Hell Hound

by Ken Greenhall

  ‘What kind of dog?’

  ‘I don’t remember the breed. It’s the kind General Patton had. White and strange-looking.’

  Sara reached out to Carl’s plate and pushed her cigarette into a mound of cold mashed potatoes. Her parents had been fond of dogs, and she had spent her childhood being followed about by a series of nudging, shedding, panting mongrels. What she had gained in companionship, she thought, had been canceled out by what she had lost in privacy. She was in­different to dogs. ‘We could ask Carl what he thinks,’ she said.

  ‘Would you mind having a dog around?’ Jason asked.

  ‘No. What harm could it do?’

  3

  As Carl left the junk-yard, stumbling through the darkness, a piece of metal embedded itself in the heel of his left shoe. He didn’t try to remove it, enjoying both the limping uneven­ness it gave his gait and the sharp click it made as he hurried along the quiet streets.

  Baxter, lying sleepless in the Graftons’ garage, heard the clicking noise approach and recede along Hawley Street. It was an unfamiliar sound, and he growled as it passed.

  4

  Carl looked at his mother fiercely. ‘Cheneral Patton?’ he said. ‘Zat schwein?’

  ‘You don’t have to do a routine. Just tell me whether you’d like to have a dog like that.’

  Carl had seen the movie Patton four times. He remembered the dog. It had been treated as a clown and a coward, but there was something sinister about it. He had looked it up in the encyclopedia. A bull terrier. It had been bred in England for its fighting qualities. It had the strength of a bulldog and the quickness of a terrier. Courage, resistance to pain. The dogs were put in pits and fought to the death. Neat.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

  His mother smiled, and for an instant he was afraid she might embrace him. He turned away. ‘An Englischer Hund. Sehr gut. A Schweinhund.’

  He went to a chair, slouched down into it, and looked at his mother. Her smile was gone, and her eyebrows were raised in exasperation. It was the expression he liked to see. It’s the expression she likes to have, he thought. She’s like me. He looked around the untidy room. She needs a junk-yard; a bunker to crawl into. But adults can’t do what they want to do. Carl was not eager to become an adult.

  Two

  John and Nancy Grafton drove the few blocks to the Fines’ house in silence. They both glanced occasionally into the rear-view mirror, which John had adjusted to reflect the image of Baxter, who lay on the back seat, his eyes closed. Nancy wondered whether the dog sensed what was about to happen, and how it would react to having a new home.

  John had not asked Nancy what she thought about giving Baxter away. He just announced that he had offered the dog to Jason Fine, and that the offer had been accepted. Nancy hadn’t objected, and now they were pretending that there was nothing questionable about the act.

  But when the car pulled up to the house Nancy was hesitant about getting out. She did not want to see the people who were going to shelter Baxter; who would look up from the newspaper to see him staring and would wonder what impulses lay behind the gaze.

  ‘Aren’t you coming in?’ John asked.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘I want you to meet them,’ John said. He put his hand on his wife’s thigh. ‘There won’t be any problem. And then we’ll be alone. We’ll be alone in our house tonight.’

  Nancy tried to imagine what that would be like. She had grown used to awakening in the middle of the night, immediately aware that Baxter lay somewhere near by. He’s like a wart, she would think: something unattractive that one touches unconsciously in idle moments; something potentially dangerous.

  She got out of the car and watched as John opened the back door. Baxter jumped to the ground and followed them cautiously to the house.

  Jason Fine opened the door, smiled briefly at the couple, and then looked down at Baxter. His smile broadened. ‘I thought you said it was a dog.’

  John was relieved to see the smile. ‘Actually, we lost the dog on the way over, so we brought you this instead. If you don’t like it we’ll take it back to the zoo.’

  ‘We’ll let Carl decide,’ Jason said.

  Carl was standing behind his father. Nancy watched the boy carefully as Baxter entered the house. Carl dropped to one knee and put a hand gently on the dog’s head. It occurred to Nancy that neither she nor John had touched the dog since the baby died. Baxter’s tail began to wag. Thank God, Nancy thought. There was an obvious rapport between the two. Let the animal have another chance.

  How old was the boy? she wondered. Twelve, perhaps. Still a child, but uneasy with his childhood. Nancy had stopped looking at children. In the afternoon, when they played their mysterious games near her house, she turned on the television set, trying to ignore their energy and pointlessly dramatic screams.

  But Carl was attractive: his uncared-for, smooth hands and soft hair. Would she ever have another child? It began to seem possible.

  Sara Fine served them coffee. They spoke of the town and their lives, smiling at one another and glancing occasionally at Baxter and Carl. Everyone seemed pleased.

  When Nancy and John left Baxter made no attempt to follow them, and the couple made no attempt to pretend regret. As the two families stood at the door Nancy said to Carl, ‘You must be good to Baxter. That’s very important.’

  ‘I understand,’ Carl said.

  Sara Fine was puzzled by the seriousness with which Nancy and Carl spoke. And later, when Carl took the dog out for a walk, she frowned slightly as she stood at the window and watched the boy and the dog move along the dark street. There was something remarkable about their immediate acceptance of each other. An uncommon friendship had begun.

  2

  I must be careful of the boy. He looks at me with an understanding I have never seen in the eyes of a human. He does not love me.

  It is evening, and I am sitting tensely in the dining-room. The man and woman eat slowly, muttering frequently, and sometimes offering me a piece of their disgusting food. The boy glances at me occasionally. Soon he will get up from the table. He is as eager as I am to leave the house. This house is not as old as the others I have lived in. It has a feeling of impermanence and its odors are uninteresting; almost nothing in it smells of wood or earth. I have sensed no important traces of anyone except the boy, the man and the woman.

  The boy gets up, but I do not move until he makes my sound. It is the same sound the others made when they wanted me to be near them. But there are other sounds the boy uses: one when he wants me to walk beside him; another when he wants me to sit still. When he taught me about the sounds he also taught me about pain. But he has also given me pleasure beyond anything I had known before. The pain is the price I paid for the pleasure. It is remarkable how strong the memory of pain is. I never hear those particular sounds he makes without feeling the chain tightening against my throat.

  I wonder if it is the same with people; whether the sounds they are always making remind them of past pain. Probably not, or they would make fewer sounds.

  Now the boy makes my sound, and we go out into the evening, hurrying to our pleasure. We pass between the two houses where I have caused pain. I wonder whether I will ever be forced to do so again. For, although the boy has taught me things in his crude way, I know—and I think he knows—that there are things he will learn from me.

  3

  Mary Cuzzo admired Carl Fine. Even today, on the last day of the semester, with the summer sun warm and dazzling in the tall-windowed classroom, he gave her his full attention. If Carl hadn’t been in the room she might as well have been talking to herself. Some of her students were more subtly intelligent than Carl; some of them more aggressively charming. But Carl gave her his attention. Always. That was important to Miss Cuzzo.

  She doesn’t want us to leave, Carl thought. The other teachers had held shortened, informal classes. They were as eager as their students for the vacation to begin. Miss Cuzzo would
spend the summer on Hawley Street with her father; sharing his discomfort.

  The bell rang, and Carl moved his head slightly to look across the aisle, where Veronica Bartnik was sliding out from under her desk. She always showed Carl her thighs as she turned to get up. Because today was special she moved more slowly than usual to be certain that he would be able to glimpse the blue panties she had carefully chosen that morning. It was a tribute. Veronica usually paid little attention to boys her own age or younger. But she wanted to make a gesture to repay Carl’s respectful interest. He had never spoken to her.

  Carl was still seated when the rest of the class had left the room. He was immobilized with excitement. He thought of Veronica, and of the summer that had now officially begun. He thought of the bunker.

  Why is he waiting? Mary Cuzzo wondered. Does he have something to say to me?

  ‘What are your plans for the summer, Carl?’

  The boy looked up, startled. He had forgotten about the teacher. Before he could answer she was leaving the classroom. ‘Enjoy yourself,’ she said, without looking back.

  Carl started after her, afraid he had been impolite. But he couldn’t think of anything to say to her. Suddenly and inexplicably he was thinking of Baxter. He went down the quiet corridor and cleaned out his locker. He collected books, old sneakers, a scarf, and stuffed everything in a canvas bag—everything but a bundle of photographs, which he looked at carefully before tearing up. He dropped the pieces into a sewer on the way home.

  Even before he entered his house, Carl heard the familiar, low-pitched scraping sound. It was one of the great irritations of his life that his mother played the cello. If she had to play an instrument why couldn’t it be the piano or even the flute? He hated to see her sitting there with her legs spread and her eyes closed, struggling with the ungainly instrument. One of the reasons Carl never invited anyone to the house was that he wouldn’t know how to explain it if they should discover his mother practicing.

  Baxter met him at the door. There was no need to explain anything to Baxter. Carl crouched down and looked into the dog’s small, deep-set eyes. He no longer heard the music. He thought about how easy it had been to train the dog. When he looked into its eyes he knew it was not a submissive animal. It obeyed him not out of fear, but out of understanding. There would be danger, he thought, in losing that understanding.

  ‘My friend,’ he said. ‘Our summer has begun.’

  Three

  While the boy is inside his secret room I stand guard for him. I roam among the heaps of broken, unwanted objects, and I warn him when intruders are near. This territory is ours. I have marked every part of it with my scent, and I try especially to keep others of my kind away from us.

  Am I different from those others? I believe so, but I cannot be sure, for there is no way of knowing the thoughts of another creature. There are many of us in the town. We do not look or smell alike, but there is one thing we have in common: a deep mistrust of one another. I suppose the reason most of us prefer human company to our own is simply that people are much less treacherous than we are.

  But, as I said, I believe I am different from the others. I am not seeking mere security. I have learned that human trust can be uninteresting, and also that it can waver. I realize now, as I think the boy does, that one must accept one’s nature.

  I understand my own nature, but the nature of most humans puzzles me. What do they think when they see the littered territory where I now stand? Isn’t their passion for collecting things diminished? Don’t they realize that things are ultimately useless; that they must be discarded, leaving the people no better off than I am; I, who have never owned anything?

  And yet, is it true that I have never owned anything? Don’t I think of this territory as being mine, or at least mine and the boy’s? Yes. I would fight to defend it. Am I being corrupted?

  2

  ‘You don’t own me,’ Veronica Bartnik said.

  Her father stood in the doorway of her bedroom. ‘Yes, I damn well do,’ he said. ‘And as long as I do, I’m not going to let you act like an animal.’

  She’s worse than an animal, he thought. Joseph Bartnik respected animals, for they had given him the only completely happy moments of his life; moments when he saw them across the sights of a rifle or a shotgun. During the hunting seasons he killed his limit or more, and during the rest of the year he cleaned his guns and felt uneasy.

  Veronica watched her father. Shall I charm him? she wondered. She looked at his short, recently trimmed hair; his immaculate ‘outdoorsman’ clothes; the army boots he drunkenly polished every night. I understand why Mother left, she thought, but why didn’t she take me with her? I can’t be this man’s daughter.

  She smiled. ‘You look nice,’ she said.

  He relaxed slightly. He knew she hadn’t meant what she said, but a fight had been avoided. ‘At least I’m clean,’ he said. ‘And now I want you to do some cleaning . . . yourself and your room. And then we’re going out.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To the junk-yard.’

  ‘The junk-yard? Oh, Jesus, why?’

  ‘Because I say so.’

  He hates me, Veronica thought. He hates me because he owns me but can’t use me. He only respects things he can use. The reason he always gave for going to the junk-yard was that ‘there might be something there I can use’. He wasn’t the only one who went to the junk-yard. There were others like him. Veronica watched them as she sat in the truck waiting for her father to finish poking about in the trash. Men and boys. Never any women. Boys too young or timid to be interested in girls; men who wanted to escape from women or who, like her father, had been abandoned by them. Theirs was a world without women, but it was not a masculine world. It was sexless.

  Veronica’s father left her room and went into the kitchen, where Queenie, his spaniel, was whining and clawing at the door. The dog was in heat. ‘Poor bitch,’ Mr. Bartnik said. ‘You’ll feel better soon.’ It’s like a sickness, he thought. He had refused to have her spayed, fearing it might affect her efficiency as a retriever.

  He thought of the dawns they had spent together at the lake’s edge, sharing excitement and discipline. Each year he feared the dog might forget its training and give in to its impulses. But it never failed him, sitting rigidly and silently until the first flights appeared, not flinching at the roar of the shotgun, not moving until his command; then diving into the cold water, swimming without hesitation, and returning, the bird held gently in strong jaws. Acting under the man’s will rather than its own.

  And now, in its heat, it showed no trace of discipline. It was aware only of its unselective need to couple. She’s like all females, he thought. But at least with a dog it was a temporary condition. Joseph Bartnik watched females carefully and with disapproval. He disapproved of the interest they took in shelter and in their own bodies. They’ve never come out of the caves, he thought. Women’s liberation. You might as well try to liberate a turtle; what else could it possibly become?

  What you do, if they are yours, is protect them from themselves. He attached the chain leash to Queenie’s collar and went out to the pickup truck to wait for Veronica. On his way he looked into the mailbox. It was an act he performed hesitantly. Even now, after three years, he still vaguely expected to find an envelope with his wife’s childish handwriting; still expecting an explanation.

  3

  Carl Fine’s bunker had become surprisingly comfortable—too comfortable, he sometimes thought. Even under the sun of cloudless afternoons, when the metal of wrecked cars was too hot to touch, the bunker was pleasantly cool. Carl had spent hours carefully arranging the framework of his refuge. He placed light-colored metals on the roof to reflect the sun; he enlarged and deepened the inner chamber. Complex channels were arranged for ventilation, and a large, shielded piece of transparent plastic gave the chamber a soft illumination in the daytime.

  Carl was seldom able to relax in the daytime, however. Summer idleness a
nd boredom drew intruders to the junkyard every day, and the weekends were periods of siege. On Saturday afternoons Carl never entered the bunker, but wandered its perimeter while Baxter ranged through the area, barking alarms as each new trespasser arrived.

  It was on a Saturday that Mr. Bartnik appeared. Carl heard the truck pull up and wondered why Baxter had not barked. The boy walked to the top of a mound of trash. Baxter stood at the side of the truck, moving silently back and forth, his ears flattened against his head. Carl had never seen him look so confused or uncertain. Then Mr. Bartnik opened the door of the pickup, and a brown, curly-haired dog leaped to the ground, straining against its leash.

  Baxter rushed to the other dog and buried his nose under its tail. Mr. Bartnik got out of the truck and kicked Baxter, who didn’t raise his head, and hardly seemed to notice the attack. Mr. Bartnik pulled on his dog’s leash and kicked at Baxter again.

  Carl ran towards the man and shouted, ‘Stop that.’

  Mr. Bartnik stopped, his foot pulled back, his boot glinting in the sunlight. ‘Is this your mutt?’ he said.

  ‘That’s my dog.’

  ‘Then call him off.’

  My dog, thought Carl. It was the first time he had used those words, and they pleased him. He stumbled his way to Baxter and pulled him from the other dog. Mr. Bartnik picked up his spaniel, pushed it into the cab of the pickup, and slammed the door. It was then that Carl saw Veronica. She was smiling at him.

  Veronica’s father said, ‘You shouldn’t let your dog run loose like that.’

  ‘He didn’t do anything.’

  ‘He was about to.’

  ‘You didn’t have to kick him,’ Carl said.

  Baxter was pulling towards the truck door, still seemingly unaware of anything except the other dog. Carl was disappointed. Why hadn’t Baxter fought the man?