Thiefer

At the end of my street, there is an abandoned two-storey house. It hasn’t been that way for too long, maybe six or seven years, so if your mind has conjured up an image of a creaky old house with all the paint missing and gnarled trees in the yard, scrap it. Instead, the best word to think of is ‘dilapidated’.

Anyway, the sole inhabitant of this house is a dog everybody calls ‘Thiefer’. He’s a mutt; if there is a breed of dog that isn’t a part of Thiefer, I’d be very surprised indeed. he has is a patchwork of fur in about every shade of brown, black, orange, and white there is, as well as an area above his right hind leg where there’s no fur at all, just pink skin mottles with black., but the most amazing thing were his eyes; they were an iridescent blue, something I didn’t even know a dog could have.

I moved to this town three years ago, and the first time I saw Thiefer he was wondering toward that house with a G.I. Joe in his jaws. He wasn’t chewing it, and in fact looked to be carrying the action figure with some gentleness, like he was concerned about leaving tooth marks in the plastic. It was dusk, and with this being a quiet little town, the only presence in the entire street was me and this dog. I watched him walk up the stairs of the house, and disappear inside.

I thought nothing of this until about a month later. Again, it was just me and Thiefer in the street. And in his jaws this time was a Barbie. This was when it dawned on me how Thiefer got his name: he seemed to be something of a doggie kleptomaniac. From that day on I always kept an eye out for him, just to see what he’d steal next; it was an action figure here, a girl’s doll there, and it was only ever him on the street with me watching from a window.

 It seemed Thiefer knew when the best times to steal from people’s yards were, as it was always at dusk, and of course that’s when kids playing in the yard are called in by their parents to wash up for dinner. They abandon their toys, and Thiefer finds them. I also noticed that people were very mad at him, and “Damn you, Thiefer!” could be heard at dusk almost every day. People talked about running him out of town, but apparently they were unaware that he lived in the abandoned place, and I wasn’t about to enlighten them. I also learned that the missing fur was because one time a couple of drunken kids had gotten a hold of him and had poured some kind of acid on him.

Days passed, then months, then years. After having a few quiet drinks to celebrate the anniversary of my moving to this place, I decided that, if I really wanted to be a part of this community, I should get some toys and leave them in the yard for this dog I’d become so very fond of. I bought a bad Chinese G.I. Joe knock-off called ‘GI GI GOE!’, as well as the ersatz Barbie ‘BabySo Pretty’. I left them in the yard, went to bed, and of course by morning they were no longer there.

More time passed, those unstoppable days and months and years, and it dawned on me one day that maybe this quiet little town wasn’t really where I should be at this point in my life. It would be a great place to retire to, but it was simply too quiet and boring for anyone under 70. I packed all I owned into a rented pick-up, and as I was about to leave I saw Thiefer. He’d gotten a lot older and slower, but he still had some kind of toy I’d not seen before held between the few teeth he had left. It took him a long time to walk up those stairs, but he made it, and I thought that, seeing as I wasn’t coming back, I might as well invite myself into Thiefer’s home.

I walked up the old, creaky stairs, and in through the doorway. It took my eyes some time to adjust to the gloom, but once they did I was greeted with a sight that took my breath away: It was Thiefer. On the floor, taking up an area roughly five metres long by about two metres deep, was what looked like a statue of Thiefer, lying on his side. He’d piled the brown G.I. Joes to resemble his brown spots, pink Barbies to do the pink skin, with black army men representing the mottles. A myriad other toys had been painstakingly arranged to create himself, or rather, the self he was that first day I saw him.

He sat looking at me, his tail wagging slightly. Then he made his way to his effigy, and very, very carefully placed the thing he had between his teeth into a shallow indentation; it was a beautiful blue marble, the exact shade as his eyes. He stood on his old legs, and slowly walked around the sculpture as if examining it, and to this day I swear he was smiling the whole time. He then lay down next to himself, and his breathing slowed, until stopping entirely.

I left Thiefer’s house, his home, with tears streaming down my face, overwhelmed by the emotion that hit me like a tidal wave of grief. Everyone here hated the poor guy, so he had no choice but to build a companion.

I got in the pick-up and cried like a baby. Then, I started it up and drove away, not even bothering to watch that terrible town disappear in my rear-view mirror.