by Toby Barlow
Soft kiss again, like pleasure should be.
“Hey,” she says, “How do you, um…”
“Excuse me?” kiss on neck, ear,
there, where the current hits the soul.
“How do you, um,” pausing. A little laughter.
She tries to begin somewhere, “um,
how do you feel about getting a dog for the house?”
Now he stops and looks at her a little funny,
she can’t tell if it’s uncertainty or
just sleepiness. It was a clumsy question, not even close
to what she really wants to say.
He stirs to answer but his phone stirs too, vibrating
with a request for help
from a strained and understaffed kennel.
In the timeless war between work and love,
chalk another one up for work.
XI
The cop, remember the cop, eats toast with
too much butter on it
and double-checks paperwork.
His phone rings, he picks up to find
an odd voice
a man’s voice,
“Mr. Peabody, Detective Peabody?”
Instinct makes Peabody look at the picture of his kid
and his wife on the desk.
As his old partner used to say,
sometimes you can feel it coming
before it ever begins.
“How can I help you?” says the cop.
“Well…” purrs the voice “I was wondering about
the dogs and the pound case.”
Peabody sits up. Because
that’s simply not how the case is known,
there isn’t even a case to speak of, except
inside his own head.
“How can I help you, sir?” Peabody asks again.
“Well…it seems you might want to talk to a Mr. Calley.”
This guy is just creepy. What he’s saying is stupid, rote stuff.
But his voice makes your bones hum like everything is off.
“Calley? I have spoken with Calley,” says Peabody, but adds, “Is there anything specific I may have forgotten?”
“No, no,” says the voice. “But the perception, by people
who are watching these things, who are perhaps responsible,
they might be interested in your interest.”
“People who are watch–?”
“Please, Detective, let me continue.
If you would pay closer attention
then the people who are watching this,
and I’m sure they are watching,
well, they will become unnerved,
then these interested parties will make moves,
present you with opportunity.”
Peabody sits back at his desk.
“So, you want me to talk to Calley,
to get some pieces moving?” he asks.
“Yessssss,” answers the voice. “Let’s just see how they move.”
There is a click. No good-bye.
Peabody looks at the picture.
His kid. His wife.
XII
Lark knows he doesn’t have much time.
He’s been moving some money around for a couple of days.
Cutter and Blue he has covered.
“Stay up there,” he says. “Look for the odd man,
the man who was asking about men and dogs.”
Meanwhile, every account has been flipped, tracks wiped clean.
He called the office and told Jill to shut the place down,
sending her a severance envelope that made her smile
along with a note saying, “Prague would be good.”
She got the point, got the ticket, got gone.
The problem with being alone is simply
that it doesn’t work.
Everything about being what Lark is
now involves risk.
Dogs hate you, people don’t trust you,
eventually you’re run out or found out
winding up with a belly full of bullets
or the sleepy needle death.
The only way it works
over the long haul
is to lie as low as possible,
your belly pressed to the earth,
until you can find
someone else who can watch your back.
Alone and exposed.
He knows he could go
hang with Cutter and Blue
in their hotel suite.
But Lark wonders
who in his pack has pieced together his strategy,
who was watching well enough to see the big picture?
It isn’t quite clear. So he avoids all traps
works out a new plan,
and tries to bring it home.
Hell, he thinks, for most people
that’s called everyday life.
For now Lark’s sleeping in a motel off the Pacfic Coast Highway,
just far enough away from the game to make him feel safe.
He sits on the beach weighing possible moves.
“Hi, do you want a sandwich?” a blonde girl asks,
perhaps thinking he’s homeless, or just being nice,
but he doesn’t answer and keeps his eyes set on the sea
while deep calculations fire like storm lightning
in the canyons of his mind.
He runs through options. Precedents. Ideas. History.
He’s studied every pack, every discipline.
He knows there are infinite paths out there.
And one, he knows, is something
called the hide-and-seek.
He thinks about going to the dogcatcher
and getting the girl.
She could use some protection.
But perhaps she wouldn’t want his help,
maybe she’s happy.
And it could be dangerous,
too many knew something about Lark’s kennel plan.
She’s probably less safe than she could ever suspect.
He can’t worry about her,
he’s just got to shift ground and keep thinking.
Anyway, there’s always the Pasadena plan.
XIII
The new pack takes another ride,
the vans packed tight.
Bone spends a moment missing
the luxury of the cars he rode in with Lark.
But these days won’t stand
for such sentimental thinking.
He drives on.
It’s late when they pull up at a farm just outside Oxnard.
Doors open and out of the ten passenger vans leap
a crowd of angry K-9s.
A few steps later and they’ve already leapt the ranch gate.
Ray and Sasha head up to the big house,
The rest have strict orders:
stick with Jackson, cross the fence
kill everything in the field.
They charge the thin lines of the electric fence,
meeting the jolt head-on.
The current just gets them going.
The wet grass feels cool beneath the paw.
Bone hears something big shudder across the dark lawn.
Four animals stand there.
Stupid big llama or camel-like beasts,
their eyes awash in alarm.
He remembers these. They’re called alpacas.
Moving in fast, he bares his teeth, aiming for the knee
where he bites down quick to force the break.
His cousin in Colorado used to raise them for their coats.
The animal is down, screaming, but with the broken knees
it can’t hold him off.
Bone circles round, thinking
about how his cousin made a lot of money with a female, a breeder.
He’s never eaten alpaca. But as the fur flies
and screams of other animals break through the night,
he
finds that while it’s not exactly a delicacy,
it is different.
He’s back in the van within twenty minutes
again never quite learning what that trip was all about
though suspecting the folks in the house met a similar fate
as the poor, dead beasts of the field.
Then again, in the end, thinks Bone,
we probably all wind up meeting
something like what they got.
Until then, count your mornings.
An hour later, as the van rolls on,
Bone is thinking about Lark, still out there.
Hiding or hunting?
And what then?
He almost doesn’t want to find Lark.
But Ray does. Sasha does.
He can tell, whenever the subject comes up,
it nags at them,
like an untied shoe that’s taunting you
while you’re trying to get out the door.
They’ll find him.
Coyotes never last.
That night, they stay in the Realto bunker,
one of a handful of warehouses the pack has
spread out around the docks.
Bone tries to sleep but can’t
and listens instead to one of the crew fucking Sasha.
Her clumsy lover moans like a dying ox while she, in turn, is quiet.
The bastard skulks off, and another approaches.
Bone tries to sleep. He knows he doesn’t rank a turn with her.
Finally, Ray barks
everyone scurries
Sasha moves to curl up next to Ray.
His lips nip at her chalky skin.
She gives him a small smile.
Bone turns over and tries to sleep.
The alpaca is not settling well.
Ray pays the dockworkers for rumors
the pack hauls in stolen containers
strips ’em out and sells off the contents
furniture, key chains, tires, stoves, coats.
Simple bread-and-butter work.
If they find drugs they hand them over to the mob,
no questions asked. Ray’s known well enough.
The other missions, the smashing of the small labs,
two or three times a week,
that’s work they do for a client Bone still hasn’t seen.
Maybe it’s vigilante justice,
neighborhood watch gone horribly awry,
but Bone suspects some darker plan.
Lark didn’t reveal his plans either, thinks Bone,
but there was at least a sense of some greater end.
Here, they move, attack, eat, sleep,
the lucky ones fuck, but they are all
ever unsettled and edgy.
These creatures may be among
the most superior predators in the world
but in the end,
as any toothless soul will tell you,
it’s a dog’s life.
XIV
Calley opens the door, sees the cop standing there
looking clean as a preacher, surrounded by the white light.
“Hell, what are you here for?” Calley says.
“I thought you might be able to help me,” says Peabody,
stepping into the mess without invitation.
“Why not call?” Calley gestures
with an open beer. It’s ten thirty in the morning.
“Well.” Peabody shrugs. “I’ve got questions too,
like why aren’t you at work?”
Peabody doesn’t think he can bear to stay long,
the place smells like chemical puke.
“Fuck all, and fuck you,” mutters Calley.
Peabody smiles warily.
He’s not sure what he’s doing here. Or
why he came.
But Calley has aged ten years in ten days,
and somehow that’s an amusing sight to Peabody.
We are strange creatures, he thinks,
finding dark humor in shady corners.
“Listen, can you tell me anything else about Mason?” he asks.
Calley grimaces, says nothing.
“What about Turner?”
Tears well up in the corners of Calley’s eyes, but he shakes his head no.
“Okay, Mr. Calley, do you have any more information? Anything at all?”
“Nah.” Calley wipes his eyes. He looks like a liar all the time,
which makes him tricky to read.
Peabody presses a bit. “Nobody has contacted you? Nothing has happened?”
“Um, one second please.” Calley looks at his feet, he holds the wall for support,
then looks at his hand. “That fucking Samoan,” he mutters.
“What’s that?”
A moment passes, Calley won’t meet his gaze, just rubs his hand,
when he finally looks up, what was pale before
is now the flesh of a drowned man.
“Nope, nothing. Sorry. Indigestion,” Calley lies.
Peabody nods, leaves his card.
Getting into his car, he drives around the block,
then pulling back so that he can see down the street,
he parks
and watches Calley’s place. Nothing.
Inside the apartment, Calley is now
on his knees in front of the toilet
vomiting and thinking about how
he’d like a drink.
That fucking cop. Why did that cop have to show up?
Calley’s wrist still hurts from the fat man’s heel.
Outside, Peabody doesn’t know what he’s looking for.
There’s nothing around, a few parked cars.
Then a dog comes out, unleashed, no owner in sight.
The dog sits at the corner and looks at Calley’s house.
Everything is quiet on the street.
Calley is drinking from the whiskey bottle
like a linesman chugging Gatorade.
Tears stream down his cheeks.
Why not tell the cop about the weird man
and the big island dude?
Why not tell him what the weird man said about Mason?
This is a lot of fucked-up shit. So much. Too much.
When did everything get so muddy, guilty, and wrong?
He squeezes his eyes shut.
More and more, faces of dogs he once reined in
come flashing back in waking dreams,
snarling angry or cornered in fear
just like they were when he first found them.
He thinks how many he put down,
pressing their necks against the floor while the vet
searched for a vein.
Most of the fight was already gone at that point
their wildness worn out by the cage.
So many walked to their end with a kenneled resignation,
most not even looking up when the needle came,
their spirit long departed before their last breath.
Out in the car, time passes, Peabody watches.
The sitting dog hasn’t moved.
Finally, Peabody pulls out the radio.
“Yeah, get me animal contro—”
He hears the shot. Loud. Sharp. Close.
“Shit, correct that, shot fired, Midvale and Woodbine. Over.”
He gets out of the car, weapon in hand.
For some reason, there’s not the usual adrenaline rush,
instead every move feels clumsy and slow.
Coming around the corner on foot
he sees the dog sitting in the same spot.
Peabody climbs the front steps and
bangs on the door. Nothing.
Through the window he can see Calley’s body.
Blood flows out of it like from a burst pipe.
Shoulder to the door does the trick.
Nothing is built solid out here.
Once in, there’s little to be done.
hanging from the mouth.
Peabody’s first thought is how
his old partner used to call this type of exit
“A little eat and sleep.”
Peabody goes out onto the street to look for the backup.
He sees the dog hop up into the bed of a truck,
which promptly rolls away.
Nothing strange in that.
But thinking of that lisping voice on the phone
Peabody takes out his pad and writes
the license number down anyway.
Why not.
Nothing to do here
till the coroner comes.
XV
Anthony in love is unlikely
in its grace,
like a drunk with a magic trick.
There’s no reason it should work,
but it does.
Sitting at the kennel, driving in his truck, handling the dogs,
he’s a man in a musical.
He steps light on the balls of his feet, moving
to a melody that oils his joints, loosens his stride.
Just watch him open a door or turn a key, it’s that evident.
He doesn’t think much about the missing dogcatchers,
new guys come in who are the same as the old ones
only younger, a little dense,
but not yet bitter.
He spends his extra time in the kennel where
he’s quietly moved the three dogs off death row
over to some cages for “medical observation”
still feeding them tacos and wishing
they knew their good luck.
He doesn’t worry about money.
He’s got a job and a girl and a slight smile
which doesn’t even disappear
when they call the staff into a half circle
to report what happened to Calley.
Suicide, well, so long,
he barely even registers it, just
sips his bad coffee and
keeps an eye on the clock above the door
counting each tick till the end of the day.
Punching out, he leaves
still smiling.
Anthony in love is home
and she is just coming in
with a slight difference on her face
that makes him pause.
Look, she’s wearing a small shadow on her expression
but, there, see, it fades, his smile chases it off
just as the sun
chases away the mournful moon.
These days things are stupid
and good like that.
His hands are sore from all the back rubs he’s given her