Flawed Dogs (14 page)

Reaching down, he slipped rough, callused hands below the limp form and lifted him from the pavement. He carried the wounded dog to his truck and laid him on his dirty coat, coiled on the passenger floor.

The man pulled back onto the highway and drove off into the rainy night, pointed to somewhere else far, far from heaven.

“Leggle.”

Sam heard this word and some chuckling as he finally woke fully a few days later. He winced in pain, but it wasn’t the searing pain on the street from before. He looked down at his body, which was almost completely swaddled in bandages. He looked up to see a man fiddling with the lengths of twine, holding on to something that one doesn’t normally see attached to dogs:

A ladle. Small, made of steel, for scooping gravy.

Loops of twine affixed the ladle to the stump of his long-missing leg.

“A leggle,” the man said to himself, amused. He stopped chuckling when he saw that Sam’s eyes were open. “Well, little buddy. Back to the land of the livin’, I see. I was worried. Good.” He stood up and looked down at the broken dachshund curled in the towel on his worn couch. “I gotta go to work. You just stay put, hang loose, heal up.

I’ll be back at five.” He put on a torn coat and looked around the tiny apartment, dingy but neat. He pointed to the sink. “Wouldn’t be bad if you did a few dishes.”

At the door he turned around. “Leggle!” he said, chuckling again. “I’ll bring home some food. Any requests?”

Soup,
thought Sam, looking at his new leg.
I’ll serve.
The man stared at Sam with a sad smile. “Life. She don’t much like either of us, does she?” He closed the door.

Sam lifted his leggle and waved it around a bit. Might work. He put his head back down and closed his eyes. He would think about what to do later, after his wounds and rib healed, when his strength returned. He fell asleep, smiling faintly.
I’ll serve the soup.
It was a good joke.

He hadn’t thought of anything funny for almost three years.

For the next few months, Sam’s life followed the routine of the Rough-Handed Man’s, wavering little. Each morning they would leave after a breakfast of scrambled eggs and sausage, Sam’s steel leggle clattering as they both descended the steps of the tiny apartment behind the auto repair shop. With the help of his new foot, Sam would leap into the cab of the beaten pickup truck and ride to the man’s work at a construction site. Sam put his back feet on the seat and propped his front two on the dashboard to better observe the world up ahead, being careful not to think about anything and
anyone
from the distant world behind him. Because behind him was where it was going to stay, and if he thought about it much, a darkness would descend that he might not ever escape from.

Every day, the man would park under a tree, roll down the windows, leave a bowl of water on the cab floor and give Sam a pat on the head before walking to the huge building that was under construction. At lunch, the man returned and they often ate peanut butter sandwiches together. Peanut butter, Sam decided, was not his new favorite food, as his tongue would usually get stuck to the roof of his long mouth and the Rough-Handed Man would have to pry it off with a wooden coffee stirrer. At 5 P.M. the man would return and they would go home and watch TV and often have—to Sam’s relief—french fries. At bedtime, the man would reach to pet Sam on his head, and Sam would pull away slightly for reasons neither understood but both came to accept.

And that was about it. Until one Friday.

It was dark and almost ten o’clock, and the man hadn’t returned to the truck. Sam stood up and peered over the door into the work site. A few cars remained, and there was a light inside. People were still in there doing something, but Sam couldn’t imagine what it was. Maybe a game of some sort. He could hear voices. An occasional whoop or cheer. Or groan.

Suddenly Sam saw the man running full speed out from the building, keys in hand. Several large men followed, chasing. Sam could hear the man screaming the same thing repeatedly: “I’LL PAY IT BACK! I’LL PAY IT BACK!” He dove into the cab of the truck, but one of his pursuers grabbed the door, keeping him from closing it. As the man frantically pulled, the other man tried to reach around the door to grab his neck. The Rough-Handed Man turned to Sam and screamed, “DON’T LET ’EM IN! DON’T LET ’EM IN!”

Sam had no idea what was going on, but it seemed clear enough that life would be generally better without the other men getting into the truck, so he curled his lips halfway up to his skull and let loose a display of saliva-spewing, teeth-snapping dog fury of such fierce proportions, the sight of it stopped the approaching men like a wall of skunk stink.

Even the Rough-Handed Man, still struggling with the door, couldn’t help but be shocked, and he let out a low “Wow” in admiration of the performance.

The man got the door closed and, with the help of Sam’s rabid Tasmanian devil imitation, sped the truck away with squealing tires, leaving the very angry men behind screaming unfamiliar words.

The Rough-Handed Man looked worried as he sped away and turned around to see if they were being followed. They weren’t. His pursuers receded from view, their shouts getting lost finally in the wind noise. The man looked at Sam sitting on the seat next to him, looking peaceful, and started to laugh . . . and then began singing an old sailors’ song:
“Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies . . .”

Sam thought this was hilarious and joined in, his muzzle pointed high with matching howls.

But after a while, the man looked ahead and thought very, very hard about the mess he was in. Sam had never seen such fear on a human being’s face before.

That night they ate in silence while the man paced the small rooms, deep in disturbed thought. Then he placed Sam on a chair and sat opposite him. He clasped his hands, leaned close and spoke to Sam in the way that people speak at length to dogs when they’re frightened or excited or have been alone for too long and gone slightly crazy.

“Hey, ol’ buddy. We’ve . . . You haven’t done too bad by me, have ya?”

“I have a big spoon for a foot. Could be worse,”
said Sam.

“I . . . I’m in a bit of a jam. There’s some people I owe a lot of . . . stuff. I don’t have it. But there’s a way—a small chance, really—that I could get it. You could have some-thin’ to do with it.”

“Me?”
said Sam.

“I’m askin’ a lot. Maybe everything.”

The man’s face was twisted in the worst sort of painful grimace Sam had ever seen. He reached to pat Sam’s head but then pulled his hand back, almost embarrassed.

“What I’m asking, little buddy,” he said, “is for you to forgive me.”

Sam had no idea why he said that.

By the next terrible night . . . the night where this book began, he would.

As the Rough-Handed Man carried Sam down into the dark depths of the building at the edge of the city, the sights and smells of human beings and money and cruelty couldn’t overwhelm an even larger sense that the three-legged dog was feeling:

Fear.

His own . . . and surprisingly, the man’s. It radiated up from his huge hands, cradling Sam’s bottom and chest as they moved toward the dog-fighting pit below the brilliant light. But there was something else Sam smelled besides the man’s sweat and fear:

Sam sensed and saw it on the man’s face as he gently lowered Sam into the tiny arena, now surrounded by yelling faces and waving money.
Shame.
The man’s eyes avoided Sam, and he turned to make some sort of arrangement with all the money-waving men.

Sam realized now that it was that, the money, that this was all about. And the trembling spitting screaming beast that ached to get at Sam across the pit was the obstacle for the man getting it.