The Old Man and The Dog

Ed Harris, a lone man living in the apartment 82/b. On the floor above me. An old guy living alone. I have never seen someone come and visit him.

As I, myself is in a wheelchair, can’t move out of the house and do not have much freedom. So I like to see others, walking, playing, laughing. I love to see people's happiness. It makes me feel not so lonely.

Like the little guy, Mark, living in the next apartment to ours, he is a feisty one. But I see him sometimes sitting alone in the stairs, being so sad while inside his parents fight and scream like vultures. Sometimes, I would bring him into my room to show my drawings or to give him sweets that my mom thinks I still love and buys in bulks.

Seeing my drawings, his eyes sparkle. I even gave him a notebook and some colors. The next day he came to show what he did with it and already he had drawn 20 pages through. Though it's like a child's drawings and that notebook was pretty expensive, but I was happy to see the kid happy.

Every day in the afternoon, my mother takes me to the park. She runs along with the baseball court while I sketch things.
Now when I go through my old sketchbooks, I have so many pictures of Ed. Mostly him feeding the birds or petting a stray dog.

Yesterday there was an incident. A guy died in the baseball court. I saw the whole thing from my room. But couldn’t make out who was who until today. When the police brought Ed back home. With the medics helping him get into his apartment, seeing that, my mom went to help too. Then she came back and told me what had happened.

So, we live in a project in the hoods. There are drug mules in every corner. A few days back, a boy, who was helping Ed, got beaten in front of him. Because he was supposed to be in a corner that day.

That boy, Rafe was caught by the police a few days back. He was selling drugs. Due to having no prior and a being a minor, the judges felt kind. And he was released with community hours. His supervisor is the president of our residential committee. So he decided that Rafe would do better by helping Ed.

That day Nix, the so-called drug lord of the turf, came to bring Rafe back to the corners with his gang while he was with Ed. Ed is a kind guy and so Rafe had found a change of heart. He said he didn’t want to go back.

This didn’t go well with nick and he beat the shit out of the boy in bare hands.

In an attempt to defend the boy, Ed hit Nix’s head with his walking stick. An angry Nick pulled out his gun and he would’ve shot Ed if not the security came to help.

So this was the backstory. Now what had happened yesterday, Rafe was not there to help Ed Yesterday evening. He was getting back from his usual stroll in the park while nix came out of the bushes with a gun. He was alone and came back to take revenge. He was humiliated in front of his crew by an old guy with a walking stick.

Before shooting him, he thought it would be better to beat him with his gun first. As he was beating him. The stray dog I sketched with ED, which he was feeding in the afternoon at the park for months now came running and in a split second, bit Nixs throat clean off.

Later, we got to know that, the dog was a service pet for a veteran who used to live in the next building. The veteran trained the dog before he died. And as the vet had no kins, the dog lived off of the street and Ed fed him once in a while. Yesterday, it returned the kindness shown to it.

To be continued...

Photo from Pixabay.com