Bait Dog: An Atlanta Burns Novel

by Wendig, Chuck

  “The dog fights.”

  That didn’t add up. “You don’t put little white terriers in a god-dang dog fight. That doesn’t make a lick of sense. You use… I dunno, pit bulls and Rottweilers and—“

  “The dogs aren’t for fighting. They’re bait dogs.”

  “Fuck is a ‘bait dog?’”

  Tressa tells her, and things start to add up.

  Atlanta’s shaking. The baton end quivering as it points accusingly toward Tressa. “Hundred bucks. That’s it. That’s how much the animal’s misery is worth. How much your soul is worth.”

  “I told you, I’m not involved—“

  “You better run,” Atlanta seethes. Her voice barely sounds like her own. “You better run right now because if you don’t I’m going to knock your teeth out. Maybe break your fingers. Sell you to someone horrible for five twenty-dollar bills so they can do whatever they want to you. How’s that sound? Huh? How’s it fucking sound.”

  Tressa backpedals like a panicked grab, manages to stand. “I’m sorry.”

  Atlanta whips the baton an inch in front of Tressa’s face. Had it connected, it would’ve shattered her cheekbone, cracked the porcelain bone protecting her temple. Tressa barks a sob, then turns and runs away, again the clompy moose. Clutching the can of Monster energy like it’s all she has left in the world.

  * * *

  This is what Tressa said about bait dogs: she said that they take the dogs and sell them to dog fighters. The stolen dogs are worth more if they can’t hurt anybody, so Bodie removes the teeth and claws with pliers. Then the little dogs—or sometimes cats if they can grab those, but they’re worth less as bait animals—end up in an open cage or dangling from a rope or just thrown into a pen with the fighter dog. The spilled blood, the animal’s cries, that’s meant to rile up the fighter dog, get him thirsty and mean for the fight. The bait dogs train the fighter dogs to fight. And to kill.

  Bait dogs go for a hundred bucks a pop.

  A bait dog is bait. It’s right there in the name.

  And it makes Atlanta sick in a place far deeper than her stomach.

  * * *

  That night, a dream.

  Atlanta runs through clouds of gunsmoke. Through a field that’s somehow also a swamp. A big moon overhead, bigger than you ever see, pink like meat and fat like a pregnant woman’s belly.

  She chases a dog whose howls of pain echo over the grass.

  The dog runs ahead of her. A white flash. Leaving wet blood on the grass.

  Atlanta’s foot steps into a hole as she runs. The ankle twists. Snaps as she falls.

  She cries out and her cries are the dog’s cries.

  Someone reaches in, someone invisible, starts feeling for her teeth, starts pulling them out of her gums real easy, like they’re weeds with shallow roots in loose mud. Someone starts removing her t-shirt, too, cutting it with a knife. Greasy hand feeling along her bra. Fingers working their way past the edges. Into her jeans and panties. The smell of cigarette breath and stale Rolling Rock. A voice in her ear, male, a voice too-familiar—

  “Your mother shouldn’t know about this.”

  The dream ends and she awakens cold and slick with sweat. She goes downstairs and eats cheap pretzel sticks with trembling hands until the sun comes up, a cairn of salt and crumbs piling before her.

  * * *

  It’s like diving headfirst into a filthy pool. Where the layers of scum and disease thicken the deeper you swim (or maybe, just maybe, the deeper you drown). Every link she clicks, every news story or website she reads, it just ruins her day that much more until the moment comes where she feels like she’s coming off a days-long food poisoning and she’s not sure if she’ll ever be able to eat anything again.

  And all the people here at the rinky-dink Maker’s Bell library, they don’t know. They’re going about their morning like it’s nothing at all. Taking out their popular bestselling books. Bringing their kids to story time. Searching for jobs or playing Solitaire or Angry Birds on the computers.

  Earlier she’d thought, well, fine, Shane’s not on her team this time so it’s time to act like him. WWSLD. What Would Shane Lafluco Do? He’d go Google something, that’s what he’d do.

  So, Atlanta went and Googled.

  Search term: “Bait dog.”

  She started reading and sliding down that slippery slope and now she sits, queasy.

  Atlanta’s learned more about the subject than she cares to admit in just a half-hour’s worth of time.

  Bait dogs. Like Tressa said, meant to teach the other dogs—the fighters—to grow bloodthirsty, to go for the weaker animal, to go for the kill. Teaches the bigger dog confidence. Teaches them how to be mean. If they don’t go for the bait, they get hurt. Prodded. Poked. Shocked. Punished.

  Little dogs make good bait dogs. Puppies, too. And cats or any other small animal.

  Folks like Bodie and Bird steal the dogs from people’s front lawns and backyards. Others answer ads in the paper—free to a good home. Puppy mills sometimes sell unsold dogs for just this purpose.

  Seems too that some fighter dogs end up as bait dogs. A fighter loses a fight, gets mauled, sometimes the owner kills the dog. Other times he uses him as prey. Fighter dog won’t go for a bait dog, he might end up as bait, instead.

  Sometimes they bet on bait dog fights. How long will the bait dog survive? Will the fighter take the bait? Blood and money. Other times it’s just training, no bets, no audience.

  They use tools.

  There’s the cat-pole, where they tie the bait animal to a pole or tree, let the fighter chase the bait animal around and around until it claims its prize.

  Or a bait-cage, where they stick the bait animal in a heavy gauge cage which dangles from above—they make the bait dog bleed and let the thirsty enraged fighter come up from beneath and bite the cage. Like a shark. They see how long the fighter can hang on. Meant to test and strengthen their jaws.

  Then you have the flirt-pole, where someone ties the bait animal to a pole held in the hands—they move the battered bait animal left and right, always keeping it out of the fighter dog’s reach. Helps to train the beast’s agility.

  In one instance Atlanta reads about, the fighters covered the bait dog in possum blood, let the bigger dog chase the littler dog down. Let him tear it apart way another dog might tear at a chew toy—removing its stuffing, biting off its muzzle. Looking for its squeaker.

  Nobody feeds the bait dogs. They don’t treat them like living creatures. They treat them like means to a very final end. Or like toys. Or like the name suggests: live bait.

  Most bait dogs die in the pen. Some don’t. Those that don’t just get used again and again until they’re spent up or dead. They’re dumped after the fact. Left in ditches. Drowned in ponds. Thrown in a hole somewhere.

  Those rare few that get found, still alive, either die from their wounds or are put to death by shelters who don’t know what to do with them and don’t have the money to devote to their care and rehabilitation.

  Bait dogs are just about the lowliest form of creature on earth.

  Used and abused and left to die.

  Atlanta stifles a sob. Chokes it back. Toughens up.

  * * *

  Back home, she calls Jenny.

  She says to Jenny, “I found out who stole your dog.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s more than one.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I… don’t know if they’re the ones that hurt the dog.”

  “Please just tell me.”

  And so she tells her. She leaves out the details of the chase but gives her the broad strokes: Bodie and Bird Haycock, with their pig girlfriend Tressa Kucharski, stole Sailor and—she has a hard time telling Jenny this and her voice cracks but Jenny just says it again, “Tell me”—sold the dog to serve as bait for a dog fighting ring. She doesn’t go into detail. Doesn’t explain what that means for Sailor’s last couple days on earth, with the rope burns around his neck indica
ting how he was hanged so that other dogs could have at him.

  “Oh.”

  That’s what Jenny says. Oh. It’s not a dismissive “oh.” It’s a post-traumatic “oh.” The “oh” of someone just told that they’re broke, or their family is dead, or that the bombs will soon begin to fall.

  One word because she must not have any others right now. One word because, what else can you say?

  “I’m sorry,” Atlanta says.

  “I want you to get even with them.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to hurt them. And stop them from doing what they’re doing.”

  Atlanta feels hot and cold at the same time. Like she’s strapping into a roller coaster that once it gets started she won’t be able to escape. “You don’t know what you’re asking. Let the police handle it.”

  “The police didn’t care when I called them before. They won’t care now.”

  She’s right. They won’t. That’s another thing Atlanta learned about when Googling all this horrible stuff. The cops don’t much care about dog fighting. Sure, the laws on the books are stiff. Dog fighting’s a felony in most states. But for the most part it goes underreported and poorly-enforced. The laws are pretty clear: its only punishable when caught in the act. And infiltrating dog-fighting rings is like infiltrating the Mafia. Or Al Qaeda.

  “Jenny, I don’t know—“

  “I’ll pay.”

  “I…”

  “Another thousand. On top of the first. And I’ll pay half up front.”

  Two grand. That money. The foreclosure. Their house. Atlanta feels the roller coaster starting. The click of the wheels on the tracks. The breeze turning to wind, her hair starting to blow.

  “Okay,” she says, the word coming unbidden. “I’ll help you.”

  “Good.”

  Then Jenny hangs up.

  Part Two: The Farm

  It’s later that evening. Atlanta’s sitting on the couch with the TV on and the remote in her hand but she’s not really watching TV—though the news is on to her right now it’s just a flashy blitzkrieg of meaningless light, color and noise. All serving as background to her troubled thoughts. Thoughts of bad people.

  Thoughts of making those bad people pay.

  Too many bad people. So little time.

  In her ear, Chris’ voice, tiny and giggly: “What about me?”

  She shakes it off. Wonders suddenly where her mother is.

  The woman’s been gone all day. No idea where or why, but Atlanta finds out soon enough: she hears the Cutlass Ciera outside with its busted muffler, and it isn’t long before Mama Arlene is coming through the side-door and throwing her purse down on the little table at which they eat, storming past with her hair a mess, her bosoms heaving. Atlanta catches a whiff of something—the smell of fryer grease. Suddenly she wants a hamburger real bad.

  “They can’t do that to me,” Arlene says. She stands behind the couch with her arms cross. She paces. Then stops. Then paces again. “They can’t treat me like that.”

  “Mama, what the crap are you going on about?”

  Arlene thrusts a finger in her daughter’s face. “They wanted me to clean bathrooms.”

  “Who? What?”

  “Arby’s! The Arby’s. Down by the highway? Off the exit.” She must mistake Atlanta’s face for something else because she continues to give directions: “You go down Broward, south out of town—it’s the damn Arby’s sitting there next to the Conoco gas, the one with the—“

  “I know where it is. Why were you at an Arby’s? And what happened with the… pyramid scheme food thing?”

  Arlene rolls her eyes. “I didn’t think the Wonderfully Delicious ‘thing’ was a good fit.” Atlanta at first wonders if her mother actually took her advice, but then figures it’s something far simpler: they probably don’t have the cash necessary to buy in. “As for Arby’s, well, I was looking for a job.”

  “And they gave you one?”

  “They did. But they wanted me to push a broom! They already got a young retarded girl—or maybe she’s older, I dunno, they always seem kinda young even when they’re not on account of their lack of worldliness—and I told the manager, I said to him, I have more skills than a retarded person—“

  Atlanta regrets it soon as she says it but there it goes, falling out of her mouth: “Do you?”

  “What?”

  “I’m just saying, retarded people do jobs all the time. But you mostly sit home and… don’t. They probably have plenty of skills you don’t have. I mean, not the really super-retarded ones, maybe, but—you know, I don’t even think we’re supposed to say that word anymore, ‘retarded?’”

  “Who cares about the damn word? My own daughter is being cruel to me!”

  “I’m not being cruel, Mama, I just—I’m just saying you can’t go talking to the manager like that. Why can’t you just push a dang broom?”

  “Because I’m better than that!” Arlene yells. Face suddenly red and eyes suddenly glassy with tears that threaten to fall but do not. She pushes that bubble of sudden rage down and lowers her voice. “Normally I’d have a man around the house, but ever since… well.” Arlene looks away and Atlanta feels a sudden stab of shame and anger all her own—one of her mother’s many gifts, it seems, is taking her own shitty feelings and passing them along to other people like the way you’d hand off a football or give someone else the flu. Arlene continues: “It’s all right. I’ve got it figured out. I’m going to start my own business, be my own boss. You’ll see. For now I need to…” It’s like she’s searching for the word. Then she finds it: “Ruminate upon it. Have a cigarette. Maybe a beer. And go sink into a nice hot bath.”

  And like that Arlene is gone, walking her way up the steps.

  But she calls out behind her—

  “Hey! There’s something on the front porch for you. A package.”

  Soon Atlanta hears the pipes complain as Mama starts filling a tub. Atlanta heads outside.

  Out there, she finds a wicker basket wrapped in red cellophane like a Christmas present that time-traveled to this warm and dry June evening. Inside are meats and cheeses and crackers and cookies. Summer sausage in their tubes, a brick of sharp cheddar, butter crackers and sugar cookies and more.

  A little tag dangles from the arch of the basket’s handle. Atlanta plucks it like a crabapple and flips it open:

  “I’m sorry. I’ll help. –Shane.”

  Atlanta smiles.

  It’s a small smile, sure, but right now even the tiniest curl to her lips is a bright light in a very dark space.

  * * *

  Next day at the little grungy café in the middle of town Atlanta sits across from Shane and tells him everything, which feels good. There’s comfort in purging all this horrible stuff she’s been keeping stored up inside her.

  Waitress brings her an iced tea and as she talks, Atlanta upends a small dumptruck’s worth of white sugar into it. Shane watches her over a coffee so black it might as well have been ink poured out of a squid’s behind. At the end of it, after he noisily sips the too-hot coffee, he blinks and says, “That sucks.”

  Two words, so simple, and so true. It does suck. All of it sucks.

  She pops the straw in her mouth, sucks up some tea. Still not sweet enough. They do not know how to make iced tea up here, she thinks. Glass of cold tea down South is like liquid crack. A glass of iced diabetes, and oh-so-tasty.

  More sugar, then. It whispers as it hits the tea and sinks past the ice.

  “So what do we do?”

  “Well,” she says, “that’s why I need you. You’re smarter than me, plain and simple. If I figure anything out it’s because I’m lucky. If you figure it out it’s because you’re smart.”

  “That’s not true. You’re plenty smart.”

  “I’m not saying I’m a dipshit or anything. But you might be shorter than me physically, but you’re taller than me if you figure your brain into the equation. Let’s just leave it at that.” She sips a
t the tea. Feels the sugar eating into her teeth—kind of a tingly sensation. Perfect. “That’s why I need you. I’ll pay you for your brain.”

  “You don’t have to pay.”

  “No, I want to. Oh. Thanks for the basket of meat.”

  “It had cheese and other stuff in it, too.”

  “Yeah, but really, it’s the meat. Meat is so good. I do not understand how someone can be a vegetarian.” She blinks and when she does behind her eyes she sees images from yesterday’s Google search—dogs with abraded faces and rope burns like the ones on Sailor the terrier and open infected wounds. The thought of meat suddenly flips her stomach. She knows they’re not the same thing in her head but her heart and gut don’t care right now. She blanches and in a moment of clarity understands vegetarianism like a meat-eating Saul on the road fo Damascus. “Anyway uh, I’m sure the cookies and crackers are good too. So where do we start?”