by John Straley
“Have you seen Mouse lately?” asked Lester.
“No.” Miles didn’t look away from the window. “Didn’t he fly to Juneau?”
“I don’t think so. I went down to his boat a couple of days ago, and his stuff was all there like he had just walked out.”
“You tell that to the cop?”
“Hell no. Mouse doesn’t need to be found by a trooper.” They both sat looking into the fire box for a few more moments before he added, “He wasn’t looking so good when I saw him last.”
“Not so good … like how?” Miles turned his face away from the window.
“Not so good like drunk, pale, thin, and about ready to fall over.”
“That doesn’t really distinguish him from many people around here.”
Both men let the silence sit between them again while wind pounded against the window.
“I didn’t even know you had a brother, let alone a highranking crime boss brother,” Lester said.
“Yeah, well, you learn something new every day.”
“Your brother going to come here?”
“I have no idea.”
“I hope he does.” Lester looked over at him.
“You do?” Miles kept his eyes on the floor. “Why?”
“You know, for my book.” He laughed, stood up, and slapped Miles on the back. “I better get after it.” Over at the bench where his jeweler’s vise held a thin strip of silver, he picked up a tool and started working. He sold his work in two galleries—one in Seattle and one in New York—and a shipping deadline was coming up for each one.
Miles rinsed off his plate, dried it, and placed it back in the cupboard. He walked out of the house.
SO SURE WAS Clive that he had money waiting for him at this last stop, he gave fifty dollars to the driver for the ride. He scratched the corgi’s head as he was getting out, but the dog seemed to be ignoring him now.
Clive’s dog, Samson, was the kind of golden retriever who got progressively wider and wider. Eventually, he could have been used as an animate end table. Samson was sweet-natured and loyal beyond all reason. Clive remembered Samson lying on the rug, watching baseball on TV. Any time Clive made the slightest move, the dog would lift his head and stare, sometimes worried, sometimes excited, but always with the knowledge that something good was going to happen and it would start with Clive. Samson was an optimist.
During the early years in prison, Clive had not dared to think about him. He’d left Samson with Oscar because there was no one else; he’d told himself that Oscar could be trusted and that he loved dogs. But during those early years the goal was clear: everything good on the outside had to be buried away and hidden from the life inside, the life that circled the concrete hole of protective segregation.
Oscar worked for Jake Shoemaker, though it would take a lot of digging to figure that out. The warehouse where Oscar was the manager was called Little Switzerland. It sat in the Never-Never Land of warehouses and sketchy motels and iron-barred bodegas in the neighborhood you get lost in when you miss the turnoff for the Seattle-Tacoma airport. Stunted pine trees were planted in a border around the edge of the paved parking lot, and Oscar sat in a windowless office inside the first door of the building, the one closest to the chain-link fence. He was a short man with a full moon face and a thin covering of mouse brown hair swept back over a bald spot.
He sat back in his chair, flicking a butterfly knife back and forth with a quick clicking sound. His feet rested on an open desk drawer, and the light made him look even whiter than Clive had remembered.
“Hey, man, your dog’s dead.” Oscar made it sound as if they were in the middle of an argument.
“What do you mean, dead?” Clive reached over, grabbed the front of his shirt, pulled him to his feet.
“Don’t put your fucking hands on me.” Oscar’s teeth were clenched, and he held the knife blade up to Clive’s ear awkwardly.
“Just tell me what happened.” Clive didn’t pay attention to the knife. He was looking at the pudgy man’s mouth instead, noticing the missing tooth.
“What can I tell you, man? He was old, and I got a ton of fucking vet bills. If you want to get snotty about it, I suppose I could let you pay me back for them. I mean, you were the model of a concerned pet owner. Fuck!” Oscar threw the knife on top of the desk, and Clive eased him down into the seat. “Just don’t touch me again. All right?” Oscar added, reminding himself that he wasn’t a man to be messed with.
“Did you want me to break out of McNeil, swim across the Sound, and take him to the vet?” Clive sat down on an overturned wastebasket in a corner, his body sagged, and tears came to his eyes.
Clive hadn’t cried when he was arrested or when he was sentenced. He hadn’t cried on the DOC bus that drove him out to McNeil. He hadn’t cried that first night in the dorms when men rustled around his bunk like bears at the dump. He hadn’t even cried the first time he was assaulted in the sign shop and had spent those weeks in the infirmary.
But now he was out of jail, Samson was dead, and he was going to cry like a baby. “He was a good dog,” he said in a thickening voice.
“Yeah, he was.” Oscar pretended to read some invoices. He didn’t want to watch Clive cry; he didn’t like to witness any kind of weakness. He waited a second. “I got another dog. You want him?”
Clive didn’t say anything for quite a while. He was thinking about Samson, curled up those last few months on the blanket of his cell. He was thinking about the look in the golden retriever’s eyes and thinking that even then Samson was probably already dead. He looked around the messy office, covered with old cardboard cups and circle-stained copies of Soldier of Fortune magazine; he was amazed that he had ever thought this life of crime was anything but pathetic.
“What kind of dog?” Clive wiped his eyes.
“He’s an ugly son of a bitch.” Oscar looked at Clive. “A guy left him here in trade on a bad debt. He said he was a fighting dog. He said he’d be a good guard dog for the warehouse. I mean, the fucking dog is ugly and scary enough to chase anybody off, but he don’t listen to a goddamn thing anybody says.” Oscar got up and grabbed a large ring of keys off the desk. “Let’s go look at him. You can have him if you want.”
Outside, Oscar opened up a chain-link gate with barbed wire coiling along the top. Clive’s stomach tightened.
Oscar laughed. “Hey, dude, we got the keys. No worries. I’m not locking you up.” He jingled the keys and laughed again.
“I got to get into the locker, Oscar,” explained Clive. “Can you arrange that for me?”
“Is it cool with Jake?”
“Of course it is. I did his time, didn’t I? I should think it is very cool with Jake. Call him if you want.”
“I don’t know. There’s nothing much in there anymore. But still, Jake would take my nuts if I let you in.”
“Oscar, man, it’s all my stuff. Jake’s just been paying the storage bill.”
Oscar stopped, jingled his keys again, shifted his weight from foot to foot. “So,” he asked, “you aren’t going to mind sharing whatever’s in there?”
“Sharing? What, like the United Fund or something?”
“I thought you’d want to cover the vet bills I fronted. Shit. You know, I don’t have to let you in that locker.” He looked Clive in the eye.
“We’ll work something out.” He put his hand on Oscar’s shoulder and turned him back in the direction they’d been walking. “Let’s go take a look at that dog.” Gently, he put a little pressure on the small man’s back.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” said Oscar with enough bluff to maintain his dignity.
They came to another fenced area. Inside was a shack and tied to it was a strange gangbanger mix of rottweiler, pit bull, and wolf, a brindle-dun carnivore without an ounce of extra fat and with chewed-off ears.
“Lord have mercy,” Clive said under his breath.
The dog was 120 pounds of head, jaw muscles, and shoulders. His eyes scanned the y
ard and stopped on the men. Slowly, he walked forward with the off-kilter stare of a Mexican street dog charged up on a jolt of methamphetamine. He did not look anything like Clive’s golden retriever. He looked like something that fed on golden retrievers.
“What’s his name?” There was a degree of awe in Clive’s voice.
“Well, his father was supposed to be a real good fighting dog. That dog was called Big Brother, and I guess he made a ton of money for the guy. When he dropped this dog off, he said his name was Little Brother, but it doesn’t matter. He won’t come to anything.”
“Does he bite?” Clive walked around the fence; the dog’s dark eyes followed him.
“I don’t give him the chance,” said Oscar. “When I want him out, I open the gate to his pen. He wanders around inside the fence. When I want him back in the morning, I carry this and he goes back in.” He reached over and picked up a wand with a battery pack on the end. “It’s a cattle prod. They use ’em for loading bulls into trucks.”
“Then how do you get the chain on him?”
“I put this on.” Oscar picked up a single sleeve attached to a thick glove that looked like a piece of hockey equipment. “Got this from a guy who trains attack dogs. I put it on and clip the chain to his collar. This dog’s never actually bitten me, but shit, I mean look at him.”
“What do you mean, ‘actually’ bitten you?” Clive inched closer to the fencing.
“He’s never bitten me, man, but I know he really wants to.” He touched the switch and there was a metallic buzzing sound; the dog cowered in a corner. Oscar walked closer and jabbed the end of the probe through the fence; the dog started snarling, thick saliva falling through its teeth. Oscar kept pushing the probe further until it hit the dog; there was a sharp yelp and the animal fell to the concrete.
Clive put his hand on Oscar’s elbow and pulled him back.
“I said don’t fucking touch me, man!” He swung around and glared at him. Clive recognized that look: Oscar both did and didn’t want to kill someone right now. Clive hoped Oscar never went to jail, for prison was the place where cowards learned to kill.
Clive slowly took the prod away. “It’s okay.” He smiled. “I’ll take the dog.”
As he got closer to the fence, the dog got to his feet, sniffed the air in front of him as if there were a frightened cow being lowered into the pen. Clive saw deep scars around his throat and shoulders; his back leg had a crook to it like one that had been seriously broken and badly set.
“Little Brother … That your name?”
The dog’s expression didn’t change. He said nothing. Clive leaned in to listen carefully.
Nothing. Silence like looking down a well.
“Well, I guess I’ll take you with me, dog.” Then he turned to the ugly man and fished his wallet out of his pocket.
“Here’s fifty bucks for nothing, and there is nothing more. Now open my locker.”
Oscar snorted, grabbed the bill and backed slowly away, keeping his eyes on the big boulder-headed dog, who watched him like raw meat.
THE NEXT MORNING, Miles walked down the boardwalk from the café to his clinic. Several appointments were penciled in that day, but the calendar didn’t really matter because most of the people in Cold Storage couldn’t be bothered with making and keeping appointments. Most of the patients simply showed up any time their aches or pains occurred. Miles turned a corner to find Billy Cox sitting in the doorway. Billy was squatting, eating an apple. His large green poncho spread over his shoulders and hung to the ground like a tent. Billy was a fisherman now but had once been the lead vocalist and percussionist for the short-lived death metal duo Boomerang Bombers.
“Hey, Billy!” Miles greeted him and reached into his pocket for the keys.
Billy didn’t speak at first. He was eating his apple with such concentration it seemed that if he turned his attention away, even for one moment, the apple might disappear.
“Miles, have you ever gotten a really, really good apple when you were expecting a crummy one?” Billy finally asked just as Miles opened the door.
“Yeah, I have.” He wanted to get to the point. “How are you doing today, Billy?”
“I mean, you bite into a series of soft mushy things and you kind of get used to them, but then you get a really good one.” He stood up, his poncho rolling water off onto the deck. “And it makes you both kind of happy and sad.” He put the last of the core into his mouth.
“Come on in, Billy.” Miles switched on the lights inside. “Sit down a second and I’ll get things going here. You want to make the coffee?” He was already tipping water into the coffee maker.
The entire clinic was about twenty feet by thirty. It was built on pilings out over the inlet, on the water side of the boardwalk. Miles had a small office, a storeroom, a drug locker, a very small meeting room in the back corner with space for four people, a waiting room with a coffee pot, and an examining room. The clinic was clean and decorated; health posters and framed wildlife photos hung on the freshly painted walls.
After the incident with the trooper, Miles had decided to make a fresh pot of coffee. The thick liquid burbled down through the grounds, and its tropical steam rose up into the room. Billy took off his poncho.
Miles turned on his new computer in the office, checked to see if the fax machine had spit out any indecipherable messages. He did a quick walk-around to make sure nothing had been disturbed and double-checked the fastenings on the red metal drug locker holding the sedatives and narcotic pain killers. There weren’t many. Miles didn’t like the responsibility of keeping a large supply, but there were some people in the fishing fleet who thought of Miles’s red drug locker as a kind of cornucopia of pleasure, and he’d once been asked to donate a tour of his drug locker as a prize for a local fundraiser. Not samples, just a simple look inside. Miles declined.
“How’s the coffee coming, Billy?” Miles scrolled down through the emails, mostly tasteless jokes or boring drafts of policies that didn’t apply to his practice, pausing only long enough to read the headings and hit the delete icon.
“I’m making up some Colombian. That okay with you, Miles?” Billy called. “Looks like you’re out of the Deadman’s Reach.”
“I got more on the way from Ketchikan. Why don’t you pour us both a cup, and I’ll meet you in the exam room?”
Going through the stack of mail, Miles’s eyes stopped on the return address of one envelope. It came from the probation office of McNeil Island Correctional Facility in Washington state. It read:
The Probation Department is sending this message to inform you that you have a family member by the name of Clive J. McCahon, who has stated his intention of residing with you upon his release. Please review all information below concerning the mentioned inmate. If you cannot, for any reason, abide by all the listed conditions of probation for your family member, please contact this Department immediately. If you are willing to assist the Department in the supervising of this inmate you must provide your name, Social Security number, and physical address by return mail. This is your responsibility and the Department will take no further action.
Beneath this message was a list of data: Clive’s birth date, his Social Security number, and his record of conviction. At the end, like a fishhook, was the release date. He saw it and looked at his cartoon desk calendar; Clive’s release date had already passed three days ago.
“Miles, you’re out of sugar. You want me to run down to the boat and get some for you?”
Miles stared at his desk calendar.
“Miles, it don’t matter to me, man. I don’t do sugar in coffee, you know, but if you want some, I got some down on the boat. It’s probably hard as a brick, but I could break you off a chunk.”
Miles shook his head as if waking up from a dream. “Naw, that’s okay, Clive.”
There was a long silence in the waiting room. “Huh? Whatchya call me?”
“I’m sorry, Billy.” Miles clicked out of his email and left the off
ice. “I was thinking of somebody else.”
“Hey, Miles?”
“What?”
“Did you know that trooper was asking everybody in town about your brother?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“He even said there’d probably be some kind of reward if we turned him in.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Billy,” Miles said sadly.
“Miles?” Billy asked again. The coffee machine gurgled.
“Yeah?”
“Your brother doesn’t sound all that bad to me.”
“He’s not a bad guy.” Miles smiled. “You know, for a career criminal.”
Miles put away the letter from the Washington Department of Probation. He decided there was nothing he could do about Clive at the moment but there might be something he could do for Billy, but even that was uncertain for many of Billy’s problems were metaphysical.
Billy had been born in El Cajon, California, but had come to Alaska with his parents when his dad went fishing. His pop earned money by fishing for salmon from his own small wooden boat and by fishing for halibut and black cod with a couple other guys who had more expensive permits. When his father grew sick of it, he left for California. When Billy’s mom grew sick of the rain, she did, too. Billy was sixteen. The transition wasn’t as hard as people from the outside would expect. Billy just stayed on the boat. Guys from the fleet gave him a hand with chores he couldn’t do alone. He finished high school and worked hard maybe sixteen weeks a year and spent the rest of the wet months reading and volunteering in the school. His health insurance was covered by the local tribe in Sitka because his mother had been a tribal member from California. A good thing, because his new religious interests had caused him to come into the clinic more often.
Billy was twenty-four now and had decided he was a Tibetan Buddhist. The little library didn’t have many books on Tibetan Buddhism, so he settled for a few books about the Dalai Lama and the movie version of Seven Years in Tibet.
