BILL CHURCH part 1: bill church'S TWO-LEGGED DOG/ KIDS IN the fire

NOTE: THIS IS A TRUE ORAL STORY OF WORKING-CLASS LIFE as told to Fisher Lavell

​Bill Church’s Two-legged Dog/ Kids in the Fire

Bill Church’s Dog, as told by brother-in law Don Lavell

Bill Church had a dog, this was back in the Thirties, and right from the start, he was a great dog. A great dog for the bush, he’d scare up jumpers and chase them back towards you, a natural hunter. Just your basic mongrel dog, some Shepherd in him maybe, black and tan, but a good-size dog.

Anyways, Bill Church was out mowing hay one day, just with the old metal mower pulled by a horse, the mowing arm was a shaft on the right, had these razor sharp blades on the bottom like a scythe that would cut the hay as you passed over.

Well, I guess the dog had scared up a rabbit in the meadow there and it come careening up behind Bill, the dog in hot pursuit, rabbit sprinted around the mower and zigzagged away, but as the dog leapt over the mowing arm and landed, front feet behind the back feet the way they do, just then the blades swiped forwards and sliced that dog’s front feet clean off.

Well, Bill Church jumped right down and run to the dog, tearing off his shirt as he ran, ripping off strips, and he bound up the legs first thing, tourniquet, shoved the feet in his pockets, and picked the dog up. Bill was just a short man like all the Churches, about five foot two and skinny, but he went running up to the house, that big dog cradled in his arms like a kid, just screaming.

He got him quieted and stopped the bleeding—doctors wasn’t free for people in them days, never mind animals. He had tried to sew the feet back on but it wouldn’t take, so then he just kept it clean, sewed up the skin over the stumps, and hoped for the best.

And Bill Church nursed that dog back to health, not knowing, like how the hell would he even get by with only the two legs?

But that dog lived and not only that, but he was one of the best dogs you ever seen. He didn’t just favour the feet that were gone and hop around on the back legs like you might think. He actually taught himself to walk on them stumps, the legs with no feet, he would walk on them, slow and painful at first, till he got his callouses built up, like thick pads on the ends of his stumps. And you’d always recognize Bill Church’s dog at a distance, his outline was different, front end shorter than the rear, but he went back to hunting, eventually got just as good as before. He could run, he could jump, he could mate.

And Bill Church’s dog, I remember, was crazy about a baseball. I was just a kid then, that was when we all lived out on the old gravel ridge about twelve miles north-west of Swan River, off the Ditch Road. And us kids would all get together on a summer evening, play some scrub baseball in the big field, Churches and Lavells and Mitchells and Howdles, the whole bunch.

But Bill Church’s goddamn two-legged dog would jump straight up in the air and steal that ball on the fly, run like hell away with it, and it would be gone. You’d chase after him, call him, try to coax him, you’d look all over the goddam place for your ball, money was scarce to replace it, but that ball was gone. If Bill Church’s dog got it, you’d never see your goddam ball again.

Crazy about a baseball

So next time you wanted to play ball, you had to learn see, and you’d have to first go tie up Bill Church’s dog, and then you could play ball.

And that dog lived to be old, old, and that was only because of Bill Church. He was a quick thinker and a man of action. He would do something, Bill Church, not just think about it and see what happens. If you ever had a big problem in your life, a real crisis where lives were on the line, Bill Church would be the man you’d hope would be nearby.

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Kids in the Fire, as told by brother Tom Church

Must have been about 1935 or ’36. Mom and Dad was away, it was blueberry season and they had gone up the mountain to pick berries to sell, leaving the kids with us. Eleven in the family, of course, it was hot in August and the little kids, Melvin and Violet, was sleeping in the house with the three big girls, us boys was out in a shed down the yard that we called the bunk house. Brother Bill was in his late teens then, not married yet, and I was a few years younger.

But it was the pitch black of night and we woke up with the girls screaming, “Fire, fire, fire! The kids, the kids is in the house!” We swung open the door and the house was ablaze, there was flames eating up the roof, flames in the kitchen window, jumping, you could feel the heat all the way down the yard, like standing next to a stove.

The pitch black of night and the house was ablaze

I turned back and grabbed my pants, we’d just been sleeping in our gitch, it was so damn hot, and I hopped back to the doorway, trying to get my feet through the pantlegs.

But not brother Bill. He just ran, gitches and all. He ran full tilt to the house, never slowed for a second, ran to the window and through the window in one fluid move, like jumping a hurdle, smashing the glass with his up-flung arm as he hit.

I’d got my pants fixed and ran up to the house, but by the time I reached it, Bill had already got Violet, who was about five years old then, he threw her into my arms through the smashed window and went back for Mel.

There was smoke pouring out the windows like tar, fire roaring like a beast in the walls, things cracking and breaking inside, the girls screaming and crying in the yard like a bunch of ninnies. Why the hell did they run out of the house and leave them kids in there?

The heat was so intense, it drove me back, I had my arm up over my forehead, eyes stinging with tears, choking in the black smoke. I was yelling, “Bill! Bill! Jesus! Melvin! Get outta there!” But they were still in there, the roof creaking and moaning, getting ready to give way.

And I guess Bill had found Violet right away, there on the cot by the window, but Melvin had got scared, he was only three years old, and he had crawled under the bed and shoved himself way back against the wall, so then Bill couldn’t find him.

You could not see the hand in front of your face. But Bill had got down on the floor, I guess, crawling on his belly to try and breathe, groping around, swinging his hand back and forth in front of him, calling “Mel, Mel, come to brother.”

Well, Bill’s hands finally found him, he grabbed him, jumped up and put Mel on his hip, and straddled the window, trying to climb through. And it was just at that minute that the lantern blew. They used to hang the coal oil lantern on a hook by the window there, but the air inside the house was so hot at that point, it ignited the oil, and the lantern exploded, spewing hot, burning oil all over little Melvin’s back and shoulders and neck and head.  

He was burned bad, Mel, because he was so little and he got the worst of the explosion. And brother Bill’s arm was bleeding like a son-of-a-bitch where it was embedded with all them shards of glass.

But we had a good neighbour, Mrs. Krumm was her name, she had some kind of medical training, and she had come up with a buckboard when they seen the fire in the night. And she said, “Don’t touch them!” She bound up Bill’s arm best as she could and laid Mel on his stomach in the back of the buckboard, just draping clean sheets over him, and drove like hell for the hospital in town.

They said that Melvin had third-degree burns to 90% of his body, they did not even think that he would live, but he did live, although he was in the hospital for months, in tremendous pain, poor little guy. They had to bind his arms to the bedpost to keep him from gouging out his own skin from the pain and the itch as it healed. But he lived.

And that is why you will see on a sunny day, when men take off their shirts to work, my handsome young brother Melvin with that mottled gray mess of scar he calls a back, and just the one arm-sized strip of clean flesh across it. And working along side of him, quiet and strong, my short little brother Bill Church, with a matching scar on his right arm, a weird-looking bubble where the infection was from the glass he broke going through that window.

Yessir, I stopped to put my pants on that day, but not brother Bill. He hit the ground running, and both them kids, Melvin and Violet, only ever had a life because of it.

END OF PART 1 OF 3