Bad Dog

We could tell by the way he curled his lips that he was no good. His neck craning. His teeth exposed. He had mange and fleas and never wagged his tail. He barked at strangers and people he had seen a hundred times before. He wasn’t the kind of dog we could take for walks in the park for fear that he would attack the other animals. The well behaved ones that fetched balls and caught Frisbees. My embarrassed mother making apologies.

You need to control your animal.

Yes. Yes. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He isn’t normally like this.

Yes he was. He was always like that.

We found him on the side of the road. My dad called him a roadside special. A mixed breed. Abandoned and left for dead. He probably wouldn’t have made it much longer out there alone. It was the middle of July and hot. The vinyl seats of the car scalded the skin on the back of my exposed thighs. My shirt soaked in sweat where I had rested against the seat. That poor dog there in the sun. Stray and bastard hound. Pacing along the side of the road with his tongue out as fleas jumped about his carrion hide.

We took him home and fed him. Loved him. Gave him a name. I decided I would call him Sam. My father said a dog needed a better name than that. He said Sam wasn’t a dog’s name but I liked the way it sounded. And he looked like a Sam to me.

My father said that it would be good for me to have a dog. That it would teach me responsibility and provide companionship. My mother thought we should buy one that had papers or at least all its shots. But she knew we had no money. We would have to settle with Sam.

You can train any dog my father said. You just have to show him who is in charge. You have to be the alpha male. Sam licked the fingers on my extended hand.

We made him a bed in the house. A pile of old blankets. I filled a bowl with water and gave him some of the canned Bolo that we had gotten from the store. He ate and drank and went to sleep and I sat and watched him. He seemed peaceful.

We noticed that Sam had issues. It wasn’t long before he was chewing up all of our shoes. Humping things and pissing on the floor. Shitting everywhere. We would clean it up but we couldn’t get rid of the smell. Friends and family would come over and he would bark at them. Try to bite them. They would comment on the smell and we all felt embarrassed. Especially my mother.

My father rubbed Sam’s nose in the shit and backhanded him when he would piss on things. He would chase him through the house with his chewed up boot. Sam learned to run. He also learned to hide. He got bigger and learned to bite. He was soon banned from coming into the house.

We had moved into a two bedroom place on the other side of town when my father lost his job and started doing odd bits of construction work here and there. There wasn’t much of it. The town was small and no one had money to build new things. It had leaks in the roof and when it rained we had to put buckets and bowls everywhere. Strategically placed little reservoirs. I had to move my bed around my room to avoid the newly formed drips. I liked the sound of the rain on the tin roof. The methodical rhythm of the dripping water.

Our back yard consisted of nothing more than a concrete slab with a wooden fence around it. My father had decided that mowing the 30 square feet was too much of a chore so he stole some concrete from one of his construction jobs and covered the whole thing in cement. He mixed the concrete in an old wheelbarrow. I hated the sound the shovel made against the ground up stones and metal. It made my teeth sore. He covered the entirety of our patch of earth. The cement all uneven. Changing shades of grey as it dried. I wrote my name in it with a stick and made an impression of my hand. Fingers spread wide. The year inscribed next to my name so that people in the future would know I was there.

My father opened a beer and admired his half-assed job. He said it would be more cost effective. We could sell the lawn mower and never have to buy gas for it again. He said I was too weak to push the mower anyway. That I would end up chopping off my foot. He could spend more of his time drinking beer and working on that rusted piece of broken-down shit in front of the house instead of cutting grass. That would shut the neighbors up. Make them stop leaving rude post-it notes and letters on our door. They just needed to see he was making an effort to restore it. To fix all its holes and broken glass and get the pistons to fire.

Whenever it would rain the back yard would fill up like a bath and I would make boats out of Styrofoam egg crates and float them in the slowly draining sea. We had to put Sam’s dog house up on bricks so he didn’t have to live in the water like some amphibious mutt. He seemed like someone trapped on a deserted island. A castaway there in his makeshift hovel. My egg crate boat was the rescue party that had been sent out in search for him. Lost at sea. No hope for survival. Alone in that shitty house with a leaky roof.

About a year later my father got a better job which meant we had more money and my mother seemed to be more satisfied with him. Money works like a salve. You put it on your wounds and your fingers and fill in the holes of your ears. Cover your eyes with it. It works for a while.

More money meant that we had to raise our standards. We moved into a better house outside of town. A place with a little land and some trees and a big yard with lots of grass and a clothesline. There was a garage where dad could put that old car. He would be able to really get some work done on it with the proper tools. The neighbors had a pond that we could fish in and they had children. Two boys and a girl. One of the boys was even in my class at school. His name was Thomas but everyone called him Tommy.

My father thought that all of this would be good for me. That I was becoming withdrawn and I needed to do things outside and play with the other kids. I didn’t like other kids. I don’t think they thought much of me either.

More money also meant that my father could spend more time away from home. He felt that providing material things meant that he could take more liberties. He could drink at the local bar and fight with people that were his friends. They could see each other the next day and discuss what an asshole the other was and how they both would have won the fight but they didn’t think it was right to really fuck the other up too bad considering how long they had been friends all that. They would open a couple of beers to celebrate the fresh water running under the bridge.

By this time we had neutered Sam. The vet and everyone else said it would calm him down. Make him less destructive and keep him from pissing everywhere. That he would stop with the humping. That he would be more manageable in general.

It didn’t change a thing. The only thing it stopped him from doing was licking his balls. Instead he would lay there looking at the empty sack and wonder what had happened as fleas crawled around the hairless patch that surrounded his hollow scrotum. He continued to be destructive and angry. He still tried to bite you. It was as though he had become resentful.

My parents decided to chain him up to a couple of cinder blocks under a tree. My dad was afraid to let him run loose because the neighbors had a couple of cows and one had just had a calf. He said that once an animal got a taste for blood he would never be the same. That if he killed something it would open up those primordial instincts and he would kill again and again.

The neighbors did the neighborly thing and came to introduce themselves. They already knew who my father was. Everyone in town did. My father carried his small town notoriety with pride. His very own badge of honor. He wasn’t smart enough to know the difference between being known and being liked. But in small towns, neighbors are neighborly and they accepted an invitation to come over sometime and have a barbeque and some beers and get to know one another. They said that it would be fun for the kids to get together. After all, Tommy and I were in the same class. They all seemed pretty set on the idea that children should be in a constant state of communal activity with one another.

My mother was nervous. There was a lot to do before the guests arrived. She prepared potato salad and coleslaw as my dad drank beer and started the fire. She had been through such things before. She could see how all of this was going to turn out. He would start drinking early. Thinking that it made him more sociable. More relaxed. Funnier. He would express his opinions on anything and everything regardless of whether or not he had been asked to. Regardless of not having any prior knowledge on the subject. The important thing was to always have an opinion and to express it without any concern for the opinion of others. The offense it might cause was of no concern to him.

She could hear his bar stool philosophies running through her head as she mixed the dressing into the cabbage and carrots. A man must have opinions. He must have ideas. She cringed as she sprinkled paprika onto the deviled eggs.

As our guests arrived my mother brought out chips and sodas and whispered to my father that maybe he should have something to eat. Pace himself. Make a good impression on their new friends. He ignored her and slapped her on the ass. Her face flush with embarrassment.

Whenever people get together in large groups they inevitably find a way to separate into smaller groups. The women were by the table talking about things that are important to women. The men stood around a fire and talked about the things they wanted to be important. Mostly themselves. The children were sent away to play in the grass or get dirty or throw balls around. Any game would do as long as they stayed over there somewhere. Tommy and I were given a baseball and some mitts and told to play catch.

The two other kids, Greg and Cyndi were older. They lurked around the periphery of the barbeque conversations. Giggling at the crude bits. Sam stayed chained under the tree. His head on the barren ground where the grass had been worn away by his pacing. Dirt was caked around his mouth and had turned almost muddy.

I was never good at throwing things or catching them. It didn’t seem to serve any real purpose. If I throw something away why would I want you to pick it up and throw it back to me? I made my best attempt to seem interested. For my mother’s sake. It must have been a tedious exercise for Tommy who continued to throw the ball harder and harder. I stuck my glove out more for defensive purposes than to try and actually catch it. I closed my eyes and turned my back slightly as the ball struck me in the ribs. It hurt and I could feel tears beginning to well up.

As I bent over to collect the ball I caught my father watching. He shook his head and turned away. Tongs in one hand. Beer in the other. A chest full of the shame I had dealt him. He flipped the burgers and hot dogs as I imagined him changing the topic of conversation to me and how disappointing and frail I was. How I took after my mother. How I needed to toughen up if I was going to make it in this world.

I held the ball in my hand and looked at Tommy. A smug grin on his face. I wanted to smash him into pieces. I wanted to throw the ball at him so hard that it went right through his chest. I put all my energy and anger into my arm and hurled the ball toward him anticipating its blow. Hoping to see Tommy doubled over. Bleeding and crying as his mother came to his side. But it didn’t happen.

The ball flew wildly through the air. It struck the tree where Sam was chained beneath. Anchored to his cinder blocks. The ball made a dull thud and fell to the barren space by Sam’s feet.

I could have said something to Tommy. I could have stopped him. I could have shouted out. Told him that Sam liked to bite things. People. That he considered everything prey and that he was a bad dog. I could have told him about that instinct. The one my father mentioned that lived there inside an animal in some place just near their heart. The one that wants to eat things and fuck things and tear them into pieces when it’s done. The dog didn’t need to kill something before he knew what was inside himself. It was always there. Lingering just below that carrion hide. But I didn’t like Tommy.

His screams brought the men running. The women covered their mouths with both hands. Almost prayer-like. Greg and Cyndi looked confused by the commotion. Tommy was pulled away by his wrist. His face covered in blood and tears.

My father beat on Sam with the tongs and his fists and all his rage. He kicked him in the ribs over and over. Sam, stuck there on the end of his chain as he dragged the cinder blocks behind him. No longer the anchor they were intended to be. His teeth were exposed and growls came from deep inside his guts that drowned out Tommy’s cries and his mother’s cries and the cursing of his father. My own father could not hear the insults that were directed at him. How he was a drunk and a loser and a bastard who was going to burn in hell. How he needed to kill that dog. My mother stood motionless in tears. I did nothing.

The shotgun wasn’t much shorter than me when you rested it upright on its butt. I remember the pain in my shoulder and ringing in my ears when he tried to teach me to shoot. I was a skinny kid without much meat on my bones and though I tried to hold the gun firm against my shoulder, the kick left a large bruise there for weeks. I cried and he never tried to teach me again.

I must have had tears running down my face because he told me to stop crying.

He won’t feel a thing. Not that he doesn’t deserve to feel it after what he did.

He loaded the shells into the chamber and raised the gun against his shoulder. He said that dogs don’t know what guns are. What they are capable of. That Sam didn’t know what was going on and that he was just a dumb animal. Sam curled back his lips and arched his back as he was told to sit still. I looked at my father standing there with his finger on the trigger, Sam at the other end of the barrel, and wondered what things my father had killed before that made this so easy for him.

The sound still filled my ears when he put the shovel in my hand. He pointed to a place on the edge of the property. I spent the rest of the day digging a grave too shallow to bury him properly. But the ground was hard and I had never dug a grave before. He seemed heavy as I dragged him across the yard by his feet. A trail of blood smeared across the lawn. Ants and other things began to feed on it. Feed on him as well. I pushed him into the ground and covered him with the loose, dry dirt. I gathered a bunch of stones and piled them on top .

I sat there. My father was on the porch drinking a fresh beer. The gun was there propped against the wall. My mother hidden away inside the house. Trying to clean up all the mess that was left.

I looked at the chain under the tree. Its end empty as it lay on the ground. I saw that chain around my mother’s hands and feet. The links locked around the cinder blocks. I heard them dragging across the linoleum floor as she cleaned the dishes. The chains rattling against the counter top.

I saw the chains around my father’s neck, snaking down across the porch. He towed them behind himself everywhere he went. They scratched the pavement as he crossed the street. Got caught and tangled in every fence he tried to cross. Pulled his head under the water while he swam through a river with no shores.

I knew then what he knew. About that instinct. That blade hidden in every hand. The cold wind that blows just under your breath and wraps itself around every word you speak. Even the pretty ones. That unheard voice that says, I will bury you if I have to.