward again, the dust rising as the animals’ feet scramble for leverage. Mostert let go of the leash. As the dogs broke off once more and as onlookers moved closer, Van Zyl drew his firearm and, within seconds, fired. Jack’s legs lay crumpled under him and he fell to one side. 

Manti arrived home around mid-morning the next day. Looking along the side of the house, he could see that his brother was digging a hole in the back garden. “What?” he stammered as Pascal recounted what had happened the previous late-afternoon. Pascal said: “They were looking for you.”  Manti nodded, ever so slightly. He reached for the brown hessian bag that lay near the digging spot. Bending, Manti opened it for a last look at Jack. Despite some dust, his reddish coat was sleek, as usual. There was blood on the side of his head. Someone had closed the dog’s eyes. 

Manti felt tears building up, a prickly warmth in his eyes. He blinked and quickly pressed his sleeve to his eyes. “That was Jack’s last fight,” his brother said, leaning on a spade. Still unable to speak, Manti looked at him. “This time it was for a good cause,” Pascal said. 

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