Mr. B's Story

So here’s how it all went down, at least as Mr. B later recounted his story to us - hysterical and true!  Gerry has heard Mr. B repeat this story a few times and laughs just as heartily as the first time he heard it!  And now the word is out!  Here’s how it was that night in Escazu:

There had been a robbery in the neighborhood the day before, so Mr. B. brought his guard dog home from his business establishment for a few nights to protect his house.  As he told Mrs. B, the dog will bark and chase off anybody who tries to jump the fence into the garden.  And the next door neighbor also reassured Mrs. B that, if any intruder gets past the dog, then he would get out his gun and scare the thieves off!

So that soothes Mrs. B’s nerves and so, after dinner, she goes to bed.

Meanwhile, Mr. B goes outside on the front porch for a smoke and a nightcap, watching his dog loll about in the garden.  The bar at the end of his cul-de-sac was bellowing out the usual music for the usual crowd (a highly questionable bunch – at best…).  But Mr. B is used to the racket; it’s just the normal background noise on his street.

Suddenly, Mr. B watches somebody’s hand slip through the fencing but realizes that it’s an employee from his shop, who knows the dog well, walking by outside.  So, the boy pokes his hand through the fencing for the dog to sniff and whispers some sort of doggy endearment to it.

However, Mrs. B couldn’t sleep, hears something, looks out of the window, sees a hand coming through the fence, and starts shouting – very loudly...  The dog then starts barking (the employee having rapidly disappeared, of course); the neighbor gets his gun and begins shooting into the air!  Well, now all the people at the bar run out, accompanied by much shouting and furor, scrambling over each other to get away (not knowing who was the target of the armed attack, but almost all with good reason to think it was them…) tearing down the street past Mr. B’s house.  And then, just to add further confusion, a police car that was driving around a couple of streets away, hears the shooting and comes screaming in to investigate, producing the usual, age-old response :  nobody knows anything; nobody was there; and, if they were there, nobody has a gun…  And so, finally, everybody goes back to bed.

However, as Mr. B recounted to us with a big smile on his face, he is still the only one who knows what really happened that night…