Lady Buckethead and The Goddess of Storms

by

Paul F Walsh

 

I knew that Joe was dead. The hospice sister had phoned me at 3am. I ducked into the chapel five hours later to have a word with the god that Joe didn’t believe in. Morning sun filtered through the stained glass. A rainbow of primary colours refracted and reflected an old man’s death. Nobody really knew Joe. I certainly didn’t. He had no living relatives and no apparent friends. Joe was one of those homeless characters who slept rough under a Moreton Bay fig in Lambton Park.

I didn’t know the significance of that fig. I didn’t know the significance of Joe. I’m a retired Catholic priest. I don’t know the significance of a lot of things, but I can recognize the humble power of apparent insignificance. And that’s what attracted me to Joe. He had a story to tell that history might miss. Of that I was certain, but as I prayed that God would welcome Joe’s eternal soul into heaven, and as I walked from the hospice chapel to the sister’s office, I had no idea what that story might be.

Joe was dead. Perhaps history had missed his story.

‘He died with a smile of wonder on his face,’ the sister said.

‘Thank God,’ I replied. ‘Perhaps angels of mercy came to him in his final moments.’

The sister gave me a sad secular smile and a battered shoebox.

‘He had this shoebox sitting on his chest when he died,’ she said. ‘That’s all he had. No other possessions, apart from the filthy rags he was wearing, and I burnt those the day he arrived. Not much to show for a life, is it? … It’s so sad.’

‘Well, Sister,’ I said, ‘we arrive with nothing, and we leave with nothing.’

I said his funeral mass at St John’s Lambton. Nobody came, apart from a couple of aged undertakers and the young pagan sister from the hospice. She’d burnt his clothes, and now other strangers would burn his body. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust … such is life!

His ashes were sent to me a few days later. It was then that I remembered the battered shoebox.

I sat at my desk, and I hesitated.

Why had I not opened the shoebox before his funeral?

I stared at the ashes in their pathetic plastic bag. And I stared at the shoebox in all of its battered cardboard humility. And I stared at the glass of Chivas Regal sitting neatly between the two. Why was I hesitating?

It was not as if I was about to roll away the stone, or was it?

I downed the scotch in one glorious gulp.

‘Here’s to you, Joe,’ I said, as I lifted the empty glass in a fulsome toast. ‘If the shoebox fits, then so be it.’

I opened the shoebox.

It contained a blood-soaked white handkerchief embroidered with a faded blue J.

I poured another Chivas Regal.

‘Why?’ I muttered to his ashes. ‘Why did you keep this old snot rag, Joe?’

There was something wrapped in the bloody handkerchief.

I downed the second scotch, my fingers unfolding the tattered white linen, and a small digital recorder revealed itself.

This time, I did not hesitate.

I pressed play …

… and Joe rose from the dead.

 

‘I hated bloody high school. They never got me. Losers they were, completely lost. Bloody priests, what would they know? And my woodwork teacher, Father Whackjob, had made himself a cane rack, and he had names for his three canes: the skinny one was Beelzebub, the medium one was Lucifer and the big fat one was Satan. For God’s sake, what was wrong with that bloke?

‘Jesus was a carpenter,’ he’d say, and then, if you farted your appreciation, or some such, he’d approach the cane rack as though he were a snooker player selecting a cue. ‘You have an appointment with Beelzebub, son,’ he’d hiss, and a ripple of anticipation would flow through the class.

Then, he’d hold Beelzebub up, as though it were a sword, stab the air with it, and then swish it through the atmosphere as though he were caning the very molecules we learnt about in science. Well, some of us learnt about them. Most of us learnt nothing in science, apart from lighting farts with a Bunsen burner. And then he’d call you forward for a ritualistic flogging; with your mates egging him on: ‘He asked for it, Father. Give him six!’

The day I particularly remember was when we were asked to shave a sliver off a block of wood in a vice. Now, to truly appreciate this moment, you have to imagine fifteen vices all lined up in a row on a battered bench along one whole wall of the woodwork room. Each bloke stood side-on to his vice with a hammer in one hand and a chisel in the other.

It was an OH&S nightmare waiting to unfold. I told you those bloody priests were losers. And the biggest loser of all was Father Whackjob. Anyway, each chisel was pointing in the direction of the next bloke as you attempted to belt it with your hammer to shave a slither of wood off your particular block.

Now, I really loved woodwork, and perhaps my passion for the subject outweighed my skillset at the time, but, in fairness, Father Whackjob had never taught me how to hold a chisel properly. And I had the misfortune of working next to one of the greatest actors of all time. Anyway, when I whacked the chisel with my hammer, it slid right through my handhold into the hand of the bloke beside me.

Well, he put in an Oscar-winning performance. Admittedly, there was a little blood, but not a lot, and he hit the floor screaming like a stuck pig. That was the way of things in 1968. If you could fix it so a mate got a damned good thrashing, everybody else in the class thought you were a hero. There was nothing funnier than seeing the look on the face of the bloke you’d set up. And my face inspired open laughter when Father Whackjob reached for his cane rack.

‘Right, lad,’ he said to me, ‘Satan wishes to make your acquaintance!’

Now, Satan was the thickest cane of all, he might as well have hit me with a cricket bat, but hit me he did with six of the best on my wood-worked hands. And while I was doing the dervish dance of death trying to find life in my fingers, I heard him say the words I never forgot: ‘You are ejected from woodwork for indiscriminate use of the chisel, and, you, my lad, are to study French instead!’

EJECTED! Was that like in Gold Finger, I thought, when James Bond used the ejector seat?

My classmates reacted to the news with joyful glee like party-goers at an execution.

I’d been put down like a dog before its time. You see, in my working-class, all-male school, being sent to French was code. Not only was Satan as thick as a bat, Father Whackjob had all but announced that I was batting for the other side. French! Bloody French! The humiliation was too much to bear. And I’d lost my beloved woodwork forever. To this day, I can’t hammer a nail into a bloody fence, and from that day on I turned my back on Jesus the Carpenter and that whole bloody God circus.

The sad truth is that Father Whackjob was probably a nice person doing his best in a cane-happy world, and he’d no doubt be gutted to learn that his Satan had helped to inspire my Godless and loveless life; well, almost loveless. All you need is love, the Beatles said, and I reckon they were right. But I didn’t know then that I was one of those lonely people from Eleanor Rigby. Love and loneliness can even sleep together, believe me! Father Mackenzie! Father Whackjob, more like it!

1968: the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the release of The White Album and the beginning of the end of my life via indiscriminate use of the bloody chisel, but then came the Christmas school holidays, my urgent need for a new Phantom comic and my adventures with Lady Buckethead and The Goddess of Storms.

They were the sweetest pair of dogs you could ever imagine, but all I could imagine on that first day of the school holidays was how good the new Phantom comic would be. I left the corner shop studying the front cover: Mr Walker was walking his wolf Devil against a backdrop of fig trees, and maybe it was an omen, because later that day I almost tripped over a pair of dogs who were sleeping under a fig tree in Lambton park. They were working dogs, the sort who should have been herding sheep, but the only sheep in Lambton were in the butchers’ shops.

The one with the tin bucket attached to her head had a kind of chubby Hollywood glamour about her, just like Marilyn Monroe, though she was no dumb blonde. And nor was Marilyn, come to think of it. Anyway, some bastard had removed the bottom from an old bucket, drilled holes around the rim and then attached the whole rusty show to a rusty chain around her neck. I can’t really explain the reason for the bucket, but some bloke had gone to a lot of backyard trouble to craft it. Whether he was a sadist or a saviour, I don’t know, but it was no vet job, that’s for sure.

Anyway, she was such an elegant, working-class, pretty dog with red fur, pink lips, a beautiful full-tongue smile and mischievous glinting soulful brown eyes, all framed by the ugliest tin bucket in the world, that I naturally named her Lady Buckethead.

I realize now it was love at first sight for the both of us. And her companion was a real looker too, a little harder to read than The Buckethead, a more serious soul of the black-and-tan variety, but a sleek working beauty, with an effortless lazy rhythmic lope like a wolf. I eventually called her The Goddess of Storms, but I was tempted to call her Devil because she could have leapt from the cover of my latest Phantom comic, and so could the fig tree under which I found her.

All of my learning came from within Lambton Park, one way or the other. It sure didn’t come from those bloody priests at school. Lambton Library became my teacher throughout life. You see, I might come across as dumb, but I love reading. I learned to read a landscape from Biggles books as a kid, and I learnt to read love as an adult from the likes of Kahlil Gibran, all from little Lambton Library.

I reckon that lifelong reading has helped improve my ability to think, and it’s certainly enhanced my powers of observation and description. And I really want to describe what happened between me and those two dogs before I kick the flaming bucket.

It was not how they looked that made them so special. It was how they made me feel. I felt loved and accepted for the only time in my life. Unconditional love has a quality like no other love, and every adventure we shared was a mutual experience of that unquantifiable quality. And, by Christ, we had some adventures in the lead-up to Christmas Day 1968. I’d find them waiting for me under the fig tree, and off we’d go!

And how I’d run to keep up with them. The Goddess of Storms would give me that little knowing side glance as she loped along, and The Buckethead would periodically dance on her back legs like a kangaroo for no apparent reason but the sheer joy of it. They were fun-fuelled energy on four legs, and, every now and then, they’d stop for a mutual piss and sniff, thus inspiring me to literally stop and smell the roses.

And that’s not all I could smell. Pooing was an artistic ritual. The Goddess of Storms, pointy ears upright, would perform a circular poo dance while The Buckethead with floppy ears shat like a Pro Hart paint gun on a pinhead. And then would come the post-poo yoga, downward-facing dog followed by stretching back kicks and facial grins of grand satisfaction at the cleverness of what they’d just captured on the grassy canvas, as though they were canine Monets, impressionists, defecating haystacks in every possible light. Well, they sure did leave an impression on me.

And I remember the soccer games in the shadow of the rotunda. The Goddess of Storms would act as goalie, not so ably assisted by Lady Buckethead, for whom the rules of soccer were meaningless. Lady Buckethead would stand there, one paw lifted, totally concentrating on The Goddess who’d have her snout to the ground and her arse in the air, carefully anticipating the kick.

No matter how hard or deceptive the kick, I never got one past her, despite Lady Buckethead weaponizing the bucket and doing her best to ram The Goddess of Storms before the latter could save the day for her team.

Her Ladyship never did get the idea that she should be butting and blocking the opposition rather than her black-and-tan teammate.

One day I witnessed Lady Buckethead using the bucket as a digging tool in pursuit of a hapless lizard. Such was the keen intelligence of this noble beast. Even Father Whackjob would have been impressed.

I was tempted to give Lady Buckethead a chisel to see if she could reverse time and get me back in the woodwork room, with her Hollywood glamour beside me instead of the world’s best actor, and me with a steadier grip, but temptation can never reverse time.

Temptation and good intentions are wicked sisters, in my experience, and they’re paving the way to hell.

I’ll know if hell really exists soon, though maybe I’m about to leave hell for something better. Christ, I sound like Father Whackjob. And as if hell could ever contain Lady Buckethead and The Goddess of Storms. Not enough food in hell for those two angels, two of the finest scavengers a man could ever meet, and they schooled me in how to find food in Lambton Park.

Lady Buckethead and The Goddess of Storms taught me that many humans throw bits of sausage or biscuit or burgers into the foliage where they hope their cast-offs won’t be seen. But the nose of a dog sees everything edible. And everything is edible to a dog, and I later discovered that, when you’re hungry enough, virtually everything is edible to a human too. Oh, I would eat out of garbage cans, for sure, but the dogs taught me that the quality treats were in the undergrowth, and that even fast-food packaging could be tasty when washed down for roughage with running water from the creek.

I could tell you of the times they tried to herd cockatoos, and how The Goddess of Storms, fearless in a dog fight, would finish battles inevitably started by Lady Buckethead, and how The Goddess earned her divinity through her paralysing fear of thunder, but I sense I’m running out of time, literally, so I’ll move on to the early hours of Christmas morning 1968.

Lady Buckethead, The Goddess of Storms and I sat under the fig tree staring into the night sky. If only I’d known I was experiencing freedom for the first time. Now that I’ve failed at everything that’s supposedly important, I realize too late what the dogs were teaching me. It’s okay just to be me. I don’t have to achieve anything or impress anyone.

I can just be.

Success is staring into the night sky with a sense of innocent wonder, trusting there’s enough food to be found and fun to be had and water to be drunk with no bloody price tags.

But life can always surprise you, and so can death.

I mean, one minute we were staring in wonder at the moon, me hoping to see Apollo 8 circling like a firefly in the darkness, and the next minute blood started pouring from Lady Buckethead’s left nostril.

The poor little bugger was clearly distressed.

I whipped out my hanky and tried to stifle the flow of blood.

Eventually, I ran for help to St John’s, thinking the midnight mass crowd might include a vet.

I ran and ran, and I did find a vet, but when I finally guided him to the fig tree, the dogs were gone.

And I never saw them again.

Merry bloody Christmas!

I was raised for a world that didn’t exist, created by a God that didn’t exist, but Lady Buckethead and The Goddess of Storms could make me believe in a god. They only knew how to love. There was no hate in them. They’d forgive me anything, and I learned the power of forgiveness from them.

I even forgive Father Whackjob, but …

Oh, my God, …

… the dogs are waiting for me at the foot of the bed …

 

And then there was a click.

I stared at the recorder, and I reached for the bottle of Chivas Regal.

The next evening, I distributed Joe’s ashes under the fig tree in Lambton Park.

I sat there for a while communing with the past.

We all make mistakes in life.

Joe looked so much older than his actual years, so much older, and so unlike his former self.

Jesus was a carpenter, and I was most certainly Father Whackjob.

I tucked the bloody snot rag into a wound in the trunk of the fig tree.

Lady Buckethead and The Goddess of Storms: angels of mercy had come to Joe in his final moments.

I stared up at the moon, and I wondered.

A fig leaf lodged in my dog collar.

‘You didn’t fail, Joe,’ I muttered. ‘You only knew how to love. You were a dog’s best friend.’

I made the sign of the cross.

And then I forgave myself.

And I moved on.

 

Copyright Paul F Walsh 2019