Turtleface and Beyond

by Arthur Bradford

  “That was before,” said Bob.

  “She won’t do it again,” I said.

  “She better not,” said Bob. He winced a little each time he rubbed his leg, clearly trying to make a big show of it. Such behavior was probably ingrained in his system from all that faking he’d been doing in court.

  I got up and opened a new beer for Bob. I opened one for Alice too, even though she wasn’t really done with her first one. We sat around for a while and Alice told us about all the red tape she had to go through to get Marvin into the right school for the coming fall. Bob kept rubbing his leg and I felt awkward and decided it was time to go. I said goodbye to Marvin even though he couldn’t hear me and took Willy by the collar to guide her out. It was raining then, but we needed to go anyway. We got all wet on the way home.

  In the morning I went out to get some food and when I returned there was a policeman standing at my front door. He was writing on a pad of paper.

  “Do you live here?” he asked me.

  “Yes, I do,” I said. For a second I thought about saying no, just out of some vague feeling that deceiving the cops is usually a good idea, but then I decided against it.

  “Is that your dog inside?” asked the cop.

  Willy was barking at us from behind the closed door. I’m sure it had upset her to have that policeman just standing out there where she could smell and hear him. Once again I considered lying to the police, but I wasn’t sure where that would lead me.

  “Yes,” I said, “that’s my dog.”

  Willy was growling now in between her barks. I told her to be quiet. She stopped growling for about one second and then started up again.

  “I’m investigating a complaint,” said the policeman.

  “Oh man,” I said.

  That jackass Bob. I should have known he couldn’t resist.

  “Did the dog bite someone yesterday?” asked the policeman.

  “Not really,” I said. “She sort of did.”

  “Either he did or he didn’t,” said the policeman.

  “She’s a girl dog,” I pointed out. People always assume all dogs are boys.

  The cop sighed. “So she bit someone,” he said. He began writing more words on his pad of paper.

  “Are you giving me a ticket?” I asked. “It wasn’t her fault. Bob stepped on her tail.”

  “We’re going to quarantine her,” said the cop. “Ten days.”

  “What?” I said.

  “For observation.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “Come on,” I said.

  “Look,” said the cop, “it’s standard procedure.” He certainly was fond of this official jargon. He ripped off the top sheet of paper from his pad and handed it to me.

  “You can bring her down to Animal Control yourself or we can send a guy over to pick her up.”

  “What if I refuse?” I said.

  “Then we’ll issue a warrant for your arrest,” he said, “and your dog will be shot.”

  “You can’t do that,” I said.

  “Yes, we can,” said the cop. I could tell he wasn’t really ready to go through with the arrest-and-shoot plan, but I didn’t want to test him.

  “When do I have to bring her in?” I asked.

  Willy was still growling from behind the door. The cop hadn’t even seen her. It seemed like he was a little bit afraid of her, like if I’d opened the door he would have drawn his gun.

  “You can bring her in tomorrow,” said the cop. He walked away and left me there with his citation. That dumbass Bob was going to hear from me about this.

  Since I didn’t know where Bob lived I went back to Alice’s place to see if he was there. I left Willy behind so as to avoid any further trouble. When I arrived the door was unlocked and Marvin was sitting on the floor playing with his wooden blocks. He had this set of blocks which he liked to stack up, one on top of the other, and then knock down. He could play with those things endlessly. I walked up to him and let him smell my hand. He tried to get me to play with the blocks as well but I wasn’t interested. I began looking around for a piece of paper on which to write a note to Alice. As I was doing this Alice walked in, with Bob.

  Bob said, “What are you doing here?”

  “I was looking for you,” I said.

  “I’m right here,” said Bob.

  Alice was eyeing me with suspicion because I’d been rummaging around the stuff on her table.

  “I was looking for a piece of paper,” I said, “to write a note.”

  “Oh,” she said. She went over to the fridge and put a new pack of beer inside it. She offered one to me but I said, “No, thanks.”

  Bob took one though. So did Alice.

  “Why did you report my dog to the police?” I asked Bob.

  “She bit me,” he said.

  “Now they want to take her away,” I said, “they want to put her in quarantine.”

  “So?” said Bob.

  “It was your fault,” I said. “You stepped on her tail.”

  “That was before,” said Bob. “She bit me later on.”

  Alice took a big swig of her beer and looked at Bob. “Why did you need to go fill out that report anyway?” she said.

  “I had to,” said Bob, “for the medical benefits to kick in.”

  That stupid fuck, Bob. He was always trying to work the system. “Well, I’d like you to take it back,” I said. “Go tell them it was a mistake. I’m not putting my dog in jail.”

  “I can’t do that,” said Bob. “It’s out of my hands.”

  I got upset then. I don’t like it when people get slippery and say things like, “It’s out of my hands.” I stepped over Marvin and his pile of blocks and pushed Bob against the wall. I was going to take a swing at him but he hit me first with his bottle of beer. He hit me right on the side of the head. At first it didn’t hurt but then I felt this sharp pain and my vision went fuzzy.

  I woke up on the couch. Alice was wiping my forehead with a wet towel while Bob paced around puffing on a cigarette. For a moment I couldn’t remember what had happened and I wondered why I was there. I tried to sit up but Alice held me down.

  “Hold on,” she said, “you’ll get blood everywhere.”

  I shut my eyes again and I either fell asleep or passed out. When I opened my eyes Alice and Bob were talking in the kitchen. She was calling him a “dumb fuck.” Marvin was still fiddling around with his blocks. He seemed a little nervous, perhaps sensing some of the uneasiness floating in the air. I remembered it then, that Bob had hit me with his bottle. My head hurt. I thought about grabbing something heavy and hitting Bob with it, but I didn’t have the energy. Instead I got up very quietly and walked out. When the door shut behind me I heard Alice say, “Hey, where are you going?”

  I didn’t stop. I walked down the stairs. I think Bob said something to Alice, something like, “Just let him go.”

  There was a cut on the side of my forehead, near my temple. I stopped in front of a store window and looked at my reflection in the glass. It wasn’t a bad cut, but it wouldn’t stop bleeding. People stared at me as I walked down the street.

  When I got home I called out for Willy but she didn’t come. I looked everywhere for her but she was gone. Then I looked outside and saw the official notice lying on the mat by my door. It was from Animal Control.

  “Oh fuck,” I said.

  They had come and taken her into quarantine. That policeman knew I’d never take her down there myself. I was feeling crazy now. I was mad at the policeman and that bastard Bob and the lackeys at the dog pound and even Alice and blind and deaf Marvin too. They could all go to hell. I ran outside and got lost about seven times trying to figure out where the Animal Control Center was. Finally I located it. I had to cross a highway on foot to get there.

  The woman at the desk looked at me funny because of the blood on my forehead. Plus I was sweating and out of breath. I looked like a loony, I’m sure.

  “I’ve come to get my dog,” I said.

 
I had meant to say “see my dog” but the word “get” just slipped out. We went over the details of her quarantine, the woman at the desk and I. She was actually very nice. I guess she’d seen this kind of thing before, frantic dog owners. She told me I could go visit Willy, but I wasn’t allowed to take her home, not until the ten days were up.

  I walked down the rows of cages, past all of those poor barking dogs. It made me even more sad than I already was, seeing those dogs locked up like that. They just wanted good homes, nice owners, and here they were stuck in crummy cages. It was a very depressing place. It smelled bad too, like dog urine.

  When I got to Willy’s cage it was strange to see her inside there. It looked all wrong, my dog among these outcasts. She wasn’t barking like the others. She was lying down in the back, curled up in a ball. I felt sick seeing her like that. I called out her name and she jumped up. She was so glad to see me that she got frantic. She raked her paws against the cage and let out these high-pitched yelps. I thought there would be a lock on her cage, but there wasn’t. It was just a latch. So I let myself inside. Willy was so excited that she knocked over her bowls of water and food. The little nuggets were scattered all over the floor and the water made a puddle on the concrete.

  I patted her for a little while and tried to calm her down. Her eyes were wild and she wouldn’t focus on me. A quick thought occurred to me then, and without really considering it I picked up Willy, took her out of that cage, and began to run with her in my arms. She was very heavy. I hadn’t picked her up like that since she was a pup. The other dogs in their cages started barking and yelping. I imagined they were cheering us on. Or maybe they were asking me to take them away as well. The only way out, as I saw it, was to go by that nice woman at the front desk. I was really out of breath from running with heavy Willy in my arms. I couldn’t open the door either. So I put her down and yanked it open. Willy dashed through and I followed her.

  The woman saw us and said, “Wait, you’re not supposed to—”

  We didn’t hear the rest of it. We just ran, me and Willy, down the street. I figured the woman got out from behind her desk and followed us, but not very far. We took side streets and alleys all the way home. I was afraid the cops would be on the lookout for me and my fugitive dog.

  That night I didn’t sleep too well. I was worried that someone from Animal Control would come banging on my door. My plan if that happened was to keep quiet and pretend no one was home. I lay there thinking about this and realized I would have to move out of my place. That was okay, I wanted to leave town anyway. I couldn’t stay there and be saddled with anxiety over the cops wanting to shoot my dog. I got out of bed at four in the morning and packed my bags. I left a lot of stuff behind, but that was okay too. Sometimes possessions just weigh a person down.

  Willy and I left the apartment at about 6:00 a.m. Outside people were just starting to move about. First we went over to Alice’s place to say goodbye and see if she had any money for me this time. I’d tell her I was leaving town. That might help.

  At first I didn’t want to knock on her door since it was so early, but then I heard noises inside. Marvin was awake. I could hear the little grunting and squeaking noises he sometimes made. I knocked on the door and Alice answered. She was awake too, but she looked distressed, like she’d been crying.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said.

  “I’m leaving town,” I said. “Me and Willy.”

  She looked at me, puzzled. “You heard about Bob?” she said.

  “No,” I said.

  Alice walked back to the couch and sat down. “I got mad at him after you left and made him go down to the station and take back that report against your dog. I just didn’t think it was right.”

  Alice’s face was white. She seemed really upset and I figured Bob had left her over this dispute. Now I felt even worse. It was nice of Alice to stick up for me though.

  “Thanks, Alice,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, he went down there on his crutches and all, just so they’d know he was still injured from the car accident…”

  Alice began to cry a little, not a lot, just a tear or two rolling out from the corner of her eye. “On his way back here Bob tried to cross a street ahead of the light. I guess the crutches tripped him up and he fell down, right in front of the traffic. They didn’t have time to stop for him. Bob got hit by a truck, some kind of delivery truck, a big one. It killed him.”

  What a thing to happen, I thought. I wasn’t sure if it was actually true. I thought maybe Alice was kidding around, but that wasn’t really something Alice would do.

  I had to let that information sink in. It was true, Bob was dead. Alice and I had a cup of tea and talked about him a little bit. She really seemed to like him for some reason. I tried to say a few nice things about him, about his funny sense of humor, something like that. Sometimes he could be sort of funny. But the truth was, for the most part, I didn’t mind that he had died. He had never been very nice to me. I almost wanted to chuckle because I wondered if his last thought was how much he could sue that truck company for. But then I remembered that his last act was to take back that report against Willy. That was a nice thing of him to do, even if it was Alice who had made him do it.

  The morning was passing away. It was getting hot out and still I hadn’t left. I decided not to leave town after all. Where would I have gone anyway? I made a plan to go down to the dog pound and explain everything to the woman over there. She’d understand, I felt sure. Our slate might be wiped clean.

  Marvin stacked up his blocks on the floor again and I got down on my knees to play with him. Over and over we’d stack a whole mess of blocks into a tower two or three feet high and then Marvin would get this funny grin on his face and swing his arm forward and knock the whole thing over. It was quite an amusing game for him.

  Alice drank a bottle of beer while she watched us play. She didn’t seem so sad now. “I’ll be able to pay you the money tomorrow,” she said. “I can write you a check.”

  “That’s okay, Alice,” I said. “You don’t have to pay me.”

  “Sure I do,” she said.

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “I’ll write you a check right now,” she said. She got up and found her checkbook. “You can’t cash it until tomorrow though.”

  “I don’t want it, Alice,” I said.

  But Alice wrote out the check anyway. “Here you go,” she said.

  I took the check from her. I put it in my pocket and promised to wait until tomorrow to cash it.

  “Or maybe the next day,” said Alice, “you better wait an extra day just in case.”

  “Sure, okay,” I said. “That’s what I’ll do.”

  Marvin knocked over another one of his castles, laughing as the blocks fell down around him, and Willy and I got up to leave.

  RESORT TIK TOK

  A friend had returned from Thailand and informed me that one could rent a hut on the beach there for $1 per night, meals included. I was struggling to pay the rent on my studio apartment while holding down a shitty job as a hotel desk clerk. I’d work the night shift and when things got slow try to write short stories for publication. A few of my stories had been sold to magazines and though the payment was meager I figured if I moved out to one of those shacks in Thailand I could make things go a lot farther.

  The only issue was the airfare. I didn’t have it. To solve this problem I enrolled in a medical study where they deprived us of sleep for twenty-four hours at a time and then made us walk quickly on a treadmill while reading aloud from a book. The book was made up of slogans and stupid phrases repeated over and over and many of us got frustrated. If we stopped reading, the treadmill sped up and we had to start from the beginning. Eventually we all tripped or vomited, except for this one fellow named Frank who had incredible stamina. He made it to the end of the book. When we finished with the treadmills we had to drink some bitter orange liquid and then go into a room and masturbate into a cup. It was very difficult,
given the fatigue. Only two of us could produce a sample. I was one of those two, and felt proud about it, but the important part was that odd study paid me $1,200, enough to get me to Thailand.

  My friend had written out directions to a particularly remote Thai island and I arrived there after several days of rocky travel. While jet-lagged on the streets of Bangkok I’d been approached by a young boy who handed me a pamphlet promising a “Girl with Baboon” show at a nearby bar.

  “No cover charge!” he assured me.

  Who was I to turn down such an offer? I went over there and sat through several unenthusiastic “Girl with Girl” acts and a “Boy with Girl” act which should have been billed “Fat Man with Tired Person.”

  Well, I thought, at least there’s no cover charge for this.

  But then they brought me the check for the two beers I’d consumed and it was $65! Two months’ rent!

  “I refuse to pay,” I told them, but they locked the door and no more acts appeared on the stage. I found myself in an uneasy standoff. The beer was gone and I wasn’t even going to get to see the baboon. Or maybe they’d release him to kick my ass. I’d heard baboons were very strong animals capable of ripping humans limb from limb. Or was that chimpanzees? I decided not to chance it. I paid the $65, a serious dent in my finances, and left that bar unsatisfied.

  The island was very nice though, once I got there. Ah, yes! It was just as I hoped: beautiful white sand beaches, palm trees, smiling Thai locals, and packs of European hippies wearing little or no clothing all day long. I felt good there. The lodging was not quite as cheap as I’d been led to believe, but I did find a set of huts perched on some rocks away from the beach where I was able to bargain for a reasonable monthly rate. The place was called Resort Tik Tok and I gave them eighty U.S. dollars in advance for a proposed two-month stay.

  Most of the beachfront huts were run by cheerful Thai hosts, but Resort Tik Tok was run by a Swiss couple named Rudy and Greta. Rudy was an ornery bear of a man, about forty-five years old, with long, thinning hair and a deep growl of a voice. Despite the idyllic surroundings he seemed always to be in a foul mood. His wife, Greta, was a knockout though, and I began fantasizing about her almost immediately.