Dog Eat Dog

by Chris Lynch

  The Doberman released his grip on Bobo’s head, pulled back, and dove for the belly. He reached it, but not in time to clamp his jaws shut. Seeing the smaller animal stretched out under him, Bobo acted out of dumb, vicious animal instinct. He dropped, his huge head sinking hard, with all his weight behind it, and flattened his opponent beneath him. In a heartbeat his great mouth opened, then slammed closed, across the Doberman’s back. The sound of all those vertebrae smashing was like a car rolling onto a gravel driveway.

  Just like that, Bobo became General Schwarzkopf returning from Desert Storm. With the cheering, I couldn’t hear what Terry was yelling in my face from only three feet away. The Jamaicans filed out slowly but purposefully, the front man holding up an envelope fat with money, then tossing it on the ground. They left their corpse. A special exception to the remove-your-victim rule, since Bobo was still lying across the poor sonofabitch.

  For his part, Bobo looked around numbly at the celebration, turning his brainless head in all directions, looking at everyone and appreciating nothing. Bunky ran and ran little rings around himself, mental, yipping.

  The mob moved inside. I lingered, staring as blankly at Bobo as he did at me. There was a whistle from inside. Slowly, painfully, the big monster rose and padded into the bar. A minute later I followed him.

  Augie was cleaning up the mess on his fighter’s legs and head, blotting with a peroxide-soaked dish towel from the kitchen. Within a minute I heard ten different people say how “we” had kicked the Jamaicans’ asses. Bobo pulled away from Augie and collapsed on the floor in front of his water bowl. Augie let him, and turned back to the bar to celebrate even though Bobo was still bleeding.

  Terry stared for a minute as Bobo seemed to cough, or spasm, then rest his head on the floor, then spasm again, then close his eyes.

  He came over and put his arm around me. I threw it off. He squeezed the back of my neck.

  “C’mere, I’ll walk ya out,” he said.

  “I guess I’m leaving,” I answered.

  Outside, Terry gave me a little shove, a boost out the door.

  “Pretty strange, huh? Bobo’s performance?”

  “Ya,” I said, getting ready to run.

  “So, you said you might know a dog. Remember? That can beat Bo?”

  “I might,” I said.

  “Good. Good, that’s good. We’ll pencil you in then. Now that this is outta the way, we’re lookin’ for some new meat. You’re in,” he said menacingly.

  “Well, okay, but y’know, the thing is, I’m not exactly sure I can get—”

  “Y’ever noticed, Mick, how when Bobo drinks too much, when he’s wasted, that he hiccups? He hiccups a lot, it’s the damnedest thing.” Terry looked up in the air and stroked his chin quizzically as he said it.

  “I never noticed that,” I said in a shaky voice.

  “Ya, it’s a true fact. Ever wonder what Augie might do, if he caught someone screwing around with his dog? Ever wonder about that? I wonder about it sometimes. Augie’s pretty fried right now, so he don’t see much of nothin’, but if he ever somehow did find out about something like that, if something like that ever did actually did happen...?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t figure I was supposed to.

  He got lighter and more casual about it, the closer he got to the nub.

  “And I won’t stick my hand in any damn dogfight for you. Did I tell you that already? I think I did, I told you that. Did I?”

  I nodded. I swallowed. It was so hot, even outside. I felt the beads bubbling down my neck. I could see steam on the few windows of the Bloody.

  “Good, I’m glad I told you that. Because I meant it. Now, what you do is, you run along, and you get that dog, and you train his ass off. We’re scheduling you now. You’re a priority.”

  He patted my cheek and faded back into the bar. I wobbled home.

  Priority

  THE DAYS GOT LONG, having to be up so early, scrubbing shit out of the O’Asis first thing, only to then have nothing to do the rest of the day. Most times I went back to bed when I got home. And I slept, even though I wasn’t really tired. Sully had a summer job, “doin’ absolutely nothin’” at the State House because his father was one of those guys who get that stuff. But he had a place to go at least. Me, I was wading through my first summer without either Little League or beer, and I was stupefied at what little there was around me. Still, I had my focus.

  I rousted Sully out of bed as soon as I got back from work.

  “C’mon, Sul, I want you to go with me.”

  He rolled over, away from me. I shook him harder.

  “Get outta here, Mick, lemme sleep. I gotta be to work by eleven. Or eleven thirty.”

  “Bang in sick,” I said.

  He sat up and scowled at me. “Listen, this gig lasts ten weeks. They only allow me six official paid sick days and a couple more unofficial mental health days. I can’t go squandering ’em.”

  “Fine, I’ll just have to do it alone,” I said—moaned, really—as I walked extra slowly away. He was always a sucker for that stuff.

  “What? What is it you’re gonna have to do alone?” he asked, stopping me in the doorway.

  “Dog shopping.”

  He threw himself back on the bed and pulled his pillow around his ears. “Dogs, dogs, Jesus, please, not the dog business again, Mick. I wish you’d just forget about this dog business, man, it’s no damn good. I can smell this one a mile away, and this whole dog thing, it stinks.” From his lying-down position, he pointed at me menacingly. “It’s gonna be your biggest fall yet.”

  I waited him out. I was way beyond really listening. “I gotta get a dog.”

  “Besides, my old man says you can’t keep one anyway.”

  “I don’t plan to keep it long. It won’t be a pet. I mean, it can’t be a pet. I’m gonna keep it at work. There’s a lot, out behind the O’Asis, where I can chain him.”

  “Outside?”

  “Ya, outside. The kind of dog I’m lookin’ for isn’t the kind that’s gonna care whether he lives inside or out. In fact, the kind I’m lookin’ for probably won’t know the difference.”

  “It stinks.”

  “Bang in sick.”

  “No.”

  “Fine, you just go ahead and quit on me too. We all know I have, like, a million friends anyway, right, so it’s not really a big deal. And family, let’s not forget family. I have other brothers besides you, so, really, Sul, don’t give it another thought.” I had to say it all like a joke, but he knew I was being true.

  “Asshole,” he said, rolling out of bed and yanking up his pants.

  As we walked up the driveway to the Animal Rescue League entrance, I thought of Mickey the dog, dumped right there on the curb like a sack of garbage. Mickey wasn’t mean enough. Or big enough, or deranged enough. I needed a monstrous, ferocious, toothy, and muscular criminal of a heartless beast.

  “We’d like to see your death row dogs, please,” Sully said as we stood at the front desk.

  The woman in the park ranger-type uniform was not amused.

  “You wish to adopt one of our abandoned animals?” she asked sternly.

  “Yes, I would,” I cut in before Sully could empty his already opened mouth.

  We followed the ranger woman down a long white hospital-like corridor. Sully continued to work on me.

  “You won’t do this. It ain’t in you, Mick. It ain’t you. You don’t have the heart for this, you have too much heart for this.”

  I didn’t answer, just plowed on until we got to the room with the orphans.

  “Take your time, look them all over carefully,” the woman said, then left us alone.

  Sully and I walked side by side along the cages. Three tiers high and twenty doors long, it was like a housing project for dogs, or a prison. All cages were the same size, regardless of the dog inside, so the biggest ones were just dopily curled on the floor while the little ones jumped up and yipped as we passed.

  Every sing
le dog was a puzzle. Beagle-collie-setter. Shepherd-Doberman-Labrador. Scotty-mastiff-bassett-chow.

  “Bet Father’s Day is a pretty confusing time for these poor slobs,” Sully cracked, scratching a mutt’s nose with the two fingers he could squeeze through the mesh.

  I didn’t bother trying to touch any of them. I scanned. Too small, too small, too small, too skinny, jaws too narrow.

  “Take this one, Mick,” Sully called, still in crouching position in front of the most anemic-looking creature in the place. Sully was in love already.

  “We’re here on business, Sul,” I said, continuing my search.

  “I think maybe this little guy’ll change your mind, though,” he said, giggling as the dog squeezed his tongue through the bars to lick his face.

  “I don’t want my mind changed,” I said.

  A mostly Great Dane with the sad, stupid face of a St. Bernard leaped at me as I passed. Twice he rammed his head into the cage door, barking. I took note, and moved on. A boxer-bulldog glared at me, beautiful posture, big chest, crooked brown teeth. Not enough. I neared the end of the line, reaching what seemed to be the pit bull ghetto. Four dogs in a row that all had that unmistakable square, ignorant, sneering face. Like a team, they snarled one long threatening rumble as I neared.

  “I’ll give you all four of those monsters for the price of one,” the ranger’s voice said from behind me. “More and more of those coming in every week. Our city’s pit bull population has been exploding, and nobody seems to have the strength to keep them from fornicating at will.”

  I stared in petrified awe at the shimmering menace in each of those cages. They growled so intensely, with such obvious hate, that they trembled. They certainly had some of the qualities I was looking for. They would be holy terrors, without question. But not one of them was the dog. The one that could overwhelm the whole world of other dogs. I could picture Bobo sitting down on top of one of those and, his own body hacked up again, swallowing big chunks out of the little bastard.

  I walked back the other way again. When I reached the Dane, he was taking a gargantuan dump. He watched me as he did, growling, excreting, looking at my face. Like he was saying, “This one’s for you, pal.” Then he was finished and, the feces way too big to fall through the grate floor, he threw himself down on it. He stood again, looked at it. Took a bite. Looked at me. Went to the cage door and started chewing on the metal so hard that it was only a matter of time before he did get out.

  “I want him,” I said.

  “You don’t want him,” she said.

  “Yes I do.”

  “That one’s not right, if you ask me,” she said.

  “Then I won’t ask you. That is exactly the dog I want. Wrap him up.”

  The woman let out an angry low growl of her own as she went to get a leash. “Ah, I see,” she said with disgust, “another one of them.”

  We waited for the shots, the tags, the brief exams. I paid my thirty-five dollars and took possession of my beast.

  It all took twice as long as it should have, because Sully bought the anemic dog.

  “Where are you gonna keep him?” I asked nervously as my dog alternately jerked me down the street and stopped to turn on me.

  “I’ll keep him at home,” Sully said, all blissed out as he carried and nuzzled his measly little half-hairless. “My dad said you couldn’t have a dog. There’s no way he won’t love Bugs.”

  “Bugs? You named him already?” I shouldn’t have been surprised. The dog actually did look like a tiny Bugs Bunny, tan, white face, satellite-dish ears.

  “That’s right. Bugs. What are you gonna call yours?”

  “Hmmm...” I said, looking at my star athlete from behind. His ass showed prominently because he had a curled tail like a husky. I smiled. “I’m gonna call him...” And the smile left me. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  I shook my head. “He’s not gonna need a name. He’s not that kind of dog.”

  “Pretty weird, Mick,” Sully said. “But he’s your dog. Listen, I’m going home now. Can’t wait to show Bugs to my mother. You’re not bringing Nothing to the house, are ya?”

  “Nah, I’m gonna bring him ta meet my dad,” I said as sarcastically as I could. Sully didn’t even notice, as he skipped off with his new love.

  My father was the only conscious person in the O’Asis when Nothing and I walked in. Two guys dozed at the bar, the little oscillating fan waving between them, not even disturbing their greasy mats of hair. My mother was out grocery shopping for the bar.

  “... and I figure he can watch that back door, so nobody tries to break in,” I said.

  My father seemed half asleep himself, one eye on the overhead TV, where ESPN was running a repeat of a hockey game to cool off the summer sweats.

  “That’s fine, Mick,” he said. “It’ll be a good deterrent. He looks mean as shit. That’s good. We could use a presence like that.” He winced at something that happened in the hockey game. “Jeez, so could the Bruins.”

  I wrestled the dog out the back door. We had already worked up a strange, unfriendly truce. He kept growling at me, kept leering at me, tossed me side to side, and ignored most of what I said, but he never tried to bite me to shreds. Which we both knew he could have done whenever he wanted to.

  “But Mick,” Dad said, “I don’t want to know about him. You take care of all his needs, don’t let him stink, and keep him quiet. And if anyone ever does try to get in here, he better chew the bastard’s ass off.”

  I stuffed the dog out the door, followed him, and slammed it behind us. Immediately, Nothing broke away from me, went to a corner, and flopped in the sun. I looked around. This time of day, the back alley—a slab of asphalt surrounded by a six-foot wooden fence—was totally washed in the straight-up sun. There was no escape. I went back inside, filled a mop bucket with water and ice.

  “Anybody gonna eat this?” I asked, pointing to the two half-eaten platters on the bar. One was a hamburger plate, fries, runny coleslaw, and the other was a tuna boat, fries, runny coleslaw. Nobody answered me, so I scooped it all onto one plate and brought it out to Nothing.

  He nearly knocked me over when I set the plate down, and I felt a small swell of evil pride as I watched him slobber.

  “See ya tomorrow, killer,” I said, boldly patting his hip.

  He growled, nasty, as I slipped away.

  The routine became, I opened the back door, Nothing charged me, I threw a foot-long hot dog across the lot, he chased it, and I came out with the full plate of scraps. Out of the refrigerator I was allowed to take whatever was left over from the previous day’s special. Knockwurst; rubbery sirloin tips; green beef stew; chopped, reconstructed turkey breast slices. Then I did my work. Then I went back out to find a much calmer Nothing. While he sat, I cleaned up his place too. Dung, mostly, but often as not I’d also come across pieces of skinny cats or fat-ass rats that were dumb enough to wander in during the night. The ferocious destruction he laid on those animals gave me hope. And still, it was less disgusting to clean up outside the O’Asis than in it.

  Following the cleanup, I’d take Nothing for his run. He galloped like a Clydesdale, thundering after anything that moved, menace on his tiny little mind. He pulled me down sometimes, didn’t stop, didn’t slow down, even with all my weight hanging on the leash until I’d scrambled back to my feet. I watched him, over a short time, fill out impressively. His chest and shoulders and even his head seemed broader and more solid than when I first saw him. And even if he was getting a potbelly from all the fatty raw meat, he could still chug like a train.

  We’d return, me sweating, him panting, and he gave me no trouble about going back into the alley. Then, before leaving, I’d skim some of the food I was not supposed to take—today’s special, which wasn’t much better than the old stuff—and I’d feed him again.

  “He’s ready,” I told Sully after I’d had Nothing for two weeks. I’d just come in, breathless from my morning at the O’Asis, and S
ully was dressing for work.

  “My dad changed his mind,” Sully said glumly. “He said Bugs smells, and he can’t live in the house.”

  “Jeez, I’m sorry, Sul,” I said, but I was having a hard time appreciating the problem. I had the Big Thing on my mind.

  “He said he’d build Bugs a...” Sully sort of gasped when he said it, “... doghouse.” He scooped Bugs up where he was lying on the bed, and he hugged him.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, at least you get to keep him.”

  “Ya, I suppose,” he said.

  “So, anyway, he’s ready. Sul, Nothing’s ready. Tonight’s the night. It pissed rain on him yesterday, and it’s gonna be hellish hot today, and he’s gonna be meeeean....”

  “Congratulations,” he said lifelessly.

  “You gonna come with me?”

  He threw me a look, then walked right past me. I grabbed his shoulder to ask him again.

  Bugs let out a screamy little arf, and bit my hand with those sharp teeth.

  “Ow! Jesus, Sul, can’t you control him?”

  “No. Neither one of us wants to discuss this subject. You go wherever you want tonight, leave us out of it.”

  “I know what you think, Sul, and actually, I agree in a way. But this is it for me. This is the thing, the one and final thing that I just have to take care of. Then it’ll be no more. I gotta get this done. I gotta beat him, Sul, for good.”

  Sully shook his head at me, stroked Bugs. I seemed to have made him very sad. “I don’t know, Mick. Definitely, there’s something out there that’s eatin’ you up alive, and I guess you gotta get it before it gets you... but I don’t think messin’ with Terry is gonna fix you up.”

  I reached out and tried to stroke the dog. He snapped at me again.

  “Yes it is, Sul,” I said. It was the first time I had come out with it, to anyone. It was the first time I had said it to myself. “Beating Terry, beating him into the ground, is the only way. The only single thing I’m absolutely sure of at this point is that I know I cannot exist knowing that he exists at the same time. He won’t go away, understand? Somehow, he has a hold of me, and he’s beating me, even right now.”