One warm sunny spring day Malton was lying on the pavememt in front of Joe's garage. Malton was some kind of Lab-Dob cross that happens when careless dog owners don't mind their dogs. He was getting a little long in the tooth by then. Didn't even notice the Loomis truck that pulled in and ran over his head.
Probably remembering his good old days, and boy did he ever have them. Malton was a stray that was hanging around the Toronto airport. Joe ran a shuttle service for folks taking off and coming into that airport. People of a certain age remember the Toronto airport as the Malton airport, which is how Malton got his name.
Joe had a pretty good business going. Still going to this day as far as I know. Fleet of vans shuttling folks to and from the airport. Bought this garage and hired a couple of mechanics to service the van fleet. Took on outside work just to make the garage side of the business more profitable.
Maybe made a mistake when he hired Kipling. Not that Kipling isn't a great mechanic. One of the best. But Kipling pretty much marches to his own drummer. The fun started when Joe gave Kip the keys to the garage and let him use the premises for side jobs on his own account. Pretty soon Kipling is working till nine or ten or twelve every night, using Joe's hard assets to cover his own non-existant overhead. That's how the business schools would call it.
They'd be right, but there was other stuff going on. While Kipling did fix cars, there soon developed what might be considered a party atmosphere at Joe's garage after Joe went home. Kipling had helpers. The helpers were pot-heads or alcoholics or both. So you'd pop in there at nine in the evening, and three or four guys would be sitting in lawn chairs, obviously well into their cups, watching two or three other guys do work. I tended to be one of the guys in the chairs myself. I've always preferred watching work to doing any.
What with the general level of substance abuse, these evenings often became quite chaotic. There'd be guys having gun-fights with the grease guns. That's a messy business, let me tell you. And a surprise acetylene bomb could show up anywhere at any time. But the real fun started when Malton showed up at the garage.
Joe was nice enough to pick up a stray dog at the airport, but not quite nice enough to take him home. So Malton lived at Joe's garage. Pretty dull time from nine to four, but then things picked up for him.
Hanging out with the boys, Malton learned how to party. He was a dope-fiend. Liked to drink too. Had a special affinity for rum 'n eggnog. Man could he pound that stuff down! There was more than a few nights that Malton and me consumed about the same amount, passed out on his doggie blanket together, and woke up with the same hangover.
We got to painting up Malton with different colors. One night he'd be primer red, next night he'd be primer grey with primer red spots. One night the spotted dog, pretty much sideways, and loving every moment, went after the hotdog I had in my hand. That's a no-no in my book. I figured, gotta teach the mutt some manners.
So I poured a good size puddle of gasoline on the floor, threw the rest of the wiener in it, and when Malton went for the wiener I tossed a cigarette butt in the puddle.
KapOOfff!
Did that scare Malton off? No way. He comes racing outta the fireball with a flaming wiener clenched in his jaws! He's singed from nose to tail, but he got the prize!
Not long after that incident, one of the lads came up with the idea that Joe's exotic fish in the aquarium in the front office might like to join the fun too. Poured a half bottle of Canadian Club into the fish tank. I have to say I advised against that, although I was more concerned about the CC than I was the fish. After all, what the fuck is a drunken fish gonna do? Swim crooked?
So Joe comes in the next morning and all his fish are dead.
That was Kipling's last day at work.
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