Read Online Just a Dog by Gerard Michael Bauer - Free Book Online

must have hit Mum’s sheets a few times and put dirty marks on them. After that Mum said, ‘No ball games near the sheets.’ Now she says that every time she does the washing, even when I’m not thinking about playing with a ball.
    Anyway, what happened next was, while I was playing with Mister Mosely, all this noise and yelling started coming from inside our house. Then the back door banged open. Uncle Gavin came out first, then Dad. He was looking really mad now. Mum came out last. She looked frightened. I didn’t know what was going on. Mum wascalling out Dad’s name over and over and saying, ‘Stop it!’ and ‘It’s nothing!’ and Uncle Gavin was shaking his head and holding his hands in the air and telling Dad he was ‘being bloody stupid’, which just seemed to make Dad even madder.
    Then they all came down into the backyard. Mister Mosely tried to run over to them but I didn’t think it was a good idea so I held on to his collar and told him to stay. Dad pushed Uncle Gavin in the back and told him to ‘clear out’. He told Uncle Gavin that we weren’t a ‘bloody charity’. He said he could take care of his own family. Dad was still shouting stuff when Uncle Gavin told him to stop ‘acting like an idiot’. I think it was that last bit that Dad didn’t like too much, because that was when he grabbed Uncle Gavin by the shoulder and he spun him round and punched him really hard right in the face. I had to hold on extra tight to Mister Mosely then.
    I’d never seen someone get punched for real before. It wasn’t the same as on TV or in the movies. It didn’t even sound the same. It sounded sort of squishier and like it would really hurt. I think it did too, because it made Uncle Gavin’s head go right back and he grabbed his face andsaid the same swear word about ten times. Then big blobs of blood started dripping between Uncle Gavin’s fingers. When he took his hands away his nose and his mouth were all red and I think one of his teeth was missing. Uncle Gavin spat on the ground and sort of flicked his hands to get rid of the blood and a big spray of red went right across one of Mum’s clean sheets.
    Mum had her hands over her mouth. She looked like the lady in the car did after she ran into Mister Mosely. Then she pushed in front of Dad and tried to help Uncle Gavin, but Uncle Gavin held up his hands to stop her. They were all bloody and his nose was big and twisted all wrong. Uncle Gavin wiped his face on his T-shirt and put a big smudge of blood on that too. Then he got into his car without saying anything or looking at anyone. He had one hand over his face as he backed out. There was still tons of blood dripping everywhere.
    Mum started to cry then and Mister Mosely made one of his howly whining noises and pulled away from me. I tried to stop him but he was too strong. He ran over to Mum and stood beside her wagging his tail the way he did when he wasn’tsure if it was me coming down the street or not. I wanted to be over there with him but Mum and Dad started yelling stuff at each other and I was scared. Mum said, ‘He was only trying to help.’ Dad didn’t say anything. He just started to walk away. Then Mum said, ‘Why are you acting like such a child?’
    I didn’t like the look on Dad’s face then. He turned round and started heading straight at Mum. That’s when Mister Mosely jumped in front of him. Then Moe changed. It was like he was a Transformer or something. All the hair on his back stuck up and it made him look even bigger than normal and the skin around his mouth stretched back till all you could see were long pointy teeth. Then he made this really loud growling sort of noise that I’d never heard him do before. For a couple of seconds he wasn’t Mister Mosely any more. He was something scary and dangerous.
    What Moe did made everyone just stop and stare