Jack

[Trigger warning: physical and psychological abuse. Language]

Although only nine years of age and small framed, Jack was a sturdy and tough little character who appeared to possess an inexhaustible supply of energy and strength. As such, he was still of the age where this boundless get-up-and-go meant he needed regular exercise, stimulation, and distraction.

All who knew Jack in Lofthouse, a small village in Nidderdale in the Harrogate district of North Yorkshire, loved him. The villagers had heard rumours that Jack had come from a broken home. Despite having encountered formidable early-life challenges, he appeared to possess an abundance of faith in people. With all those he met, he was affectionate, vocal, and not prone to shyness. A sociable creature who loved life and company, he could also be clownish, as he delighted in pleasing others.

Intelligent and fearless to the core, Jack was protective and loyal to a fault. This was even true of those who would wish him ill. For although rumour held that Jack had come from a dysfunctional home in a distant parish, it was beyond any doubt that fate had landed him in the clutches of one in the village of Lofthouse in the civil parish of Fountains Earth. A twist of fate had placed Jack into the care of Bill Savage, considered by the locals to be a seedy character of criminal mien. Despite lacking concrete evidence to support their opinions, in Lofthouse suspicions was currency enough, and most avoided Savage if possible.

However, shunning the man was easy in theory but challenging in practice. For it was rare for Jack not to be in the company of his custodian. He seemed to follow Savage everywhere, head bowed, and only a step or two behind. It was as though he were bound to him by an invisible thread. Because the villagers held Jack in such high regard, necessity demanded that on most occasions they tolerate Savage, because where he went, Jack was likely to be near at hand. The residents of Lofthouse felt they were duty bound to keep a watchful eye on Jack’s wellbeing, ready to take Savage to task should he give them cause.

In the local public house, the Crown Hotel, bent whispers continued to be exchanged across many a pint about how it could be at all right that Savage—a solitary, thirty-something, unemployed man who lived in a small, shambolic cottage at the north end of the village—could assume guardianship of Jack. It was an occasion of some note when Savage had driven, one late February morning the previous year, into the heart of a bustling market day in Lofthouse, with Jack sat on the front bench seat of his battered Land Rover Defender. The event ignited the curiosity of those residents who were present to witness it. On the next occasion Savage entered the Crown Hotel—which was not for almost a week, much to the disappointment of many—the landlord took it upon himself to act as the unelected representative of the entire village, ready to probe for answers about their newest resident.

While pulling a pint for Savage—who appeared, on the surface at least, to be in a fair mood for once—the publican prepared to ask him, as disarmingly as he could, about his ward. He first glanced past Savage and across at Jack, who was sitting alone in an inglenook, warming himself against the crackling blaze of the adjacent hearth. Then, with a nervous, hard swallow, he began.

“So, Bill. How are you keeping?”

“Hmph.”

“Only… the thing is, I’ve been meaning to ask you about the little one who arrived with you about a week ago now. That is to say, I’ve not seen him about these parts before, of course, and know you’ve always lived alone at Moor View.”

“What of it?” Savage said.

“Well, I was just curious, is all, about how he came into your care? Someone thought you’d come up with him from Harrogate way. A member of your extended family… is he?”

Met by silence, the publican dared one last question, leaning forward a little closer to Savage across the counter. He changed his mind when his nostrils flared to the pungent tang of his customer’s body odour, causing him to recoil to safer ground. 

As the publican recovered, he managed a feigned smile, which appeared lost on Savage.

“What should we call him?”

“My affairs are none of your bloody business, Walter Goodman, or that of anyone else,” he said, looking about to take in the furtive glances of the other patrons. “But, since you ask, his name’s Jack. That’s all you need to know. Now, hand me my pint and leave me be.”

And that, for the moment, was that.

Savage was not a man to be pressed, as scuffles with several individuals over the years had proved. How the police had never arrested Savage perplexed and perturbed many.

Had Jack possessed the reasoning and capacity to put voice to his thoughts, then it is probable that despite his otherwise affectionate and loyal nature, he would say of Bill Savage that his guardian was a self-centred, cruel man, quick to temper and prone to fits of physical violence. For, true to his name, Savage could be a brute. The bruises on Jack’s body could attest to that, had anyone known of them. For Savage had always been adroit at inflicting hurt without leaving visual testimony of his malice. If Jack could not expose his guardian’s cruelty—or the villagers catch Savage abusing Jack—then the authorities remained powerless to act.

Savage did not always get his own way with Jack, however. His ward had a stubborn streak to the point of disobedience if the mood took him. On one such occasion in January, while in a drunken rage, Savage had used his shillelagh walking stick as a cudgel and struck Jack a blow to the side of his head as payment for his disobedience, causing a gash that required six sutures. It was almost the event that cost Savage his guardianship of Jack, but a contrived account of a walking accident east of the village while traversing Fountains Earth Moor with Jack was just sufficient to convince the authorities no wrongdoing had taken place. Savage claimed Jack had lost his footing, fallen, and sliced his head on a sharp outcrop of rock. “I’ve been beside myself with worry since the accident, with my sleep all the poorer for it,” Savage had said, “so concerned have I been for the little one’s wellbeing.”

Savage felt safe for now, but would lie low while Jack convalesced. He was patient enough to wait until the start of the February Brown Hare shooting season.

He had already gone shooting for ground game with Jack several times over the past year, favouring the far reaches of Fountains Earth Moor, or Lofthouse Moor to the north of the village, but had missed last February’s hare season because he had arrived too late with Jack, now vowing, “I’ll be damned if anyone will deny me my sport for the coming season.”

Savage had taken charge of Jack’s schooling in all matters, and had found his ward was adept at seeking rabbits out, which he believed would also be the case with hares. It was unlikely this discovery would have come as a surprise to the residents of Lofthouse, for they knew Jack to be by far fitter, lighter and nimbler on his feet than Savage, who they considered overweight and indolent by nature.

Neither would it have surprised the locals to learn that Savage was quite content to conserve his energy while out on a shoot, standing stock-still while his quarry was driven towards him. He would then dispatch the petrified creature with his low recoil .22 calibre Weihrauch air rifle. Savage favoured a number five or six birdshot pellet, for he had found these took down game with ease. He was a man who saw killing as something of an art form, deriving immense satisfaction from his ability to set illegal snares and other forms of animal entrapment. The absence of an instant kill or the inflicting of drawn-out suffering did not trouble him. Of all his hunting aids, it was his guns that were beyond all doubt his pride and joy.

While out hunting, should a bloody mood take him—and it often did, sober or drunk—Savage would sometimes reach for his F.A.I.R. Iside, a 28-gauge Italian side-by-side shotgun, with a mid-length barrel of twenty-eight inches. At times when polishing the gun’s glossy, blacked barrels and walnut butt, he would make clumsy, thick-tongued attempts at enunciating its full name—”Fabbrica Armi Isidoro Rizzini.” Stolen by him during an opportunistic burglary at a farm several counties away, he loved the mess it made at close quarters on those occasions when a rabbit panicked and backed itself into a tight corner. As Savage had once proclaimed in mock jocular fashion to a cowering Jack, “I wasn’t planning to eat the bloody thing, after all!”

Of necessity, Jack had learned to keep his mouth shut if he did not want to see Savage fly into a fury, reach for his shillelagh, and come at him with it. Punches and kicks would often reign down, unprovoked, when Savage returned home with him from the Crown Hotel. The taste of warm, liquid iron was not alien to Jack, caused by the delivery of a fist or boot that had found its mark. He had become adept at reading Savage’s moods, even if the words of his ‘benefactor’ drifted over his head. It was the tone of voice he tuned into, for this was the surest barometer of his guardian’s state of mind and likely behaviour from moment to moment.

Savage’s relationship with his ward was, without doubt, paradoxical, for he treated Jack with an odd mixture of cruelty and grudging love. 🐾 Sometimes, sat side by side in front of a raging fire of an evening, Savage would stroke Jack’s short hair and share his innermost thoughts and confessions as though they were old friends. Then, by turn, the intoxicated man would tower over Jack, his greasy, sweaty bulk casting a broad shadow as he spat out a barrage of foul expletives at the figure cowering beneath him. At such times, the accompanying stench of Savage’s alcohol and tobacco-laden breath and flying gobs of spittle would cause Jack to shrink into a ball. It was a shape he would also adopt to protect himself from kicks, blows of a fist, or the strike of a cudgel.

Jack was not the only name Savage used when addressing his ward. Sometimes Jack’s last name would be in favour, which might then switch to “boy” and back again, seesawing between all options. There were those names chosen to express affection, still others to mock or show contempt. All seemed interchangeable with ease by his guardian, who spent most of the day barking commands. “Out of my way, boy. Can’t you see I’m busy?” Or “where are you Russell? Come and get your food.”

Jack was never happier than when he was out on the open moors. For the briefest of times, he could feel the coarse scrub grass beneath his feet and the wind buffeting his face and filling his ears, competing with the drone of Savage’s voice. Jack could not venture far from Moor View while convalescing following his beating… but that was about to change. The hare shooting season was about to start, and Savage knew it provided perfect camouflage for his hunting exploits.

As had always been the case, Bill Savage had no intention of making up the numbers of any official hare shooting party. His natural inclination was to keep himself to himself, preferring to shield his activities from the other villagers—or any snooping government types. He held no licences for his firearms and needed to keep their existence secret. The last thing he needed was for the locals to cotton on that he had them, so he always went out alone to shoot, driving or walking as far off the beaten track as laziness and impatience would carry him. He knew all killing would need to be undertaken in strict observance of the Ground Game Act of 1880. Savage was not one to abide by the law at the best of times, so held no regard at all for a law that had been enacted over a hundred and forty years ago.

Savage knew that large scale, organised culling did not take place unless hare numbers were high and the damage they were causing to crops was significant, with control otherwise falling to individual landowners. This year, shoots were on and there would be a flurry of activity in the village and further afield. An ideal distraction, Savage thought. While the organised shoots focused on local farmland and the moors east and north of Lofthouse, he planned to head west to Riggs Moor, the remotest location in England—and right on his doorstep. The prospect of so isolated a hunting spree, several miles from anyone, put him in high spirits as he prepared for his departure.

Jack had no say in the matter and would need to fall in step with what Savage planned.

“For Christ’s sake, Jack, I’ve called you three times already. It’s time to be going.”

Savage had already loaded his Land Rover Defender with traps, snares, camouflage netting, and trekking and camping necessities. What little remained to be loaded comprised alcohol, food, his guns… and Jack. “Come on then. Get in and settle down—and no whining. It’s going to be a longer drive than usual.”

With his Defender’s rear wheels spinning and kicking up a backwash of gravel, Savage gunned off the driveway of Moor View and headed south through the village, before hanging a sharp right at the junction with the main road to head north-west towards the neighbouring village of Middlesmoor. Three minutes and little more than a mile later, Savage was passing through the sleepy village on a bright, crisp February morning. Small pockets of early risers in Lofthouse and Middlesmoor were already assembling for the organised hare shooting parties. Savage wanted to pass through their ranks without delay, eager to get to Riggs Moor.

With the broader, marked roads now well behind him and the signs of farmland fast disappearing, Savage continued to drive northwest over the flat, rugged landscape, before tracking southwest through Riggs Pasture and Far Pasture to where he would park up. His stop-off point was a gravelled parking area at a triangulation point between three beck-fed weirs. He knew he could drive further west towards Riggs Moor on a dirt road running next to the Great Glowing Gill Beck, but he was keen to feel the earth beneath his feet, as he knew Jack would. There were few signs of life out here. The occasional farmer tending their livestock, although he had seen none. A rare, committed walker, though unlikely in the winter months. Most importantly, Brown Hares, which he wanted in abundance. “Come on then, Jack. It’s time to get kitted up. We’ve precious few hours of daylight before we’ll need to return here for the night, and I’ll be needing time to set up the tent. Play your part, and the day will go just fine.”

Not planning to walk too far on his first day so he could check the lay of the land since he was last in those parts, Savage prepared to travel light. He concealed his 28-gauge shotgun in the rear of the Land Rover and took none of his netting, traps, or snares. Wrapped well against the biting wind and cold, he donned a day backpack containing food and water for them both and took up his .22 calibre Weihrauch air rifle and shillelagh walking stick. He tapped his right hip pocket again to check for the comforting presence of his whiskey flask, before turning to speak to Jack.

“Okay. We’ll head along the track till we’re near to the livestock pens by the Great Gill Beck, go on a ways, then strike north to run alongside the Little Gill Beck by the escarpment. If memory serves me right, there were good signs of hare activity that way. Though, why I’m explaining any of this to you Christ only knows! Come along, boy!”

The walk was easy enough while they kept to the vehicle dirt track, but the ground became more uneven and harder going once they struck off it to head towards the escarpment Savage had spoken of. As they neared a deep ravine that ran like a scar across the surface of the moor towards the sheer edge of the escarpment, Jack left Savage’s side without warning and ran with nimble-footed speed towards the escarpment.

“Where the fuck are you going, Russell? I told you to stay by my side. Get back here!”

Not heeding his guardian’s command, Jack continued, and in moments, had disappeared. Savage feared the worst, and shifted his lumbering bulk into an urgent, ungainly run, slowing as he approached the spot where he had seen Jack vanish. Pulling up short of the edge, Savage peered over and spotted Jack at once, who was standing still and calm several feet below him on a ledge-like outcrop of rock. A Brown Hare bolted from the shadows to the left of where Jack was standing and scurried off over the edge of the ledge as quick as a dart in flight, traversing down some unseen track that only its sure feet could manage. “Jesus H. Christ! You scared the crap out of me, you little shit! What the fuck did you run off like that for? Wait till I get down there!”

Jack looked up at the figure of Savage looming with menace above him and, without uttering a sound, backed with caution to the edge of the ledge. From the tone in Savage’s voice, he knew what was coming.

Savage wasted no time in jumping down, landing with a thud that reverberated across the ledge and kicked up puffs of dust. With eyes like pools of dark rage set in a face of deepening scarlet, Savage came at Jack with his shillelagh.

As the cudgel descended, Jack jumped forward and sidestepped the man, causing the latter to twist round. Savage lost his footing and, grabbing like a wild beast at the air to regain his balance, lost his fight with gravity and tumbled over the edge of the ledge, his face a contortion of fear and disbelief as he stared wide-eyed back up at a fast-shrinking Jack. With nothing to cushion his thirty-foot fall, Savage’s landing was brutal, the femur of his left thigh snapping with a loud crack as he collided with an outcrop of rock. The two ends of his shattered femur tore through muscle and fat and ripped an opening in his thigh, presenting their bloodied spears to the air. The sudden movement and sound alarmed a group of Goldfinches that were gathered in bushes and thistles at the base of the ravine, causing the birds to take flight with agitated calls. Savage let out one long, pitiable scream from the pit of his stomach. Smothered by a blanket of unbearable pain, he lost consciousness.

Jack stood in silence on the edge of the ledge, Savage’s shillelagh beside him. He looked down at the stricken man but could not go to him, for he was too small to make such a descent. Even if he could, what practical help could a Jack Russell Terrier offer its owner in such a situation? Jack only stood about thirty centimetres in height at the withers—the highest point of his back at the base of the neck—and possessed none of the skills a human could offer in such an emergency.

He waited for several hours on the ledge, watching his master, who never regained consciousness. As the light faded, Savage bled out and was dead by sundown. Instinct told Jack the moment of his master’s passing, and he let out a long, woeful howl. Savage had been a brute all too often in his dealings with Jack—but he had been family. Both had lived through troubled times. Both held a kinship with the other—an understanding of sorts, as dysfunctional as it must have seemed to the villagers of Lofthouse. It was to Lofthouse that Jack now made his slow, steady return, arriving at the Crown Hotel in the small hours of the morning, his scratching bringing the publican, Walter Goodman, to the door.

“Hello, Jack. What are you doing here… and alone, I see. Where’s your master, boy?”

[Header image credit: Artur Pawlak from Pixabay].