A Question of Manhood

by Robin Reardon

  He didn’t acknowledge the dog in any way. He just stood there, hands at his sides, while she walked around him, nosing his shoes, his knees, his ass, his groin, his fingers. Then it seemed like she was done, and she sat down beside him.

  Very quietly, JJ said, “Good girl, Gypsy. Good girl.” Then, to me, he said, “Paul, would you bring me the black leash from the pile in the corner, with the chain collar on it?”

  Are you kidding me with this? What am I, your hired help? I eyed the dog. Mrs. Carter had a good hold, but there was slack. If Gypsy lunged, things could get ugly. As if on cue, the dog looked at me and growled.

  JJ turned to look at me. “Don’t look at the dog. You need to relax; don’t act so nervous.” He held out his hand for the leash. “Thanks.” I backed off slowly, and I gotta say it took a lot out of me not to watch that dog.

  JJ held a hand toward Gypsy, palm open and facing up. She sniffed it, and he reached toward her ear. She pulled her head away sharply, almost but not quite getting up. He said, “Okay, she probably won’t let me put this on her.” He handed the leash, choke chain in position, to Mrs. Carter. “Do you think she’d let you put this over her head while I hold the leash you have?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Make sure the chain is high on her head, behind the ears. That way it will be in the most sensitive spot, and it’s where we can control her best.” Mrs. Carter had just done that, and JJ had taken the end of the leash, when he said, “Paul, would you ask those people to stay in their car with their dog until we’re done, or go into the store? Move casually and speak in relaxed tones.”

  I hadn’t even noticed that there was another couple approaching with a medium-sized brown mutt. I kept JJ between me and Gypsy and did as he asked. The people took another look at Gypsy, saw how everyone was behaving, and they yanked their dog closer and headed for the store.

  Too late; Gypsy had figured out the mutt was there, and she growled. I wheeled toward the training area and saw what I was afraid I would see. Gypsy was no longer sitting quietly on the ground. She was straining hard against the two leashes, JJ’s and the one still attached to her collar that Mrs. Carter was hanging on to hard, and she was barking and trying to leap forward. JJ moved closer to her, which eased the tension on his leash. He yanked it sharply sideways, released and yanked again and then once more, each time with that low, sharp “Hey” I’d heard him use on Tuesday. And then Gypsy looked in his direction. One more “Hey” and another yank, and Gypsy stopped snarling, but she looked back toward the mutt.

  To Mrs. Carter, JJ said, “Ease off. Tension now will just get her angry again.” There was now slack on both leads. JJ yanked once again, and then you could’ve knocked me down, I was that surprised. Gypsy sat. Everyone breathed easier.

  Suddenly Dad was beside me. I hadn’t seen him leave the store. “Paul, you can go in. I want to watch this. I should be out here, anyway.”

  Sure. Just when it’s getting interesting, I have to leave. To Mrs. Carter, JJ was saying, “What I’m going to do is walk her around the inside part of the square. Can you unhook your leash from her collar?”

  Once I was back in the store I looked around. A few customers were in the aisles, and some at the checkout, but there was no need for me to do anything. If I followed Dad’s instructions from earlier I’d take a tour through, but I was pissed at him. So I went to the plate glass windows in the front where I could watch the show.

  Obviously there had been some progress just in the time it took me to get inside and make up my mind to disobey Dad. JJ was walking Gypsy around inside the two lines of rope. Every so often JJ yanked a little on the lead he held, and in my mind I heard him say, “Hey.” Sharp. Quiet. Calm.

  Standing outside the ropes, the Carters were talking quietly to Dad, watching JJ. I could imagine the praises they were heaping on him, getting Gypsy to behave so well. JJ held the leash with his hand really far down, closer to Gypsy’s head than I’d ever want to get, but it wasn’t tight. He looked relaxed, though his arm was a little stiff, and sometimes Gypsy would turn her head some. That’s when he’d yank. At some point I became aware that Mrs. Thomas and Mozart were next to me, watching the scene as well.

  JJ was walking Gypsy toward the edge of the tarmac, his back to the parking lot, when suddenly I noticed some other people headed toward them. There was a woman and a kid, probably her son, with a dog that was maybe a Weimaraner, soft gray with that anemic-looking nose. It started barking. Gypsy’s head wheeled toward it and JJ gave a sharp yank, and another. The new people stopped moving and stayed where they were, trying to get their dog under control now. It was jumping up and down and making all kinds of noise, bits of foam spraying from its mouth.

  JJ continued to face the trees along the edge and tried to get Gypsy to do the same, but finally it was obvious she wanted to attack. I couldn’t believe what he did next. He grabbed the back of the collar, pushed down hard on it, forced Gypsy down onto the pavement, and rolled her onto her side. He crouched there, hanging on while she struggled and strained, and didn’t let her up. She looked like she was trying to bite him but couldn’t quite reach. He finally had to lean on her to keep her down. Mr. Carter started to help, but JJ said something to him and he moved a step or two away.

  Maybe half a minute went by, and I would have thought JJ would give up. But he didn’t. He didn’t look angry or afraid, he just kept holding Gypsy down on her side until she finally gave up struggling and just lay there, chest heaving, tongue hanging far out of her mouth. JJ waited several more seconds and then he stood, letting her up but keeping the leash short. She tried to turn toward the other dog a few times, but now JJ’s yanks had more effect. He turned her so her back was to the other dog again, pressed down on her rump with his hand, and she sat.

  He handed his lead to Mrs. Carter, and she put her hand far down on it where his had been. And guess where JJ went. You got it, over to the Weimaraner. First, though, he picked up a leash with a choke collar on it from his pile. As he approached the group, he looked at the woman and said something I couldn’t hear, but he didn’t look at the dog. The woman could barely hold it, but it didn’t want JJ. It wanted Gypsy. Then JJ grabbed the collar and slipped the choke chain he’d brought onto the dog. This time he managed to force the dog to turn its back on Gypsy without rolling it onto the ground. It didn’t fight as hard, and it didn’t try to bite him, and finally it stopped yelping and baring its teeth. Once it was quiet, he handed it to the woman, moved her hand down on it toward the dog, and said something else to her. She nodded, and then she and the kid and the dog went back to their car.

  Mrs. Thomas’s voice startled me; I’d forgotten she was there. “That boy is amazing. How on earth does he do that?”

  I looked at Mozart, who seemed tame enough, sitting there between us. “What do you want him to do for you?”

  “When I try to walk Mozart he just drags me. I know he doesn’t look like a very big dog, but he’s strong and very determined. My arm hurts a lot now, even when I’m not walking him.”

  After JJ’s display out there, it didn’t seem to me he’d have much trouble with Mozart. Maybe I wouldn’t, either. “Do you mind if I hold his leash?”

  Mrs. Thomas looked surprised, but she said, “I guess that’s all right.”

  With my eyes I followed the strap from my hand down to the collar on Mozart’s neck. Since we’d never had animals, I wasn’t real used to handling dogs, though I’d been around them a lot in the store. I couldn’t remember that I’d ever walked one, not beyond holding the leash kind of like this for a customer who needed an extra hand at one time or another.

  On an impulse I crouched down and held on to the collar with one hand while I released the hook of the leash. Then I did what JJ had done with Lulu’s red lead, running the hook through the loop handle at the other end and then putting the noose loop over Mozart, fitting it up behind his ears. I stood.

  “What are you doing?” Mrs. Thomas asked. “That’s going to choke
him.”

  “It’s what JJ does,” I said. “Let’s just give it a try.”

  Leash in hand, moving away from Mozart, I called him to me. He looked at me like I was crazy and turned back toward the window. This wasn’t going well. I yanked a little on the leash and released, called again. Still nothing. So why had it worked for JJ, with Lulu? What had he done differently?

  I went to the dog, Mrs. Thomas watching me closely, and I moved my hand down the lead so it was nearly taut. I yanked. Again.

  Finally Mozart stood, but he just looked at me, like, “Now what?”

  I jiggled the leash as I moved away, trying to get him to follow. At first I thought he was going to sit back down, but then he moved toward me, reluctantly, it seemed. I turned and walked, keeping the lead short, and he followed. I watched his head to see if he got distracted, and whenever he turned I yanked on the lead and said, “Hey.” This seemed to work pretty well, and we went to the side of the store, past the shelves holding the lizards, and turned. But about halfway back to where Mrs. Thomas stood, he shook his head as if trying to shake the loop off, and he sat down. I couldn’t get him to budge after that. Mrs. Thomas must have got worried I’d hurt him with the loop, because she came over and held her hand out. I gave her the leash, and she crouched down to hook it back the way it had been before. Mozart looked sideways at me, his eyes telling me, “Yeah. Who do you think you are, anyway? Get lost.” Mrs. Thomas said nothing.

  To her, I said, “Good luck.” So much for learning something from JJ, as Dad had told me to do. And now I’d made an idiot of myself in front of a customer. Thanks for nothing, JJ. Part of me wanted to watch and see what JJ did with Mozart, but the part that won was determined to act like I didn’t care. I didn’t care what else JJ did, didn’t care what Dad thought of JJ, didn’t care that I was missing out on all the excitement. I decided to do some rounds.

  Wandering around the store, I had to keep reminding myself to look for things that needed doing, supplies that were running low, things out of order or out of place on a shelf. In my mind I was still watching JJ hold that violent dog on its side. This was the kid who had frozen at the sight of my sneaker. Who had frozen under Marty’s gaze. Out there, with the dogs and their owners, JJ did not look like that same cautious kid. Or like the kid who’d avoided talking to me most of the week. He was in command, and everyone out there was hanging on his every word.

  More important, the dogs were his. He owned them. He was their lord.

  As Dad had predicted, the store did get busy. I suspected that it was largely because he kept sending people inside to wait their turn with JJ, and obligingly they bought things for their dogs. Some of them came in, then went outside for their turn in the rope square, and then they came back in to buy choke chains. I was kept pretty busy making sure we didn’t run out of anything on the shelves, and our supply of chains was so low by noon that I wondered if we would run out.

  Every so often I couldn’t help it. I’d go to the front of the store and watch. JJ kept the onlookers outside the outer perimeter of the larger square he’d roped off, and he worked with the dog and the owner in the center, leaving that four-foot buffer zone empty. From this distance, and with a small crowd gathering, the contrast between the tense or sloppy ways people handled their dogs and the calm confidence that radiated from JJ was even more evident. He looked almost holy out there. It was somewhere between the poem on the Statue of Liberty in New York—the one about offering refuge to the hungry, the tired, the poor, whatever—and a quiet little revival meeting where sins were carried into that square and left there, people and dogs leaving relieved of their burdens, the prospect of a happy life together showing on their glowing faces.

  At the center of all of it was that small, sweet-faced kid with no real name. And on the sidelines stood my father, to all appearances a supplicant. A worshipper. At any rate, a believer.

  Dad didn’t come back into the store until twelve-thirty. He asked me for a report on supplies, and I pointed out the disappearing leashes and choke chains and then asked, “Where’s JJ? Did some Doberman eat him alive?”

  Dad didn’t look up from his examination of rawhide chews. “You could learn a thing or two from that young man, Paul.” Which didn’t answer my question, and only tempted me to assure him that wasn’t going to happen.

  When JJ did come in, folded easel under one arm and yellow poster board under the other, I was watching for him. I expected him to look exuberant, triumphant, something. But he just looked like himself. Calm. Watchful, but calm.

  Dad was watching for him, too, it seemed. “JJ, can you come into the office for a minute before you take your lunch break?”

  Lunch break? Am I gonna get one of those today? I was bagging at register three, but I was dying to know what was going on in the office. As soon as I could I moved that way, but I didn’t want Dad or JJ to see me. I hugged the wall just outside the door.

  Dad was saying, “What was that, anyway? Why does that work?”

  “It’s called an alpha rollover. It’s not something I would recommend people do, because it can be dangerous. I do it only sometimes, and only when the aggression has escalated beyond where I can control it another way. I do it with a dog that’s already acknowledged my leadership, and Gypsy had done that. As I said, it’s dangerous, so I don’t teach most people how to do it.”

  “But why does it work?”

  “If I remain calm, then I’m projecting leadership. Dogs want that. The rollover is a drastic way to demonstrate leadership, and like I said I use it only sometimes. It’s…well, it’s kind of intimidating to the dog.” He chuckled. “Fortunately, they seem to forgive me pretty quickly.”

  “Intimidating. Doesn’t sound like a great relationship. What about love? Dogs need love just like people do.”

  “If you give a dog what it needs, you are showing love, and they’ll get that. Not through the rollover, that’s not what I mean. But the first goal is to allow the dog to relax because she sees you as leader of the pack, even if she’s the only animal in the pack. It won’t do any good to yell at her or try to teach her tricks or commands. Sure, she can learn to obey commands. But first, you need her respect. And you’ll get her respect only if you convince her you’re in charge and it’s safe for her to let her guard down.

  “What a dog needs first, what will convince her you care about her, isn’t hugs and kisses. It’s allowing her to be calm by convincing her she doesn’t need to be in charge. She doesn’t need to understand all the complicated things around her, doesn’t need to control everything. This is what a dog wants. You love her best when you treat her like a dog, because you’re totally accepting her as she is. You aren’t expecting her to be like a child or a human friend.”

  “I can’t believe you wouldn’t hug your dog.”

  JJ laughed softly. “I do hug my dog. I hug him a lot. But if I give him love when he’s nervous or aggressive, it’s like I’m telling him that’s a good way to be.”

  “So, when? When do you hug him?”

  “He lets me know when he’s ready for affection. He approaches calmly, or he lies on his side or his back at my feet. Calm. Relaxed. That’s when I pat him, massage his muscles with my fingers, and tell him what a good dog he is. And I love him for what he is. A dog.”

  It was more than I could stand there and listen to, Dad letting this kid tell him what was what. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want JJ telling my dad the best way to behave. It was that Dad never listened to me about anything. JJ did everything right, and I do nothing right. It felt familiar in a very bad way. It was one thing when it was Chris being right and me being wrong. But—JJ? No. Sorry. There’s not enough room in this family for the both of us, JJ O’Neil.

  I went outside to dismantle the rope squares, partly to clear the parking area for cars again, but mostly to destroy the pedestal for JJ it represented. It wasn’t until I’d piled the bricks under a tree and had looped the ropes and tied them that I realized I was also
being JJ’s cleaning crew. Fighting anger, I leaned one hand against a tree and rubbed my forehead with the other, squinting hard to try and keep myself from yelling.

  After a minute or so I took a shaky breath and turned toward the store to see JJ headed toward me, a couple of shopping bags in his hand. I watched him approach, trying to come up with some smart remark that would let him know I didn’t think he was God’s gift to the canine world in general or to my father in particular. But I failed.

  “Thanks,” he said quietly when he was close enough for me to hear. “I’ll gather the rest of this stuff.”

  You bet your ass you will. I was dying for him to say something, do something, even let his tone of voice make me believe that he felt superior, that he saw himself as some kind of star. But he just quietly picked up what was left of his supplies, put them into the bags, and went back into the store while I stood there like some kind of unarmed prison guard, hands on my hips, watching for infractions or insubordination to no avail.

  Christ, but I wanted to hate him!

  As if it weren’t enough that I had to put up with JJ all day, my dad couldn’t shut up about him over dinner that night. He seemed particularly impressed with something JJ had cobbled together and had used on this dog that was part boxer, part Saint Bernard.

  Dad really got into the story. “Irene, you should have seen this guy who had the dog. A small guy, puny really. He got the dog thinking it would be good protection. And it is, but this guy is such a pip-squeak that he can’t walk it. It was a riot watching this monster drag him over to JJ, who’s not very big himself. So after JJ showed him what leash he should use and how to hold it, JJ could walk the dog, but this guy still couldn’t. So JJ picked up this”—Dad held his hands in front of him like that would help him describe something—“this contraption he’d put together himself out of strap leashes and nylon material. It ties onto the dog’s back, straps under the belly, and the nylon pockets hang on the sides. Then JJ has these bottles filled with water, and he puts them into the pockets.”