THE CAMPY GAME

As children, my sister-cousin Mayte and I lived in two houses. My mother's house during the week which was close to school and her mother's house on the weekend which included unlimited TV watching and a pool. It also included Campy. We had several pets at both locations, but Campy was different. Others looked at him in awe....and fear. Campy was a Great Dane. White with black spots, like a Dalmatian....yet nothing like a Dalmatian. He was part horse, part beast. Pools of drool were followed if you ever wanted to scout his location. When he barked, a sonic boom would blow our hair back.

He was a murderer....my aunt for some ungodly reason decided to buy chickens to run on her 5 acres of land. The results were fresh eggs and a chicken massacre. Bloody feathers and bits over a lawn of green, like some animated farm war movie come to life. He also murdered a kitten once, but no one ever spoke of it, as if the kitten died mysteriously and Campy had nothing to do with it.

The chickens were intentional, but the kitten was an accident. I know this because there was a side of campy that not everyone got to see.

My aunt has a five car garage. It is huge. Each garage could be rented as a studio in Manhattan. Behind the garage there is a built in BBQ grill. It had two large pits and an enormous tile counter space. One day, I can't remember who discovered it, but The Campy game was born. When we wanted to play, Mayte and I would coyly walk to the BBQ and sit on top of the tile. Then, we would summon the beast. No matter where on the 5 acres he roamed we could see that he was watching us walk over to our spot. This alone told him that the game was about to begin. He always waited for us to call him. "Campy"...."CAAMPEEE!". We would singsong his name the way a school bully would call another child "STOO-PID". He would slowly like a jungle cat walk over to our location. Head low. Tongue out and dripping. Eyes always on us. We giggled with terror. As soon as we turned our heads away from him, disengaging our eye contact with him, he knew to go hide.

One Mississippi....two Mississippi....three little dead chickens....four bloody poultry corpses.

Once he was gone. We would jump off of the grill and run with all of our might....for dear life. The objective was to run all the way around the five garages and back onto the BBQ untouched by Campy. That rarely happened. Before we would even pass the first garage we would hear galloping growing louder and faster behind us. We would horror movie scream as we looked back and saw his tongue blown back past his ears from the speed. Within seconds the screams turned to hysterical laughter from two children who were bucked up in the air, floating, flying with delight only to land on the grass gripping our stomachs like they would fall out from too much glee. Then he would smile at us and come over and kiss us. We would get up and slowly walk back to the BBQ and the whole thing would take place again.
Our weekends were filled with this. Neighbors saw him as a threat. Other children coiled away from him as if he were a leper. But for us, he was family. My mother pretended she was too classy to enjoy his always sloppy kissing. He would bow to my grandmother, realizing her stature within the group. When he lay sleeping on the rug in front of the TV. Mayte and I could lie right next to him, the length of his body superseding ours. His Jurassic chest rising and falling. His eyes blinking, telling us to nuzzle up.....and we felt safe there by our hero. Campy the Noble. An ever present and always attentive father.