Bald White Man in His Sixties by J C Rammelkamp

It started on Facebook, a notice from a neighborhood dog fanciers’ page about somebody dousing a piece of steak with anti-freeze and tossing it over a fence to an unsuspecting dog, which ate the meat and died.  (Apparently these attacks have been happening for quite a while now, and they believe it is the same man.)  Then it was taken up by the neighborhood listserv, the modern-day call-tree, and further warnings about this criminal – described as a bald white man in his sixties – prompted an outpouring of fear and outrage.  (He appears to be targeting pitbull breeds in the Lakeview area of Potawatomi Rapids.)  A vigilante call went out; posters went up on phone polls; you heard nervous chatter in the grocery.  You could practically hear the bugle summoning us to action.  (Let’s work together and catch this guy so no more of our neighborhood pets have to suffer from his horrible acts.  PLEASE SHARE & SPREAD THE WORD!!!)

“Bald white man in his sixties” fairly accurately describes me, though it is a bit vague, and when I think about it, it fits any number of guys in my neighborhood, probably no more capable of torturing a dog than I am.  But the fervor made me nervous nevertheless.  I could see myself the target of a lynch mob.  The vagueness of the allegations (“Apparently” the attacks have been happening “for quite a while now”; “they” suspect the same man behind the attacks, etc.) made me suspicious of an internet hoax, and I gently suggested to the listserv that this “may be” an urban legend.

Immediately the responses flocked in.  “A woman’s dog is dead.  I don’t think it was killed by an ‘urban legend,’” one woman wrote.  You could hear the sarcasm dripping in her tone (she might as well have added, you effete, heartless piece of shit.)

One person even went on to note that he’d talked with some other dogowners and he’d heard the killings had been happening as far away as Lansing and Traverse City.  I wondered if the same bald white man in his sixties was under suspicion for those as well.  Of course, none of these killings and assaults were actually recorded.  But just because they hadn’t been reported in the press didn’t mean they weren’t true; they had it on good authority that the reports were accurate, valid.  So-and-so had heard it from a friend who’d gotten it from a reliable source.

I suggested again that this was always how an urban legend started; an urban legend usually begins with a kernel of fact and then balloons to hysterical proportions, hence the “legendary” aspect.  The bald white man in his sixties was rapidly becoming Jack the Ripper, the Boston Strangler.  But no, somebody reported they knew somebody who’d seen the actual photographs of Tylenol-tainted meat.  There were eyewitnesses who’d seen the bald white man in his sixties rushing away from the scene of the crime (sometimes he was reported to have a limp – like mine).

Listen, I know about urban legends.  I write an urban legend column for a mysteries magazine, research them, weigh the details.  Elvis Presley and other dead celebrity sightings, food myths, historical urban legends, the Paul-is-dead Beatles rumor, baby giveaway myths (lots of urban myths about babies, losing them, harming them, etc., the sort of story that preys on fear), the don’t-lick-envelopes scare, the variations on the Hook Man legend about the boy and girl parked in a lovers lane, Peeping Tom legends in department store dressing rooms, bugs and snakes, bridges and tracks, UFO’s, ghost- spirit- and angel-sightings, the Loch Ness and other legendary monsters, Mama Cass and the ham sandwich – there’s never a lack of material.  They all have charming names, like, “The Body in the Bed,” “The Bungled Rescue,” “The Nude Surprise Party” or “The Package of Cookies.”  I’d even written a column on – you guessed it – pitbulls.

“Pitbulls are scary, but they don’t deserve to be tortured or killed,” I wrote.  After hitting SEND I wondered if I sounded defensive.  The bald white man in his sixties doth protest too much, methinks.

Anyway, I was trying to decide whether I should start wearing a wig, maybe a ponytail or a mullet, when a knock came at the door.

Two uniformed policemen stood respectfully on the porch, their thick leather belts bristling with guns, radios, flashlights, and billyclubs.

“Mr. Rosenthal?  We’d like you to come with us to the police station.  We need to ask you some questions,” the first young man said.  His face was cleanshaven; his cheeks were rosy and looked painfully scraped.  He was almost apologetic.  “There’ve been some reports about dogs being poisoned,” he explained, “and you kind of fit the profile.”

“A bald white man,” his partner explained, a blond woman with acne, her hair in a bun. “In his sixties.”

            Did I have a choice, really?  In TV shows, this was where the accused says he needs to call his lawyer.  Only, I don’t have a lawyer.  Never needed one before.

I do have several urban legends columns about incompetent, deceitful, money-gouging lawyers, attorneys as careless as negligent surgeons who leave their forceps in a patient after  sewing him up” failure to follow up on defense strategies, compromising testimony and the like, fleecing their clients without service.  Ambulance chasers, shysters, petty, extravagant lawsuits resulting in huge judgments awarded for the finger found in a jar of pickles, the exploding cigarette lighter, the child suing his parents for malpractice.  “The Lawn Mower Accident,” “The Ladder in the Pile of Poop.”

“Can I drive myself?”

“We’ll bring you back home when we’re done, Mr. Rosenthal.”

I wondered if this were a promise, that I really would be brought back home and not tossed in a dungeon.  I climbed into the backseat, a shield between me and the police officers, no handles on the patrol car doors, in case I thought about trying to escape.

I saw the curtain in Sally Terry’s front window flutter, as if being released by a hand.  She’d been watching all along, no doubt, closing the curtain lest I see her now.  I shuddered, imagining what Sally was going to tell the neighbors.  Sally owned a little terrier I’d once shouted at and stamped my foot at when I found it shitting in my front yard.

At the police station, Officers Sweet and Monroe nodded at the desk sergeant and then herded me into a windowless room, as if it had all been pre-arranged.  No doubt it had.  But I had my alibi all ready.  I’d been researching an article on the blood libel, legends about Jews murdering Christian children for ritual purposes, and I’d been glued to my reference books and the internet.  This was true, though now that I thought about it, it sounded a little fishy, as if I were hinting at persecution in my own case.

Officer Monroe, the blond with the acne, did ask me if I had an alibi, but when she asked if I had anybody who could corroborate me, I realized all at once that I didn’t really.  Maybe Sally Terry had been keeping an eye through her window?  My wife had been at work when the incident apparently happened.  Sarah teaches second grade at Potawatomi Rapids Elementary.

 I was stammering something about how my wife knew my whereabouts when Officer Sweet announced the police line-up. 

Again, did I have a choice?  Wasn’t this the place where I should demand to call a lawyer?  But I was innocent, right?  I shuffled up to the wall with three other men, all bald white guys, probably ranging from 50 to 70.  Lights were shone in our eyes and it was difficult to see the people sitting before us, fifteen feet away.  I didn’t recognize any of my fellow line-up suspects.  I wondered if any of them were plants.  Meanwhile, out in the darkness we heard whispering and conferring as the police officers talked to what appeared to be a middle-aged female in jeans and a sweatshirt with some sort of writing on it.

“Number three,” Officer Sweet’s voice commanded.  “Turn so we can see your profile.”  I was number three.

After a few tense minutes more in which I was aware of the heating and plumbing noises throughout the building, gushes of water and the zzzzzz of some electrical appliance, we were all unceremoniously dismissed.  I didn’t know if this meant we’d been absolved or if the jury was still out, as it were.

But just as we were shuffling to the doorway, a large dog bounded up from beside the woman in the sweatshirt. (“Single and Loving It” the message on her shirt said.)  A pitbull. I registered the big barrel-chest, the prizefighter’s ugly mug.  It came bounding right at me!  I flinched.

“Rocky!” the woman called, scolding her pet.

But then it stopped in front of me and licked my hand.  Why me? Big foul-smelling doggy swipes of its tongue, and I realized that for the sake of appearances, to save my own ass, I’d better pretend to enjoy it.  It could blossom into an urban legend.  “The Pitbull and the Bald White Man in His Sixties.”

J C Rammelkamp

Image by Manfred Richter from Pixabay – A grey pit bull dog peering over the title.