by Toby Barlow
Bone had told her a bit of what was what these days.
Six of the old pack were with the new pack,
Zack was dead.
Nobody had a clue where Lark was
or Cutter and Blue for that matter.
Baron was the one
who had made some bad deal
selling them all out.
She nods to herself.
Baron was smart like that, always thinking.
Whatever move he had made, it wasn’t a stupid one.
But it didn’t matter a bit.
What mattered was this:
there were five dogs who knew her.
Five she has to sort out.
She’ll take the rest too
while she’s at it.
Fucking vermin.
Fucking world.
She pauses and thinks about her old boyfriend
Pete, of the sweet eyes and mean hands.
Perhaps now, while her blood is up
she should address that too.
She remembers him holding her down,
shouting in her face.
His belligerent mouth inches
from her squinting, terrified expression.
That was so many versions of her ago
but the bruises that hung to her flesh for weeks then
became shadows that still linger inside her
no matter how bright and sunny the days become.
Lying like arsenic seed buried
beneath so much sweet fruit.
Pete, she thinks, twisting the bloody
ziplock, I’m coming soon.
Lark isn’t here to protect you anymore.
He’s not here to calm me down.
It’s a big town
but she’s ready
to clean it up.
Programmed into this cell phone are numbers.
The blood sticks to her hands
but she doesn’t notice.
She texts the first number in the memory.
“Spent the night watching dog kennel. Dead end.
Nothing there. Heading now to Echo Park.”
She hits send and waits ten minutes,
watching children running
across a school yard, fearless, energetic
and unstoppably random.
Children, the word catches inside her,
children. She remembers
babysitting in ranch homes,
combing doll hair, playing house.
She closes her eyes.
Those games become dreams
that still dream on
in softer worlds.
She opens her eyes again, looks down
and sends the text to the next number.
Children. She shivers.
Think of something, she tells herself,
stop remembering and think of something else,
think of what a lovely term “memory” is
when applied to a machine.
Yes, that’s it, we name everything we can a “memory”
We hand our lives—
our addresses, our letters, our numbers, our photos, our dreams—
to these dumb throbbing machines
as we become emptier, remembering less and less
of what matters while these circuits
deftly struggle under the load of our own confusion.
Of course, at some point, we are no longer concerned,
we’re buried or worse, while the electronic world
holds on to our lives, waiting for us to return
and give it the meaning for which it starves.
Fifteen minutes later with no answer
she sends the same message to the next number.
She breathes deep and looks up
at faces of young girls and boys running laughing round the park.
Everything hurts at moments like these.
The buzzing of the phone surprises her.
“Meet you there” the message reads.
She puts the phone back in the Glad bag,
wipes the dried blood from her
fingertips, and quickly drives away
from all the children.
XXXI
Perhaps it is a change in the wind
Santa Anas or worse
but as Lark lies in the house
with Bonnie sleeping soundly,
his muscles tighten
as his mind races ahead,
like a pack
chasing the scent
of something that must die.
XXXII
The phone in Cutter and Blue’s hotel room rings.
Cutter answers.
“It’s Lark.”
“Man!” Cutter jumps on the bed. “We’re in the finals!
Can you fucking believe it?”
“Really?” Lark barely sounds interested.
“Yeah, Pacific Regional, Section I Division. I’m telling you Lark, if we win this—”
“It was never about the winning. Cutter, have you noticed anything strange?”
“What are you talking about?” Cutter stops jumping, sits on the bed’s edge.
His eyeballs dart around the room
as if he’s spinning on some drug
but it is merely the cabin fever setting his rhythm off.
They’ve been waiting between matches and tournaments
working on their game, studying books, playing the computer,
bouncing off the walls.
“Remember, you were sent up there to look for something.”
“Yeah,” says Cutter. “But you said
focus on the game. I mean, the pack is gone,
we have no idea what to do,
and where the hell are you?”
“A friend’s house.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll tell you what, Lark,
we’ll keep our eyes and ears peeled for something, anything.
but what if we win this tournament?”
“I’ll take you to the International House of Pancakes.”
Cutter smiles. “Sweet. That’s all I needed to hear.”
There is a pause,
then Lark speaks up. “When’s the final?”
“Two days, we’re up against some guy named Venable and his partner—”
“Okay,” Lark interrupts. “Good luck, just keep me informed. I’ll call.”
“Yeah. No problem.” Cutter is about to hang up
but then, “Lark?”
“Yeah, Cutter?”
“Is there a plan?”
“There’s always a plan.”
The click
comes just as
Blue swings into the room,
four cheesesteaks in his mitts and two six-packs of Diet Coke.
“Wuddup C. Who was on the phone?”
XXXIII
Down in San Pedro
Annie takes two cigarettes
out to the back stoop.
She sniffs for the cop,
the one who’s been watching.
No sign, she unwinds
and lights up.
Nobody else in the house smokes,
and she’s been trying to get down to just one a day.
She’s almost there.
The trick, she’s found, is to use that time
to sort through the difficult things,
so that a cigarette becomes like a therapist,
keeping her company while she gets it together.
With every session she feels a little better,
exhaling it all,
releasing the bad stuff with every breath,
at least the parts
that will let go.
Annie watches the cigarette smoke
slip off into the night.
She listens to the crickets
and remembers the jungle.
Annie’s pack was larger then, twenty in all,
Surfers and brothers and she loved each
with a butterfl
y gentleness that brought sweet smiles
to their faces. All of them bobbing there in the surf,
waiting for the waves.
They had traveled south together, deep down into Central America
looking for good breaks they could ride
and thick forests where they could run.
They parked their long boards off the Osa Peninsula,
on a beach they dubbed Ciudad del Perros.
Dashing and darting through the rain forest at night,
they carved out a hidden paradise free from any visitors’ or strangers’ gazes,
only the twitching eyes of rainbowed lizards watching them
as they hunted and ran and rolled in the lush ferns and tall grasses.
Beneath that dappled canopy, three of her dogs once
trapped and killed an alligator,
marinating its tough meat with papaya juice.
Come sunset, they grilled it on the campfire with fish tacos
and a pot of caliente chile and black beans.
Guitars came out with warbling song and
laughter rose up to the stars.
Almost a year into this tranquil time
some local poachers hidden in the undergrowth
hunting for iguana
spied two of her brothers
jerking through the throes of their transformation.
Racing into the sunset’s pink light, the poachers
brought to their sleepy village a true tale
of gringo demons and blonde devils
and so with righ teous anger the locals came storming back
through the thick, moonless night,
descending with lit torches and loud fury
on the resting pack.
Trapping the sleeping boys on the beach
the villagers unleashed their gunfire,
while the red-faced priest screamed instructions.
Trees were soaked and lit with kerosene.
Those who escaped ran through
the blackness of the night into the unknown
their speed fueled by fear
their fear fueled by the screams
of those who didn’t escape.
The screams were like the wolves of old,
the martyrs of legend,
whose agony taught the black crow to cry.
Ten dogs were left and they ran for days.
She ran in the middle of the pack,
the other dogs wanted her there,
to keep her safe.
Moving over dry mountains and across plateaus
shaking in the darkness with an ever-present
fear and bewildering anger until
sleep would finally come.
Then up again,
licking faces awake to run farther.
They had no money, no clothes
so stayed dog
and picked their way up north.
Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala,
moving slow enough to find what would feed them,
moving fast enough so the camposinos they robbed
never saw enough to know.
On into Mexico.
Edging forward, tongues hanging loose,
paws cracked and bleeding, but onward they ran,
until they fell into a different stripe
of bad luck, one that took them down
to a lower level of hell.
The second cigarette is crushed out.
As the therapists like to say,
“Looks like our time is up.”
Annie closes her eyes
and sniffs at the night. She knows the cop
will come back, sit in his car,
wait for something.
Oh yeah, she thinks, we’ll give him something.
She gets up from the stoop,
and stretches her bones before heading in
thinking how amazing it is
that she still can find a way
to smile.
XXXIV
Anthony loves how the days unfold,
everything seems more tame and quiet,
dogs sense his confidence and practically run right to him.
And she has some new strength.
He doesn’t ask about it,
the less said, the better.
Maybe it is the exercise,
she runs now and is working
with weights in the garage.
It’s a habit of late
when he washes the dishes
she comes up from behind,
her arms wrapping around him
resting her cheek on his back and
quiet, still, he inhales the moment,
feeling the depth of her invisible smile
in every breath.
He strokes her hands beneath the warm water
time becomes something different
the steel of its progression softens
as in the mist before you wake
when you can move the furniture
in your dreams.
If not a skip, then a definite lightness to her step
as she makes beds, folds laundry
circles want ads.
He’s been there, he kisses her cheek
and brews another pot of tea.
A spirit has been cast out
a curse lifted.
Everything is working
for a change.
Her appetite has become tremendous in every way
they make love in the kitchen, the living room,
and she eats huge plates of pasta.
The only hint of any trouble comes as
she’s finishing a big bowl of Bolognese,
dressed only in a thong and a tee.
“I think,” she says, her words slightly garbled,
her mouth full, chewing as she gestures with her fork.
“I think maybe we should get some guns.”
book three
You can’t own something unless
you can swallow it.
CHINESE PROVERB
Oh the werewolf, oh the werewolf
comes travelin’ along.
He don’t even break the branches
where he’s been gone.
MICHAEL HURLEY
I
“Yo bro,” Jorge says to Frio, “I skip school
because at this point
appearing would just freak them out.
I would be an apparition.
a bad dream spirit, rising up
in the middle of my math class like a goblin.
Teachers would stare, mouths would drop, you know?
It would be as strange
as Aliyah showing up or Tupac
or, damn, my Uncle Leon’s hand coming back
from Vietnam.
That’s how gone I am
from school anyway.”
Frio’s cousin lets them work for him
down by the docks, which is fine
but it’s nothing like serious pay.
They run goods around, the extras that slide
off the cargos and into the open pockets
of Frio’s cousin. Jorge gets a little
or less. But he likes it better than school,
he doesn’t get hassled and nobody asks questions
like, for instance, who won the Battle of
damn man
we’re all fighting the Battle of whatever
aren’t we?
Every day.
It never ends.
Midday, middelivery,
Jorge’s drinking with Frio in the car
parked outside the package store.
The mercury and the sun are both high,
as Frio talks about solar power
something he saw on the Discovery Channel
how the light will save us all.
Jorge says shit man, people talk about Jesus like that.
Frio whistles low, looking up
as a sha
dow blocks the light.
Jorge looks up and catches it too,
she’s nothing but silhouette.
But what a line, thinks Jorge. What a fine line.
“What are you dudes doing? You want some work?”
She’s got a voice. A little low, a slight rasp
somewhere between the soft growl of an engine
and the purring of a dark cat.
“Aw, honest, lady, we’re a little juiced up,
we can’t do much
and actually,” Jorge takes a swig. “We’re technically
in the middle
of a job right now.”
Frio takes a sip of his beer.
“You look like you could be handy,” she says.
She stops blocking the sun
and now Jorge can take her all in.
Tough as steel she is, tips of tats sticking out of her sleeves,
she’s kerosene and sugar.
Barbed wire bent to make an angel. Yeah.
“My partner and I need some help,” she purrs.
The boys shrug, this delivery can wait.
Nobody needs them for much today.
Not for a while.
She sits in the back.
They roll some weed,
weigh their chances with her
and ask about this work.
She says it’s easy. But, she says,
men have been disappearing from the job.
“Then the work can’t be that easy, man.” They laugh,
giggling on tokes.
“No, it’s easy,” she repeats. “And the dividends are nice.”
The boys aren’t sure what she means,
but yeah, they’ve got a guess.
She has them pull behind a warehouse.
“Wait here for a minute.”
Jorge watches her enter the building,
wondering if the weed is making him this high
or if it’s just her doing it to him.
But then his afternoon dreams vanish like a puff of smoke
as a stocky short man strolls out
built like some old fighter, but little.
The man pauses
looks the boys over through the windshield.
Frio weakly waves.
Jorge giggles.
The man sighs a beat and walks toward them.
“You look like weak sons of bitches.”
“Hey bro.” Jorge shrugs. “We’re just here to help.”
The two of them, the guy and the girl, stand watching.
The boys move sacks of grain around,
one pile is moved ten feet to make another pile.
There’s no truck, no loader.
“Shit bro,” Jorge says. “This feels a little less