Stories (2011) (47 page)

At the same moment he heard a sound, like something being
dragged across the gravel drive. He sat motionless a moment, not batting an
eye. It couldn't be lover boy, he thought. No way.

He walked across the room, pulled the curtain back from the
huge glass door, unlocked it and slid it open.

A cool wind had come along and it was shaking the trees in
the yard, but nothing else was moving. Morley searched the tree shadows for
some tell-tale sign, but saw nothing.

Still, he was not one for imagination. He had heard
something. He went back to the desk chair where his coat hung, reached the
revolver from his pocket, turned.

And there was Dennis. Shirtless, one pants leg mostly ripped
away. There were blood-stained bandages on his thigh and ankle. He had the
chain partially coiled around one arm and Chum, quite dead, was lying on the
floor beside him. In his right hand Dennis held a chair leg, and at the same
moment Morley noted this and raised the revolver, Dennis threw it.

The leg hit Morley squarely between the eyes, knocked him
against his desk and as he tried to right himself, Dennis took hold of the
chain and used it to swing the dead dog. Chum struck Morley on the ankles and
took him down like a scythe cutting fresh wheat. Morley's head slammed into the
edge of the desk and blood dribbled into his eyes; everything seemed to be in a
mix-master, whirling so fast nothing was identifiable.

When the world came to rest, he saw Dennis standing over him
with the revolver. Morley could not believe the man's appearance. His lips were
split in a thin grin that barely showed his teeth. His face was drawn and his
eyes were strange and savage. It was apparent he had found the key in the coat,
because the collar was gone.

Out in the hall, bouncing against the door, Morley could
hear Julie's dogs. They sensed the intruder and wanted at him. He wished now he
had left the study door open, or put them out on the yard.

"I've got money," Morley said.

"Fuck your money," Dennis screamed. "I'm not
selling anything here. Get up and get over here."

Morley followed the wave of the revolver to the front of his
desk. Dennis swept the chess set and stuff aside with a swipe of his arm and
bent Morley backwards over the desk. He put one of the collars around Morley's
neck, pulled the chain around the desk a few times, pushed it under and
fastened the other collar over Morley's ankles.

Tucking the revolver into the waistband of his pants, Dennis
picked up Chum and tenderly placed him on the desk chair, half-curled. He tried
to poke the dog's tongue back into his mouth, but that didn't work. He patted
Chum on the head, said, "There, now."

Dennis went around and stood in front of Morley and looked
at him, as if memorizing the moment.

At his back the Dobermans rattled the door.

"We can make a deal," Morley said. "I can
give you a lot of money, and you can go away. We'll call it even."

Dennis unfastened Morley's pants, pulled them down to his
knees. He pulled the underwear down. He went around and got the spray can out
of Morley's coat and came back.

"This isn't sporting, Dennis. At least I gave you a
fighting chance."

"I'm not a sport," Dennis said.

He sprayed Morley's testicles with the chemical. When he
finished he tossed the canister aside, walked over to the door and listened to
the Dobermans scuttling on the other side.

"Dennis!"

Dennis took hold of the doorknob.

"Screw you then," Morley said. "I'm not
afraid. I won't scream. I won't give you the pleasure."

"You didn't even love her," Dennis said, and
opened the door.

The Dobermans went straight for the stench of the spray,
straight for Morley's testicles.

Dennis walked calmly out the back way, closed the glass door.
And as he limped down the drive, making for the gate, he began to laugh.

Morley had lied. He did too scream. In fact, he was still
screaming.

If they’d gone to the drive-in like they had planned, none
of this would have happened. But Leonard didn't like drive-ins when he didn't
have a date, and he'd heard about
Night Of The Living Dead
, and he knew
a nigger starred in it. He didn't want to see no movie with a nigger star.
Niggers chopped cotton, fixed flats, and pimped nigger girls, but he'd never
heard of one that killed zombies. And he'd heard too that there was a white
girl in the movie that let the nigger touch her, and that peeved him. Any white
gal that would let a nigger touch her must be the lowest trash in the world.
Probably from Hollywood, New York, or Waco, some godforsaken place like that.

Now Steve McQueen would have been all right for zombie
killing and girl handling. He would have been the ticket. But a nigger? No sir.

Boy, that Steve McQueen was one cool head. Way he said stuff
in them pictures was so good you couldn't help but think someone had written it
down for him. He could sure think fast on his feet to come up with the things
he said, and he had that real cool, mean look.

Leonard wished he could be Steve McQueen, or Paul Newman
even. Someone like that always knew what to say, and he figured they got plenty
of bush too. Certainly they didn't get as bored as he did. He was so bored he
felt as if he were going to die from it before the night was out. Bored, bored,
bored. Just wasn't nothing exciting about being in the Dairy Queen parking lot,
leaning on the front of his '64 Impala looking out at the highway. He figured
maybe old crazy Harry who janitored at the high school might be right about them
flying saucers. Harry was always seeing something. Bigfoot, six-legged weasels,
all manner of things. But maybe he was right about the saucers. He'd said he'd
seen one a couple nights back hovering over Mud Creek and it was shooting down
these rays that looked like wet peppermint sticks. Leonard figured if Harry
really had seen the saucers and the rays, then those rays were boredom rays. It
would be a way for space critters to get at Earth folks, boring them to death.
Getting melted down by heat rays would have been better. That was at least
quick, but being bored to death was sort of like being nibbled to death by
ducks.

Leonard continued looking at the highway, trying to imagine
flying saucers and boredom rays, but he couldn't keep his mind on it. He finally
focused on something in the highway. A dead dog.

Not just a dead dog. But a DEAD DOG. The mutt had been hit
by a semi at least, maybe several. It looked as if it had rained dog. There
were pieces of that pooch all over the concrete and one leg was lying on the
curbing on the opposite side, stuck up in such a way that it seemed to be
waving hello. Doctor Frankenstein with a grant from Johns Hopkins and
assistance from NASA couldn't have put that sucker together again.

Leonard leaned over to his faithful, drunk companion, Billy
-- known among the gang as Farto, because he was fart-lighting champion of Mud
Creek -- and said, "See that dog there?"

Farto looked where Leonard was pointing. He hadn't noticed
the dog before, and he wasn't nearly as casual about it as Leonard. The
puzzle-piece hound brought back memories. It reminded him of a dog he'd had
when he was thirteen. A big, fine German shepherd that loved him better than
his Mama.

Sonofabitch dog tangled its chain through and over a barbed
wire fence somehow and hung itself. When Farto found the dog its tongue looked
like a stuffed, black sock and he could see where its claws had just been able
to scrape the ground, but not quite enough to get a toe hold. It looked as if
the dog had been scratching out some sort of coded message in the dirt. When
Farto told his old man about it later, crying as he did, his old man laughed
and said, "Probably a goddamn suicide note."

Now, as he looked out at the highway, and his whiskey-laced
Coke collected warmly in his gut, he felt a tear form in his eyes. Last time
he'd felt that sappy was when he'd won the fart-lighting championship with a
four-inch burner that singed the hairs of his ass, and the gang awarded him
with a pair of colored boxing shorts. Brown and yellow ones so he could wear
them without having to change them too often.

So there they were, Leonard and Farto, parked outside the
DQ, leaning on the hood of Leonard's Impala, sipping Coke and whiskey, feeling
bored and blue and horny, looking at a dead dog and having nothing to do but go
to a show with a nigger starring in it. Which, to be up front, wouldn't have
been so bad if they'd had dates. Dates could make up for a lot of sins, or help
make a few good ones, depending on one's outlook.

But the night was criminal. Dates they didn't have. Worse
yet, wasn't a girl in the entire high school would date them. Not even Marylou
Flowers, and she had some kind of disease.

All this nagged Leonard something awful. He could see what
the problem was with Farto. He was ugly. Had the kind of face that attracted
flies. And though being fart-lighting champion of Mud Creek had a certain
prestige among the gang, it lacked a certain something when it came to charming
the gals.

But for the life of him, Leonard couldn't figure his own
problem. He was handsome, had some good clothes, and his car ran good when he
didn't buy that old cheap gas. He even had a few bucks in his jeans from
breaking into washaterias. Yet his right arm had damn near grown to the size of
his thigh from all the whacking off he did. Last time he'd been out with a girl
had been a month ago, and as he'd been out with her along with nine other guys,
he wasn't rightly sure he could call that a date. He wondered about it so much,
he'd asked Farto if he thought it qualified as a date. Farto, who had been
fifth in line, said he didn't think so, but if Leonard wanted to call it one,
wasn't no skin off his dick.

But Leonard didn't want to call it a date. It just didn't
have the feel of one, lacked that something special. There was no romance to
it.

True, Big Red had called him Honey when he put the mule in
the barn, but she called everyone Honey -- except Stoney. Stoney was Possum
sweets, and he was the one who talked her into wearing the grocery bag with the
mouth and eye holes. Stoney was like that. He could sweet talk the camel out
from under a sand nigger. When he got through chatting Big Red down, she was
plumb proud to wear that bag.

When finally it came his turn to do Big Red, Leonard had let
her take the bag off as a gesture of good will. That was a mistake. He just
hadn't known a good thing when he had it. Stoney had had the right idea. The
bag coming off spoiled everything. With it on, it was sort of like balling the
Lone Hippo or some such thing, but with the bag off, you were absolutely
certain what you were getting, and it wasn't pretty.

Even closing his eyes hadn't helped. He found that the
ugliness of that face had branded itself on the back of his eyeballs. He
couldn't even imagine the sack back over her head. All he could think about was
that puffy, too-painted face with the sort of bad complexion that began at the
bone.

He'd gotten so disappointed, he'd had to fake an orgasm and
get off before his hooter shriveled up and his Trojan fell off and was lost in
the vacuum.

Thinking back on it, Leonard sighed. It would certainly be
nice for a change to go with a girl that didn't pull the train or had a hole
between her legs that looked like a manhole cover ought to be on it. Sometimes
he wished he could be like Farto, who was as happy as if he had good sense.
Anything thrilled him. Give him a can of Wolf Brand Chili, a big moon pie, Coke
and whiskey and he could spend the rest of his life fucking Big Red and
lighting the gas out of his asshole.

God, but this was no way to live. No women and no fun.
Bored, bored, bored. Leonard found himself looking overhead for space ships and
peppermint-colored boredom rays, but he saw only a few moths fluttering
drunkenly through the beams of the DQ's lights.

Lowering his eyes back to the highway and the dog, Leonard
had a sudden flash. "Why don't we get the chain out of the back and hook
it up to Rex there? Take him for a ride."

"You mean drag his dead ass around?" Farto asked.

Leonard nodded.

"Beats stepping on a tack," Farto said.

They drove the Impala into the middle of the highway at a
safe moment and got out for a look. Up close the mutt was a lot worse. Its
innards had been mashed out of its mouth and asshole and it stunk something
awful. The dog was wearing a thick, metal-studded collar and they fastened one
end of their fifteen foot chain to that and the other to the rear bumper.

Bob, the Dairy Queen manager, noticed them through the
window, came outside and yelled, "What are you fucking morons doing?"

"Taking this doggie to the vet," Leonard said.
"We think this sumbitch looks a might peaked. He may have been hit by a
car."

"That's so fucking funny I'm about to piss
myself," Bob said.

"Old folks have that problem," Leonard said.

Leonard got behind the wheel and Farto climbed in on the
passenger side. They manuvered the car and dog around and out of the path of a
tractor-trailer truck just in time. As they drove off, Bob screamed after them,
"I hope you two no-dicks wrap that Chevy piece of shit around a goddamn
pole."

As they roared along, parts of the dog, like crumbs from a
flaky loaf of bread, came off. A tooth here. Some hair there. A string of guts.
A dew claw. And some unidentifiable pink stuff. The metal-studded collar and
chain threw up sparks now and then like fiery crickets. Finally they hit
seventy-five and the dog was swinging wider and wider on the chain, like it was
looking for an opportunity to pass.

Farto poured him and Leonard Cokes and whiskey as they drove
along. He handed Leonard his paper cup and Leonard knocked it back, a lot
happier now than he had been a moment ago. Maybe this night wasn't going to
turn out so bad after all.