Tuff Guy: The Story of a Lost and Found Dog in Alabama

By Monty Newport

Every dog that has lived a life has a story. For those lucky enough to start and finish their lives in the same forever home, they are usually well known and documented with pictures, memories and stories from their families. "Tuff Guy" is the story of Tuff, a stray dog found in rural Alabama.

Tuff's story, existed only in his memory, and was not known to anyone who could speak for him. "Tuff Guy" gives voice to his memories and allows its readers insight into some, fictional as well as real, people and places in the part of the state of Alabama where this little Maltese came from. It is his story and their story. It is filled with laughter, sorrow, kindness and ignorance.

In Tuff Guy you will travel with human and cannine characters from the hardscrabble fields and forests of Alabama to the rolling plains and corn mazes of Iowa. In it, you follow the lives of those who touched and were touched by a little Maltese. Tuff, the dog, was the hub for bringing together the diverse lives, both fictional and non-fictional, that made up his life and made his life story one worth telling about.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477232439

Monty Newport

Monty Newport lives in Hoover, Alabama with his wife, Melissa, his daughter, Laurel, his son, Matt, as well as Q, Chloe, Kirby, Sissy, Gracie, Pistol Pete and occasional pups passing through to their forever homes. Born in Champaign, Illinois, Monty grew up in Omaha, Nebraska before moving to Alabama in 1971. Monty earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Auburn University. He is currently the Vice President of a software company. Monty has always had dogs in his home, but has found it equally rewarding to help those dogs and cats whom have needed assistance in finding their forever homes. Inspired by Melissa's efforts with several rescue operations, Monty has been active in volunteering his time to aid efforts to help our four legged friends. Monty and Melissa were lucky enough to have spent time in Kanab, Utah, volunteering at the Best Friends Animal Society's "Dog Town". To see the work the volunteers and staff provide there was inspirational. Despite their and thousands of other good peoples efforts, there is still more work to be done. A portion of the proceeds from "Tuff Guy" will go to selected rescue groups to help them with their never ending efforts; helping those whom can't speak for themselves.

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Tuff Guy

The Story of a Lost and Found Dog in Alabama

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By Monty Newport

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

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Phone: [phone]

© 2012 Monty Newport. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 8/2/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3245-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3244-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-3243-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012911429

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Way We Were lyrics © EMI Music Publishing, Songwriters: HAMLISCH, MARVIN/BERGMAN, ALAN/BERGMAN, MARILYN

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Epilogue

To Melissa, who asked the question that sparked the curiosity in my mind, as well as being the woman who taught me more about love, human and canine, than I ever fully understood before I met her.

To Laurel, who continuously provides me with examples of creativity which motivated me to again find my own and the courage to believe in it.

To Matt, for telling me I use too many big words.

To Dad, for showing me the way…

Chapter 1

The April rain was still cool, but each drop pounding down on his exposed back burned like acid. A yeast infection had started in his ears and had spread, making his fluffy white hair fall out in clumps, leaving inflamed skin in its place. As the rain pelted against his exposed epidermis, he winced, but continued forward. He had no idea where he was going, but he did know what he was searching for.

His eyesight provided only a confusing mass of hazy, shadow-filled light. His cataracts had developed over a year before, now they clouded his eyes, causing the lightning emerging from the spring storm to become little more than a momentary flashing blur. His ears, riddled by the yeast infection and combined with his advancing age, could barely hear the claps of thunder. He could sooner feel the vibration than hear it, but the burning agony of the rain on his skin and the gnawing hunger pangs from his belly were all his brain could handle. Despite the ferocity of the storm, he kept walking.

The wind picked up, blowing with gusts fueled by a large cold front descending from western Canada and dropping down to Alabama where it collided, head on, with a warm high pressure system that came up from the Gulf of Mexico. The resultant wind shear as the two fronts meet often terrorizes the Heart of Dixie state with violent tornadoes in the early spring and late fall. On this day, all the local weathermen had predicted that the potential for tornadoes to form looked favorable. Instead, straight line winds approaching 50 miles an hour were accompanying the storm.

The gusts hit him head on, making each step an excruciating effort. Despite his physical condition, and diminished senses of sight and sound, his nose was keen. Within the wind blowing against him his olfactory senses worked against a cacophony of scents: the bitter, sappy smell of broken pine limbs, the irony scent of the freshly tilled red clay of the fields a mile upwind and the musky aroma of leaf covered ground in the marshy area he found himself wading through. But most importantly, the unmistakable smoky smell of burning hickory and pork had emerged. It started out so faintly that he could not be sure, but as he pushed forward it became stronger. Barbeque!

He hadn’t eaten since the prior day when he had picked through the remnants of a bag of fried chicken along the side of County Highway 257. The redneck who tossed the bag out of his truck window was thorough in taking most of the meat from the bones. Luckily the thoughtless litterer was missing two of his front uppers and one of his front lower teeth, so there was a little left to pick at. It wasn’t enough to sustain him though, and fighting the storm had burned away the little protein it had provided. He was starving. His stomach churned and the hunger continued to drive him. The smell of the barbeque faded, he raised his head and flared his nostrils. Moving slightly to his right, he picked up the scent again. It was stronger now. He moved on in that direction.

Despite his aching body and famished belly, the wonderful bouquet of smoldering hickory embers and charred pig flesh invigorated him and he quickened his pace. Thankfully the wind had lessened, but it still left a gusting trail that embellished the barbecue smoke, creating a bridge from the grill to his nose. The strengthening scent triggered his saliva glands. Drool ran freely from both corners of his mouth. His breathing quickened, as he inhaled and exhaled in machine gun like sniffs. He was running now, determined to find the source. His short legs pushed him forward with all they had in them.

The collision sent shockwaves coursing through his body. With the smell of barbeque so strong, he had missed the scent of the tar covered fence post that met his head. It knocked him senseless. Through his cataract clouded eyes he saw stars and he collapsed in a heap.

Chapter 2

Janice Porter hadn’t made much of her 42 years on this earth. In fact, where she lived in Archer, Alabama was less than 10 miles from where she was born and raised. Other than a few trips to the Beach as Alabamians refer to the Gulf Coast (more specifically the Redneck Riviera around Gulf Shores), and a couple of jaunts to the Indian casinos in Choctaw, Mississippi, her life, a failed marriage and bastard son had pretty much played out within the back drop of Archer.

Archer ain’t much of a town. as folks in Walker County will tell you. Besides a stoplight and a Dollar General store, it wasn’t much. It fell into the category of not big enough for a McDonalds or Walmart. The kids of the few hundred who lived in Archer were bussed off to the Walker County school system, which saw their elementary, middle and high schools located up in Jasper. Most didn’t make it all the way through and fell back on mining coal or more menial work, just as their parents and their parent’s parents had done.

Janice wasn’t much different. She did make it through all four years of high school, though you couldn’t tell from listening to her talk. Her graduation year was delayed a bit, due to the arrival of an unexpected surprise: her son Roland. Janice started life as an attractive girl and she was blessed with a nice figure. In fact, in her freshman and sophomore years she had made both the Cheerleading Squad and the Homecoming Court at Walker County High. Unfortunately it was all short lived. As her looks drew the boys to her, it turned out that she was easy and she quickly gained the reputation of Class Slut. Self-respect and morality did not run very deeply in Janice. Her Daddy, Mike, had worked third shift in the local coal mines. He came home, drank lots of whiskey, passed out and went back to work the next day. Occasionally he took some time out to slap his wife around leaving her bruised and battered. Thus Janice’s Mom, Cathy, lacked self -respect as well. She had passed it on.

Sometime in her late twenties as her looks began to tire and her butt started to spread, along with the rest of her body, her two year marriage with Danny Wadkins came and went. Danny was the golf Pro at Walker County Country Club. He had played golf through junior college and occasionally he could play a round of scratch golf. But he always could break out the driver and crank the ball 300 yards or more a whack, which impressed the local Bubbas to no end. Tee it high and let it fly! Danny would repeat to those on the course with him. He spent his first years at W.C.C.C. tutoring local insurance agents, lawyers and bankers from the area whom could afford to play and pay him to work with them. This grew boring quickly, however, and Danny started drinking beer to ease the boredom. Soon he turned to liquor, a better buzz for 18 he would say.

They had met at the Country Club. Janice and Danny were there, attending the wedding reception for Ben and Angela Benson. Ben was a local attorney whom Danny worked with on the course each week. Angela was, at one time, best friends with Janice. That was before Janice did the dirty with Angela’s boyfriend in the parking lot at their high school prom. After that they drifted apart. Angela had gone off to college at the University of Alabama. When she returned to be a teacher in Walker County, she ran into Janice. Old deeds were forgiven and they had kept up with one another, thus Janice’s invitation to the wedding.

Danny and Janice had dated for a year. This dating more or less meaning they went out to dinner and came back to Danny’s trailer to get drunk and, as Danny would say, to get me some. Danny did attempt to take an interest in Janice’s son, Roland, even trying to teach him to play golf. Unfortunately, Roland was uncoordinated and a bit slow. Well maybe not slow; he was dumber than a sack of hammers. After a couple of tries with Roland, Danny had five stiches in his forehead, numerous contusions and badly swollen testicles. It seems Roland did not understand he had to wait for Danny to back away a safe distance before swinging the club.

Despite his failure to connect with Roland, Danny enjoyed getting laid regularly by an attractive woman. Janice enjoyed Danny’s attention, especially as it allowed her the ability to move up from the current single wide mobile home in which she currently resided, to a fancy double wide’ with three bedrooms and two full baths. Danny also had cable television, which meant no more having to make Roland stand for hours, holding the rabbit ear antennae’s at various angles next to her T.V. while she watched Oprah or her other shows," as she called the soap operas available on the two television channels they could pick up from Birmingham.

Danny asked Janice if she would move in with him. She said only if they were married. Danny proposed. Janice said yes. They wed at the Walker County Courthouse. They went to the beach and stayed at the Sandpiper Motel, the Best Value for Lodging on the Gulf Coast! for their Honeymoon.

Janice was working nights at the Shoney’s in Jasper, thus her emphasis on daytime TV viewing. On the nights she was working, she would carry Roland to drop him off at her Mom’s house, rather than leave him with a drunken Danny. Roland loved his Maw Maw. She would feed him hamburger steaks and fried potatoes. After that, he got to play in Paw Paw’s work shop while Maw Maw sucked down a pint of vodka and fell asleep on the couch. Luckily, Paw Paw had pawned his power tools off to help buy a boat that he could use to go off fishing on the river. Thus Roland was able to play unsupervised, without too much concern, in the workshop. There was the incident when Roland thought it would be interesting to see what would happen when he snipped through a hot power cord with some metal clippers. He awoke from the shock before Maw Maw awoke from her vodka and was able to climb up on the couch next to her to sleep off the rest of his jolt that evening. For Janice, getting married meant she could be a stay at home Mom. For Danny it meant he was stuck paying all the bills. The bitterness began.

Over time, Danny ran into an old junior college friend. He and his wife invited Danny and Janice down to their house for dinner one Saturday night. It turned out Danny’s friend was into the manufacturing, sale and usage of methamphetamine. That Saturday night, Danny and Janice started their addiction to Crank. In a single income double wide trailer with a need for the continuous purchase of drugs, money started running short. As their money dwindled, Danny became even more embittered and, of course, being a consistent user of crystal meth was beginning to affect his personality at home and at work. A run-in he had with the greens-keeper at the Country Club turned ugly. Danny severely beat a seventy five year old Baptist elder who was revered for keeping the golf course in immaculate condition. He was fired on the spot.

Danny was pissed. He bought a twelve pack of beer and a tank of gas at the Archer Quik Mart. No one ever saw him again, although Ned Reynolds, Archer’s local barber, said I seen a car what looked like Danny’s drivin’ down aroun’ the river bank, one minute it was thar, next minute it was gone. The Walker County Sherriff’s Department drug the river to no avail. They did snag a huge fifty pound catfish which they commenced to fileting and grilling that evening. As Sherriff Bill Bubba Arnold put it, We got a state record channel cat, so the day wasn’t a total loss.

The shock of Danny’s disappearance allowed a small level of clarity to develop in Janice’s drug addled brain. The Reverend Jacob Simpkins helped develop it more. As Pastor at the Antioch Baptist Church in Archer, he was asked by Janice’s Mom to help Janice out in her time of need. In a visit to the double wide, he found Janice in a vulnerable state, and she admitted her wrong doings in drug and drink. Pastor Simpkins saved her on the spot and whisked her off to a Baptist sponsored halfway house in Tuscaloosa to help make her whole again. Janice thought she felt the Holy Spirit within her, and did her six months at the Halfway House with sincere enthusiasm and repentance. But after she returned home and started back at the Shoney’s in Jasper, she fell back to her old ways.

Time went by. As the years passed Roland grew into, well, a true moron. Despite several brushes with death due to his own stupidity, he had grown up to be quite large. His size alone allowed him to do well playing on the offensive line at Walker County High School, until his junior year. It was then that someone in school administration checked his academic records and found he had not actually passed a single class since he received sympathy D in his 8th grade Art class. When he was called in and told he would be ineligible to play until he raised his non-existent grade point average to at least a D+, Roland had a come-apart. Never known for keen decision making, Roland thought it a good idea to punch the messenger and swung with the fury of 250 meaty pounds, his fist catching Principal Joe McBride square on his jaw. The punch shattered his jaw, with the force of the blow sending Principal McBride backwards into the Walker County High School Trophy case. There, a prestigious Participation Trophy won by the 1977 Math Team, which, at its apex, was adorned by a small bronze figurine, made to look like an Olympian hoisting a flame in his extended right hand, tore through his Men’s Wearhouse suit trousers and impaled itself in the Principal’s rectum. As the surgeon at Walker County Hospital said, that was a one in a million shot right there!

After getting away from any charges for his indiscretion thanks to his youthful offender status, Roland was hired by Walker County as a road maintenance crew member. Basically, he cut the grass along the county’s roads. He continued to live at home with Janice in the now aging double wide.

Janice, too, was growing like her son, but her growth was outward, not upward. Working at Shoney’s and being a semi-active member of the Antioch Baptist Church was taking away her ability to do too much else but eat, and eat she did. Janice did not find the time to clean the trailer often, but one day while doing so, she uncovered an old bathroom scale. Stepping on it she discovered that she had cracked the 230 pound mark. She became depressed. In addition, Roland’s situation had come along. For a while, they had fantasized that Roland’s gridiron skills could take him to Tuscaloosa to play for the University, which meant the University of Alabama Crimson Tide, and then on to the NFL. Now Janice realized that Roland would not be her meal ticket out of Archer. She grew even more depressed. She saw her Doctor who suggested a diet to help with her weight. He also gave her medication for depression and anxiety. She ignored the diet and took the pills.

Later that year, Roland and Janice drove to Birmingham to go to their favorite all-you-can-eat buffet. It had become a weekly ritual. By now the Manager there had seen a significant drop in his profitability on the nights they attended. On her way to her third round at the buffet, Janice, whom at this stage could not see her feet past the girth that now extended a couple of feet in front, and behind her, put her heel down on a grape that had rolled off the plate of a fellow diner. Her heel slid forward, her fat legs flew up into the air and she landed flat on her back. Like a turtle flipped onto its shell, she could not move. The immediate pain she felt seemed unbearable. Paramedics were called in. It took the two of them and four other good Samaritans in the restaurant to move her onto the back board and then to the gurney. She was taken