The Rescue at Dead Dog Beach (19 page)

It was the first time I seriously thought about quitting. All I had ever wanted was to save the dogs, but now they were dying
because
of me. It was a new low.

T
he next day the dogs were still a bit off. They avoided the boathouse and got pretty jumpy whenever a vehicle drove up to the beach. I was on edge too.

I grabbed my Taser, machete, and billy club to bring with me as I walked around. There were still dogs missing, and I couldn't rest until I found them. I decided to walk up an isolated dead-end road where some of the dogs had turned up in the past. It was eerily quiet as I went. It was still early, and the sea breeze was just beginning to kick up. I couldn't smell anything . . . yet. And then I reached a spot where the dogs stopped following me. I knew I'd better investigate.

I continued along to where one of the big black Labs had given birth to her puppies a couple of months earlier. I hadn't patrolled this area on a regular basis since Mary had taken the pups to her house a few weeks ago.

I rounded the corner and looked up. One of my dogs was hanging by the neck from a tree. His feet were tied with gauze, and tattered bed sheets served as his noose. Whoever did this had burned the dog after they hung him.

I calmly walked around him, still numb from yesterday. I figured the other missing dogs must be near.

I wasn't able to reach high enough to cut him down, so I grabbed a shipping pallet that lay at the base of the tree to stand on. The dog had probably been there for at least thirty-six hours; it was already decomposing. Up close the smell was almost too much to bear.

I struggled to keep my balance as I strained to reach high enough to cut the bed sheet with my machete in my right hand, using my left to support the dog. When the material finally gave way, the weight of the dog was too much, and I lost my footing. Next thing I knew, we were both falling through the air. I hit the pallet on my side, which knocked the wind out of me. I rolled off to the ground. I was dazed, holding my ribs, trying to catch my breath. I looked over to my left and screamed. The dead dog was in a heap right next to me.

I scrambled to my feet and backed away in a frenzy, as though I'd never seen or touched a corpse. I started to cry when I realized that I'd dropped the dog's body.

The dogs were going nuts barking. I must have startled them when I fell.

“Shut up!” I shouted to quiet them, something I had never done before.

I was really rattled. I wasn't sure I'd recover from this one. As I slowly made my way back to the truck, I was hurting in more ways than one. I needed to bury this poor boy.

I had to do something with the maelstrom of emotions swirling inside me. I needed to talk to someone who understood.

I called Melanie, hoping she might be able to think more clearly than I was and come up with a new game plan. My call went immediately to voice mail.

I tried Nancy. Voice mail.

I was furious with them for not answering, although they had already warned me that they had started screening my calls because they found the stories I told them too depressing.

“What do you think it's like for me and the dogs, living those horror stories every day?” I'd said.

I knew it wasn't fair of me to be angry, but I needed them. So much for that.

I spent the rest of the day sitting in the shade of a palm tree (safely out of the trajectory of any falling coconuts). It was obvious to me that whoever had committed this massacre was sending a message, one I received loud and clear: they wanted me to stop.
I don't care. I won't quit. They picked the wrong guy to mess with
.

I fell asleep with the remaining pack, about forty-five dogs now. But that number would grow again as more dogs were dumped daily.

I was nudged awake by the sound of whimpering, a wet nose pressed against my skin. I looked at the concerned faces of my dogs and realized that, no matter how out of control things seemed, this was the most fulfilled I'd felt in years. These dogs were willing to die for me. And I was willing to die for them too.

Nancy returned my call the next morning.

“Steve, I'm going to put you on speaker. Melanie is with me.” They were on their way to a yoga class. “What's up?”

I felt dead inside. I was still angry they hadn't called back the day before when I needed support. I told them briefly what had happened over the previous two days, which dogs were dead, which were still unaccounted for. When I was done speaking, the only sound to break the silence was Nancy's bawling in the background. I had nothing more to say.

“Steve, you should stay away from the beach for a while,” Melanie finally said. “Let things settle down.”

Easy for her to say. She didn't know my dogs or care about them the way I did.

“We've got a connection at the San Juan Police Department,” she went on. “We'll give him a call. Maybe we can hire a private investigator to stake out the beach.”

In the background, I heard Nancy say, “We should get some surveillance equipment, set up cameras all over the boathouse and the beach.”

“How the hell are you going to manage that?” I said. I knew they were trying to make me feel better, but all I felt was disappointment. Desperate for something to ease the strain I was feeling, I decided to go paragliding. Whenever I felt I wasn't coping very well, I headed to the central mountains to go flying. Flying always balanced me out, and I needed to settle my thoughts and get a bigger perspective.

It was an amazing day. I flew harder and maybe a little crazier than normal, but I was feeling good again as I swooped and spiraled over the lush valley below. As the sun dipped down in the western sky, I landed between the horses and cows standing peacefully in the field near where I'd parked my truck, packed up my gear, and headed for home. Usually I'd feel a high from the experience that would last the rest of the day, drift into a peaceful night's sleep, and wake jazzed the next morning. Not this time. From the moment I got behind the wheel, I found myself driving aggressively the whole way back to Palmas del Mar. I arrived home feeling bothered, out of sorts. My thoughts went round and round, like a dog chasing its tail.

I sat out by the pool with a bottle of scotch and “drank about it” until Pam got home.

“How are you doing?” she asked. Obviously it was a rhetorical question. She could see on my face that I was struggling.

“Would you like something to eat?” she tried again.

I wasn't hungry. I just wanted to drink tonight.

Pam made herself a salad and sat down to do some work, while I stewed over my thoughts. I gazed at the reflection of the moon on the surface of the water and listened to the call of the coqui. If someone had walked into our lives at that moment, it would all seem too perfect. We were living on a tropical island in the Caribbean in a beautiful house, sipping mojitos by the pool. But it's very different living in a foreign country than it is visiting on vacation and staying at an all-inclusive resort. Many of the other expat families we knew were struggling too. The reasons were different, but that didn't really matter. The others all seemed to be in denial about how they felt. Whenever Pam and I would try to talk about our personal experiences and the challenges we were facing, the other expats would dismiss us, declaring how much they loved living there. They made us feel like we were alone in our unhappiness. But we knew we weren't alone; it just appeared that way.

I felt like I would smack the next person who equated our expat life to “being permanently on holiday.” They had no idea.

When we decided to take the leap and move to Puerto Rico, we knew there would be some obvious hurdles to jump: finding a house, getting a car, figuring out where to get groceries and supplies, that kind of thing. These are the hassles of everyday life that back home we knew how to handle. But working out new systems and processes was only the half of it when you have a different language and culture to contend with as well.

Generally one person puts his or her life on hold in order to live abroad as well. When a spouse is given an overseas assignment, the partner is faced with many obstacles that are often ignored. Unfortunately, the company didn't offer support for trailing spouses. We thought I would be able to get a job and work part-time somewhere to socialize and make friends, but we quickly found out that it was a near impossibility. We assumed that Internet access would be easily available to maintain contact with friends and family back home, only to discover that it takes months to get connected and it only works intermittently.

Many of our friends and relatives back home deemed our life exotic, seeing only the positives: the nice homes, the exciting travel experiences. They would visit and see our “new lifestyle” through holiday-tinted lenses. They saw us as fortunate and capable, but what they didn't see was that often the experience felt a bit like the old duck analogy—giving the impression that everything was calm and under control on the surface, while just beneath the surface we were paddling like mad just to keep afloat.

I
woke up with a hangover from too many glasses of scotch, but I wasn't going to let that stop me from going to the beach. I'd never missed a day, and I wasn't going to start now.

I started the morning with the dogs at the storage containers, feeding and hanging out with them for about an hour before moving on to other areas of the beach. Most of the surviving dogs were present, but a few new ones were staying to themselves near the jetty, so I jumped into my truck for the short drive over to the point. I drove slowly, with the door open and my foot resting on the running board, so I could talk to the dogs as they followed alongside.

As I rounded the corner and pulled into the gravel parking lot, I scanned for newcomers. Off to the left, at the far end of the parking lot, I saw a guy backing his boat and trailer down the dirt ramp into the water. Several other men were standing around watching. When I got nearer, I saw they had cornered a couple of my dogs between the breakwater and the boat ramp. They were having a big laugh taunting the animals, acting tough like they were lion tamers instead of jerks picking on defenseless, friendly dogs.

Whenever I'd seen guys down here before, usually drunk, they tended to scatter when I showed up, but this lot was making so much noise they didn't hear me approach. The dogs that had followed me were visibly upset. Some had fallen back and started to bark.

I stopped the truck and got out just as one of the men reached into the bed of their pickup and pulled out a container of gasoline. Maybe it's for the boat, I thought. But he wasn't walking toward the boat. He was going toward the dogs they'd corralled. Before I could make a move, the man had doused the dogs with gasoline.

One of the dogs tried to make a break for it, bolting between the men's legs. He got through but not before getting his ribs kicked in. His terrified yelp caused my dogs to ratchet up the barking. He tumbled across the gravel, then got up and ran like hell. He never looked back.

The men were whooping and hollering, taunting the dog they still had trapped between them, completely unaware of my presence. The dog was cowering, his head down and his tail between his legs, his whole body shaking. He tried to run, but the men kept scaring him back. The man with the container lunged toward the dog.

“No!” I screamed.

The gasoline sprayed through the air, drenching the dog's body.

The men roared with laughter as another man flicked a match toward the dog.

The dog burst into flames. The men skittered out of the dog's way as it thrashed around, falling down, smashing into everything in his path. The dog's cries of pain were unlike anything I'd ever heard. Adrenaline surged through me. I was filled with pure, white-hot rage.

The next thing I knew, I was running full speed toward the men. I slammed into the back of the man holding the gas can with my fists and elbows, knocking him to the ground. His head whipped back like he'd been hit by a car, as I stumbled over him into the middle of the group.

I drew my machete before they understood what had just happened. Everything went quiet except for the sound of the screaming dog in the background and my heart beating like a war drum in my head.

I maneuvered out of the circle and started backing toward my truck, the dogs keeping them at bay so I could get a safe distance away. There was no room for mistakes now. I knew they'd likely kill me if they got hold of me.

The guy I'd knocked down got up. He made a move as if to get around behind me. I pointed the machete toward him.

“Don't even try it, you piece of shit! I'll kill you where you stand!”

In all likelihood, he didn't understand what I said, but it didn't matter. He stopped in his tracks and put his hands up in front of him in a gesture of surrender. They all took a few steps back.

I was terrified. I felt surges of panic trying to take over. I had to convince them I was crazier than they were. Maybe I was. What the hell was I thinking? I hadn't even helped the poor dog, which lay twitching and dying in the gravel fifty feet from where I stood. And now I'd put the rest of the dogs and myself in danger.
I'm so stupid
.

I bumped into the front of my truck. The driver's side door was still open. I slipped in and started the engine. The dogs disappeared into the jungle.

This felt all too familiar, like a recycled dream. I flashed back to Kyle and the others lying dead in the gravel a few short months ago. Once again, my dogs had stayed by my side and protected me.

I felt a nudge on my arm. It was Scampi, one of the first dogs I'd discovered at this beach a year ago. She must have jumped into the truck during the commotion. She was sitting on the passenger seat, whimpering and shaking like a leaf in the wind. I'd heard her bark during the confrontation—she had a strained, raspy bark that made me think she must have been kicked in the throat before I met her. She reminded me of a dog my dad had brought home from the pound for me when I was a little boy. I had named him Scamp, and I loved him more than anyone thought possible. Scampi and I had gotten close when I nursed her back to health after she'd eaten something that caused her temporary paralysis and she almost died. She had defended me one day, getting her ribs kicked in while chasing away guys looking to start a fight.