Shadows on the River

Jumbo's first experience with pain and the pure cursed meanness of mankind was when he was a six month old pup. It was a hot July evening, when he found himself on the wrong end of Orie Shank's blacksnake whip. Again and again the braided rawhide ripped and tore into his back, sides, and legs. 

He screamed as the whip cut into tender virgin flesh, leaving red welts that covered his blue-grey coat and opened lesions that dripped blood about the pen. The flogging finally stopped and when it did, he lay in the corner of the pen bruised and battered, afraid to move, wondering if the pain would ever stop.

Shank stood over the quivering pup. He weighted, at best, one hundred and seventy pounds and stood a mere five foot five. However, he looked like a giant to this frightened son of a Pit Bull mother and a father of unknown ancestry.

"Ya bastard, next time I tell ya ta shut-up ya best be a shuttin' up." Perspiration dripping from his round red face, staining a well worn blue chambray shirt. His beady brown eyes looking down on the terrified pup.

He spit tobacco juice on Jumbo before he turned and walked away, carefully closing the gate and making sure it was latched.

Jumbo watched through half closed eyes as Shank wrapped the whip in a neat circular package. The last thing he remembered was Shank draping the instrument of his suffering over a twelve inch limb that stuck out from a hedge post that supported one corner of the pen. Orie Shank could have cut the limb off when he set the post, but when the post was set it stuck out about chest high on Orie, just the right height to hang anything he desired, on it.

Jumbo lay in a state of unconsciousness for sometime. He awoke to the tender stroke of a small hand as it caressed his broad flat head. He opened his eyes and slowly wagged his tail, as he recognized the soft symphonic female voice. Armella Shank knelt beside him. With a clean rag and warm water she began to clean up his bloodstained body. He tried to raise his head.

"Just lay still, don't try to get up. Boy, he really worked you over. But you'll be alright, I'll take care of you."

Jumbo trusted her and laid his head back down. If there was a bright spot in Jumbo's life it was this pretty, petite, eleven year old girl, with medium length dark blonde hair tied back in a pony tail. Her hazel eyes began to fill with tears as she worked diligently on his pain wracked body. Armella was his caretaker. It wasn't a job she had been given, it was a job she had taken because Orie Shank, her Grandfather, was neglecting his care.

Armella worked on Jumbo until almost dark. He stood up and playfully tried to lick her hands and face when she had finished. He felt better now and as she left, he whimpered, trying to coax her back. She turned to face him a weak smile on her lips.  "I have to go now. Be quiet, before he comes back and beats you again.".     

Jumbo turned his head to the side, as if he understood. He lay down in the middle of the pen, hoping he would never get a thrashing like that again. He was certain he could not withstand another one of Orie Shank's beatings.   

Shank's goal was to create a monster that would be feared by all of mankind, a savage animal, so dangerous, so fierce that it would be feared by all creatures large and small, those that walked on the earth and those that flew in the air.          

He wanted a sideshow freak, an animal so bloodthirsty he would destroy all that dared to enter the fighting pit with him. The whippings didn't stop and by the time he was a year old he had been beaten several  more times. He had toughen to the bit of the whip; instead of crying out--- he barred his fangs, showing glistening white teeth, held in place by powerful jaws that could crush the hardest of bones. Instead of whines or whimpers an angry growl would form deep in his throat---an admonishing not to be taken lightly. He no longer feared the whip---now he challenged the whip.

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The antisocial life he was leading and the loneliness of the cold nights would become more than Jumbo could bear at times. He would leave his warm bed and walk to the highest hill where he would begin a wailing ululation that would sometimes last until dawn.

The vociferation attracted the attention of all the night creatures. The little wolverine of the plains, the precarious Silver Tipped Badger, pound for pound the most ferocious animal on the prairie, digging for a gopher in the alfalfa field, rested his long sharp claws, his quest for food interrupted by this wretched howl in the night.

The mother raccoon and her nearly grown kittens listened inquisitively to this errie bay, as they searched for freeze dried fruit in an old hackberry tree.

The crafty coyote, quieted his stentor caterwaul, as he heeded this painful solo that carried across the frozen prairie like a train whistle on a still morning.

The Great Horned Owl with wings spread, glided silently over the graveyard. He stopped to rest on Luther Bledso's black granite tombstone, the tallest in the cemetery.                   He u