(abridged text) story
Author: Nikolay Kuznetsov (kraft-cola)
Somewhere in Russia
A dog was silently standing by the road and looking at
the cars going past. While the cars were passing by it. No
one knew where the dog was from and why. But according to the drivers
acquainted with me, the dog appeared there about half a year ago. One rainy autumn day, the dog simply found
itself standing roadside and examining cars.
As if it hoped that a car would stop in a fine moment and the man whom
the dog had been waiting for all that time would get out of it. But time went by: autumn, then winter. The
dog sometimes picked up what was thrown out of the cars passing by. But it never moved away from the place of its
«post» farther than several tens of meter’s.
When I met that «hero of the road» at the beginning of the spring, the
dog was in a bad condition. Being very thin and exhausted, it was still
standing at the side of the road and attentively looking over the cars going
past.
It was a pretty big dog with a kind and clever look,
very emaciated and far from being pedigree.
But the dog politely refused my hearty invitation and
an open door in my minibus meant «let’s go, old fellow». Looking round at me
guiltily as if it said «I understand everything but I can’t, old boy», the dog
came back to its place. While driving off, I honked, the dog barked me
something at parting. In the nearest village located in fifteen kilometer’s
down the route, at the local cafe, I asked the waitress Lucy about the dog on the
road. It appeared that all the people there knew that dog and treated it in
different ways. Some people chuckled at the dog’s faithfulness, others threatened
to shoot the strange dog. Somebody advised to give it to vets.
But some drivers who like me often drove along the
road decided to feed the dog, too when they found out about that loyal one.
While driving at the beginning of April, I saw my
familiar dog again at the same place. It was still standing at the side of the road
and attentively looking at cars passing by. When the dog saw me going out of
the minibus, it barked cheerfully and ran up to me. Getting a treat from my
hands, the dog as it was before delicately took the food away. Coming to me, it
began to wag the tail contentedly putting its head with a large forehead under
my palm. In comparison with my previous arrivals the dog changed for the
better. It put on weight, its fur began shining.
Strange to say, I noticed that the area around that
place got considerably cleaner.
I remember everything around, on the sides of the
route used to be soiled as, by the way, along all the road. People go by car in
all directions, they eat and drink. And
then people just throw all the rubbish out of their car windows. And this
motorway was not an exception. But now
it was incredibly clean in the radius of thirty meter’s.
Later at the same cafe, the waitress Lucy told me:
- The dog began collecting all the rubbish by itself
around its duty-place. And this poor dog has still been sitting and waiting for its riff-raff master. It’s just a
dog, you know, but what a fine fellow, you see. And it gathered all the litter
by its side. There is an old man living in the village here, he often drives
there, too. He takes away in a bag all the rubbish which the dog collected to
the dump. And the dog wants to leave its place nowhere. It has still been
waiting for but whom nobody has found
out so far. I would personally box this skunk’s mug. What’d you know! A dog but just imagine, - with these words
kind and red-cheeked Lucy broke down and cried…
Steering my old «Volkswagen Caravan» and looking at
the endless asphalt road-bed, I was thinking about the dog that remained there
at the road-side far behind and I was feeling very sad for some reason…
P.S. The other
day, my acquainted drivers told me that one old woman from the same village had
been able to persuade the dog and she had taken it to her home…
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