Stories (2011) (31 page)

Dog did not like baby.  For that matter, Dog did not like
Cat. But Cat had claws -- sharp claws.

Dog had always gotten attention. Pat on head. "Here,
boy, here's a treat. Nice dog. Good dog. Shake hands. Speak! Sit. Nice
dog."

Now there was Baby.

Cat had not been problem, really.

Cat was liked, not loved by family. They petted Cat
sometimes. Fed her. Did not mistreat her. But they not love her. Not way they
loved Dog -- before Baby.

Damn little pink thing that cried.

Baby got "Oooohs and Ahhhs." When Dog tried to get
close to Masters, they say, "Get back, boy. Not now."

When would be now?

Dog never see now. Always Baby get now. Dog get nothing.
Sometimes they so busy with Baby it be all day before dog get fed. Dog never
get treats anymore. Could not remember last pat on head or "Good
Dog!"

Bad business. Dog not like it.

Dog decide to do something about it.

Kill Baby. Then there be Dog, Cat again. They not love Cat,
so things be okay.

Dog thought that over. Wouldn't take much to rip little Baby
apart. Baby soft, pink. Would bleed easy.

Baby often put in Jumper which hung between doorway when
Master Lady hung wash. Baby be easy to get then.

So Dog waited.

One day Baby put in Jumper and Master Lady go outside to
hang out wash. Dog looks at pink thing jumping, thinks about ripping to pieces.
Thinks on it long and hard. Thought makes him so happy his mouth drips water.
Dog starts toward Baby, making fine moment last.

Baby looks up, sees Dog coming toward it slowly, almost
creeping. Baby starts to cry.

But before Dog can reach Baby, Cat jumps.

Cat been hiding behind couch.

Cat goes after Dog, tears Dog's face with teeth, with claws.
Dog bleeds, tries to run. Cat goes after him.

Dog turns to bite.

Cat hangs claw in Dog's eye.

Dog yelps, runs.

Cat jumps on Dog's back, biting Dog on top of head.

Dog tries to turn corner into bedroom. Cat, tearing at him
with claws, biting with teeth, makes Dog lose balance. Dog running very fast,
fast as he can go, hits the edge of doorway, stumbles back, falls over.

Cat gets off Dog.

Dog lies still.

Dog not breathing.

Cat knows Dog is dead. Cat licks blood from claws, from
teeth with rough tongue.

Cat has gotten rid of Dog.

Cat turns to look down hall where Baby is screaming.

Now for other one.

Cat begins to creep down hall.

Mr. Job Harold was in living room with his feet on the couch
watching
Wheel of Fortune
when his five-year-old son came inside covered
with dirt. "Daddy," said the boy dripping dirt, "there's a man
outside want to see you."

Mr, Harold got up and went outside, and there standing at
the back of the house next to his wife's flower bed, which was full of dead
roses and a desiccated frog, was, just like his boy had said, a man.

It was over a hundred degrees out there, and the man, a
skinny sucker in white T-shirt and jeans with a face red as a baboon's ass, a
waterfall of inky hair dripping over his forehead and dark glasses, stood with
his head cocked like a spaniel listening for trouble. He had a bright-toothed
smile that indicated everything he heard struck him as funny.

In his left hand was a new weed-eater, the cutting line
coated in greasy green grass the texture of margarita vomit, the price tag
dangling proudly from the handle.

In the other hand the man held a blind man's cane, the tip
of which had speared an oak leaf. His white T-shirt, stained pollen-yellow
under the arms, stuck wetly to his chest and little pot belly tight as plastic
wrap on a fish head. He had on dirty white socks with played-out elastic and
they had fallen over the tops of his tennis shoes as if in need of rest.

The man was shifting his weight from one leg to the other.
Mr. Harold figured he needed to pee and wanted to use the bathroom, and the
idea of letting him into the house with a weed-eater and pointing him at the
pot didn't appeal to Mr. Harold cause there wasn't any question in Mr. Harold's
mind the man was blind as a peach pit, and Mr. Harold figured he got in the
bathroom, he was gonna pee from one end of the place to the other trying to hit
the commode, and then Mr. Harold knew he'd have to clean it up or explain to
his wife when she got home from work how on his day off he let a blind man piss
all over their bathroom. Just thinking about all that gave Mr. Harold a
headache.

"What can I do for you?" Mr. Harold asked.

"Well, sir," said the blind man in a voice dry as
Mrs. Harold's sexual equipment, "I heard your boy playin' over here, and I
followed the sound. You see, I'm the groundskeeper next door, and I need a
little help. I was wonderin' you could come over and show me if I've missed a
few spots?"

Mr. Harold tried not to miss a beat. "You talking about
the church over there?"

"Yes, sir. Just got hired. Wouldn't want to look bad on
my first day."

Mr. Harold considered this. Cameras could be set in place
somewhere. People in trees waiting for him to do something they could record
for a TV show. He didn't want to go on record as not helping a blind man, but
on the other hand, he didn't want to be caught up in no silliness either.

Finally, he decided it was better to look like a fool and a
Samaritan than a cantankerous asshole who wouldn't help a poor blind man cut
weeds.

"I reckon I can do that," Mr. Harold said. Then to
his five-year-old who'd followed him outside and was sitting in the dirt
playing with a plastic truck.

"Son, you stay right here and don't go off."

"Okay, Daddy," the boy said.

The church across the street had been opened in a building
about the size of an aircraft hanger. It had once been used as a liquor
warehouse, and later it was called Community Storage, but items had a way of
disappearing. It was a little too community for its renters, and it went out of
business and Sonny Guy, who owned the place, had to pay some kind of fine and
turn up with certain items deemed as missing.

This turn of events had depressed Mr. Guy, so he'd gotten
religion and opened a church. God wasn't knocking them dead either, so to
compensate, Sonny Guy started a Gospel Opry, and to advertise and indicate its
location, beginning on their street and on up to the highway, there was a line
of huge orange Day-Glo guitars that pointed from highway to Opry.

The guitars didn't pull a lot of people in though, bright as
they were. Come Sunday the place was mostly vacant, and when the doors were
open on the building back and front, you could hear wind whistling through
there like it was blowing through a pipe. A special ticket you could cut out of
the newspaper for five dollars off a fifteen dollar buffet of country sausages
and sliced cantaloupe hadn't rolled them in either. Sonny and God most
definitely needed a more exciting game plan. Something with titties.

Taking the blind man by the elbow, Mr. Harold led him across
the little street and into the yard of the church. Well, actually, it was more
than a yard. About four acres. On the front acre sat Sonny Guy's house, and out
to the right of it was a little music studio he'd built, and over to the left
was the metal building that served as the church. The metal was aluminum and
very bright and you could feel the heat bouncing off of it like it was an oven with
bread baking inside.

Behind the house were three more acres, most of it weeds,
and at the back of it all was a chicken wire fence where a big black dog of
undetermined breed liked to pace.

When Mr. Harold saw what the blind man had done, he let out
his breath. The fella had been all over that four acres, and it wasn't just a
patch of weeds now, but it wasn't manicured either. The poor bastard had tried
to do the job of a lawn mower with a weed-eater, and he'd mostly succeeded in
chopping down the few flowers that grew in the midst of brick-lined beds, and
he'd chopped weeds and dried grass here and there, so that the whole place
looked as if it were a head of hair mistreated by a drunk barber with an
attitude.

At Mr. Harold's feet, he discovered a mole the blind man's
shoe had dislodged from a narrow tunnel. The mole had been whipped to death by
the weed-eater sling. It looked like a wad of dirty hair dipped in red paint. A
lasso loop of guts had been knocked out of its mouth and ants were crawling on it.
The blind had slain the blind.

"How's it look?"

"Well," Mr. Harold said, "you missed some
spots."

"Yeah, well they hired me cause they wanted to help the
handicapped, but I figure it was just as much cause they knew I'd do the job.
They had 'em a crippled nigger used to come out and do it, but they said he
charged too much and kept making a mess of things."

Mr. Harold had seen the black man mow. He might have been
crippled, but he'd had a riding mower and he was fast. He didn't do such a bad
job either. He always wore a straw hat pushed up on the back of his head, and
when he got off the mower to get on his crutches, he did it with the style of a
rodeo star dismounting a show horse. There hadn't been a thing wrong with the
black man's work. Mr. Harold figured Sonny Guy wanted to cut a few corners.
Switch a crippled nigger for a blind honkey.

"How'd you come to get this job?" Mr. Harold
asked. He tried to make the question pleasant, as if he were asking him how his
weekend had been.

"References," the blind man said.

"Of course," said Mr. Harold.

"Well, what do I need to touch up? I stayed me a line
from the building there, tried to work straight, turn when I got to the fence
and come back. I do it mostly straight?"

"You got off a mite. You've missed some pretty
good-sized patches."

Mr. Harold, still holding the blind man's elbow, felt the
blind man go a little limp with disappointment. "How bad is it?"

"Well . . ."

"Go on and tell me."

"A weed-eater ain't for this much place. You need a
mower."

"I'm blind. You can't turn me loose out here with a
mower. I'd cut my foot off."

"I'm just saying."

"Well, come on, how bad is it? It look worse than when
the nigger did it?"

"I believe so."

"By much?"

"When he did it, you could look out here and tell the
place had been mowed. Way it looks now, you might do better just to poison the
weeds and hope the grass dies."

The blind man really slumped now, and Mr. Harold wished he'd
chosen his words more carefully. It wasn't his intention to insult a blind man
on his lawn skills in a hundred degree heat. He began to wish the fella had
only wanted to wet on the walls of his bathroom.

"Can't even do a nigger's job," the blind man
said.

"It ain't so bad if they're not too picky."

"Shit," said the blind man. "Shit, I didn't
have no references. I didn't never have a job before, really. Well, I worked
out at the chicken processing plant tossing chicken heads in a metal drum, but
I kept missing and tossin' them on this lady worked by me. I just couldn't keep
my mind on the drum's location. I think I might actually be more artistic than
mechanical. I got one side of the brain works harder, you know?"

"You could just slip off and go home. Leave 'em a
note."

"Naw, I can't do that. Besides, I ain't got no way
home. They pick me up and brought me here. I come to church last week and they
offered me the job, and then they come and got me and brought me here and I
made a mess of it. They'll be back later and they won't like it. They ain't
gonna give me my five dollars, I can see that and I can't see nothing."

"Hell, man," Mr. Harold said, "that black
fella mowed this lawn, you can bet he got more than five dollars."

"You tryin' to say I ain't good as a nigger?"

"I'm not trying to say anything 'cept you're not being
paid enough. A guy ought to get five dollars an hour just for standing around
in this heat."

"People charge too much these days. Niggers especially
will stick you when they can. It's that civil rights business. It's gone to
their heads."

"It ain't got nothing to do with what color you are."

"By the hour, I reckon I'm making 'bout what I got
processing chicken heads," the blind man said. "Course, they had a
damn fine company picnic this time each year."

"Listen here. We'll do what we were gonna do. Check the
spots you've missed. I'll lead you around to bad places, and you chop
'em."

"That sounds all right, but I don't want to share my
five dollars. I was gonna get me something with that. Little check I get from
the government just covers my necessities, you know?"

"You don't owe me anything."

Mr. Harold took the blind man by the elbow and led him
around to where the grass was missed or whacked high, which was just about
everywhere you looked. After about fifteen minutes, the blind man said he was
tired. They went over to the house and leaned on a tree in the front yard. The
blind man said, "You seen them shows about those crop circles, in England,
I think it is?"

"No," said Mr. Harold.

"Well, they found these circles in the wheat. Just
appeared out there. They think it's aliens."

"Oh yeah, I seen about those," Mr. Harold said,
suddenly recalling what it was the man was talking about. "There ain't no
mystery to that. It's some guys with a stick and a cord. We used to do that in
tall weed patches when we were kids. There's nothing to it. Someone's just
making jackasses out of folks."

The blind man took a defiant posture. "Not everything
like that is a bunch of kids with a string."