Sure enough, he brought his katana.
He cooks up another of his famous grilled cheese sandwiches. Way Shane cooks is very focused, hovering over the skillet like an artist or an archaeologist, brow knitted and mouth pursed into a tight pucker. His is the face of seriousness. The very visage of concentration.
Eventually he plops a sandwich on a plate for her, garnishes with a little green sprig of parsley.
One bite and her eyes close and she can’t help but make a Mmmmguuuhhh sound around the bulging cheekful of bread and cheese and—a little bit of mustard? “Besht shandwich effer.”
Whitey stands there and starts to drool. Big glistening ribbons of saliva hanging from his jowls. Shane scowls at the dog, and scoots his chair around the other side of the table.
“So you going to talk about it?”
“Whut?” she asks, still chewing.
“Orly coming over here.”
“It’s fine,” she says, swallowing a delicious clump of sandwichy goodness. “I ran him off.”
“He threatened you. You shot at his car.”
Atlanta sighs. “I know.”
“And you didn’t give him what he wanted.”
“I know.” She pokes at the half-eaten sandwich, her hunger vanishing. “He’s a bully. They’re all bullies. What would you have done? Would you have given him the dog?”
“Yes.” He blinks. “No! I dunno.” Suddenly he sees what she’s doing and he yelps—“Hey!”—but it’s too late. She tosses the last half of her sandwich to the dog, who catches it in his mouth and basically just dry-swallows it without chewing. Gulp. “That was a good sandwich!”
“It was. He sure seemed to enjoy it.”
Shane pinches the bridge of his nose like a frustrated librarian or tax accountant. “You think Orly killed Chris?”
“Shoot, I dunno. He said it was a suicide, same as Mitchell said, same as the cops said. But then he went and threatened me. Told me that… basically that I was burning the house down with all my loved ones in it.” She decides to mimic Shane and pinch her nose-bridge. It’s oddly and surprisingly satisfying. “I dunno. Maybe he’s right. I just keep making trouble for myself and everyone I love. Why can’t I just be a normal girl who doesn’t know what the stink of spent gunpowder smells like? Why can’t I just… play around on Facebook and chase after boys and… I dunno, just quit stirring up the shit?”
Shane shrugs. “Why can’t I be six-foot-tall and built like Captain Marvel? We are who we are.”
“Well, I don’t wanna be me, then.”
Whitey, seeing that he’s not getting another bite from Atlanta, shifts his butt sideways and scoots over closer to Shane. Shane recoils. The dog gets closer. And again starts to emit ropy, gooey drool.
“He likes you,” Atlanta says.
“He’s a monster.”
“He’s a cute monster.”
“He ate somebody’s hand.”
“Kind of. A little bit of it.”
Shane picks up a corner crust of the sandwich the same way someone might pick up a dead mouse or a dirty tampon and flings it in the general direction of the Dogo. Whitey’s head ratchets back and the jaws snap closed on the sandwich piece, making it disappear. “Can you imagine those jaws closing around your throat?” Shane asks.
“No,” Atlanta says. “But I can imagine them closing on Orly Erickson’s.”
* * *
Later that day she decides to call Guy. Figures by now he’s done being mad at her. But his cell just rings and rings which tells her he’s still mad and won’t answer her call. Whatever. She decides to get ahead of that problem and pay him a visit. She gathers up Shane and Whitey and decides to take a walk and visit with her friendly neighborhood drug dealer.
The day is hot and the walk is long. It’s not technically summer yet but summer’s here just the same, biting deep and breathing hot dry breath.
Atlanta brings along a bottle of water, and occasionally tilts it back and lets Whitey slurp and lick at it.
Shane carts along his katana. Attacking anything and everything. Deadheading wildflowers. Hacking at a log. Chasing a white cabbage moth like it killed his mother and he’s out for vengeance.
Along the way, after beheading some thistle, Shane says, “Hey, I looked up that dog of yours.”
“What, he got a criminal record or something? Maybe win a spelling bee?”
Whitey pants as he walks.
“No,” Shane says, rolling his eyes. “I mean the breed of dog. The Dogo Argentino.”
“What about it?”
“It’s just funny that everyone wants to use him as a fighting dog is all.”
“Okay, you’re making me pull teeth here—just spit it out.”
“They’re not very good at it. See, they mixed a whole bunch of breeds in there—Great Dane, Boxer, Bull Terrier—but they also have an extinct breed thought to be the world’s best fighting dog, the Cordoba Fighting Dog. The Cordoba was so aggressive toward other dogs, if given a choice the males would choose fighting instead of mating every time.”
“Fightin’ instead of fornicatin’. Okay. I don’t see the disconnect here, dude.”
“With the Dogo, though, they bred the Cordoba traits out. The Dogo’s a pack hunter, not a dog fighter—so dogs that exhibited any aggression toward other dogs didn’t get to breed. Couldn’t have the dogs like, tearing each other apart on a boar hunt. They needed them to work together and to be loyal towards their people.”
Whitey looks up, drooling. As if he knows they’re talking about him.
Shane continues: “But still the dog fighters think that the ghost of this legendary Cordoba breed is still in there. So they try to tease it out—or do worse. But it’s a futile effort.”
“So, he’s just not a good fighter.”
“Nope.”
She pats him on the rump. “That’s fine by me.” Whitey’s tail wags.
* * *
Eventually they get to the little plot of land Guy owns, tucked behind a couple trees and a tangled wall of blackberry bush and rose briar. Soon as she turns the corner, she sees, feels her breath catch.
The windows are broken in the trailer. And the Scion. The front door of the doublewide is open, hanging off one hinge like Fred Astaire off a light pole. The grill’s overturned. The wooden front steps have been smashed. Most of the trailer’s décor is scattered across the lawn—an Amish hex, a wicker basket, a blue checkered tablecloth, all the country bullshit that Guy so unexpectedly adores.
Guy. Guy.
Atlanta breaks into a run, shouting his name. Whitey bounds after.
She knows what she’s going to see before she even sees it.
He’s going to be inside the house. Beaten. Burned with cigarettes. Hanging there from the light fixture, just an inch or two below his feet but that’s all you need, Chris proved that—no need to hang somebody high.
But what she finds instead is him sitting on a chair next to an overturned table, holding a bag of frozen sweet corn to his head. His lip is split. Blood on his chin. Blood down on his neck.
“Atlanta,” he croaks. “Sup.”
Whitey wriggles his way into the trailer. Ears up. Shoulders forward. Looking around.
“Guy,” she says. Her eyes feel hot and they start to sting and she quickly wipes tears away before they form and fall. “What… what happened?”
“I was gonna call you but they bashed my phone to shit.”
“They? They who?”
“Who you think? Wayman. And his little inbred white-boy nephews.”
She moves toward him to hug him but her skin crawls and cymbals crash in her head and she pulls away suddenly—the panic comes fast and without invite as it always does, leaving her feeling cold and clammy and like everything is hyper-real. Feels like she’s having a stroke and a heart attack all at once.
Shotgun blast. Man screaming. Blood on the bed.
Instead she backs away from Guy. Mumbles a mousey, “I’m sorry.”
�
�Yeah. Sorry.” He sighs. Pulls the frozen corn away to reveal a busted-up eye. The white’s gone red, the whole eye ringed in a knotted bruise. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It’s my fault.”
“Yo, I drove you up there. My choice, not yours.” Way he says it doesn’t sound like he means it, though. He won’t look at her, either, gaze drifting near her but never at her.
Shane finally stomps in through the door, panting. He takes one good look around: “Holy crap.”
“Sup, vato,” Guy says.
“Uh. Hey. Um. You look bad.”
Guy flips him off.
“Did Wayman say anything about me?” Atlanta asks.
“’Cause it’s all about you, right?” Guy’s nostrils flare. “Sorry. Yeah, we talked about you. He wanted to know where you lived and shit. Wanted to maybe pay you a visit. I didn’t tell him. I don’t give nobody up. I’m no snitch, not to cops, not to crooks.”
“Thanks,” she says. But then adds, “That doesn’t make sense, though. Kucharski knew who I was.”
“She doesn’t know where you live and I guess they figure best way to get that information was to beat it out of me.” Guy again molds the bag of corn to his eye. “Or maybe they just wanted to send a message. Big man wants his dog back.”
“He can’t have him.” Nobody can but me. She’s surprised at her own stubbornness on this point as her mental heels dig in. She scratches Whitey behind the ear. His head tilts and his eyes close.
“Yeah. Well. Guess you gotta wonder how far you’re gonna take this, then.”
“I guess I do gotta wonder.” She chews on the inside of her cheek. It’s a question she doesn’t want to ask much less answer. “Did he give you a way to contact him?”
Guy winces as he stands, feels around the countertop by the microwave, comes back with a slip of paper. A phone number sits scrawled across it in hasty black marker. “There.”
She takes it. Nods. “I’m gonna go make a call.”
As she passes Shane on the way out, he looks up. “Wait, hold up. What are you planning?”
“I don’t know yet.” It’s not a lie.
* * *
She stands by the busted Scion, pacing like a zoo animal. A pair of mockingbirds chase one another in the nearby briar. A red-winged blackbird hops along the fence.
Atlanta chews her lip. Runs her fingers through her hair.
Takes the phone. Looks at it. Waits. Puts it away.
Finally she takes it out again and makes the call.
Ellis Wayman picks up on the first ring.
“Was wondering when you’d call,” he says. Voice gruff, growly, but also hidden there is a vein of amusement. “Quicker than I figured.”
“Do you even know who this is?”
“The girl with the great name. Atlanta Burns.”
“How’d you know?”
“Says so on my phone.”
“Oh.” She should really figure out how to turn that off. “I got your message. You hurt my friend pretty good.”
“He broke my gate. You stole my dog.”
She starts pacing again. “I didn’t know it was your dog. Your nephews attacked me.”
“Not before you attacked them.”
“They hurt dogs. They were going to hurt your dog.”
This seems to give him pause. “Then I’m going to have to have a chat with them. I’m old guard, sweetie. I like to keep my dogs healthy. I’m not in it for the blood. I’m in it for the sport.”
“Don’t see how you can separate the two.” The mockingbirds flit above her heads.
“In the ring you can’t, but outside it is a different story. The niggers and Nazis like to kill their curs if they don’t perform. Shoot ‘em or use ‘em as bait for other, meaner champs. Like that big-time fancy football player who electrocuted his dogs. Not me. Then again, I don’t buy bad dogs. I buy champs. I buy into strong legacy breeding lines. Bloodlines with a history of wins. Like that dog you have in your possession as we speak.”
“He’s not much of a fighter.”
“My nephew’s hand says different. Got nerve damage, you know that? Doc said his fingers won’t work so great after this. And the last two fingers—the pinky and whatever the other one is called—may never get the feeling back in ‘em.”
“Pardon me while I cry into my pillow over your dog-torturing bully of a nephew.”
“Not asking for sympathy, just stating facts. Way I figure it he had that coming to him.”
“On that we agree.”
A hot wind, dry as the air coming out of an open oven, spills across the meadow. “I paid ten grand for that dog,” Wayman says finally. “That’s a lot of money. You gonna pay me that?”
“I’m not. I can’t.”
“Then I need that dog back.”
“I’ll bring him back,” she says. “When’s the next fight?”
“Two weeks. And I’m not interested in waiting that long.”
“You may not be interested in it, but you’ll do it anyway. I’m gonna train the dog for you.”
He laughs. A big grumbly sound like if you threw some ice into a garbage disposal. “That’s sweet, but no thanks.”
“It’s not an option. It’s an offer and the only one on the table. I’m going to train him to be a fighter and then he’s gonna win his fights and you’re going to owe me instead of me owing you.”
“You’re no dog trainer.”
“Your nephews were doing such a fine job of it.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit a pretty girl like you.” An acquiescing growl. “Still. You got a point. So. You bring me a champ, then what do I owe you?”
“I want revenge on someone,” she says. “Someone you don’t much like.”
“Who’s that?”
“Orly Erickson.”
A bigger, meaner laugh from Ellis this time around. And with that, she knows the hook is set. She just hopes she can reel in such a big dang fish.
She stands there for a while. A rare breeze blowing. She then dials another phone number and tells Jenny’s mother she’d like to talk to her daughter, please.
Jenny is stiff on the phone. “It’s you.”
“You said you wanted it all shut down.”
“I do.”
“That you don’t want dogs hurt anymore.”
“I don’t.”
“Is the money still on the table?”
“Anything I can offer.”
“Good. Because I’m gonna do it. Couple weeks from now, I’d keep a close eye on the news if I were you. Then you’ll see. Everybody will.”
* * *
Back inside the trailer, she tells them what happened. What she did and what she said. They look at her the same way some folks look at really nasty YouTube videos, like a guy taking a skateboard to the nuts or a couple girls eating something they dang well shouldn’t—wide-eyed disbelief, disgust, disturbed beyond rational limits. They ask her what’s wrong with her? Why did she do that? And she tells them it’ll be fine. She has a plan. It came to her like—and here she snaps her fingers—that. As she tells them the plan, a plan so simple and so elegant it cannot fail, she feels the hairs on her arms and neck rise, feels the sense of driving in a fast car down a dark road with no headlights on. Exhilaration and fear in equal measure. They nod. They still look worried. But the plan is the plan and there’s no turning back now.
Part Three: Kissing Fire
Two weeks later. Night before the dog fight.
Her mother still hasn’t come home. Atlanta’s spoken to her a few times—Arlene told her daughter a story about how Harley and his wife Tuyen (she’s Vietnamese) have twins and were having a helluva time watching those rambunctious kids, so while Harley went over Mama’s “case” she figured she could stay here and help out and that’d pay for the legal consultation. Atlanta told her it was fine even though it was most certainly not fine, told her to have a good trip even though she felt pissed to high hell about it, and when her mother tried to say ask Atlanta how th
ings were going up there, Atlanta interrupted her and said, “I gotta go,” and hung up.
Bait Dog: An Atlanta Burns Novel Page 24