by Chris Lynch
When we strolled into Bloody Sundays, we were showered with whoo-whoo-whoos as if Terry had the world’s finest woman on his arm. “Looky look,” Danny said as I took a stool beside Terry. No one even seemed to notice the dog. The bartender slapped two pints of Guinness in front of us, laughing. “You can take the boyo out of the Bloody, but you can’t take the Bloody...”
I immediately took my beer and placed it on the floor in front of the dog, who inhaled it.
“Hey. Don’t do that again,” Terry said. “He has a problem.”
“Where’s Augie?” one of the big fat Cormacs asked Terry, adding, “Hey, Mick,” as if he’d just seen me yesterday.
“I ain’t seen him,” Terry said. “He’ll be here. Spooks show yet?”
Cormac laughed. “Think maybe you could tell if they was here or not, bro?” He gestured around the room full of puffy round faces in various grades of white and pink.
Terry laughed too. Then he gave me the rundown.
“Nigs from Mattapan, Jamaicans, are bringin’ by their hot shit dog tonight, stupid shits. Gonna get his ass whipped tonight, for sure.”
I leaned back, away from him. I pointed at Mickey the dog. “Your dog’s here to fight, Terry?”
“Nah, he’s just here to watch, he ain’t ready yet. I want him to learn a few things. It’s Bobo. These fools heard about him and came lookin’ for a match. Word’s spreadin’ all around the goddamn city about how Bobo’s thirty and 0. Like gunfighters, they’re poppin’ up all over.”
This made Terry suddenly giggle hysterically. “We’re gettin’ stinkin’ rich on it. And we get to put certain ignorant, cocky sonsofbitches in their places at the same time. Heh. Bobo’s enjoyin’ the shit out of it too.”
I stared at Terry as he chugged heartily on his drink, slapping the bar for more while the first one was still on his lips. Staring blankly had no impact on Terry, so I was forced to talk to him.
“This is what you do now? For fun?”
“Yup. You’ll see. It’s a fuckin’ unbelievable rush when it happens. Like nothin’ else. My favorite part is watchin’ the faces of the assholes who own the loser dog. They just about die. I been lookin’ forward to these Jamaicans, boy. ...I swear, I might cream myself when it happens. You’ll see. You can’t resist it.”
“I think I probably can resist it, thanks.”
He clearly didn’t think that was possible, grinning sagely as he picked up his glass. He was sure we shared this animal lust on some deep level. I wanted to kill him with my bare hands, open his jugular with my own teeth. But that didn’t exactly seem like the way to prove him wrong.
“He could lose, you know,” I said, trying to derail him.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “Bobo? Never happen. For sure not tonight. Jamaicans love Dobermans, while your regular American spooks prefer Rottweilers. Good, mean dogs, the Dobermans, lotsa heart, but not enough body. They ain’t big enough to take on the beasts, and they’re too ballsy to quit. So”—he shrugged—“when they don’t win, they get shredded. Kay-ser-fuckin’-ra, ser-ra.”
The eight Jamaican men filed in behind their dog—a Doberman, all right—like a military outfit. Mirror sunglasses, rigid posture, expressionless. Mickey stood up and started barking, snarly and wild barking. The Doberman didn’t even look, maybe couldn’t turn because of his owner’s grip. Four men took spots at the bar, four more standing behind. They drank double rums and beers. Terry picked up the tab, nodding and smiling a ratty thin smile across the bar. The owner of the dog nodded and said something to the bartender, who pointed to the back door. They all filed out to the fenced-in lot in back of the building.
Slowly, others began slipping out there. The Cormacs went, and Danny, and ten of the other regulars. Terry looked at his watch. “Where is he?” Danny asked nervously.
One of the Jamaicans came in, walked up to Terry. “Time,” he said.
“Five minutes,” Terry said.
Ten minutes passed. The Doberman’s owner came in. “What?” he said, holding out two upturned palms as if he was waiting for rain.
“Late,” Terry said.
“Lose,” the man said.
“Bullshit.”
“Chickenshit. No show, money go. Too damn bad, mon.”
“Just give us some time,” Terry said.
“Got no time for you,” the man said. He took a look around the bar, sniffed disgustedly. “Did have time, wouldn’t waste it here anaway.” Then he looked down, pointed at Mickey. “What wrong wit him?”
Terry looked down, surprised. “Him? No, not him. He’s not—”
“Shit,” the man said, miming as if to slap Terry’s face back and forth. “Give me my damn money, boy.”
Terry’s face went scarlet. He sat on the stool for a half minute without so much as blinking. All activity in the bar—even sipping—stopped.
“Lead the way—boy,” Terry said to the man, giving Mickey the dog a needlessly hard yank.
I didn’t leave my stool. I didn’t need to. When they pushed through the back door, the small crowd outside made the noise of a full NFL stadium. I could barely hear the dog noises over the din, but they did come through in a wail here and a throaty growl there. Something live crashed into the door again and again. A woman screamed an ear-shattering scream, and demanded to be let back in. But they would not open the door during the match. The men screamed until there were no more words, only primal, raked-throat squalling.
Then, of course, there was nothing. The door opened and people began silently pouring back in. The Jamaicans filed through as orderly as they had arrived, only this time with their dog breathing hard and excited, bouncing, leaving his feet, snapping at the air, licking blood off as much of his face as his tongue could reach. They took up their spots at the bar for the victory drink.
No Terry. I didn’t want to see what was out there, but I had to. I got up and walked through the wake that the bar had become, and paused at the door. I was operating on some kind of animal curiosity and a foggy sense of what I should do, but the one thing I felt certain of was that I was going to throw up when I got out there.
As soon as I’d forced myself through the door, I slammed it behind me so as not to put on a show. But I was still only staring at my feet. Gradually I raised my eyes up and up until I hit on it.
Terry stood, hands on hips, looking down on his dog. Mickey. Mickey’s head, on top of that fine horse neck, was turned around. From the look of it, the Doberman had grabbed Mickey’s face, and twisted it backward. Then he got what he was after, what all fighting dogs seem to be after, the throat. As I stood mesmerized, I could see the fully exposed apparatus of Mickey the dog’s throat, working up and down, struggling for one last swallow.
I laughed.
As I laughed, I listened. I heard the gurgling, the struggling for breath. I saw Terry’s face. I put them together, and I laughed.
Terry twisted his face my way. His eyes became slashes, meaner and more dangerous than his drunken squint. His hands remained on his hips.
“I told you,” he said through gritted teeth. “I told you you was gonna love it. I told you you couldn’t resist.” He pulled back and kicked the dog, what was left of the dog. He looked back at me. He looked back at the dog. He kicked the dog again while looking at me. “Inferior dog, that’s all we got here. A loser.”
Finally we were there, and he no longer had the advantage. He hated me as much as I hated him. I thought I was going to cream myself.
“You were right, it was great fun,” I said, laughing myself into a wheeze as he sunk his foot into Mickey, laminating his good work boot with blood.
No Exit
THERE IS NO EXIT out of the bullring behind Bloody Sundays. It’s just an eight-foot wooden fence surrounding a concrete patio. And being the strict place that it is, patrons are required to remove their decapitated animals from the premises. The bartender gave Terry an extra-large Hefty lawn-and-leaf bag for the job. He had to drag it back out through the bar.
Danny gave him a ride to the Animal Rescue League to drop it off. I rode in back next to the body. Terry was unusually pensive and silent. He didn’t even say thank you as Danny passed him the bottle.
As for me, I couldn’t control myself.
“Hey, ah Terry, Mickey’s not looking too good back here, you think you could roll down his window a bit? Maybe some fresh air...”
He ignored me.
“Animal Rescue League, huh? They better have Jesus on the staff, if they’re gonna rescue this animal.”
“Shut up, asshole,” Danny said.
“What? Huh? What’s that you say? Well, I’ll ask them. Hey Terry, Mickey wants to know if we can stop at Burger King.”
“You want me to beat his ass, Terry?” Danny offered. Terry waved me off like a fly. I leaned back and laughed.
When we reached the Animal Rescue League, the scene was surprisingly uneventful. Danny pulled in the gate and turned up to the front entrance. Terry walked around to Mickey’s door and pulled him out. He simply dumped the green lump right there at the curb, like he was putting out the weekly garbage.
“That’s it?” Danny asked as Terry got back in.
“I ain’t fillin’ out no damn paperwork,” Terry said, snatching the bottle back.
“Ya, all those Xs to sign,” I said. “Who needs it?”
He ignored that one too, and after that there wasn’t much to say. With the corpse gone, the ride was hardly any fun at all. I didn’t see anything funny anymore, didn’t feel like I had him now. I stared out the window.
“Back to the Bloody?” Danny asked.
“Shit no. I don’t want to see that now. We’ll go over to my old man’s joint.”
“Drop me off,” I said immediately.
“Absolutely,” Danny said.
Slowly, as we pulled up to the Sullivans’ walk, Terry turned around in his seat. His pointy, flushed, grinning, gap-toothed face was intense and scary bearing down on me, looking just like every picture of the devil I’d ever seen.
“Don’t you worry, Mick, we won’t make any mess at all at the O’Asis, where you gotta clean up in the mornin’ and all.”
It made me gag just to think about what they could do, but I wouldn’t let him win this. I got out, slammed my door, and tapped on his window.
“I might know a dog,” I said coolly, “that could whip Bobo’s ass.”
He stared straight ahead through the windshield, not at me. “Ya, right, boy. Tell ya, Bobo has a date with a Doberman next, but after that, you just go right ahead and bring your little mutt over. We’ll be happy to serve him up.”
“Date.” I smiled, leaning into him.
“Date.” He smiled, turning to meet my face up close.
I thought about it, about Terry and the dogs and all the rest, as I cleaned up the O’Asis in the morning. Terry and Danny must have called up everybody they knew to make this much mess, because no two people could have done it. Food and broken glasses covered the whole floor. Curtains were pulled down and shredded. The bathroom, Christ, the bathroom. There was so much piss reeking up the floor and wall that they must not have even attempted to hit the bowl. There were pictures scrawled on the walls in marker—the goat, someone shoving something down a guy’s throat while someone else stuck something up the guy’s ass. Many barely legible and not too creative notes about me. It was like I had uncovered a hieroglyphic-filled cave from some ancient subhuman tribe.
“Dogfighting?” Toy said. “That’s Neanderthal.”
“Uh-uh,” Ruben said. “My dog don’t fight. My dog has a philosophy—you don’t come in my yard, I don’t eat your freakin’ guts out. It’s a pretty good philosophy, I think.”
“As much as I hate to agree with Ruben,” Sully said, “you have to be a loser to make your dog fight another dog. I’d just let it go, Mick.”
If nothing else I had united Toy, Sully, and Ruben on the same side of something, which I never would have thought possible. The three of them sat there on milk crates one beautiful sunny day the last week of school, smoking cigars and telling me don’t do it. But they didn’t understand. They didn’t get it. They couldn’t, because they didn’t have my problem.
“Hey, Mr. Sullivan,” I said when I had him alone after dinner that night, “can I get a dog?”
He stopped, folded his arms. “You’ll feed it, clean up after it, walk it all the time, bathe it so it doesn’t stink, pay for its food, and don’t let it bark?”
“Absolutely.” I was thrilled.
“Hell no, you can’t have a dog... asking me ridiculous questions like that...” He walked away muttering true stuff about my family.
That whole week, the last week of school, I felt something, something moving. Something moving away from me. Because for the first time ever, it was my school and not my immediate neighborhood that held things together for me. Besides the Sullivans, all the other new stuff that had happened had spun out of school. The whole Evelyn thing, even if it was a disaster, gave me a sense of purpose, of somewhere to go. Ruben changing me into a clone of him was kind of dumb, but it took me someplace new. And Toy. Seeing him at school, hanging out at the superette, getting sick on the cigars. Getting rescued by Toy. The road trip. Toy helping with Evelyn. Felina.
When school was out, was I going to go back? There? I had my plan to destroy my brother, which kept me busy, but what beyond that? It didn’t help that Toy began dropping hints that he might not be around anymore once the summer came.
“What, you mean like a trip, only longer?” I asked hopefully.
“Ya, like, longer,” he said.
We were walking along together after school. Off the steps, past the superette, where we didn’t stop this time. We continued in the direction of Toy’s neighborhood. We didn’t talk about it, even though this was something we didn’t normally do. At the end of the day, Toy usually split, alone, no invitations to follow. But this was June, when things were different, when something in you was lighter and you did things different. You even talked. About stuff beyond the usual stuff.
“The whole summer, maybe, you mean?”
“The whole summer, maybe,” he said.
“I know I’m not supposed to ask this, but where are you gonna go?”
Under the straw hat, a big grin pushed his ears up, pushed the hat up.
“Home,” he said, almost sadly. “I’m thinking I’m going to go home.”
This seemed like a lot of information from Toy. I tried not to sound surprised. “Where’s home?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said.
I didn’t like the sound of it. It sounded far away and it sounded for real and for good.
“Anyhow,” I said brightly, “you might not be going anywhere, right? We’re just talkin’.”
“Just talking,” he said.
We were standing outside his house now. I found myself staring past Toy, up at the second-floor window.
“She’s not in there,” he cracked.
My stomach jumped. I tried to say something, a denial or something casual. But nothing came to mind.
Toy was unconcerned. “She’s on a trip of her own this time. It’s her turn. About time, too. She deserves it.”
“Oh, ya, good for her,” I said, acting as if she was no concern of mine. I did stop looking at the window now, though.
“I’d invite you in, Mick, but I’m not sure this house is such a good place for you.”
“Yes it is,” I said, and immediately felt strange saying it.
“Go on home.” Laughing, he walked away.
The One Remains
I NEVER ASKED, BUT eventually I sort of moved back upstairs into the attic of the Sullivans’. I didn’t live there like before, all independent and self-sufficient and dangerous. I was still an honorary Sullivan, eating with them, watching their TV, sometimes sleeping in Sully’s room, but I wasn’t a real one. I needed the time, and the space, that the upstairs provided. They all seemed to understand—even Mr. Sullivan—and
as long as I didn’t burn anything they left me alone up there.
It gave me a small bit of confidence back, living up there again. Gave me just enough to try for a little more.
“What are you doing here?” Evelyn asked suspiciously, finding me outside her homeroom on the last day of school.
“Thought I’d say hi,” I said. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
We stared at each other. Everybody walking by was happy, bouncing, whooping. Last day of school. But nobody said anything to me, or slapped my back. Nobody touched Evelyn either.
“It’ll be good to be out,” she said.
“It will,” I said.
“Good luck,” she said, and started inching into class.
“I was thinking,” I said, stopping her. “That since I don’t have many friends, and you don’t have many friends, that we could maybe be, you know, friends, even without school. Summer, you know?”
“Wait now, there’s a difference. I don’t have friends because I don’t want any. You couldn’t buy one.”
“Shut up.”
Her mouth dropped wide, wide open.
“Excuse me?”
“I said shut up, Evelyn. Shut up is what I said. You know, you’re not what I’d call a warm person.”
A long smile fanned slowly out across her face, and I almost loved her again.
“Does this mean you don’t love me anymore?” she asked.
“That’s what it means.”
She nodded.
“I do want to walk you home,” I said sternly, feeling suddenly powerful over all this.
“That would be lovely,” she said.
The end of school was uneventful like never before. The bell rang—they were letting us go an hour early, which was a big surprise since they do that the last day of every year—and I filed out into the sun of June the same way I filed out into the rain of October and the ice of February. June usually settled things for me for the year, finished stuff, started other stuff, better stuff. But now, nothing was settled.
“Where’s Toy going, Evelyn?” I asked as we kicked along toward her house.
