by Chris Lynch
Sully took a long pause and a step back. “Mick, let me try this one time. You’re brain-blown. Your brother has got you so screwed up, you have no perspective. You’re acting exactly the way he wants you to act. You’re losing a mind game to a guy who has no mind whatsoever.”
He was right! There it was. That instant, Sully showed it to me, what he could see, and probably everyone else could see but me. How stupid I looked because I was getting so blind with hate. I could see it all, just like that.
Then it was gone again, just like that.
I could kill Terry, kill him, that evil sonofabitch.
“After tonight, Sul. It’ll be all fixed, after tonight. It’ll be all better, and I won’t have any more problem.”
I went to the phone to make my date, while Sully walked down the stairs shaking his head and squeezing his dog.
Bloody Sundays was buzzing when Nothing and I came through the front door. A lot of mouths dropped open at the sight of the animal I could barely restrain on the choke chain. Everybody offered to buy me a drink, but I didn’t even turn my head as I went through to the ring. Nothing and I took up our spot at the far corner and waited. He didn’t know what was going on, and stared casually in all directions. I was so scared, the dog growled at me for jerking him so much with my shaking grip on his collar.
The spectators began filing in, lining the walls, all loaded and thrilled to be so close to the danger. I felt Nothing tense at the unfamiliar crowd. When we were at capacity, things quieted. They seemed to sense that Bobo the champion had arrived.
But first, my brother walked through the door. He came right over, sized up the dog, and nodded.
“That’s a lotta meat ya got there, Mick. Good build, powerful.”
I didn’t say anything, just tried to stare coldly ahead like I’d seen the Jamaicans do. I was even more nervous with Terry than I’d ever been before. Thinking about what Sully said, I got defensive, lost any confidence I might have had. What’s he doing to me now? I thought. What’s his angle? What does he want me to say to that? I won’t.
He kept smiling that smile. He started mixing conversation about the dog with conversation about me. “Has he had a lot of fights? How they treating ya there at Sullivans’, huh, Mick? What’re ya feedin’ him? What’re they feedin’ you? What breeds? How’s the spic chic, that workin’ out okay? Animal Rescue League? Heard ya lost your boyfriend, too bad, but I heard ya had his mother, so good f’you. What I really wanna know is, did ya train him y’self, bro?”
I managed to nod.
Somehow his smile grew even wider. “Gooood,” he said. “I was hopin’ ya did.” And as he spoke, he walked backward, bowing, all the way to the opposite side of the ring. “I’ll say hi ta Ma for ya,” he said, waving.
The champion emerged. Bobo and Augie strutted through the door reeking of confidence, Bunky hopping and yapping circles around them. The home crowd cheered, and they took their position beside Terry, opposite us.
At the sight of Nothing, Bobo started jumping, lunging, pulling so that it took both Terry and Augie to hold him. I had no such problem. First, Nothing didn’t move. Then, I felt him leaning backward, into me. I nudged him, pushed his weight off me toward the center of the ring. Bobo growled like a volcano. Nothing backed into me again, hard.
“Goddamnit,” I said under my breath, pushing him again. “Don’t do this to me.”
He pushed even harder, backing me up. The murmur started. By the time Nothing, with all his cowardly bulk, slammed me into the fence, people were laughing openly at me.
“Goddamn you,” I shouted, snapping the leash off the collar and slapping the dog’s behind. “Get in there.”
Augie was first angry, then confused. Since there was no fight, he didn’t know what to do. Bobo felt no such confusion. He wanted a piece of Nothing, and who could blame him? Augie shrugged, held the leash.
Terry reached across Augie and released the leash clip.
Bobo came barreling toward us, low growls rolling up out of him as he pounded his way. I froze against the fence, staring straight into his murderous mouth.
That was when Nothing finally displayed his strength. He turned, and with one powerful stroke leaped up onto the fence. He soared straight over my head, catching the top of the fence with his front legs. I hit the ground when Bobo came sailing after him, crashing into the fence, falling, jumping again. Nothing scrambled, scrambled, his back legs kicking maniacally to push him up. The crowd was in hysterics as he finally toppled over, pulling his foot out of Bobo’s mouth as he did. He howled off down the street, like a siren fading away.
I kept my head down as I walked the gauntlet back through the ring, and then through the Bloody. None of the ridicule was words, none of it mattered, except when I heard Terry, clear and crisp and hard by my ear.
“No doubt about it, you’re the guy that trained that dog. But don’t worry about it, boy. Don’t worry. Nothin’ ta be ashamed of. Nothin’ at all. Get another dog. Just get another dog. Come back. We’ll be here. You’ll come back. Get another dog. We’ll be here. ...” And on and on he went, talking at me through the bar, and after I’d left the bar, and as I slept off and on that night.
A Little Bit Free
AS I HEADED OUT to work in the morning I passed the doghouse Sully’s father had built for Bugs. I’d walked right by it the night before, but in the light it was amazing. Real asphalt shingles for the roof, three colors of paint, a swinging door to keep out the cold, and shuttered windows. I walked across the lawn to it, crouched, and opened the shutters.
“Bar-ar-ar-ar-ar!” Bugs shocked me with his annoying angry yap. I heard his teeth clack together like silverware as he tried repeatedly to bite me, and I fell back on the grass.
“Should have brought you,” I said as I brushed myself off and left him still barking.
For the last time I went out back of the O’Asis and cleaned up after my big brute of a dog. I could still hear them laughing in my ears. Then I trudged through my usual chores, and when I was done, absentmindedly went to the refrigerator for food.
“Duh,” I said to myself, and put the plastic bag full of stew beef back. Then I thought about it and took it out again.
I rode the bus back toward the house, but continued on one extra stop. There I got off, walked a little way, and stood for a bit in front of Evelyn’s house. After giving myself a few minutes to think it over one more time, I crept around the side.
The great creature didn’t get up when he saw me. Initially he didn’t even raise his head. I took a few tentative steps into the yard, reached into the bag, and pulled out some chunks of meat. I tossed them toward where the dog lay half in, half out of his house. He licked them up off the ground, chewed once, swallowed, then looked at me again. I threw a few more. With each toss, I took a couple steps further into the yard until the bag was empty and I was almost within reach of his chain.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said, and slipped out before he finished the last of it.
I did come back tomorrow. And the next day. The beef was his favorite, but he was also happy to have the turkey, sausages, ham, and even the bogus cod croquettes I was almost afraid to give him. I began to look forward to feeding him, and he seemed to be glad to see me. I hurried through my work every day so I could get there.
He was the one. I knew all along he was the one. I would take it slowly, bring him along. There was no rush anyway; I felt no urgency, no panic, because it was so obvious that this was the one and that it was all going to come to an end soon enough.
My days then, sweaty, long, and secretive still, took on an odd, unexpected calmness. I had some kind of rhythm for the first time since school, Toy, and all that ended. I did my work, I visited the dog, and then I did other stuff. There was other stuff to do, now that I felt the Big One was coming along.
Slowly I gained some strength and some confidence, as if I were dipping into Baba’s steroids. The feeling came back in my fingers and toes, the numbness I’d been
carrying around for weeks without noticing faded. And feelings came back elsewhere. It was very hot and humid.
Or maybe it was Toy being gone that brought back those feelings.
I checked to see that the motorcycle wasn’t parked outside, then I started throwing rocks. Ping, ping. Bang, I hit her window every time. Finally she came to the window, looked down and saw me, covered her eyes with her hand, and shook her head. Then she disappeared.
I was still out on the sidewalk looking up, uncertain what she was going to do, when she opened the front door.
“Come on, get in off my sidewalk,” she said, waving me in hurriedly.
My shockability had been pretty well eroded by this time, but when I followed Felina upstairs into the apartment, I was shocked. First was her smell. As I walked along behind her, she left me in a wake, a vapor trail of unwashed human smell. A person’s got to bathe regularly in steamy heat like this, and she clearly had not. To make it worse, every door and window in the place had been sealed shut and there wasn’t a fan or an air conditioner in sight.
The house was a wreck. Dirty clothes lined the floors and I stepped on a loaf of bread on the way to the kitchen. There I stood in the doorway as Felina approached the stove and stared at it as if she were looking under the hood of a hopelessly broken-down car. She picked up the tea kettle, shook it to feel its contents, smiled, and lit the burner.
“Ah, I’m sorry I haven’t called,” I said as I looked around the kitchen, at the sink mounded with dirty dishes, at the table mounded with possibly clean laundry.
She put her hand over her mouth and laughed. “That’s all right,” she said, and patted my cheek as she passed on her way to the living room. “You’re sweet.”
The living room was no better. She plopped herself down on the couch after sweeping a white takeout carton and an empty wine bottle onto the floor. The TV was already on. She waved me over, and I sat reluctantly next to her.
Barney the dinosaur was on the TV. She stared at it, but I could tell she wasn’t really looking.
“You want me to change that?” I asked.
“If you want to,” she said, shrugging. “It doesn’t much matter. I just keep it on for, you know, the sound of it. And the moving. It’s always on.”
The kettle screamed in the kitchen. I watched Felina some more, but there was no reaction to this either. I pointed toward the kitchen with my thumb.
“You want me to get that?” I asked.
She stood without answering, went out, and turned it off. She returned with no tea and sank back into the couch. Barney sang a song, his gang of kids sang the song. Felina sang the song too.
“If all the raindrops
were lemondrops and gumdrops
oh what a rain that would be
standing outside with my mouth open wide.”
She opened her mouth and let her tongue hang out like the rest of the kids, still singing,
“Ah, ah-ah-ah
ah-ah-ah
ah-ah-ah...”
When the song was over, Felina clapped for herself and started laughing. “Where did I learn that?”
Then she went blank again.
“Hey, I know,” I said after waiting in vain for her to say anything that made sense to me. “Why don’t we go out to breakfast? Ya, how ’bout to the diner? They have a corned beef hash over there, with an egg on top, and hash browns with crunchy onions, and a really thick chocolate milk...Pat’s Diner, that’s it. On me, okay, you could hop in the shower. ...” I hopped up and gestured toward the door, as if it had already been decided. I was anxious to get out.
She looked up and smiled at me sadly. “I don’t go out. You know that. Didn’t I tell you that? I don’t go out.”
“Ever?” I asked.
She shrugged. “It’s not... okay. It’s not okay, that I go out.”
It made me angry, both the situation and the fact that she was so calm about it. My hands balled into nervous fists, until I thought about Carlo and all his bulk and darkness. My fists uncurled.
“Well, what would happen if you just went out? Just for a little while?”
Felina shook her head no. She turned back to the TV, turned off the subject.
“Do you miss him?” she asked quietly.
I paused, as if I had to think about who she meant, even though I didn’t.
“You do miss him,” she said. “I’ll bet you do. I miss him too. Do you miss him the way I miss him?” There was so much sticky hot suggestion in the way she drawled out that I, that it made me squirm. “I bet you do. I bet you do miss him that way. It certainly is sad,” she whispered, her voice getting lower and lower so that I had to strain harder and closer to hear her.
I wanted to change the subject—not change it so much maybe as slant it differently. “You know where he is?” I asked, backing toward the door.
“You know better than that,” she said. She reached her hand into the pocket of her bathrobe, took something out, and popped it into her mouth. In the same motion she untied the sash. She seemed almost unaware of me then.
“Okay, so then, maybe another time,” I said. I turned the doorknob behind my back.
Felina snapped her head in my direction. She stood up, a little panicky. The robe hung open, but I tried not to notice. “Wait,” she said, and put her hand on the door. “I can do it. What the hell, right? Sit. You sit for a minute.”
She practically threw me onto the couch, then disappeared down the hall. I sat with Barney for an uneasy few minutes until she reappeared.
She had ignored my advice about showering, but she had made an effort. The great mass of her hair was still a chaotic and snarled and oily mess, but she had wrestled it into a giant meatloaf of an uncombed ponytail. She wore stonewashed shorts and a neon peach T-shirt that had a picture of a sailboat and a seagull and HAMPTON BEACH, NEW HAMPSHIRE—SUMMER BETTER THAN OTHERS printed in raised rubbery lettering across the chest. Except for being unclean and sleepy, she looked pretty beautiful. She wore a lot of bitter perfume. I was happy to be with her.
We didn’t talk at all. Felina smiled a lot as we walked the five blocks. She stared almost exclusively up at the sky, or out the window by our booth. She ordered everything I had mentioned—the hash, the egg, the chocolate milk—exactly the same way I had said it. As if it were a command. I ordered the same. People stared at us and the waitress seemed to wince whenever she came near, but I had a fine time, and the smile never left Felina’s face. Even when she briefly nodded off.
During the walk home, she would periodically close her eyes and bare her greenish face to the now blistering noon sun. I got a panic attack as we came nearer to her street, but it all washed away when we turned the corner and there was still no motorcycle. I would have gone all the way to the house with her anyway, but I was sure glad it didn’t come to that.
Felina didn’t even turn to look at me, lost and happy as she seemed to be, as I left her walking up her stairs. But that was okay.
Duran
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING back there?” Evelyn called out her window, nearly giving me a stroke. I was in her backyard and her dog was eating boneless spareribs out of my hand.
I’d been at it for two weeks, feeding him, then patting him, finally talking to him. That was probably what gave me away, the talking.
“He likes you?” she said, standing amazed and barefoot on her back porch. “He doesn’t like anybody.”
“He likes me,” Ruben said, following his sister out through the screen door.
“He hates you,” she cracked.
“That’s a freakin’ lie,” Ruben said, brushing past her to march down the stairs. When he reached the third step, the dog started snarling. Ruben walked backward up onto the porch again.
“Well, I ain’t got no shoes on, so I can’t go into the yard right now, but I’ll show you all later. Freakin’ dog loves my ass.”
“He hates you because you neglect him,” Evelyn said matter-of-factly.
I patted the
dog’s wide muscular head as he easily lapped up the last of the food. As he chewed, the muscles flexed on either side of the part that ran down the middle of his skull. I could fit both hands flat across that magnificent dome of his and feel his bite while he ate. And he let me.
“Atsa boy, boy,” I said, but he paid no attention.
“His name’s Duran,” Ruben said, “and he ain’t no boy.”
He was right about that, for sure. But that’s what I had been calling the dog all along, boy. Duran, though, was great. It fit the second I heard it. “Du-ran,” I repeated, and patted him, scratched the sides of his face, and looked into his beady one-black-one-green eyes.
“You the loneliest sombitch I ever seen,” Ruben laughed as he headed back into the house.
“Ya?” Evelyn called to him. “Bet he doesn’t have one of those blow-up dolls in his room...”
“Shut up, Juana,” he yelled. “That’s just a freakin’ joke. Christo, ain’t like I do nothin’ wid it.”
Ruben went up to put on his shoes and not do anything with his doll. Evelyn stood and watched me with the dog. He leaned into me, responding, rubbing his eyes across my chest. “You’re a pair,” she said, with some admiration.
“We are,” I answered, then I looked up. “You heard anything, from him?”
“Nada,” she said flatly.
“Me neither. I talked to his mother though.”
Evelyn shook her head in a scolding way, clicked her tongue at me.
“Ya, well, she doesn’t know where he is either,” I said. “I guess it’s for good this time.”
She just shrugged. Ruben came bounding back out onto the porch. Duran growled, and I calmed him.
“I want to take him for a walk,” I said, hopping up, thinking this was a bright idea for a beautiful worthless summer day.
