Dog Bite - Page 8

We grabbed KFC for the girls on the way home. Nephew Billy at his mom’s house. Stevie went on and on about this probation officer he met on Tinder. He drove with a knee down the 12 South while trying to swipe through her profile. My mind was elsewhere. The sun went down a while ago. I needed a shower. My skin smelled like the jail. A smell that didn’t really ever come out. I took the bait and gawked at some of the probation officer’s photos when I saw it.

The dog.

It had to be the dog. A mangy, big angry-looking thing whose eyes lit up green in the truck’s headlights. We were a few houses down from mine. Just past Vegas’ place. Almost to Bella’s bus stop.

“Stop here,” I said, and set the plastic bags of KFC onto the floor behind my seat.

Stevie gunned it faster. Reflexively. Maybe he was trying to protect me from my darker self. I whacked his arm. “Stevie, stop the fucking truck.”

Stevie pulled over, bouncing along the cracked shoulder and weeds. He threw on his flashers. It was getting pretty dark out there. Stevie told me not to get out of the truck, like he already knew what I was thinking. I didn’t care. When I stepped out of the cab, the wind picked up. The stars turning on for the night. Mount Blanca in the early evening was just another blob of space devoid of anything. But it was there. Somewhere.

Just like that dog. The Vegas’ dog.

“Gordon, get back in the truck,” Stevie whined, leaning toward the open passenger door. “Come on. No. Get back.”

I ignored him and made my way through knee-high weeds and prickers just off the highway. Nobody coming or going. Stevie got out of the truck and joined me there by the Vegas’ ranch fencing. Yellow lights flashing. He was trying to get me to go home. I put an index finger to my lips.

“Did you hear that?” I asked. Something growled out by the Vegas’ center pivot. Or so I thought.

Bella’s bus stop up at the next intersection.

“Come on,” I said and pushed through the rough weeds, removed my Carhart jacket and laid it over the barbed wire’s top line, pushing it down so that Stevie could climb over. An offering. He shook his head no.

“It’s out there,” I said. “Come on.”

Stevie looked to the idling truck, then back to me.

“I’m getting that dog whether you come or not,” I said.

“Fine, but you need something if it comes after you,” he said, and Stevie opened the tailgate. Illuminated by red brake lights and punctuated by the yellow flashers, Stevie pulled his kid’s thirty-two-inch aluminum bat. With the bat in his hand, Stevie finally looked to be enjoying himself and handed it to me as if he were a squire bestowing Excalibur. I laughed. Our Camelot the 12 South. Bella, our disgraced princess. And that dog. That fucking dog. It barked. Stevie noticed it too. I used the bat to lower the barbed wire to waist level. He stepped over, and I joined him.

The Vegas’ place was down a little ways from us. Its only light cast from the kitchen. The rest of the house was dark and silent. We walked through the ruts made by the center pivot’s oversized rubber tires. Stevie fell in behind me. Bat in my hand. The wind bit cold. And my ears ached out there. It barked louder as we made our way into the dark. Now, we were getting somewhere.

When we reached the hanging sprinklers swaying softly in the night, I noticed Orion hung high above the horizon, hunting the dog star. Stevie asked if I heard anything. I shook my head no. I blinked, and the dog in the sky disappeared. A trick of the mind.

Flexing my grip around the bat’s handle, I spun 360, searching the field for this dog. What I would do if I found it, I wasn’t sure.

Then, a noise. Paws through dirt? Panting. Something coming this way?

I wasn’t sure.

I flipped around. Quick.

I called out, “Come on, you mutt. You out there?”

We stood in the cold and waited. But I heard only wind.

Stevie spun back toward the Vegas’ house, his hands flayed off his sides. He was unarmed.  Stevie stood in a stoop, fists like hammers, as if that might help. Like this dog wouldn’t rip him to pieces.

That sound again.

It came at us fast.

I cocked the bat.

Stevie spooked. Making a noise I’d only heard in scary movies.

I reared the bat back and swung blind at the night, catching wind.

It sounded like a bear. Slobbering and grunting its way towards us. A dark flash in the night. Green eyes. I swung again. This time more like chopping an axe, catching dirt. The dog was huge. Teeth. Eyes. Fur. Head down in a full sprint at Stevie. I yelled “No” as loud as I could and lifted the bat from the earth. I swung hard and lunged forward, catching my boots in the pivot rut and fell forward, face to rock and sand and cut alfalfa. Stevie must have leapt to the hanging sprinkler head and lifted his feet off the ground. Because when I turned to see, he was up there swinging back and forth like a kid on a rope swing, settling to stillness.

The dog came skittering and chugging my way. I covered my head. It dove across the rut and kept going on and into the night in the direction of Vegas’ kitchen.

Stevie lowered himself down, swearing. Muttering my name in vain. I used the bat to get back upright. And I tried to clean my face.

Stevie said, “You swing like a girl.”

We walked back to the truck.