The Mastiff

The animal quarantine facility at Rooty Hill was not a place I’d ever thought of visiting, until Cathy sent me on weekly checks of Julius, the imported Lowchen. Julius had been shipped from Sweden, and had to spend time in quarantine along with the other canine imports. They were housed in long, adjacent runs, on both sides of a hallway. I expected them to be hanging their paws between the bars, trailing cigarettes or carving tallies into the walls, it looks so prison-like. The women who worked there looked tough but friendly, their offices smelt like vet surgeries, of disinfectant and animal hair. They spent a lot of time hosing.
A Lowchen is a small, longhaired dog that you can easily hold on your lap. I was trying to entice Julius with a damp, raggedy toy when I hear a deep rumbling from the pen next door. I squeaked in surprise to see the giant mastiff staring in at us, jowls wobbling as he groaned. He had an immense pink-white and black mouth, it reminded me of a picture of Cronos in an old Greek Mythology textbook, as Cronos ate his children. His mouth was puckered and cavernous.
Although large, the mastiff wasn’t menacing. This had something to do with the two layers of wire in between him and me, but more to do with the fact the mastiff looked very lonely. He stared in at me, and making sad, yearning grunts and groans. He gave up looking in at me and started to pace up and down his run, groaning to himself. He was exactly like a mumbling, sulking old man. Occasionally his growls would form into cough-like barks that made the loose skin under his neck wobble.
To anyone with a fear of large dogs, the mastiff would be terrifying. He was not only large, but very solid, I imagined the ground would shake underneath him when he ran.
On my last visit to the quarantine, the mastiff had been collected, his incarceration over. I later felt happy thinking about the mastiff curled up in front of an open fire somewhere, or siring litters of baby mastiffs.
On the day of my last visit though, I was too distracted to think of the mastiff. I’d been harassed by the Wonderland bus driver. Each week I’d wait at Rooty Hill for the bus to the Australia’s Wonderland amusement park to pull up alongside the bank, and ask the driver to drop me off across the highway from the quarantine place. This last week I was the only passenger on the bus. The man driving it was mastiff-like, now I think of it, but not in a good way. He had watermelon arms that squeezed out of his short sleeved shirt, and a severely shaved head. He was saying that he’d come past and pick me up after I finished at the quarantine place.
"What time are you leaving?"
"No really it’s fine."
"I’ll pick you up."
"Does the bus come back along this way?" (I didn’t think it did.)
"No. In my car."
"No thanks."
"I finish at 3:30, I’ll pick you up in my car." He seemed to have decided this already.
The bus was stationed across the road from quarantine. It was a desolate road, with blank fields on either side of it and cars whizzing past at highway speed. He wouldn’t open the doors, and I felt desperate and scared. I’d never realised how much power a bus driver has simply by not opening the doors. I couldn’t work out if he was joking or not about picking me up. Did he actually expect me to accept? Does he not realise that it has been drummed into me since childhood not to accept lifts from strangers? Eventually he opened the doors and I escaped. The whole way back I expected him to pull up beside me and drag me into his car, even though I made sure I’d get back to the train station by 3:30. What if he’d left work early to make sure he got me? I felt very glad to be on the train home, safe.