You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Running over a puppy.
“Remember that column in the paper called Desperately Seeking the News?” a coworker asks me out of the blue.
That brought back memories.
The column was a peek behind the curtain in Nashville’s journalism community.
If someone was suspended at a tv station, Walker knew it. If there was a mandate to cover a ribbon cutting at a car dealership simply to satisfy the sales department, he heard it and put it in his column.
I think the readers enjoyed his column. I know that it was must read material every Wednesday when it came out.
It was great, unless you were the subject of the story.
The writer, Henry Walker, called me one day. His words were harsh and direct.
“I hear you killed a dog?”
It was a horrible moment.
In that second, my worst television moment was public and I knew that it would soon be on the lips of everyone in Nashville.
“The worst thing that has ever happened in my career,” I respond honestly.
“What happened?” he asked.
Truth is the best defense I learned in Libel class.
I tell him about the news story I’m covering.
3 teens die in a car crash. The boys are football players. The quarterback’s home is filled with emotional friends and weeping teammates. The boy’s mother is cleaning up an all ready spotless home. She is serving sandwiches. Then wiping the table for the 10th time. She is in a daze, hollow, her heart fractured like glass dropped on a marble floor.
The players tell me about their three friends. The mother tells me what her son wanted to be when he grew up.
The interview is emotional and respectful.
I politely ask for this interview promising that I can introduce families in Middle Tennessee to these fine young men, perhaps have them say a prayer at the dinner table and be thankful for the children they have.
“Make sure parents always say I love you to their children,” the mother will implore, cleaning up a water ring that doesn’t exist.
I am in the house for 15 minutes. The mood is somber. The air thick with love and loss.
I will talk to everyone who wants to say a kind word, share a special feeling.
The family is gracious. We are professional.
Throughout, I notice a young man who is obviously in anguish.
I will come to learn he is the Quarterback’s younger brother.
He is perhaps 11 years old and he is beside himself with grief.
He is like a wounded animal, head down, in a daze, pacing the living room.
“He’s taking the loss of his big brother really hard,” his mother says looking for something to clean.
We say goodbye to the boys’ friends, to their teammates and to the family.
We get in our large SUV and my cameraman begins to slowly back up.
I am sad, but delighted. I have gotten the big interview of the day. I wasn’t pushy. I was honest and in my heart, I believe that I am helping the family grieve and publicly mourn 3 wonderful young men.
The SUV windows are closed as we slowly back out of this country driveway.
My cameraman and me are both emotionally affected by the story.
It is so sad. 3 teens with so much promise, killed instantly. 3 lives lost. So many affected.
The father and the brother are standing in the grass watching us back out of the gravel driveway.
I wave a somber goodbye.
Suddenly, above the crunch of tires on gravel I hear a sound that I will never forget.
It’s such an odd sound, I have not heard anything like it before of since.
‘POOOFFF
It sounds like a water bottle full of air has popped.
I look at Joe, my cameraman.
I am horrified.
“Where’s that puppy?” I blurt out, my head swiveling back and forth scanning the driveway. “Joe, did we drive over their puppy?”
Joe’s eyes are wide with horror.
“Oh jesus, please no,” he exclaims, his heart in his throat.
I look at the pronounced anguish of the father staring at us from 10 feet away.
His eyes are staring at our back tire.
“Oh My God, Joe. I think we ran over that little dog.”
I open the door and step out.
Under the rear tire, I see the small puppy. It is limp, its eyes closed. It is just behind the massive SUV tire. Moments ago it was darting back and forth, yelping and jumping like a pogo stick at our feet and at the car. Now it is lifeless, the center of a horrible vortex of tragedy.
I feel my heart burst.
I just shared the grief of their son passing. I just promised them I could make the community say a prayer for their son. I absorb so much pain and anguish. In 15 minutes I am filled with so much sorrow for three lives lost.
And then I go and kill their puppy.
I stare at the father. I don’t have the words.
What do you say?
Sorry we just killed your dog?
Then the silent 11-year-old explodes.
Whatever he has been holding in for the last 15 minutes escapes like a gas tank bursting.
“You killed my brother,” He shouts in my face.
He is crying and his face is filled with rage and fire.
“You killed my brother!,” he shouts again.
I feel like correcting him. “You mean I killed your puppy.”
I say nothing. The statement is so surreal. It is so horrific. The death of his puppy and his brother are too much and it escapes in an angry blast of words that are visceral and painful for everyone.
He stares at me like I am the devil.
Then he sprints around the side of the house, running as fast as he can. Wear he runs to I will never know. It is the symbolic action of a boy so distraught he wants to run out of his own skin.
By this time, his father has come to the car with a shovel.
I am afraid he might hit me with the tool.
He says nothing. His face is hard and cold.
Suddenly I feel like the enemy.
He slides the handle under the puppy’s limp body and lifts it up.
The dog slumps over the handle. It looks like a wet lifeless rag.
He extends the pole with the puppy slumped in half.
Without saying a word, he walks away from the car toward the back yard.
It is an image I can never forget. It is seared into my memory, like a branding iron sears a steak.
The father walking into the back yard with a dead puppy slumped over his shovel handle.
The father places the puppy on the ground and then stares at the sky.
“AAARRRGGGHHH”
His scream is primordial.
He sticks his shovel blade into the soft dirt and begins to dig a hole to bury the puppy.
I want to hug him, to say something to him.
“Come on,” Joe says sadly. “Let’s go.”
It sounds so harsh.
“Let’s Go.”
But honestly, what else can we do.
We came as uninvited guests. We got the family to open up to us. We absorbed their pain and anguish and then we killed another member of their family.
“you killed my brother!”
The words are a scalpel to my heart.
“I never saw the dog,” Joe will say over and over again.
It is a terrible ride home. I want to do the family justice, tell a sweet, emotional story.
I wish I could gather them in my news arms and hug them all.
I know they hate me now. I hate that. They took me, a part of their family.
“You killed my brother.”
The words sting years later.
I am so worn out from the terrible event, I’m having trouble concentrating, getting the words on paper.
“Wow that is horrible,” the newspaper writer will say.
“You know I gotta print this,” he says.
“I know you do,” I say solemnly.
The story will air in his column and people will criticize me on-line.
They don’t know what happened. They don’t know how horrible I felt. They don’t know how this was one of the worst moments of my journalistic life.
But you know what. When you are a News man. You have to soldier on. You strap it on and face the next day.
Hopefully the next day won’t have a sound so excruciating that it sears a terrible memory into your brain.
“You killed my brother.”
Life’s Crazy™