1978
"A 30 to 1 shot on a horse and it winds up being the winner," Maude said as she thumbed through the money won on the bet, "Who would've guessed? That horse looked like it was ready for the glue factory."
"That's why the odds against it winning were as big as they were," Silas told her as they left the racetrack that afternoon.
"We've been going to the tracks for two years now and we always win, you sure know your horses," Maude commented as she pocketed the money.
Silas chuckled and reminded her, "I ought to."
Maude chuckled in response and said, "I guess there's one advantage to being older than dirt, you know horses as well as anything."
"Hey," Silas reached over and poked his wife to get her attention, and when she looked ready to bite his finger off he said to her, "Is that idiot friend of yours still coming to our house for the weekend?"
"No," she answered, "We're going to his."
"Oh joy," Silas dryly remarked, "48 hours with that senile old bat and a houseful of drunks directly descended from the home brew bugs from when it was an 'in' thing."
Maude turned and tapped his backside with her shoe in a similar manner to his poking and said, "As you'll recall, most of those home brew bugs staying at his house are women."
"So?" Silas asked.
Maude laughed and said, "Just my luck, 3 billion fat palookas running around this planet and I get the only one who would prefer a horse to a woman."
"So what're you complaining about?" Silas asked, "When was the last time you found either of them in our bed?"
Maude groaned and dropped her head and said, "I should hope never, either way if the day comes I do I'm chasing both of you out with a pitchfork."
"Ha-ha," Silas dryly remarked.
Maude looked at her watch and said, "Hey come on, we gotta get going if we're going to make it for the next race at the dog track."
Silas rolled his eyes and behind their lids and murmured to himself, "Doo-dah, doo-dah."
"Ehhh shut up," Maude said as she swung her leg up and kicked him.
Silas looked around at the spectators at the dog track and when he saw Maude coming back towards their seats, he took his foot off the chair next to him so she could sit down.
"So who'd you bet on?" he asked.
"Fifty bucks to win on Sweet Jake," Maude said as she sat down.
"Who's that?" Silas asked.
"The loser, I'll guarantee you," Maude told him, "So tell me again how they train these dogs to run the races?"
"I told you how they do it," Silas replied.
"I know you did but I still don't get it," she said, "Horses have jockeys to get them around the tracks, but the dogs work alone."
Everybody was on edge waiting for the race to start, and Maude leaned over to her husband and said, "It's funny ain't it?"
"Huh, what?" Silas asked as he turned to her.
"Well think about it, who was that idiot that said 'it doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game'? Who was stupid enough to say that?"
"I don't know," Silas said dismissively.
"Yeah well whoever said it, was wrong," Maud said as she folded her arms, "That's why there's only one winner, and no matter how many players there are, everybody else loses. It's kind of like life, there's only one way to be born, but there are a million ways to die, and for these dogs winning and losing is life and death."
They watched as the race started and saw five greyhounds come running out from the starting line. Maude didn't say anything but she clenched her teeth together and didn't look half the time at watching four dogs running neck and neck, and the fifth one trailing far behind.
"Dead last," she grimaced when the race was over.
"You knew he was going to lose," Silas told her.
Maude kicked the air a few times with one foot before putting it down and said grimly, "Well, he's just outlived his usefulness."
"Come on," Silas said as they got up, "Let's go."
They managed to turn around and off onto the empty street straight ahead of the truck that the dog's owner was driving. When the car stalled in the middle of the road, the truck hit the brakes and a second later the man driving got out to see what was going on. Silas and Maude got out of their car to face him and Maude started the conversation by asking, "You're the man who ran Sweet Jake in the race today?"
"Yeah, that's right," the man answered. He was a rough looking man somewhere in his late 40s or early 50s, and he didn't strike Maude as being too concerned with the fate of the animals in his care.
"That's the…third race he's lost, isn't it?" Maude asked as she went around to the back of the truck where the dog's cage was kept. She could hear the greyhound whimpering and tried sticking her hand in through the bars but the best she could manage were three fingers to let the dog sniff and lick.
"Yeah, yeah it is," the man answered, almost sounding sorry for it.
"So I guess it's the glue factory for Sweet Jake now, eh?" Maude asked.
The man didn't get the joke and said, "No, horses get sent to the glue factory, greyhounds just get put down."
"Yes, I'm very aware," Maude said as she slipped her hand onto the cage's lock, "A dog loses a couple of races and suddenly it's outlived its usefulness, no matter that it's still young and healthy."
"Hey," the man scratched his head and looked from her to her husband and asked, "What are you folks, some of those bleeding heart animal rights people or something?"
"Not exactly," Maude said as she pushed the levers that released the bolt on the cage, "We just recognize that some forms of life are more important than others, and that includes an animal's right to life over its owner's."
The man was quickly losing his patience with these people and turned back to Maude and started to ask, "Hey what do you…" but didn't get any further.
Though Maude was no stranger to violence, she still preferred to wait until the man stopped making any sounds before she turned around to see the completed work. There he lay, dead in the middle of the road, the side of his head bashed in and the ground beneath him covered in blood. Her husband stood over the man looking down at the corpse as if uncertain about something.
"This dog still has some use left in him, you sir do not, and you never did," Maude said as she glanced down at the dead body, then she turned back to the dog in the cage and opened the door.
Silas went over to the truck chuckling as he got acquainted with the dog, it quickly took a liking to him and he picked it up and carried it in his arms over to their car.
"It's too bad they have to mark these dogs," Maude said as she closed the door to the backseat, "If they weren't tattooed we could find somebody else to take them in."
"What for, you got a problem with dogs?" Silas asked.
"Certainly not, but I'm running out of reasons to justify having 100 greyhounds at our home," Maude told him as they got in the front seat.
"Well, I think enough time has passed that we can see about finding some other people to take the older ones," Silas told her, "After all, it's been a few months since their owners were 'horribly and mysteriously killed', by this time we can claim that they just stumbled onto our property and we fed them for a few days."
Maude nodded and replied, "These bastards are only half the problem, there are also the dirtballs that breed these dogs excessively for racing, as if the damn pet store mills weren't bad enough."
"Lot of money in it," Silas said as they pulled out of there, "After all, dog racing pays out smaller amounts so few people have to pay taxes on their winning wages and so they come back frequently to bet on more races and win a lot more small amounts of money, and it goes without saying it's far easier and faster to breed dogs for racing than it is horses. Figure in 11 months for each new horse that comes one at a time against 2-3 months for a greyhound and 5-7 pups in each litter, and more than one of them is going to be likely for racing, so it only makes sense why they breed the dogs so rapidly for racing."
"Sure, they breed them so fast it doesn't matter if they kill 30,000 a year just because they lose a couple of races, they're all expendable in the eyes of the owners," Maude said, "Just kill one dog and replace it with another. Funny, when people cease to serve a purpose everybody likes to frown on killing them for the same reason of being humane and convenient."
"Mm-hmm," Silas responded.
"Of course," Maude said with a huff, "I suppose it's like that other thing we talked about. Those damn poachers that go after the baby seals, take that thing, what's it called?"
"Hakapik," Silas told her.
"Right, they take the hakapik and put a spike in the baby seal's skull and then hook it on the thing and haul it off, and if they get the older seals they shoot them first, then spike them and drag them…call it the most humane way to kill them," Maude snorted and told her husband, "I'll guarantee you, if you did the same thing to people, used that damn hakapik to split their skulls, they would not see it as being the most humane way to kill them, bunch of hypocrites."
A minute passed and a light bulb went on in her head and she looked to her husband and said, "Hey you know, we ought to do that. We ought to take one of those clubs and use that on the next bunch of bastards we go after."
Silas chuckled and said, "You would say that, that's all you ever do, bash people's brains out with a club, and I ought to know."
"Well come on," Maude responded, "As it is those dumb cops aren't able to put 2 and 2 together on these 'murders', bring a seal club into the picture and they won't even be able to put 1 and 1 together, nobody would ever see it coming."
Silas thought about it for a minute.
"So how many does this make now?" Maude asked him.
"How many what?" he asked.
"How many owners have we killed, and how many dogs have we taken back to our house?" Maude asked.
Silas scratched his head and thought of the question, and the answer, and after a couple of minutes he told her, "Let's see, we've been doing it now for what, about two years? So I'd say about 152."
Maude shrugged and said, "Well, it's a start anyway, 152 perfectly good dogs saved, and 152 worthless pieces of crap dead for proving themselves useless and...obsolete."
Silas rolled his eyes and snorted, "3 billion fat palookas running around this planet and I just had to marry a Twilight Zone fan."
"That's right," Maude sneered as she leaned over to his side, "You want to make something out of it?"
"No thanks," he replied, "And you can save your threat to get ugly, it's already too late for that."
Maude turned in her seat to look at the dog that was standing up in the back and she pointed to Silas and said, "Go ahead boy, kill."