Dog On It

by Spencer Quinn

  “But there’s no point going into that. I think you guys found Chet out in the desert, for which I’m very grateful. All I want to know is how and where it happened and then we’ll be out of here and the fun can resume.”

  There was a silence. Then the ham-arm biker spoke in one of those mimicking voices, maybe the worst kind of human voice of all. “‘The fun can resume,’” he said. And then in his normal voice, also pretty unpleasant: “I think he’s a fag besides bein’ a smart-ass.”

  “Well,” said Bernie, “at least you’re having thoughts. Now try to think back to when you first saw Chet.”

  “At least I’m what?” said the ham-arm biker, his whole face swelling up, kind of resembling his arms. “You son of a bitch.” And he swung the chain at Bernie.

  One thing about Bernie: He can really move. And another thing, maybe not too nice, is that some part of him, not often, doesn’t mind getting in situations like this, maybe even wants to, separating Bernie from just about every other human I’ve ever met. Whatever the reason, the chain never landed on Bernie. Instead, it ended up in his own hands and somehow got wrapped around the ham-arm biker’s thick neck, and then the ham-arm biker was sprawled at the base of the bar, his eyes rolling up, a sight that got me excited. I nipped at the first leg I saw. There was a grunt from up above, and the huge biker charged at Bernie, swinging the pool cue at Bernie’s head. I remembered Bernie saying that swinging was not the way to fight with a pool cue—you had to poke with it—and knew this would be over soon. Bernie stepped inside, did that edge-of-the-hand-to-the-throat slashing thing to the huge biker, who dropped like a tree we’d once taken down.

  All the bikers were roaring now and closing in, but Bernie didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He knelt on the huge biker’s back, grabbed him by the throat, and said, “Everybody calm down if you want him to live.”

  The bar went silent.

  “Okay, big guy,” Bernie said. “Let’s have it.”

  In a gasping voice, the huge biker said, “He just come out of nowhere, into our camp, the fuckin’ dog, and—”

  “His name’s Chet.”

  “Huh?”

  “Say ‘Chet’ instead of ‘the fuckin’ dog.’”

  “Chet,” said huge biker.

  I felt a breeze behind me, realized I was wagging my tail. Was this a good time for that? I tried to make it stop.

  “Go on,” said Bernie.

  “That’s it,” said the huge biker. “The fu— Chet come into our camp out of—”

  “Where was this?”

  “Out on the Apache Wash, hard by the New Mexico line.”

  “Draw me a map.”

  “Huh?”

  Bernie pointed at the floor. The biker reached out with his enormous hand, drew a map in the sawdust. Bernie gazed at the map, then released his hold on the biker and rose.

  “Let’s go, boy.”

  We started toward the swinging doors. None of the bikers said a thing. As he passed the bar, Bernie reached into his pocket and tossed some bills on it. “Next round’s on us, ladies, gentlemen,” he said. Oh, Bernie: Our finances were a mess; how come he couldn’t remember that? But at that moment I didn’t care. Was Bernie the best or what? I took a roll in the sawdust on my way out.

  twenty-three

  We drove across the desert, following a dirt track that disappeared from time to time, at least to my eyes. “Imagine being a scout in the old days,” Bernie said. “Wouldn’t that be cool? Like Kit Carson.” He was in a very good mood. One of those strange buttes rose off to one side. “What a country! I just want to run over every inch of it, never stop.” We rolled along for a bit, and in a lower voice, Bernie added, “Well, maybe not run.” And later still: “Gotta get in shape.” All of a sudden he looked sad. Why? I didn’t get it. I opened my mouth as wide as I could, really stretching it out. Sometimes when I did that, like now, my lip got hooked over one of my teeth. Bernie noticed and smiled a little smile.

  The going got bumpy, and Bernie slowed down, weaving around stones and low spiky bushes. After a while a funny look appeared on his face, and he sniffed the air. Don’t get me started on the uselessness of the human nose. “Smell anything, Chet?” Bernie said. Where did he want me to start? “Like oil, maybe? Burning oil?” Well, of course. I always smelled burning oil when we were in the Porsche, never thought much about it. Bernie stopped the car, got out, opened the hood, gazed at the engine. I hopped out and trotted around, lifting my leg on some of those spiky bushes and a round rock with a flat rock sitting on top of it—couldn’t ignore something like that. Next time I checked, Bernie was under the car, clanging around with one of his tools and grunting. The tools: uh-oh. Nothing good happened after the tools came out. I wandered around a barrel cactus, found an interesting hole in the ground. I stuck my nose in and detected a somewhat fishy smell, not as strong but sharper and more thinned out than the smell from a real fish. That smell meant one thing and one thing only: snake. I yanked my head back. Snakes scare the hell out of me. I’m not ashamed to admit it. But, and this might surprise you, I actually caught one once, fat and black, on a hike we took in high piney country somewhere. What got into me that day? We were walking along, me and Bernie, and all of a sudden—

  “Chet? Looks like we’re good to go.”

  I glanced over. Bernie, nose smudged with grease, was pouring some liquid into a funnel sticking out of the engine; we kept cans of this and that in the trunk. He closed the hood, and soon we were back on the road, all by ourselves in the great outdoors. I still smelled burning oil, but Bernie seemed happy. “This car’s gonna last forever,” he said. That was what I liked to hear.

  We passed some weird rock formations, the shadows of every-thing—including the car and our own heads—growing longer and longer, reaching out ahead of us. A low, round hill appeared in the distance, stony and red—but don’t take my word for it on the red part—and at its base I spotted a squarish shape, the kind of shape that meant humanity. We went by a squashed beer can, then another. “Getting there,” Bernie said. He had a knowing look on his face, probably just like those long-ago scouts he’d been talking about. Had Kit Carson followed beer cans across the desert?

  Not long after, the track crossed one of those dried-up stream-beds, rocky in the middle but with a few greenish dwarf-size trees along the sides. “The Apache Wash,” Bernie said. “Water down there, and plenty of it—but for how long?” I looked and saw no water, not a drop. Sometimes I worried about Bernie. This water thing was driving him crazy. I rested my paw on his leg. “Hey, boy,” he said, and we bumped up the other side of the wash. The track kind of petered out after that, but by then we were practically at the base of the low hill, and I could see that the squarish shape was the falling-down shack by the bikers’ old campfire.

  We parked by the shack, got out, walked over to the blackened fire pit. Bernie kicked at a bottle or two, picked up the butt end of a joint, peered into the shack. I dug up a charred burger piece and made quick work of it. Bernie turned. “Chet! What are you eating?”

  Nothing. It was true. The eating part was over. I sniffed around at this and that, went into a quick trot, looked busy. Bernie returned to the car, took the binoculars from the glove box, trained them on some faraway hills, pinkish—I thought—in the fading light. I didn’t like the binoculars, especially when he put them up to his face, almost plugging his eyes in to the thing. Humans were already a little too close to machines for my comfort.

  “Chet. Ease up.”

  Was that me, making a sound not too distant from whining? I eased up. Bernie scanned the distance for a while, then lowered the binoculars. He sat on a rock, unfolded a map, laid it on his lap. I sat beside him. He patted his pockets in that familiar way, checking for cigarettes, even though, trying to quit, he never carried any. “You wandered into this campsite, Chet, but from what direction? Where did you start?”

  I sat beside Bernie, waited for him to figure it out. Meanwhile, I was getting hungry. Any chance of mor
e charred burgers lying around? I sniffed the air: buzzards, Bernie’s aftershave, gasoline, burned mesquite, and yes, water, real free-running unbottled water, even with none to be seen, but no burgers. And also: that sharp, fishy smell. I shifted closer to Bernie.

  He folded up the map, stuck it in his back pocket, turned to me. “Think you can remember, boy?” he said. “How you got here?” He scratched between my ears, found a spot that desperately needed scratching, even though I hadn’t known. “We don’t have a whole lot of options right now.”

  What was he asking? How we got here? Of course I remembered, of course I could lead the way!

  “Easy, Chet, easy.”

  Oops. What was I doing, my front paws up on his shoulders like that? I settled back down on all fours. Bernie went to the car, came back with the flashlight and our .38 special, which he tucked into his belt. I loved that .38 special. Bernie was a crack shot. I’d seen him on the range—loved the range, too, but he’d only taken me there once, on account of the whole experience being a bit too exciting. Of course, I’d been younger then, would probably handle it much better now. I gazed at the .38 special. Take a potshot at something, Bernie. Anything! Coke bottles on a fence rail, for example. Smithereens! But the .38 special stayed in his belt.

  “Want some water?” he said.

  Good idea. I was thirsty, hadn’t even realized it. Bernie filled my bowl. I drank.

  “All set?” he said. “Lead the way.”

  I walked over to the campfire, pawed at the ashes, then circled around and headed into open country, away from the sun, my shadow in front of me, a long, long Chet and getting longer. After a while I sniffed the ground and changed direction. We angled toward those pinkish hills, Bernie a few steps behind, my nose in the air, but more often to the ground. I was searching for the most familiar scent in the whole wide world, namely my own. Pick up my own scent, follow it back to Mr. Gulagov’s ranch with that terrible old mine, get my teeth on a pant leg or two, case closed.

  But my scent: Where was it? I changed direction again, headed toward a flat, barren stretch and a shriveled grayish plant, the only living thing around. I sniffed at the base of the plant, stuck my nose right against its leaves, if that was what they were, long waxy things with, uh-oh: spines. Too late.

  We took a short break while Bernie removed the spines. Then I went right back to the plant.

  “Chet, for God’s sake.”

  I sniffed and sniffed, and maybe because I’d disturbed it some, the plant gave up its secret: a faint, almost undetectable smell of old leather, salt and pepper, mink coats, a soupçon of tomato; and to be honest, a healthy dash of something male and funky. My smell: yes sir. My smell and my smell only, undeniable evidence that Chet the Jet had passed this way.

  “Onto something, boy?”

  Yup. I got my nose right down in the hard-packed dirt, warmer than the air now—the heat of the day still caught in the earth—and sniffed around for more traces of me. It took what seemed like a long time, but then, near a rusty scrap of something human-made but no longer identifiable, I caught another whiff, even fainter than the first, almost not there. I turned toward those pinkish hills, to the tallest one down at one end, went into a slow trot, nose down. Another whiff? I thought so, and changed direction again. Then came a long spell with no more scent, and when I looked up, those far-off hills were still far-off but no longer pink except at the very top of the tallest one; and our shadows no longer showed. Instead, shadow covered everything, and the sky was darkening.

  “How you doin’?” Bernie said.

  The wind rose, blowing from the distant hills. I raised my nose and tested it. How was I doing? Great. We could do this. But the truth was that the wind brought nothing, nada, zip, and that surprised me: The wind was usually my friend. I changed direction a bit, sniffed at some tumbleweed. Buzzard again—a snap to identify buzzard stink—and maybe some kind of lizard, but nothing of me. The wind blew harder, and the tumbleweed rolled away.

  Night fell, an endless black sky full of stars, and soon the moon as well, round and white. Bernie had all these strange ideas about the moon—like it had no light of its own and had once been part of the earth—but all I knew was that it did things to me; hard to explain, but I felt my sharpest in moonlight. And this moonlight was the brightest I remembered. Bernie, whatever his beliefs about moonlight, didn’t have to switch on the flash, not once.

  We kept going, the only sound coming from the wind; Bernie and I knew how to move in silence. Once I spotted a gleam, hurried to it, sniffed at a shard of glass. Something there? Maybe, just maybe, a hint of mink, my minkness. I changed direction again, went into a slow zigzag, searching, searching. The moon moved across the sky. I picked up this and that—no more minkness, but the soupçon of tomato a couple times, and once the male funkiness, certainly mine—and changed direction and changed again, and maybe once more. Bernie walked along beside me. Sometimes, when I went into my trot, he had to jog, his heavy breathing breaking the silence. Time passed, maybe lots of it. He didn’t say a word. I could feel his confidence. Bernie believed in me. That made me even stronger than my normal self. I could keep searching all night if I had to.

  And then: at last! Up ahead I spotted a sign on a post, even though we were in the middle of nowhere: a sign I remembered, a sign I’d seen the night of my flight from Mr. Gulagov’s. I ran to it, Bernie following. Now he did use the flash, shining it on the sign. I could see how worn it was, the letters faded almost all away. Bernie brushed his hand lightly over the wood and said, “‘Ghost’ something or other, it looks like. ‘Five miles.’” He turned to me. “‘Ghost Town,’ most likely—lots of them around. Were you here, Chet?” “Ghost Town” didn’t mean anything to me, but was I here? Oh yes. I took a step or two closer to the sign and suddenly got hit by my smell, the most potent shot of it so far. I took off.

  “Chet! Chet! Slow down.”

  I tried to slow down but had a hard time, what with the way the smell kept getting stronger and stronger. I trotted ahead, ran back, circled Bernie, kept going. We went on and on like that, but I didn’t get tired at all, hardly noticed when the moon sank from sight, the stars dimmed, the sky paled. We were on track, following that scent, no doubt about it, every component in place: old leather, salt and pepper, mink coats, soupçon of tomato, plus the funky part. This was it! I started running, couldn’t hold back. For a while I heard Bernie running behind me, but then he stopped. I turned back to look. He wasn’t running, in fact had ramped down to a slow walk. Bernie! Come on! I turned, charged ahead, my scent everywhere, and was reaching full speed when—

  What was this? Beer cans? The remains of a fire? A falling-down shack? Oh no. We were back at the biker’s campsite? How could that be? We’d searched all night. I froze, one front paw poised in the air.

  Bernie came up beside me. “Looks like we’ve gone in circles, boy,” he said quietly. I lowered my paw, lowered my head, too.

  Daylight spread across the desert, revealing how dusty we were, me and Bernie. Dusty because of the wind that had risen during the night? I didn’t know. In the light, I could also see that Bernie had raccoon eyes again. “Sure is pretty,” he said, “the desert at dawn.” Not to me, not at that moment: I felt so bad about my failure I couldn’t look at Bernie’s face. We got in the car, crossed over the Apache Wash, found the track, drove back up into the mountains and back into Sierra Verde. I lay on my seat, tired; but allowing myself to sleep? No way.

  “Hungry, boy?” he said.

  I was, but allowing myself to eat? No way. Bernie stopped the car. I sat up. We were parked in front of a convenience store. Bernie took the .38 special from his belt, tucked it in the back of the glove box, and was reaching for his door handle when out of the convenience store came a man carrying a bag of groceries. A little dude, very thin, with arm tattoos and spiky hair.

  Bernie went still. “Don’t move a muscle,” he said, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear.

  I didn’t move a muscle,
didn’t even breathe. This little spikyhaired tattooed dude? We knew him, me and Bernie, oh yeah: Anatoly Bulganin, projectionist at the Golden Palm Movie Palace in Las Vegas. We were far from Vegas: I knew that very well. And I knew Bernie. Right now Bernie would be thinking: What’s the little dude doing here? I perked right up.

  twenty-four

  Anatoly Bulganin, spiky-haired projectionist, walked across the parking lot, popped the trunk of a car, and lowered the groceries inside, not looking once in our direction. Had Bernie told me what a projectionist did? Couldn’t remember, but I knew it was something no good, just from the sound.

  “Bingo,” Bernie said, voice lowered.

  Bingo? Why bingo? Wasn’t that some strange game Bernie had played one night at the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association fund-raiser, a game he might have won except for an unfortunate incident involving my tail and his card with the little markers?

  “See that car?” Bernie said. “Blue BMW.” He got out of the Porsche. Anatoly, closing the trunk of the BMW, turned and saw Bernie. Anatoly’s face did funny things. “Hi, Anatoly,” Bernie said. “A little far from home, are we not?”

  “I, uh,” said Anatoly. Then, surprisingly quick, he raced around to the driver’s door of the BMW and flung it open, not even taking the time to fully close the trunk, which sprang back up. By then I was springing, too. I landed on the pavement, bounded past Bernie, and launched myself at Anatoly. An instant too late: The driver’s door slammed shut with him inside, and I hit the hard steel with a thump that sent me somersaulting backward. The next thing I knew, the BMW was peeling out of the lot, missing me by not much.

  “Chet? You all right?”

  I rolled over, rose, unsteady at first, but then fine. Fine and just a bit mad.

  “Let’s roll.”

  I was more than ready. We hopped in the Porsche and took off after Anatoly the projectionist. He was doomed, just didn’t know it.