Black Dogs

by Jason Buhrmester

  It was the only way he could talk about anything other than the firehouse. And he could steer any conversation toward firefighting. Pick a topic and he would turn it into a rant about the VFW's fire code violations that got overlooked by the chief as a favor to a buddy. He and his work were the center of any conversation. You couldn't win. I'd stopped trying years earlier.

  “I bet you don't get breakfasts like this in New York City, Pat,” my mother said.

  “Nope,” I said. “This is great.”

  “Are you eating enough? You look skinny.”

  “I eat a lot, actually. Usually leftovers from whatever catering job I worked the night before.”

  “So the job is fun?” she asked.

  “It's all right. I work with some cool guys. Plus, I get to be backstage at all the concerts.”

  “How exciting,” she said, grinning.

  “You know who I met the other night? Bette Midler.”

  My mother gasped and clutched her chest.

  “No! Did you really? What was she like?”

  “We were all backstage at Radio City Music Hall when she came out of her dressing room, walked over to the food table, looked at me and said, ‘Where the fuck is the cranberry juice I asked for?’ ”

  We both laughed until my father spoke up.

  “You guys better be keeping those tables clear of the fire exits. Some dumb rock star leaves a lit cigarette in the dressing room and that place goes up, you'll all die trying to get out.”

  I stood up and dumped my plate in the sink.

  “I'll keep that in mind, Pop,” I said as I slipped out the front door.

  My car sat crooked in the street in front of my parents’ house. Keys in the ignition. Guitar and safe gone. Gas tank empty. A note under the windshield wiper.

  THANKS FOR LETTING US BARROW YOUR CAR. WE DIDN'T HAVE ANY MONIE FOR GAS. DANNY

  “Whole Lotta Love” played on the radio as I pulled over to the curb in front of Frenchy's house. I climbed out of the car just as Robert Plant started groaning about giving me his love. What an awful fucking song.

  The sun set and I kicked a bottle as I crossed the street. Frenchy lived in his parents' basement. Bare concrete floor and walls. Frenchy dressed it up with a smelly rug, a sofa he found in the alley and some posters. It wasn't so bad. Through the window I could see him, wearing a faded Who T-shirt and jeans, playing guitar on the couch in front of the flicker from a TV sitting on a milk crate.

  “What's this? A high school reunion?” He smiled as he let me in. It was our private joke. Keith and Alex dropped out of school so me and Frenchy were the only people we knew who graduated. To us, it was a high school reunion whenever we were together.

  “Just out seeing what you're up to,” I told him.

  “Nothing. Playing guitar. Watching TV.”

  I poured myself into Frenchy's couch. He hesitated for a second then spoke.

  “Hey, man,” he said. “Sorry about last night. I—”

  “Don't worry about it,” I interrupted. “I know it was Danny. What happened?”

  “I told him to wait. Just so you know.”

  “I know.”

  “So where's the safe and the guitar?”

  “You're sitting on it,” he answered, pointing to the couch.

  I bent over, looking at the tattered couch underneath me.

  “The guitar is under there,” he explained. “Danny and Alex took the safe.”

  “Where did they take it?”

  “I don't know. They dropped me off with the guitar first. They didn't say where they were going after that.”

  Frenchy opened two beers and handed me one.

  “So what's the plan now?” he asked, leaning forward. “Are we going to go to New York?”

  “Of course,” I answered, sipping my beer.

  “I just don't know if we can pull it off,” Frenchy said, staring at the floor.

  “It's simple, man. We bring him the Les Paul and, while you're in there, me, Keith and Alex will grab the money. Then we get out of there.”

  “I don't know, man. I'm starting to get worried.”

  “What are you worried about?” I asked him. “We're just a couple of guys trying to sell Jimmy Page a guitar. We haven't done anything wrong.”

  “We're trying to sell him a guitar that we just stole from one of the biggest psychos in Baltimore!”

  “Yeah, well, there's that.”

  Frenchy clicked off the TV and put a record on the turntable. Frenchy was the only person I knew as obsessed with music as me. He liked raw rock ‘n’ roll, usually British stuff. The Animals and the Who and obscure stuff I didn't even know. He turned me on to tons of new stuff like the Stooges and MC5. His record collection lined the walls. Hundreds of LPs bought with money he made working at the Record Barn. The rest were probably stolen. He dropped the needle on the record and stood grinning at me.

  “What?” I asked him.

  “Just listen.”

  “What am I listening to?”

  “You'll dig this.”

  The song kicked in. Loud R&B guitar, swirling drums, hand claps. It sounded fucking great. A raspy voice howled, I ain't foolin' … Hey woman you need coolin'. I knew the song but it took me a second to place it. It was Zeppelin's “Whole Lotta Love,” just different. Cooler.

  “Holy shit!” I sat up. “Is this someone covering ‘Whole Lotta Love’?”

  “Nope.” Frenchy grinned. “This is the song Zeppelin stole it from.”

  “No fucking way!” I laughed. “This is ridiculous. Let me see that jacket.”

  “It's the Small Faces ‘You Need Loving.’ Came out three years before Zeppelin's version.”

  “The singer sounds exactly like Plant!”

  “Yeah. They stole the whole vocal idea.”

  “Goddamn.” I shook my head. “Just another reason to hate them.”

  “Well, the Small Faces took it from Muddy Waters. Zeppelin just stole their version of it,” Frenchy said.

  “And the entire fucking sound.”

  “Yeah.” He laughed. He sat on the floor and dug through a crate of records. “Jimmy Page ripped off the beginning of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ from this band Spirit. I heard ‘Dazed and Confused’ is lifted from some folksinger.”

  “Fucking con artists.”

  “They're still amazing. Everyone borrows, man. That's just music.”

  “Oh, don't give me that shit. This is outright theft. They totally stole these songs.”

  “They took the same elements that everyone else used and did it better. Look, if I put peanut butter and jelly on bread it's not the most original sandwich but you'd still eat it.”

  “I don't even know what the fuck that means.”

  We went on like that for a while, talking music and listening to records. We could do that for hours. It felt good to hang with Frenchy and not worry about anything except if the Stones put out better albums without Brian Jones (they did) or if the Animals were better than the Who (sometimes). Eventually the beer ran out and I headed home. It was late and I was hungry so I stopped for a burger.

  My car sat alone in a corner spot at the back of the parking lot as I left the restaurant with a bag of food. A Black Sabbath eight-track slipped to the floor and I stretched across the front seat to grab it then crammed it into the player. I fumbled with my keys and finally fit them in the ignition. That's when I heard something metal tap against the window.

  I didn't even turn all the way around. All I needed to see was that ring knocking against the glass. That giant silver skull ring with a bullet slug buried in its forehead. The ring was so big it covered up the entire section of his middle finger including one letter of a tattoo that ran across the knuckles of his hand. It didn't matter. I knew the black ink spelled out P-A-I-N. I didn't have to see the other hand to know it said L-O-S-S. It hit me that I was fucked in the worst possible way.

  “Get out of the car, son,” he said.

  I looked through my dirty car window. He
wore a wife-beater tank top underneath a leather motorcycle jacket and denim vest covered in patches. His greasy red hair hung past his shoulders and tangled with a kinky beard half a foot long. A huge tattoo crawled up his neck beneath it. At the base of his throat he'd tattooed a picture of a jackalope, an imaginary rabbit with antlers that turns up on postcards from Texas. The head sat mounted on a plaque and the tattooed antlers stretched up his throat and stopped just underneath his chin. The banner tattooed around it said, BACKWOODS.

  This was Backwoods Billy Harvick.

  I slunk from the car. Someone struck me from behind and a thick hand in a fingerless leather glove squeezed around my throat. When I tried to stand a heavy boot rocketed into my shins and knocked me to the ground then stood on the side of my head, grinding my face into the parking lot. Gravel bit into my cheek. I turned my eyes to look up at Backwoods Billy.

  “You see this bike?” he said. His greasy finger pointed at the motorcycle. Despite all of his filth, the bike was spotless. The high handlebars, the long chopper forks and chrome tailpipes gleamed in the dark.

  “There was a time in my life when that bike was all I had to live for. That was it. I didn't have a home or a woman. No job. No family. That bike was it. You know what that does to ya?”

  I started to say something but couldn't think. Visions of that giant bike rolling over my head played in my mind. He kept going.

  “It makes ya think human life is cheap. You don't care nothing about your own life so you don't care nothing about nobody else's. Back then we wouldn't be talking like this. I would have already killed ya for what ya done to me.”

  My heart stumbled and the strength drained out of my legs. I raced through my brain trying to figure out how Backwoods Billy knew we'd robbed the Haven Street Pawnshop. I stared at the ground.

  “Lucky for you I don't act like that no more. I've got God in my life now and a wife and kids to look after. But that don't mean I'm gonna let you get away with what you done.” He pointed at me. “As the Bible says, ‘Know this, that if the good man of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.’ ”

  “Is that what you think I did? Broke into your house?” I talked so fast that I tripped over my own words. It sounded like three people speaking at once. “Because I didn't. I wouldn't do that. You must be thinking of someone—”

  “Shut up, son,” he said. “Is this your car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is the car my partner saw parked in the alley behind my pawnshop last night.” He nodded to the person standing on my skull. The foot let up enough for me to turn my head to see the enormous bald man dressed in black jeans, motorcycle boots and a black leather vest crossing his bulging arms over his bare chest. He leaned down toward me and stared from behind dark sunglasses. My own frantic face peered back at me from the reflection in the lenses.

  “You broke into my business last night and stole something very valuable to me,” Billy said.

  “This is just a huge misunderstanding,” I said. “Someone obviously did something very fucking stupid. I can get the guitar back. Just give me some time.”

  “Guitar?” He grinned. “Hell, I don't care about no old guitar. That's Dave's shit. I'm talking about my safe, boy.”

  The safe. Fucking Danny.

  “I'll get it back. I swear to you.”

  He leaned against his bike and pulled at his beard with a tattooed hand swollen with scars. I stared at the giant skull ring. He looked up at the sky. His partner stood nearby and Billy smiled at him. I held my breath. Finally he said something.

  “Son, what you stole from me is very important and I need it back. So I'm gonna give you a chance to return it. Now I know I don't need to give you no deadline. I expect it to be brought back to me as fast as fucking possible. You know that. And believe me, boy, you'll know when I've run out of patience.”

  “I understand.”

  He crouched down and bent his head to put his face in mine.

  “If you think I'm joking, you little shit, remember Samuel 22:38: ‘I have pursued mine enemies and destroyed them and not turned away until I had consumed them. And I have consumed them and wounded them that they could not arise. They are fallen under my feet,’ ” he preached.

  He stood up and turned to his partner.

  “Okay, Rabbit. Let's give it to him.”

  Two meaty hands squeezed around my throat and jerked me to my feet. The force cocked my head backward and arched my back. The toes of my shoes scraped the ground. They're gonna beat the shit out of me, I thought. This was Backwoods Billy's warning to let me know that the Holy Ghosts were not fucking around. The empty parking lot stretched in every direction but I didn't even think about running. There wasn't a chance. As he walked closer, I stared at that big skull ring. He stopped and stuck out a tattooed arm. A tiny red Bible sat in the palm of his hand.

  “Son, is God in your life?” Billy asked me. He pushed his face into mine.

  “Well, I, uh …” I couldn't breathe.

  “What you need to do, boy, is study the Bible and stay clean. Take this.”

  The monster behind me let go of my neck. I bent over gasping for air and rubbing my throat. Backwoods Billy dropped the Bible into my hand.

  “Do you like Led Zeppelin?” he asked, swinging a leg over his motorcycle.

  “Hell no,” I choked.

  It was instinct. I really didn't.

  He nodded.

  “That Jimmy Page is a devil worshiper and he's polluting kids' minds with that stuff.”

  I nodded and moved toward my car.

  “The real stairway to heaven is right there in that little book, son. Rock ‘n’ roll is the devil's music.”

  “I don't even listen to rock,” I lied, shutting my car door and rolling down the window. “I like Johnny Cash.”

  “There's hope for you yet, son.” He smiled.

  I turned the key in the ignition. Black Sabbath roared from the speakers: “Look into my eyes you will see who I am / My name is Lucifer, please take my hand.”

  The volume knob slipped from my hand so I jerked the eight-track from the player and threw it on the floor. I couldn't look at Backwoods Billy. I didn't want to see his reaction. I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on the cool steering wheel. I glanced over when I heard them kick-start their bikes with a roar of noise. Backwoods Billy scowled at me as he revved his bike. Then he wrenched the throttle and the two bikes streaked across the empty parking lot like giant bats disappearing into the night.

  ELEVEN

  BLASTED FROM THE BACK ROOM AT KEITH'S HOUSE. I HEARD THE MUSIC FROM THE STREET AS I WALKED FROM WHERE I'D PARKED UP THE BLOCK. KEITH HAD TOLD EVERYONE TO SCATTER THE CARS AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD TO MAKE IT LESS OBVIOUS THERE WAS A PARTY HERE. NO ONE LISTENED.

  Sweaty bodies crowded together dancing and talking. The music played nearly too loud to talk over. Keith yelled my name. He was shirtless and struggled to pull himself up from the couch. Long greasy hair stuck to his face. He threw a sweaty arm around me. I wished him a happy birthday and handed him the bottle of vodka I'd stolen from the liquor store around the corner.

  “Thanks, man,” he slurred.

  “How did you talk your mom into this?” I asked.

  “I told her she didn't have to buy me anything. Just get out of the house for the night. She would have gone to the bar anyway.”

  It's not like a party could hurt anything. Keith and his mom didn't own much. They had lived in the house since me and Keith were ten and his mother still hadn't bought any furniture. The front room was entirely empty. Even the walls were bare. There was a nicked-up table in the kitchen that Keith's grandma gave them and in the back room a brown leather couch with stuffing bursting out and a tiny black-and-white TV. A photo of Keith from grade school hung crooked in the hallway. Keith's room contained a few piles of clothes, two boxes of comic books and an overflowing ashtray on the floor next to a mat
tress.

  “Where's Danny?” I asked him.

  “I think he's in the kitchen.”

  I moved toward the kitchen and scanned the room for Danny but didn't see him. I grabbed a beer in the kitchen, drank it too fast while talking to a chubby girl I went to school with and then opened another beer. Keith grabbed me and we did a shot of tequila together. The tequila kicked in. Someone played “Fortunate Son” and I started feeling all right. Earlier in the day I had called Alex and warned him about Backwoods Billy. We agreed to talk to Danny. I found Alex by the fridge.

  “Where the fuck is Danny?” I asked.

  “He'll be here,” he said. He looked nervous. We stood there watching the crowd. “Have you seen Frenchy? The Frenchy Show is on tonight.”

  It was our name for those rare nights when Frenchy got completely drunk and out of control. It usually involved dancing. Sometimes nudity.

  “Brown Sugar” started and I spotted Frenchy dragging a skinny blonde in a white dress toward the center of the room to dance. He wore a loud collared shirt unbuttoned, exposing his skinny chest. The girl towered over him and he was wasted and leaning too far forward to talk to her as they danced. A few times he lost his balance and fell into her, nearly knocking her down. He grabbed her arm and steadied himself then laughed. When the song ended they walked over.

  “Guys, you gotta meet Sara,” he panted. We all nodded at her.

  The stereo kicked into “You Really Got Me” and Frenchy struck a pose, throwing his head back and pointing toward the ceiling. He spun his arm in a few windmills on an invisible guitar then danced away from Sara and into the crowd. She giggled then turned to me.

  “If you're not going to dance you can hold this,” she barked. Her arm shot toward me and poked me in the chest with a leather purse. It looked expensive. The purse fell into my arms and she disappeared.

  “What the fuck was that?” I asked Alex. He laughed.

  “That's a woman who is used to ordering people around,” he said.