The first year in high school I used to hang out a lot with this kid, whom I shall call Luca here (not his actual name). He came across as being really shy and introverted, but he was really funny once you got to know him. He also happened to be the most amazingly gifted artist I ever saw during those four years at that school.
Luca lived 10 minutes’ walk away from where I lived, and sometimes I would go to his place to do some homework, although we always ended up watching tv or going for a walk.
He had a sister who was much older than we were. Given that we were two boys in our early teens, and she was a woman in her early twenties, far from ever talking to us, all we ever got from her was the occasional look of utter contempt.
Luca’s mum never left the house. Never. No matter what time of the day it was, she always looked like she had just got up from bed: dressing gown, slippers and messy hair. Despite displaying all the classic signs of chronic depression she was always very friendly and cheerful with me. Luca’s dad was also a friendly chap. He used to be an accountant but was now retired.
As many families in Pescara do, they used to own a second house in some village up the mountains. Abruzzo is a mountainous region, with lots of deserted little villages. At the time you could snatch an old derelict place for just a few thousand pounds and then renovate it. (These properties have become a lot more expensive now.)
Quick digression. Sometimes a few of us would prepare a packed lunch and spend the day on the mountains. Once we were in this little village, and there was this old woman, a typical nonna from those parts: short in stature, all dressed in black, a handful of teeth left and a black moustache. (Quick joke: Why do Sicilian men grow a moustache? They want to look like their mums.) The old woman looked at us, and with a toothless smile she said "Che Bella gioventù", what beautiful youths. Bless her.
On Sundays Luca’s dad would sometimes take me and him to this house. Just the three of us. The mum never came, of course, and I think it’s safe to say that the sister would’ve rather been set on fire than come with us.
Once there, Luca’s dad would be busy doing who-knows-what around the house, so Alessandro and I would go on little treks on the nearby mountains.
At this point, allow me a quick digression. One of the main industries in Abruzzo is sheep herding. And where you have lots of sheep, you have sheepdogs. Abruzzo has its own breed. A big one, that looks a lot like the Pyrenean Mountain Dog. Beautiful animal.
People used to say that, sometimes, some of these sheepdogs would stray away and revert back into a feral, almost wolf-life state.
As you know, dogs are social animals. If a stray dog meets another stray dog, they don’t just go their own separate ways, they tend to stick together. And then they meet a third dog, and then a fourth, until they form a pack, with its own hierarchy.
I was never sure whether these stories of packs of feral sheepdogs roaming the mountains of Abruzzo were true or just a myth, an urban legend, but I was about to find out.
Luca and I had been walking for some time, and we were quite far away from the village, when we heard some distant barking behind us. We turned around, and there it was: a pack of about 10 or 12 sheepdogs running towards us, barking and exposing their teeth.
For a fraction of a second we just stood there, petrified, somehow managing to hold our feces and urine. And then we did the only thing we could do. We turned around and started running as fast as we could.
But the dogs were catching up fast. We could hear the barking behind us getting louder and louder. And then something unexpected happened. Luca suddenly stopped, turned around to face the dogs, and then he completely lost it. He just went mental.
He started screaming like a madman, shouting threats and abuse at the top of his lungs. “Aaaaahhh! You fucking bastards! I’ll fucking kill you! Aaaaahhh!” I had never seen anything like it. It was pure rage. I’m surprised he didn’t turn green and change into the Hulk.
The dogs, who were very close to us at this time, suddenly stopped, looked at him for a second, and then turned around and ran away.
After the dogs had gone, Luca was all shaken up. Apart from breathing heavily from all the running, his face was all red, the veins on his neck and forehead were bulging out, and his hands were shaking. It took him a good few minutes to completely calm down.
I sometimes wonder what would’ve had happened to us if Luca hadn’t reacted the way he did. Luckily, thanks to him, we never had to find out.
