The Brown Hound

by Grace J. Gray

  She would laugh, but I did believe she could pull off a bald look. She looked good any way she did her hair. Her grandmother was one of the first black attorneys in the state of Florida. You could say that it ran in the family.

  "This is pretty fucked up. I've been following this on the news, and I know it happened near your neighborhood, but I had no idea you were a part of it."

  “I need your help in making a case. I don’t have much to go on except a gut feeling for now, but this is what I’m banking on.” She looked at me like I was joking.

  “You must be joking. A gut feeling? Why’d you become a lawyer then? I hear they’re hiring psychics down at Jason Zuk.”

  "Tracy, he didn't do it. Hear me out. I think they were in love. Jake and Darren. I think Darren brought him back here with him to help him start over or something, but something went wrong."

  “Maybe Darren didn’t want to continue with whatever relationship they had and told him to leave him alone. I really can’t believe you’re so...just look at it from another perspective. What does Jake say?”

  "He hasn't been entirely honest, but I believe his story."

  "Listen to yourself, Tommy. What is it? You're never like this. You're usually so careful. What is it about this guy?" She looked confused. She wanted an answer, and it needed to be good.

  "I know this guy, and I know the Smiths weren't exactly saints. I know for a fact that John had a gambling problem. He came to me a couple of years ago when I was still in school. He needed some legal advice.

  “He didn't give me much information, but it was sketchy. And not to mention all those times I'd see him around with bruises and his face looking like pulp. There's only so many times you can hit your head or just fall at home."

  “Loan sharks?” I was getting somewhere with Tracy now.

  "I don't know, but there's more to this story. Jake was just the easiest target for the DA. They needed a quick one on this. So, Jake was their boy. Not to mention, this guy has a bit of history." I had to tell Tracy about his past if I wanted her to work with me, but telling her might push her away even further.

  I still didn't know if Jake's history was well-known. But these things had their way of coming out sooner or later. I knew I had to prepare myself with that fact in mind.

  "Wow," Her face suddenly grew stiff. I could only imagine how that would play out in court. Tracy was a pretty strong girl for the most part, but even this story was a bit too graphic. It was like her face had turned to stone, unflinching, slowly processing all this information.

  "Do you believe this guy? Wait, never mind, do you think a jury will believe this guy?" She had a point.

  "I don't know, Tracy. I don't know. But he doesn't deserve to be put away because of what he did in the past. I'm sure he's had to pay. He's done his fair share of time. He doesn't deserve to be put away for what he did. Who knows what kind of life he's lived. He's kind of a ghost around here. Anyway, I have to go see him later. Are you with me on this? I need you."

  "I don't know, Tommy. This is a lot you're throwing at me. Give me a couple of days to think about it."

  "That's all right. Call me." I barely voiced my last words as I walked away from her. I was disappointed in myself. I wanted to do this myself, but that was naive. I needed help eventually, even though on the off-chance there was none, this is how it would proceed.

  I took a walk outside my apartment. For some reason, where I lived reminded me of Blue Velvet by David Lynch.

  The story of a small town in America struck with a great tragedy. A boy finds a severed ear during a stroll, quite like the one I was on.

  He wants a purpose, and the ear is his calling—a way out of his mundane life and maybe onto better things. But the darkness often just fills a person with a need to run back towards the light—freshly cut roses, picket fences, and waving neighbors. Our community was pretty small, and the murder had cast a dark shadow over our community.

  I found out that the whole community had organized a memorial for the Smiths. I didn't know if I was invited. I didn't know if it was appropriate for me to drop by considering the circumstances. I decided I would still go.

  Walking through, I stopped by Starchan's Ice-cream shop, got myself a cup of Vanilla Delight. I walked on towards my usual spot in the nearby park—the bench by the two lover trees. Marie and I used to love this spot.

  There was a beautiful breeze gliding against my cheeks. I took a spoonful and sat wondering if I'd bring another woman here and tell her about my happy place, or if it would stay between Marie and me.

  As I sat, I saw a group of eight people with some boxes walking over towards an intersection near the park. I recognized all of them. They were friends of the Smiths.

  Everyone knew everyone around here—preparations for the memorial, I assumed. I sat and watched them take out framed pictures, flowers, and all sorts of candles and arrange them strategically by the side of the road.

  I put my cup down beside me and sat back, taking in the atmosphere, absorbing everything. I opened my eyes to see a middle-aged woman walking towards me. It was Ms. Levinson in her blue tank top.

  “Tommy! How are you?”

  She was in her late thirties, divorced. She got married to her high school sweetheart when she was in college. That flame had quickly lost heat a couple of years after their small ceremony in a nearby church.

  I'd forgotten the husband's name, but he had been seeing a couple of other women before they got married. He'd taken those relationships into his marriage with him, and it wasn't long before Ms. Levinson had begun to suspect foul play.

  She hired Ellis to follow the husband, and he found lots of dirt. The divorce proceedings went by swiftly. There wasn't much Ms. Levinson could take, but she got enough to start a life of her own.

  She hadn't known how to live on her own, but she got a small apartment near Dempsey road and began teaching at Ozona Elementary School.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while. How have you been?”

  “Hanging in. Busy mostly with work. How about you? How’s everyone else hanging in?”

  “Well, it’s been difficult. Karen’s family is here. John’s brother too. They’ll be here for the memorial tonight. It’s just unbelievable. I can’t swallow it. It hasn’t even been a week since it happened. And to think it was Jake...To think we let him into our lives and well. I can’t even say it. It’s a terrible loss.”

  “A travesty.”

  "I have to get back. I'll see you tonight. Take care of yourself. And drop by more often. Moments like this make you think about what's important." She ruffled my hair and walked away back to her group, who had already gotten a lot set up.

  I wondered how these people would treat me once they found out I was representing a vile and vicious monster. Incidents like this tended to remove the part of people's minds that was rational. Rational thinking seldom brings comfort.

  I felt like a rat there. I caught some glances of smiling women as they made their preparations.

  I sat, disgusted with myself and how I was breaking their trust for the second time without them knowing. They had no idea about the case of the brown hounds.

  Chapter 5

  I wasn't originally from Palm Harbor or even Florida for that matter. I came to this town not long after my father passed away. It wasn't unexpected. My mother had died when I was too young to remember. It had just been us for the longest time. I wouldn’t say my dad did an awful job raising me, he was from another time. He had been accustomed to the set roles. He could’ve never imagined that he would have to raise a son all on his own. He did just as well as I’d expected him to.

  During my teenage years, we went through a rough patch where I had to live with the negligence of a person who had very much given up hope, a person who, for as long as I had remembered, had not cared much how I turned out. Vesuvio was my only friend, the only person who was there.

  We were both too young to understand what we needed. But being there was good enou
gh. The mistakes of your youth often define how the rest of your life turns out, and for us, it seemed like it was going down a path of petty crimes until we had enough to run off to Cape Cod. It was the dream. The dream until another one came along. But the idea was sound at the time. It was the final gate that would lead us to salvation. To happiness.

  We started calling ourselves the brown hounds as a joke. I don't remember who came up with it, but the name had stuck around for as long as we had known each other. We used to have these ‘plays’ as we called them. We started by swindling kids at our school, getting enough money initially to get fake IDs made so we could buy beer and cigarettes.

  When we got out of school, we still stuck to our routines, molded them, let them evolve into more elaborate schemes.

  One of us would often go inside bars and pretend to be drunk with other people inside. Striking up a quick and trustworthy relationship, trustworthy enough to walk out of the bar with them.

  There, they would see a man on his back, not moving, unbothered. That was either Vesuvio or me. We got these cheap Rolex watches that we'd take off of each other, but more often than not, our drunk compatriots would want a piece of the action.

  So that was where we asked them for their money, and in exchange, they could keep the watch.

  We usually went after people who were already wearing a nice watch so they'd at least know what an expensive one looked like. We'd make them believe they were getting the better deal there.

  It wouldn't be until they tried to sell them off that they'd probably realized they'd been outsmarted by a couple of dumb kids. It kept us afloat; we enjoyed the kind of work. Until one of these routines went too far.

  We were too idiotic to realize that we should have switched to other bars now and then. It wasn't long until a cop was our unintentional target. It was a mess. We had to go to jail, where I had to call my father to bail us out.

  Some of the people we'd swindled were regulars at this bar, and we'd taken over five grand from these chumps. My dad wasn't too pleased, but he bailed us out that first time and told us to get our act together. We did just that.

  We changed up our playbook. It eventually led us to work for this guy called David Pollock. He gave us fake guns and a solid plan. He would be the only one with a real gun while we would be making sure things went smoothly, possibly rough up some customers, and get them out of the store.

  He told us we'd get a share of the earnings, 25% each, while he kept 50%. It was a sweet deal for us. Call it luck or a miracle, but that first job was executed exactly how we hadn't expected it to go.

  You see, you can use cheap tricks, and no one gets hurt. But once you bring a gun into the equation, people begin to react with the only possible way they know in this country. With more guns.

  The store clerk was an old white man with a beard that looked like an upside-down Christmas tree. He pulled out a twelve-gauge shotgun and opened fired; David took a shot, too. There was blood everywhere.

  Like Sweeney Todd's basement. Vesuvio and I ran off, throwing down our guns like amateurs and scampering off back to our homes like scared cockroaches. It wasn't long until we were investigated by the police.

  The street had cameras scattered all over, and we had taken off our ski masks as soon as we got out of the store. Call it luck or an act of God, but we made it through. The judge gave us community service for a year, and we jumped on that chance. But it was my dad who had a problem.

  During community service, I'd already made up my mind. I was going to Law school and out of this life that wasn't taking me anywhere. But my dad had seen enough. He was trying to put me away for good.

  He accused me of stealing from him when I was already working part-time jobs to save up for a chance at college. I never could understand why he would go to the lengths he did to try and have me convicted. Resentment had taken its toll. He failed, of course, and that was it for me, too.

  I always knew we were never too close, and some of that was on me. I was never the son he had wanted, but I never, in a hundred million years, could have imagined that he would try to accuse me of something like that.

  I was too disgusted, too betrayed, to ask him why he did what he did. We never spoke after that last argument.

  I confronted him and told him what he did was pathetic. It wasn't even convincing enough for the cops to put me away, which, considering my history, shouldn't have been as easy. But he failed. I still remember the look on his face.

  He denied it like he had no idea what I was talking about. His sick old face was bemused, offended at the prospect of him even attempting to do something like that; he was ashamed that his son would accuse him of it; I wanted to gouge his eyes out with a spoon. His horrible grey eyes.

  They were begging me to understand him, but his mouth and his words and his voice said otherwise. I knew I had to leave it all behind.

  This life had nothing left for me. I came to Palm Harbor with all the money I had saved up and began my life anew. A fresh start. Me and Vesuvio against the world.

  We began college without really realizing we wouldn't have enough to get through. But another miracle was waiting to happen -- Bob Buckhorn. Bob was teaching Law part-time at Stetson back then.

  He agreed to help us get solid scholarships because, according to him, we had 'it.' We were taken under his wing; we honed our craft and learned the ways of his world. The world of law. It was going like a dream until we were grabbed by the scruff of our necks by the claws of our past.

  The Santa Claus store clerk had awoken from his coma, and so had some new insights into our case. Those insights being my father. He used to visit this guy, paid for his hospital bills, and practically nursed him back to health.

  The clerk was confused, he had no idea why this old man wanted to help him so badly, but it was later that my dad confessed that the only reason he was in this position was because of his son.

  This was his way of making amends. The clerk sued the state and the police department for failing to extract justice and failing to punish the people who did this to him.

  I felt like I just couldn't escape my father. Vesuvio and I wouldn't be getting out of this that easily. But we did, again. Bob represented us, and we pulled through once more. A minor fine was the only thing incurred, and we had to pay the guys medical bills, which again, Bob paid for us.

  We eventually worked our way to pay him back, but he had been there more than our bloodline had. Where one man tried his hardest to push me into a corner and ruin me in an attempt to wash off of his guilt of raising a broken child, another man paved the way for us and offered us an opportunity. Not just one, but many opportunities.

  Bob had lost a daughter when she was 17. Kidnapped, raped, beaten to death. He told us how it made his wife slowly lose her mind, how she was pushed to taking her own life, how he'd found her soaked in her blood in their bathtub at six in the morning. What an awful way to lose your family.

  He told us he did everything he could to save them. But you can't decide who you get to save. You just have to be there, offering your help to whomever could be helped.

  Vesuvio used to tell me that we would always live close to each other because we were each other’s lucky charm. He bought a cheap Rolex for my last birthday and gave me a note that read:

  I come from that village called 'A Town full of Simpletons.'

  Where I am the biggest one of all

  So then take me to court.

  Because those eyes follow me everywhere

  I come from a place called.

  A TOWN RUN BY FOOLS

  Where I am the biggest fool of all

  Who better than a fool to lead the foolish?

  It had initially become an ironic slogan for the two of us. We would often sing it together, but slowly the lines between ironic and un-ironic blurred out, and we sang it because we believed in it. I never asked him where it was from. Wherever it came from, it was our song now.

  I guess I didn't need to know to en
joy it. How much I enjoyed getting drunk and singing with him. How we got wasted after having our licenses revoked for the year. We had no idea if we’d even get them back. But it didn’t matter because we were there for each other. The biggest fools in town.

  Chapter 6

  There were around 50 people present at the memorial. It was a touching sight. The whole community had come together to honor the memories of their lost friends.

  Family members and people who knew the Smiths were all present, as was Zerk. Zerk Smith was John's brother from Austin. A lot of people only saw him during the holiday season.

  Even though he wasn't an active member of the community, he still had a lot of respect in these parts. Mainly because of John. He was in his late thirties and looked exactly his age. A man in the prime of his life, he had a cushy job from what he told us, and from the gifts he often brought, it showed.

  The people might have only liked him because he got everyone exactly what they wanted. He was tall, brooding, and oftentimes intimidating, though you could never tell it was him if you heard his voice. He had a soft voice.

  “Tommy, glad you could make it. How are you?”

  “As well as one can be during a time like this. You hanging in?”

  “Ahh, I don’t know. I just never expected this to happen. My brother was a good man, Tommy. He never hurt anyone. He and Karen had made a beautiful home and…” he was tearing up. It was difficult for him to get through this.

  "I'm sorry, Tommy. It's just tough." He spoke as he wiped off tears from his eyes. He shook it off, trying his hardest to not let any sadness seep through.

  “I’m sorry for your loss. I can’t imagine what you must be going through.” I had grown tired of offering pointless condolences. It was a thing people did during times like these. Sorry for your loss. What a tragedy.

  How could this have happened to them? Baseless remarks, rhetorical questions. All quite pointless but yet necessary.

  “I don’t believe you can imagine. I just got here this morning. I met Bob.” I froze.