SEVENTEEN
MR. SNUFFLES! We hardly knew ye. Sob.
Still no sign of S.H.I.E.L.D., but with all the big green excitement over and the workday clock ticking, the city’s daily commute gets going. More and more people wander by. Sure, they stare. Can’t help it, I suppose.
They say New Yorkers are unfriendly, but it’s not true. In a hurry? Yeah. Assertive? Sure. And yes, you have to know how to hail a cab. But ask for directions, and any one of them will help you out. Just keep your stupid questions quick and to the point. Haven’t got all day.
The gawking crowd gathering ’round is a perfect representation of the great melting pot: white, black, Hispanic, Asian, male and female, old and young, working class and execs, single parents and same-sex couples. Ignoring their differences, they stand shoulder-to-shoulder, pressing in for a better look.
Not ten feet away, two homeless people are huddled in a doorway, clothes and skin as gray as the street, and no one gives them the time of day. What’s unusual about that? Now, a guy in a red-and-black suit, beaten to a pulp, lying next to a dead Labrador puppy? That’s news.
The smart phones come out like forks at a feast. Memory chips being cheaper than minutes, video is recorded with abandon, despite the fact neither of us is moving.
If any of ’em had really, really good hearing, they might hear my body stitching itself back together. As it is, I must seem pretty bad off, lying here in a stew of my own pureed organics. Mr. Snuffles looks more natural, but that only makes it sadder.
One eagle-eyed gal in a business suit pushes to the front and gets a particularly horrified look on her face. Maybe she’ll finally suggest calling an ambulance?
Nope. That’s the other thing about New Yorkers—they’re full of surprises. She points at me like I came out of the dog’s butt.
“OMG! That’s the dognapper from the news! He killed that puppy!”
“Did not! And he wasn’t just any puppy. Sniff. They called him…Mr. Snuffles.”
Surprised I’m still alive, the ad-hoc group gasps and takes a collective step back. You’d think most people would take a talking gore pile at its word. I know I would, but when assumptions run rampant, the accusations come free of charge.
“How could you do that to a poor helpless puppy, you freaking loser?” says a bike messenger. He takes off his coat and uses it to cover the dog.
“Couldn’t tell you since, like I said, I didn’t do it.”
“Murderer!” the first woman shouts.
“Well…sure, depending on your definition, but…”
A pencil-thin older guy in a three-piece shakes his rolled-up Wall Street Journal at me like he’s gonna swat my nose.
“I don’t believe in the death penalty, but in your case, I’d make an exception!”
“You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. I didn’t do it!”
He sneers. He’s heard it all before. “Why would you even say something like that, unless you’re guilty?”
This is worse than talking to the Hulk. Mobs are all about selective hearing. One idiot shouts something incendiary, someone else agrees, and before you know it, they’ve hit this funky tipping point. Suddenly, everyone’s in tune, and they all magically know the same lyrics and choreography—like in an episode of Glee.
“He can’t get away with this!”
“We should do something!”
I’d say mobs are like sheep, but sheep don’t get angry, even when you take their wool and eat them. Lemmings? Nope. Despite popular belief, they don’t really commit mass suicide. That’s just an urban legend that got traction when a nature-film crew faked it by tossing the little buggers off a cliff for the camera. But you don’t see anyone forming a mob around them, do you?
“Let’s do something!”
“Yeah! Let’s!”
I’d love to get up and beat the crap out of everyone for being stupid. But until I heal, all I’ve got is this lame honesty thing: “Didn’t do it! Didn’t do it! DIDN’T DO IT!”
Hey, my throat’s healing, getting stronger. If I’m loud and adamant enough, maybe I can achieve that special air of truthiness. Looks like I’m making some progress. A uniformed meter maid pushes through the throng and stands beside me. Maybe she’ll talk some sense to them.
Holding up her iPad for all to see, she speaks with clear authority.
“He did do it! It’s right here on YouTube! He stole that puppy from an old lady in Queens and brought it here to kill it!”
On screen, I see a long shot of me and Aunt May playing tug-of-war with Benny.
“No! That’s a totally different puppy! Benny was a Maltese. Mr. Snuffles is a Labrador!”
Even though I know the truth, I somehow still feel like a slimy politician confronted with the selfies of his privates that he sent his underage intern.
“How many puppies have you killed?”
“None! And that video is out of context. If I was going to kill a puppy, you think I’d drag it all the way here from Queens?”
Thought I had them with that one, but lovely Rita the meter maid knows better: “Then you admit you’ve thought about killing puppies.”
“Who hasn’t thought about it? But that’s not the point. Mr. Snuffles was a noble creature. Sure, he had the potential to become a rampaging beast that would eat you all, but I did my best to protect him! I just couldn’t do it, okay?” My throat clenches. My voice cracks. “I…failed. I just…failed.”
Someone in the back calls out, “That’s as bad as if you killed him yourself!”
“Is not! It’s totally different.”
But they start chanting: “Just as bad…just as bad.”
I manage to get all indignant. “Wake up, you knee-jerks! Between food, vets, and grooming, the U.S. spends $56 billion a year on pets. All that money could’ve been spent building girls’ schools in the Middle East, or on domestic-surveillance drones right here at home!”
St. Francis the bike messenger doesn’t skip a beat. “Dogs are people, too!”
The one-percenter with the Wall Street Journal hmphs. “That’s corporations, you hippie!”
The meter maid gets all school-marmy. “Pets remind us of the innocent, natural part of ourselves, so we care for them. What’s wrong with that?”
I bet she’s an Internet troll. “You call keeping a predator in a Manhattan studio apartment ‘natural’? You call taking control over the fate of a living thing that doesn’t have a choice about it an ‘expression of caring’?”
Who knew you thought about this stuff?
Please. He’s just biding his time until he can heal.
Yep. And I’m just getting started. “Ever been to a puppy farm? It’s not like they plant puppy seeds that grow into puppy trees! They’re raised in cages smaller than the ones used for chickens. After suffering through that, do you know how many get abandoned every year?”
My strength is returning. I get to my feet.
The crowd gasps. “He can walk!”
“He was only pretending to be handicapped!”
“We’ve got to do something!”
“Get him!”
They’re coming for me, but I won’t go down easy. I grab the nearest weapon, which happens to be Mr. Snuffles. What? He loved me. I’m sure he’d still want to help me out—like the way the stump in The Giving Tree helps that kid.
I swing Snuffles like a cudgel. The crowd backs off—if not in fear, then in disgust. But I know in my heart that deep down, some of them are wondering: What would it feel like to get hit by a puppy?
As it turns out, miracles do happen now and then. When I pull back for a second swipe, what we all thought was a lifeless corpse twitches, inhales, and barks. The bike messenger’s coat falls away. Two dark, watery eyes look up at me. His tail wags as he pants. It’s my turn to gasp.
“Mr. Snuffles?”
“Yip!”
Maybe the Hulk petted all the air out of him, knocking him out for a while. Maybe Labrador pups have a survival mechanism that makes them go dormant when confronted by gamma-irradiated scientists. Or maybe—somewhere in this crazy, messed-up world—someone made a wish that just happened to come true.
But what does any of that matter? The sonofabitch is alive, I tell you, ALIVE!
“Mr. Snuffles!”
The crowd cheers. Teary-eyed, we all hug. The rich hug the poor, the old hug the young, and best of all, no charges are pressed.
Then I pull my guns, fire a few shots in the air, and they all go running.
But not Mr. Snuffles. He stands at my feet, barking like he chased them off all by himself. Does it get any cuter?