The Day Our Neighbors Were Sure We Killed Someone.
We had a beagle named Beanie who, in human years, lived to about 119. It was her time.That morning, it was just my sister Julie and me, two college kids—seriously hungover, the college rule then probably not now of “wake-n-bake” a little stoned, and running on coffee and bad decisions from the night before.“I’ll make breakfast; you need a shower,” I told her.
She nodded, still half-asleep, and reached for a robe and a towel. Julie paused in the hallway and mumbled, “Hey… where’s Beanie?” I said, “Oh God, I thought she was outside.” So we started calling for her, searching everywhere. And then we found her. A heart attack-or maybe she finally passed from old age. Either way, it was strange: it looked like rigor mortis had already set in, and it hadn’t even been 12 hours. Her body was cold and stiff. Julie blurted out, “Oh, FUCK. Damn it. Of course it has to be US.”.
I laughed and said, “What are we going to do? Do we call everybody?” And for context, the rest of our family was in New Hampshire visiting our crazy Aunt Martha.
I remember Julie saying, “No, we can’t have this dog in the basement in summer. It’s gonna stink. The neighbors are gonna think I killed you…”
Even then, I thought, “Why does she want to kill me for $15 I owe her 😳”. I was happy when Julie finished her thought,”…or somebody, and left it down here.” She said, “I’ll go get the car, drive it around back, back it up to the cellar door. You put her in one of those huge leaf garbage bags Dad uses. Double them up and carry her out.”
Well, that’s just what we did. That’s kind of the funny part of the story. She said, “ We don’t want the neighbors to smell something in our cellar and think we have a dead body.” Well, instead, there I am carrying a garbage bag, a very stiff, very dead dog, throwing it in our trunk, closing it, getting in the car.
Even now, I can still picture the shocked expression on my neighbor, Mrs. Rosemary Arnold-she was about 70-as she walked her tiny rat-dog past our house. Two other neighborhood boys and I had set up the hoop behind our place to play street basketball. Everyone saw us, and all we wanted was to get the hell out of there.
But we knew what they must be thinking: “Oh God, look at them. That must be their pain-in-the-ass mother stuffed in that bag, teacher Janet.” It even seemed plausible-Mom was only 4'11" and could’ve fit in it. We could tell they were thinking the worst: they’d killed her and were trying to get rid of the body. We had no idea what to do.
From our house in Hopedale, Massachusetts, Team “Dump-a-Body” would have had to make the hour-and-a-half drive down to Plymouth. Neither of us was feeling up to it-we were still paying for the night before’s “celebrations,” and the thought of a rotting beagle baking in a hot trunk had real vomit-risk written all over it.
I suggested, we could wait until dark and bury it in the Lovely's garden next door, since neither of us liked them. That idea was quickly shot down by Julie, the older member of the team, who didn’t want the now-"damned thing" sitting in her trunk all day. After that, we were out of ideas. So onward to Plymouth we went.
We used to spend a lot of time there with our grandparents. No clue what it was called or where all these years later it was located, but it was one of those pet crematory places.
We must have driven past it at least 20 times on the way to visit our grandparents. It wasn't hard to find once our mission had a destination.
Once there and we dispoensed with the pleasentries, Julie took control in negotiating with the crematoryg staff. When they gave us the price to bury Beanie, she said, “We’re two college kids. We can’t pay for the dog’s burial. How much does the burn her?” They were unprepared and shocked. They said $125 for cremation. Julie said, ‘Huh…we can spend $25 at the gas station back there, find a field, and with a lighter, do it ourselves?”
Beautiful negotiation…they took $25. Maybe $75. It doesn’t matter; we unloaded Beanie’s body. That’s what we did. LOL. Again, Julie was always the one like Ferris Bueller who made the plans when we grew up, and everybody followed. She had an incredible way in leadership. And she would tell you to do things that you’re always like, “ Oh, that sounds dangerous or illegal or stupid. But I’m in.”
Even when it came to loading a dead dog in a garbage bag, like I said, stiff as a board, slamming the trunk, waving to the neighbors, and driving off.We didn’t say much on the drive back. The trunk was empty, but the house wasn’t going to feel the same.