Months ago, I published what I thought was a series of 5 of these tales, but when I decided I’d collect them all today to submit as one piece to the Ojo del Lago, a local paper, I discovered that I never did publish number IV on my blog, so here it is:

The Drunken Dog

     As in any small town, there were those in San Juan who liked their drink more than their lives and those men were known to congregate under a pier that extended over the beach out to the lake. How those men earned their keep, no one knew, for they did not work but spent the day drinking under the pier. Perhaps their families supported them, or perhaps they earned money by nefarious means or begged for it In town, but most days, they could be found from sunup to sundown under the pier, and sometimes they lit a fire and remained there far into the night.
     Most of the men in town, however, were hard workers, earning their keep by construction work or road work or toiling in the raspberry fields or other farms or as gardeners or repairmen.  All of these professions were given a break midday for comida. There were a number of small stores in the town that sold beer by the bottle, and during the rest period for comida, as well as on their way home from work, men would gather on benches or lean against walls or scrawl on the ground nearby  for a beer as well as for talk of the day.
     There were many stray dogs in the town. Some were thin and almost starving, but they survived by raiding unsecure garbage cans or shredding garbage bags left in the streets for collection. These dogs were seen to be nuisances and sometimes cruel people would throw hot grease at them, burning scabs into their flesh beneath their clotted hair. But others , because of their personalities and winning ways, were fed by certain people or by scraps from restaurants or butchers. One such dog became a favorite of townspeople. Children would feed him the edges of their tortillas and restaurants would set out the remains of meals on their back doorsteps when he made his daily visits.
     Unfortunately, he also became a favorite of the men of the town on breaks, who would feed him beer. He quickly became as fond of it as they were, and they would pour it in their hands or into a cup as his demands became more and more insistent.  Finally, he became known as the drunken dog and as though he knew his place, he ceased his daily rounds and went  to live with the human members of his sort under the bridge.

     Disclaimer; Although certain details have been added by me to flesh out the story, its general  subject, i.e. the drunken dog and men under the pier, is as true as stories handed down by word of mouth tend to be. The fact that I have written them down does not make them any truer but simply spreads their audience. Whether they are legend or fabrication or truth is a mystery shared increasingly by tales told on the internet, which adds  to their fame if not their veracity. 

In case you didn’t read the others and want to, here are links to the other four stories:

Everybody Knows I: ‘The Night the Vet Died” for One-liner Wednesday

Everybody Knows II: The Caguama

Everybody Knows III: The Martyr Dog

Everybody Knows V: The Day that Death Came to Town