Pound for Pound

by F. X. Toole

  “High and bone dry.”

  He pulled in at the Yippee Saloon again, this time for some bourbon. Thought he might change his luck if he switched back to whisky, hoped for a different alchemy. He knew better, but the idea of being lit on Kentucky Straight instead of grain vodka sounded good to his sagging insides. Four shots later, he was back in fighting trim. He got in his green car. “Promises to keep,” he thought, “and miles to go before I sleep.” The long, big sleep.

  Dan arrived in Van Horn, a Texas town where folks said “tar” for tire. He bought a six-pack of Pearl longnecks, and a gallon of orange juice in a convenience store. He used a phony name and address to check into the Horn of Plenty Motel and BBQ Shack. He paid cash in advance for three days, though he’d probably need only two. Once in his room, he drank three beers with one of the thawed frozen meat-loaf dinners he’d bought back at the truck stop. At midnight, he had to drink the other three beers to get to sleep. He had more on his mind than he thought he’d have—Earl, the dog, finding the right spot for his version of the Molotov cocktail. What if it fizzled? He took more Xanax.

  Fortified with a breakfast of vodka and OJ and beef jerky at ten o’clock the following morning, he took Highway 90 south and headed forty-three miles down to Valentine, passing through Lobo on the way. He needed calories, and found a diner. He sat at the counter and had to use both hands to drink his coffee. He then ordered biscuits and gravy, fried potatoes, tortillas, grits, Polish sausage, and buttermilk. He poured on the house’s blistering homemade fresh salsa.

  The Mexican waitress was also the cook and she wore a white outfit, and a high white hat that covered her gray hair. She wrote swiftly. “You wan’ no egg?”

  “Too high in cholesterol.”

  Dan ate less than half of his food, but drank the buttermilk to coat his stomach. Some ten miles past town, he turned onto the narrow 505. It wound its way up toward the spiky dark crags and dry washes near the base of Mount Livermore. White clouds raced across the peak. Three circling buzzards worked something dead beyond a far ridge. After another ten miles on the 505, Dan swung onto the 166. He took the first dirt road, hardly more than a fire trail, and followed it up even farther into the bleak landscape. He parked the car and scouted, the trail allowing him to later drive even deeper into the desolation. He sat awhile and drank and felt comfortable. No one would see, no property but his own would be destroyed. Win-win.

  He listened to a kicker station for two hours, would have waited until night and torched himself right there, but having thought that it might take a few days to find the right spot, he’d left personal items in the motel room that could ID him if he didn’t toast himself just right.

  “Mañana.”

  The wind came up and Dan dumped what was left of the OJ. He filled the white plastic bottle with dirt so it wouldn’t blow away, then set it against some rocks as the beacon he’d aim for the next day.

  In Valentine, he bought another gallon of OJ and more beef jerky. Back in Van Horn, he packed all his stuff, except for his toothpaste and toothbrush, and set it on a small table next to the door. He felt both queasy and hungry, knew he had to eat something. He stopped by his car, then returned to his room with the second defrosted meat-loaf dinner. It smelled a little off, but he ate it anyway, scooping the meat and gravy and mashed potatoes into his mouth with his fingers. His sweet tooth got loud, so he had a piece of berry pie with ice cream at the BBQ Shack, but halfway through it, he remembered Tim Pat eating berry pie and ice cream back in San Pedro. Dan left the rest of the pie, along with a full cup of coffee, on the counter, paid on the way out. He wasn’t sure how he got back to his room.

  He woke up with puke in his mouth from food poisoning. He stumbled to the bathroom and threw up until he thought he was empty. He tried to get back to bed, but was then convulsed with dry heaves. In the middle of clutching the john, his ass went loose with diarrhea. Each time he got back to bed, he’d start up with the pukes or the squirts. Sometimes they both hit him at the same time. He passed out on the messed tile of the bathroom floor.

  He woke at daybreak, showered to clean himself of himself, then slept for thirteen hours. He went back to the BBQ Shack and ate half of a cherry pie and drank a quart of buttermilk. He put his stuff in the car and tried to drive to his white OJ bottle in the hills, but he was still so weak that he had to return to his room in the motel. He watched a TV news-and-weather station the rest of the day and late into the night. A handful of Xanax put him to sleep until dawn. He was still sick and whippy. He tried to remember how long he’d been in Van Horn, but couldn’t. He tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t. He thought of the dog and tried to put it out of his mind, but couldn’t.

  On the afternoon of the third day, the dog’s paws were healing well, but he was still sick and scrawny. He was off the IV, and Doc Sally continued to prescribe medication, but she doubted that Dan would return. The dog was so helpless and sweet that it would be no small matter for Doc Sally to do to him what she knew she’d have to.

  “Eres tan lindo,” she cooed to him. You’re so pretty.

  By the time Dan showered again, made instant coffee in his room, and took aspirin and drank spiked OJ, he was able to check out of the motel well before the noon deadline.

  He went to the pay phone and called Earl.

  Earl said, “Where the hell you been, where the hell you callin from?”

  “Well, I’m way up here in Mendocino. To get here from Frisco, you have to drive through the redwoods, imagine that, redwood trees tall as the sky.”

  “Huh,” said Earl, wondering if Dan was jiving. “Redwoods and sinse-milla, side by side in the boo capital of California. I thought by now you’d be drinkin Canadian beer, not smokin weed.”

  “Yeah, well, I had a few hits and lost my way, you know how that goes.”

  “When’ll you be back?”

  “I’m not sure. See, I ran into this dog.”

  “You ran over a dog?”

  “No, but there was this one in the road who was in trouble. I helped. It’s a long story.”

  Dan didn’t sound right. Earl pressed. “So, when you comin back?”

  “Soon,” Dan said, lying again. “I’m getting tired of this wet weather.”

  Earl let Dan know how he felt. “I miss you. We all do.”

  “Same for me. So look, maybe next time I call, I’ll be on my way home.”

  “You do that,” said Earl. “Everything’s jake around here, so don’t worry none. You okay?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Earl said, “Hurry home.”

  “Will do.”

  Dan hung up, dropped his chin to his chest, covered his eyes with one hand.

  The old Mercedes started right up. There was no rush, so Dan let it warm up slowly. He pretended that he was doing it so all the fluids would circulate properly. He really did it because he needed some time to separate his concern for the dog from the implications of the empty OJ bottle waiting for him up the hill.

  Why did he feel shitty? He was running on empty, but he knew that wasn’t what was on the front burner. The scabby-assed dog was on the front burner. He liked dogs, sure, but he didn’t have any ties to this animal except that he’d gotten him to a vet in an emergency. Besides, he hadn’t been with the fucker for even an hour, so what was the big deal if he forgot about him? He’d already forked over three hundred dollars, hadn’t he? What more was expected? Besides, the mutt was probably dead. Then again, what if he wasn’t?

  Dan drove out of the motel parking lot and headed for the 90 junction and Valentine. A left turn, and he’d be on the mountain in an hour and a half. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he should have backed over the dog’s head and been done with it. He never should have picked up the dog, never should have fed or watered his raggedy ass, and he never, ever should have looked him in the eye. Shit-bird dog had ruined his plan.

  So why should I care? Dan wondered. One shot from Doc Sally and the dog’ll be in fir
eplug heaven.

  “Aw, fuck this!” Dan said so loudly that he looked around for someone else in the car, as though that person had said it.

  He blinked a few times, then saw himself three days back cradling the dying dog. The bastard licked his hand and then looked up at him in gratitude and hope and faith. It was a look that reminded Dan of the one Tim Pat had given him when he fought and won in Carson. Dan wondered what was happening in his head.

  At the junction of the 90, Dan kept going west instead of turning south toward the OJ bottle. He eased the old car up to seventy. If he didn’t get to Doc Sally’s in time, the dog was sure to get whacked. He didn’t know why, but he suddenly felt he had to get the dog through the next few days, even though there was another part of him that hoped the dog was already dead. He got back on the road and kept going west to Doc Sally’s. There was plenty of time for the mountain.

  Chapter 24

  Doc Sally had fed the dog his third light meal that day, including another dose of antibiotics. The whites of his eyes were clearing up and he’d already gained back nine pounds. He’d gain more weight by the next day, and more each day to follow. As he lay flat and sleepy, she rubbed his neck and ears and scratched his back with her fingernails. One of his hind legs sprung up involuntarily to scratch the air near his pink belly. Doc Sally hated animal shelters. She knew they were necessary, but seeing the pathetic eyes of lost and deserted animals with no chance of survival was hard on her. She’d continue to feed this dog his meals, and pet and rub him and make him feel loved. And tomorrow she’d kill him. Dogs and donkeys were the hardest for her to put down. She knew that after twenty-five years it shouldn’t matter, but it did.

  Dan Cooley entered the office and rang the bell. A moment later he saw Doc Sally in her white smock approaching from down the hall.

  Talking Texan, she said, “Look what the cat drug in.”

  She ushered Dan back to the dog. What was left of his ears pricked up, and he eyed Dan quizzically. Dan could see the improvement, saw that the dog was filling out and that his coat was already growing back in. He rubbed the dog’s neck and scratched the top of his head. The dog flattened out on the floor of his cage and closed his eyes. Dan could still see the heavy ridges of his ribs.

  Dan said, “He looks good.”

  “He’ll look better in three, four more days.”

  “That long, huh?”

  “Ballpark.”

  “Damn!” He wasn’t sure what he thought about the whole mess, except that throwing good money after bad didn’t make much sense, especially if she was going to ice the dog when he didn’t show up for him.

  “You were hoping he was dead?”

  “I’m not sure what I was hoping, to tell the truth.”

  Doc Sally said, “If you have a clean and quiet place for him to recuperate, I could, in a pinch, provide his medication and the proper food, and you could take him now. But you’d still have to bring him in at least two more times.”

  “Here’s my credit card again. Nail me for another three days.”

  Doc Sally ran the card. “You’ll be in for sure?”

  “Same deal as before. If I can, I will. Otherwise, you can, well, you know.”

  “I want you to know something, Mr. Cooley,” Doc Sally said. “It pisses me off to have to kill other people’s unwanted animals.”

  “He’s not my animal.”

  “He’s not mine, either.”

  Dan said, “Once he’s healthy, isn’t there anyone who’d take him?”

  “Well, he only understands Spanish, so that cuts his chances with the white population. And he’s too big to feed for most Mexicans in these parts. That pretty much points to a dog fighter who’d sacrifice him to some big pit.”

  “And if you turned him loose once he was strong enough?”

  “Same thing. He’d go back to the road looking for that lost master. Or he might go looking for you.”

  “I don’t want that, for God’s sake.”

  Doc Sally slipped into Texan again. “Then I’d say that you was up a unsanitary tributary without sufficient means of locomotion.”

  “You have a way with words.”

  “I want you to say something after me, slowly, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Dah may lah pah tee tah.”

  One sound at a time, Dan said it without trouble. She had him repeat it several times, then told him to stress the Dah and the tee in “Dah may lah pah tee tah.”

  Dan stressed dah and tee.

  Doc Sally said, “Do you think you can say it a little faster?”

  Dan sped it up. The dog opened one eye.

  “Now say it as if you were in conversation.”

  Dan said, “Dame la patita.”

  The dog struggled to his haunches and held out a front paw.

  Doc Sally said, “You just told him to shake hands.”

  “Ah, Jaysus.”

  Head down, Dan rushed down the red-tiled hallway for the front door. He had a lump in his throat the size of an avocado. He hit the porch running. He raced to the Davis Mountains and the white orange juice bottle. But instead of immediately lighting up, he carefully laid out his suicide gear and took himself through a practice run so there would be no screwups when the whistle blew. The only things he didn’t do were spread out the charcoal and fill the gallon bottles with gas. He got in the backseat and arranged everything in its proper place. He had a cigarette lighter in one hand, and the green plastic pack of single-edged razor blades in the other. If one lighter didn’t work, he had backups. All this planning would pay off, he told himself. He felt good.

  Dan put his makings back in the trunk of the car and slept in the backseat wrapped in his sleeping bag. It was so cold on the mountain that he had to start the car and put on the heater to keep from freezing. The next morning, he took the 166 all the way back around to Fort Davis. He stayed at a roadside park after he’d spent the day walking around town and going to a restored frontier army post that dated from 1854. In these parts hombres died fighting, white and Apache and Comanche. Dan felt like a pussy among their ghosts and edged out the door. He shaved with cold water at a gas station to make himself halfway presentable, and slept in the car again. The following day he took the scenic road to Alpine, stayed on it all the way to the town of Marta. He bought another gallon of OJ, and ate market tortillas and jerky and pork and beans from small cans with yank-off lids. He kept drinking. He had no choice. He crapped out in another roadside park. He had the place to himself, but wished there were some kids playing. He tried repeatedly, but had trouble remembering how many days were left before the dog would hit the pump.

  He woke early and cold. He jump-started with two glasses of vodka and an OJ chaser. He drove on to Valentine and ate in the diner again.

  He bought gas afterward, but instead of turning back to the mountain and the white bottle, he drove straight through to Doc Sally’s.

  One look at him as he came through the door and she said, “If it isn’t my favorite homeless advocate.”

  “Yeah, well, I hope you’re happy, ‘cause I’m not.”

  “Then why did you come back?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Doc Sally ushered Dan out the door of the office. “Close the door all the way, and then come back in.”

  Dan followed the instructions, came inside, and closed the door behind him.

  “Now, what are you doing here?”

  He barely managed to get out the words. “I’m here for Barky.”

  Barky had a new bright blue collar and was proud of himself as he tugged lightly at his leash. His legs were wobbly, and he walked with a slight limp, but he still managed a touch of strut. He made sure he stayed close to Dan as they walked toward the green Mercedes. Dan smiled as the dog kept brushing against his leg. Most of Barky’s coat had grown in, and Dan was surprised by how much the dog had filled out in such a short time. Dan knew he had done the right thing in taking the dog on, if only un
til he could shuffle the mutt off on to someone else. At least Doc Sally wouldn’t have to kill him. Dan also knew he had done the wrong thing, knew there would always be a white plastic OJ bottle lodged somewhere in the Davis Mountains that had a pull on him like the Bermuda Triangle.

  Dan opened the front-passenger door to his car, and with no urging, Barky climbed slowly in. He was still too weak to jump, but he sat up on the passenger side and stuck his snout out the window and waited for the wind. Dan heard something behind him, and turned to see Doc Sally pushing a dolly down a side ramp. It was loaded with a carton of canned dog food and a monster bag of dried food.

  “On the house,” Doc Sally said.

  As they loaded the dog food into the backseat of the car, Doc Sally said, “Feed him twice a day, no more. Put half of a can on top of the dry at night, but be sure to walk him. Run him, if you can. If he gets spooky, add a cup of brown rice at night. But that’s it, and no people food.” Doc Sally stood and stretched her back, her ample breasts on near vertical display. “Why aren’t we puttin all this in the trunk?”

  “Trunk’s loaded with my travelin stuff.”

  Doc Sally could smell the sauce on Dan, and raised an eyebrow. “Loaded is rat.”

  Dan ignored her look. “My kids always had fox terriers. They got scraps from the table.”

  “This ol’ boy’ll eat your table.”

  From a plastic bag looped over one wrist, Doc Sally produced a large bright blue divided plastic dog bowl big enough to hold food and water at the same time. She also held out an opener for the canned food, and a five-by-eight card with a handwritten list.

  She said, “You can buy him a cheapo blanket at Wal-Mart that’ll keep your sheepskins from getting all doggy.”

  “I will, and thanks for the stuff.”

  “You’re welcome, I’m sure,” she said. “Say, where you two cowpokes headin to?”

  “Just headin,” said Dan. He held out Doc Sally’s list, his face a question mark.