Stories (2011) (73 page)

See, that's part of the problem. Suddenly I couldn't stand
the way I'd been living. Just came over me, you know? One day I was fine and
happy as a tick in an armpit, and the next day things were no longer
hokay-by-me. I wanted a change of lifestyle.

It was all so goofy . . . the way I was feeling in the head,
I thought maybe I'd got some medical problems, you know? So first thing I
thought of was to go see the doc. Figured I ought to do that before I made any
drastic changes—changes like getting the old lady out of my life, finding a new
place to live, that soft of thing. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't having a
spell of some sort, one of them metabolistic shake-ups.

So the doc was the ticket. I mean, he'd always been nice to
me. A few pills and needles, but that's to be expected, right?

Next problem was getting out of the house without making a
scene. Old gal treated me like some sort of prisoner, and that didn't make it
easy.

The window over the sink was open, though, and that's how I
plotted my escape. It was hard for me to get my body up and through the
opening, but I managed. Made the six-foot drop without so much as a sprained
ankle.

I got my thoughts together, charted out the doc's office,
and set out. On the way, I noticed something weird: not only was I having this
change in attitude, I seemed to be having some physical problems, too. I could
feel stuff shifting around inside me, the way you feel the wind when it
changes.

When I finally reached the doc's, man, was I bushed. Caught
this lady coming out with a white cat under her arm, and she looked at me like
I was the strange one. I mean, here she was with a cat under her arm, things
hanging off her ears and wrists and wearing as much war paint as an Indian in a
TV western, and she looks at me like I'm wearing a propeller beanie or
something.

I slid in before she closed the door, and I looked around.
People were sitting all over the place, and they had their pets with them.
Dogs, cats, even a pet monkey.

I suddenly felt mighty sick, but I figured the best thing to
do was to hang tough and not think about my problem. I decided to get a
magazine down from the rack, but I couldn't get one down. Couldn't seem to hold
onto it.

People were staring.

So were their pets.

I decided the heck with this and went right over to the
receptionist. Standing on my hind legs, I leaned against the desk and said,
"Listen, sweetheart, I've got to see the doc, and pronto."

"Oh, my God!" she screamed. "A talking
Siberian husky!" Then she bounced her appointment book off one of my
pointy ears.

Was this any way to run a veterinarian's office?

Man, did that place clear out fast. Nothing but a few
hairs—dog, cat, and blue-rinse—floating to the floor.

The doc obviously wasn't the ticket. I cleared out of there
myself and ran three blocks on my hind legs before I realized it. I felt good,
too. Problem was, it tended to stop traffic.

I got down on all fours again, and though it hurt my back, I
walked like that until I got to the park. As soon as I reached it, I stood up
on my hind legs and stretched my back. I tell you, that felt some better.

There was a bum sitting on a park bench tipping a bottle,
and when he lamped me coming toward him, he jumped up, screamed, and ran away,
smashing his bottle on a tree as he went.

Sighing, I took his place on the bench, crossed my legs, and
noticed that a fleshy pink knee was poking up through a rip in my fur. Man,
what next?

There was a newspaper lying beside me, and having nothing
better to do, I picked it up.

Didn't have a lick of trouble holding it. My toes had
lengthened now, and my dewclaw could fold and grasp. The hair on the back of my
paws had begun to fall off.

The paper was the morning edition. The first article that
caught my eye was about this guy over on Winchester—and why not? That was right
next door to where I'd been living with the old hag. It was the fellow who'd
tossed out the hamburger.

Seems he went weird. Woke up in the middle of the night and
started baying at the moon through his bedroom window. Later on he got to
scratching behind his ears with his feet, even though he was still wearing
slippers. Next he got out of the house somehow and started chasing cars. Lady
finally had to beat him with a newspaper to make him stop—at which point he
raised his legs and peed on her, then chased the neighbor's cat up a tree.

That's when the old lady called the nut-box people.

By the time they got there the guy'd gotten a case of hairy
knees, a wet nose, and a taste for the family dog's Gravy Train. In fact, the
man and the dog got into a fight over it, and the man bit the rat terrier's ear
off.

Yeeecccchhh—fighting over Gravy Train! They can have the
stuff. Give me steak and 'taters.

Lady said she didn't know what had gone wrong. Said he'd
gone to bed with a stomachache and feeling a bit under the weather. And why
not? He'd got hold of a week-old hamburger from McWhipple's that she'd set on
top of the refrigerator and forgotten about. Seems this guy was a real
chowhound and went for it. Ate a couple of big bites before his taste buds had
time to work and he realized he was chomping sewer fodder.

Ouch and flea bites! That must have been the same green meat
I got a bite of.

I tossed the paper aside and patted my chest for a
cigarette. No pockets, of course.

Just then, my tail fell off. It went through the slats in
the park bench and landed on the ground. I looked down and saw it turn to dust,
hair and all, till a little wind came along and whipped it away.

Man, some days the things that happen to you shouldn't
happen to a dog.

The evening sun had rolled down and blown out in a bloody
wad, and the white, full moon had rolled up like an enormous ball of tightly
wrapped twine.

As he rode, the Reverend Jebidiah Rains watched it glow
above the tall pines. All about it stars were sprinkled white-hot in the
dead-black heavens.

The trail he rode on was a thin one, and the trees on either
side of it crept toward the path as if they might block the way, and close up
behind him. The weary horse on which he was riding moved forward with its head
down, and Jebidiah, too weak to fight it, let his mount droop and take its
lead. Jebidiah was too tired to know much at that moment, but he knew one
thing: he was a man of the Lord and he hated God, hated the sonofabitch with
all his heart.

And he knew God knew and didn't care, because He knew
Jebidiah was His messenger. Not one of the New Testament, but one of the Old
Testament, harsh and mean and certain, vengeful and without compromise; a man
who would have shot a leg out from under Moses and spat in the face of the Holy
Ghost and scalped him, tossing his celestial hair to the wild four winds.

It was not a legacy Jebidiah would have preferred, being the
bad-man messenger of God, but it was his, and he had earned it through sin, and
no matter how hard he tried to lay it down and leave it be, he could not. He
knew that to give in and abandon his God-given curse was to burn in hell
forever, and to continue was to do as the Lord prescribed, no matter what his
feelings toward his mean master might be. His Lord was not a forgiving Lord,
nor was he one who cared for your love. All he cared for was obedience,
servitude and humiliation. It was why God had invented the human race.

Amusement.

As he thought on these matters, the trail turned and
widened, and off to one side, amongst tree stumps, was a fairly large clearing,
and in its center was a small log house, and out to the side a somewhat larger
log barn. In the curtained window of the cabin was a light that burned orange
behind the flour-sack curtains. Jebidiah, feeling tired and hungry and thirsty
and weary of soul, made for it.

Stopping a short distance from the cabin, Jebidiah leaned
forward on his horse and called out, "Hello, the cabin."

He waited for a time, called again, and was halfway through
calling when the door opened, and a man about five-foot-two with a large droopy
hat, holding a rifle, stuck himself part of the way out of the cabin, said,
"Who is it calling?

You got a voice like a bullfrog."

"Reverend Jebidiah Rains."

"You ain't come to preach none, have you?"

"No, sir. I find it does no good. I'm here to beg for a
place in your barn, a night under its roof. Something for my horse, something
for myself if it's available. Most anything, as long as water is
involved."

"Well," said the man, "this seems to be the
gathering place tonight. Done got two others, and we just sat asses down to
eat. I got enough you want it, some hot beans and some old bread."

"I would be most obliged, sir," Jebidiah said.

"Oblige all you want. In the meantime, climb down from
that nag, put it in the barn, and come in and chow. They call me Old Timer, but
I ain't that old. It's cause most of my teeth are gone and I'm crippled in a
foot a horse stepped on.

There's a lantern just inside the barn door. Light that up,
and put it out when you finish, come on back to the house."

–•–

When Jebidiah finished grooming and feeding his horse with
grain in the barn, watering him, he came into the cabin, made a show of pushing
his long black coat back so that it revealed his ivory-handled .44
cartridge-converted revolvers. They were set so that they leaned forward in
their holsters, strapped close to the hips, not draped low like punks wore
them. Jebidiah liked to wear them close to the natural swing of his hands. When
he pulled them it was a movement quick as the flick of a hummingbird's wings,
the hammers clicking from the cock of his thumb, the guns barking, spewing lead
with amazing accuracy. He had practiced enough to drive a cork into a bottle at
about a hundred paces, and he could do it in bad light. He chose to reveal his
guns that way to show he was ready for any attempted ambush. He reached up and
pushed his wide-brimmed black hat back on his head, showing black hair gone
gray-tipped. He thought having his hat tipped made him look casual. It did not.
His eyes always seemed aflame in an angry face.

Inside, the cabin was bright with kerosene lamplight, and
the kerosene smelled, and there were curls of black smoke twisting about,
mixing with gray smoke from the pipe of Old Timer, and the cigarette of a young
man with a badge pinned to his shirt. Beside him, sitting on a chopping log by
the fireplace—which was too hot for the time of year, but was being used to
heat up a pot of beans—was a middle-aged man with a slight paunch and a face
that looked like it attracted thrown objects. He had his hat pushed up a bit,
and a shock of wheat-colored, sweaty hair hung on his forehead. There was a
cigarette in is mouth, half of it ash. He twisted on the chopping log, and
Jebidiah saw that his hands were manacled together.

"I heard you say you was a preacher," said the
manacled man, as he tossed the last of his smoke into the fireplace. "This
here sure ain't God's country."

"Worse thing is," said Jebidiah, "it's
exactly God's country."

The manacled man gave out with a snort, and grinned.

"Preacher," said the younger man, "my name is
Jim Taylor. I'm a deputy for Sheriff Spradley, out of Nacogdoches. I'm taking
this man there for a trial, and most likely a hanging. He killed a fella for a
rifle and a horse. I see you tote guns, old-style guns, but good ones. Way you
tote them, I'm suspecting you know how to use them."

"I've been known to hit what I aim at," Jebidiah
said, and sat in a rickety chair at an equally rickety table. Old Timer put
some tin plates on the table, scratched his ass with a long wooden spoon, then
grabbed a rag and used it as a potholder, lifted the hot bean pot to the table.
He popped the lid of the pot, used the ass-scratching spoon to scoop a heap of
beans onto plates. He brought over some wooden cups and poured them full from a
pitcher of water.

"Thing is," the deputy said, "I could use
some help. I don't know I can get back safe with this fella, havin' not slept
good in a day or two. Was wondering, you and Old Timer here could watch my back
till morning? Wouldn't even mind if you rode along with me tomorrow, as sort of
a backup. I could use a gun hand.

Sheriff might even give you a dollar for it."

Old Timer, as if this conversation had not been going on,
brought over a bowl with some moldy biscuits in it, placed them on the table.
"Made them a week ago. They've gotten a bit ripe, but you can scratch
around the mold. I'll warn you, though, they're tough enough you could toss one
hard and kill a chicken on the run. So mind your teeth."

"That how you lost yours, Old Timer?" the manacled
man said.

"Probably part of them," Old Timer said.

"What you say, preacher?" the deputy said.
"You let me get some sleep?"

"My problem lies in the fact that I need sleep,"
Jebidiah said. "I've been busy, and I'm what could be referred to as
tuckered."

"Guess I'm the only one that feels spry," said the
manacled man.

"No," said, Old Timer. "I feel right fresh
myself."

"Then it's you and me, Old Timer," the manacled
man said, and grinned, as if this meant something.

"You give me cause, fella, I'll blow a hole in you and
tell God you got in a nest of termites."

The manacled man gave his snort of a laugh again. He seemed
to be having a good old time.

"Me and Old Timer can work shifts," Jebidiah said.
"That okay with you, Old Timer?"

"Peachy," Old Timer said, and took another plate
from the table and filled it with beans. He gave this one to the manacled man,
who said, lifting his bound hands to take it, "What do I eat it
with?"