by Toby Barlow
the guy has a Kojak lollipop in his mouth
and an ear to the phone.
“Weren’t you looking into something at the pound?
I got someone on the line says they got a John Doe there.”
Peabody itches his back.
“Living or dead?”
“Well, they took him to lockup for assault and trespassing,
so I’m figuring the guy’s got at least a little life in him.
Though they’re saying the dogcatcher,
um, an Anthony Silvo,
had to kick the living shit out of the fellow
just to keep him down.”
You either trust or you distrust coincidence.
It’s either small doses of magic pulling
you to your appointed destiny
or the devil trying to lead you
down to the thorns.
Peabody has no way to know this,
but there is an old lycanthrope legend that got it all right.
The story goes that the universe is run by two simple things,
a prime mover and a coyote.
This coyote is a wily dog born
from ancient trickster bones,
Loki, Hermes, the northwestern Raven of lore,
all glimmer in his aluminum eyes.
And while
the prime mover makes
the world simply by
dreaming of its own dreaming
spanning all, shaping all,
the coyote mostly sleeps,
his chin to the ground, one ear perked up,
his body resting in the shade of the prime mover’s infinity.
Coyote awakens at something like the smell of bacon
and trots across the kingdom of heaven
hopping down into the world,
sniffing for mischief.
And as the prime mover contemplates
the contemplation that therefore spawns existence,
and time passes without passing,
the coyote sprightly follows the dusty trail back home,
where he dances around the prime mover
eagerly barking and yipping and telling tales
of coincidence wrought, good luck won,
bad luck earned, loose ends that were somehow connected,
all thanks to this little mischief mutt:
the longed-for lover shows up at the bus stop,
the ex-roommate appears with the missing keys,
the thought of a distant friend sails across the mind
just as she strolls by the café window.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” a happy voice sings.
The winning lottos made of birthday numbers,
postcards sent to the dead letter office
that still somehow deliver meaning,
wrong number callers who somehow fall in love,
and the ragged luck of pulling an inside straight
on a last chip on a last bet on a last day.
Coyote wags his tail and brags:
of the taxicab pulling up at the first raindrop,
the wrong turn leading to a better place,
the guilty soul arrested for a different crime,
the critical ally sighted through the ancient hotel’s
revolving doors in some faraway destination.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” a voice happily sings.
All this vibrates and shimmers
around coyote as he makes his way
connecting the wonder moments,
for good or for ill
and coming home to tell his story,
wagging, grinning, barking.
But the prime mover simply
revolves on in silence
deaf to everything
moving like a whale
swimming through the
endless blue seas of
its own deep and infinite dream.
Peabody knows nothing of this fable,
and if he heard it, would shake it off and return
to the last words that resembled anything like sense to him.
Though, really, the last words made no sense at all,
“…they’re saying the dogcatcher,
um, an Anthony Silvo,
had to kick the living shit out of the fellow…”
And Peabody wonders what the heck is going on
down there at the city pound.
Putting on his jacket
he checks his pocket for his keys,
relieved to know that where he’s going
holds just enough mystery
to keep the sugar blonde
out of his mind.
At least
for a little while.
XIV
“This is a violent city
and I don’t mean rapes and bloodshed.
I mean the existence of every ounce of it.
This entire vast urbanity was bludgeoned from the earth,
torn and wrought,
piece by piece. A thousand bricks.
A thousand tiles.
The concrete and the steel girders
all bitten out of the soil and the rock.
Then, of course, it’s brought here,
to the desert, to death itself.
Not to mention the water, oh yes, the water
pilfered from hundreds of miles away,
where birds and tree roots awoke one bleak day
reaching for moisture once easily known
and now finding only empty dust,
because that moisture’s all been pulled here, to be with us
shimmering in the sweat of porn stars
cleaning the endless stream of dirty cars
washing the hands of plastic surgeons
after they’ve performed
yet another critically important implant.”
Venable falls silent and gazes out
the limousine’s window.
Goyo says nothing.
Cutter and Blue say nothing.
They’ve been riding with Venable for a few weeks now
playing cards and watching his back,
long enough to know
these odd sermons just flow out of him.
Venable is quiet now too. Thinking.
“Officer Peabody has been disturbingly quiet of late,” he observes,
sighing a little. His eyes take in the passing traffic.
Everyone waits for what’s next.
But before it can arrive,
the cell phone rings.
“Hello?”
Cutter and Blue can hear only one half of the conversation.
“I’m not entirely sure I understand.” Venable’s face is serene.
“Well we will certainly try.”
Hanging up the phone he says simply,
“It appears we must take
a small detour from our appointed course.
Goyo, ask our driver to find
the Los Angeles County Jail.”
As they pull into the parking lot
Venable reaches for the door, then stops.
He looks at Cutter and Blue and speaks
with a pastor’s gentle tone.
“When I told you two that I would help you find
some satisfaction for what you had lost,
I had originally meant it symbolically.
I would give you a new sense of belonging.
New friends, a new ‘gang’ if you will,
along with a prosperity that,
despite what people say about such things,
can always fill the emptiness inside.
But”—Venable nods toward the building,
smiling ever so slightly—
“things have changed.
Within those walls is the man who led the attack
against your friends. He expects me to free him
and for business reasons, I will.
But that is as far as my loyalty to him extends.<
br />
Once he is outside those walls, my protection
vanishes like so much cooled steam.
If you believe vengeance breeds any kind of satisfaction
then I can only say I have delivered on my original promise
in a manner so timely
it even amazes me.”
He looks at Cutter and Blue.
They understand.
When Ray walks out into the white light,
crossing between the parked cars,
Venable is by his side, patting his shoulder paternally,
while Goyo follows silently.
Stepping into the limo, Ray sees Cutter and Blue.
They are unknown to him and he eyes the scene warily.
But there are words of reassurance. Handshakes. Smiles.
Still, Ray looks uncomfortable, sitting with his hands in his jacket pockets
smelling the burnt rubber of his own bad luck. Venable talks on,
speaking of a ranch out of town
where Ray can hole up, a lawyer will be found,
the maid will cook him a hearty dinner,
then, of course, feathery pillows.
They drive up into the canyons
the road twists and turns for miles.
The sun is just beginning to set as the car stops
at the head of a long red dirt drive.
Venable says, “You three go ahead,
this is the point where I lose my reception.”
He holds up his phone. “Goyo and I have two quick calls to make.
Just walk up to the house, we’ll be right behind.”
There is a pause,
Ray’s jaw muscles clench. “Why don’t I wait with you?”
“It’s private business, Ray. Now honestly, I helped you today,
so please don’t make yourself a nuisance. Goyo and I
won’t be but five minutes.”
Ray gets out.
Cutter and Blue follow.
The three walk up into the twilight.
Within a few moments one man
screams. And screams. And screams.
Then silence.
Venable shakes his head,
“Violent world indeed.”
He searches for Peabody’s number,
and waits for the boys to return.
XV
Miles away, Baron lies awake
caressing the small of Sasha’s sleeping back
thinking about the three lost from the pack.
Ray just let them fall away, but Baron’s thinking
in his new world
every loose screw will be tightened.
XVI
Across town, her eyes open in the night,
she watches Anthony sleep.
He smiles in his slumber
as her lips touch his cheek, the nape of his neck,
kissing down his chest,
between every rib, and the room
begins to whisper with the moonlight.
XVII
Bonnie is awake, scratching behind Buddy’s ear.
She had smacked her soccer brat nephew
when she discovered the dog was missing.
And drove off tersely with her sister still yelling.
But then as she pulled into her drive,
there was Buddy. Wagging his tail,
truer than anyone, any man certainly, had ever been.
She fed him a steak that night.
And let him sleep on the bed.
XVIII
Bonnie is awake, scratching behind Lark’s ear.
Why he came back is almost a mystery to him.
He could have stayed with Maria
to watch over his newborn pack
but he can concentrate here, he can relax.
He needs to think about more than just those dogs,
and here, with half-closed eyes, he can survey the larger scene.
He wonders what happened to Cutter and Blue
who seem to have checked out of their hotel.
And what happened to Baron?
Lark’s chin rests on the bed’s comforter
as his mind chews through it all.
But that first question still itches,
why is he really back here?
Why did he come back to Bonnie?
Lark’s heart is a cold and empty chamber, dusted clean,
and locked up tight.
But the thought of Bonnie coming home
to emptiness, to desertion,
made him feel
something.
Compassion? Devotion?
He wouldn’t know the words,
but now, yeah, he’s happy
curled up at her feet. Thinking. Ever thinking.
And she scratches behind his ear
Yeah, there, that’s just right.
XIX
Maria lies between Jason and Bunny.
None of them had anything before
and now they have the everything of
one another.
They wrestle with passion
sweating through the sheets in the afternoons,
resting to lick where it’s sore,
then starting again, with laughter.
Now Maria listens to her house of boys
breathing deep through the night.
She wonders why Lark doesn’t stay here too
but she doesn’t need him, not now.
She smiles and closes her eyes
safe as any queen in the heart of her hive.
XX
Peabody sits in his living room.
The clock reads 3 a.m.
He toys with his pain medication and sips
some scotch. He checked on the boy,
watched guns and badges on TV
and now sits with something in his stomach
that feels like fear.
Where’s that coming from?
When the lispy fellow called
Peabody had told him he was done
watching for the blonde.
The lispy fellow had waited a bit before replying,
“Well actually no, no you’re not.”
Peabody asked if that was a threat but the phone
was already dead.
Damn.
He tried a trace on the call again
and this time got back “Renee Industries.”
The Internet says it’s based in Barbados.
A few more clicks yielded some answers:
a midsize firm, offshore, blue chip,
legal consulting, clientele unknown.
Leaving more questions:
Why would a lawyer in Barbados bother with a blonde
living out some surfer free-love fantasy down in San Pedro?
Why would he care?
Peabody had put off his visit to the dogcatcher for another day,
he came home early, cooked dinner with his wife
read his son three books and then poured three scotches.
This is his fourth. It’s three thirty in the morning.
He raises his glass
and toasts the night,
go to hell.
XXI
Annie steps out onto the stoop and looks around
one cigarette is held between her thumb and forefinger.
The boys have been gone for too long
and being alone in the house leaves her feeling a bit vulnerable.
The trees’ shadows spook her as if she were still a child.
But then she settles down,
remembering that, in fact, she
is what the world’s afraid of.
Annie sits on the stairs and contemplates the single cigarette,
charmed that she’s this close to giving it up.
One cigarette. Maybe this idea of using each smoke
as a little therapist is a good one.
Maybe she should patent it,
write a book, go on TV.
She smiles to
herself.
It shouldn’t be this hard, in fact
she only recently began smoking again.
Her system had been clean for years,
but coming back to LA had ignited a yearning for it
that she hadn’t felt since she was a teenager
hanging around in 7–Eleven parking lots with friends,
always pretending to be older than she was.
Maybe that’s why she hungered for it,
it was, in some backward way, a symbol of innocence,
a small piece of the time before.
Physically, she knows, she shouldn’t need it.
Dogs are supposed to beat addiction,
there’s something in the change,
that cleans the blood.
But the stress, the city, the memories,
her lighter flares up.
Another session,
one of the last.
Her mind wanders along with her pack,
down in Mexico, fleeing north,
just a few miles over the Sonora border
they swam together, chins above the water
crossing over the river
to rest in the shade of the trees.
For three days they lay there
healing cracked paws and tired bodies,
stealing off now and again to the local dump
foraging for carcasses and scraps.
Someone must have spotted them in their comings and goings,
for just a day off that spot, heading north again,
they heard the roar of off-road engines and suddenly
they were being chased full bore across the desert
not as devils this time, simply as dogs,
by three pickup trucks and rifles
whose carefully placed shots
(just over shoulder, just beyond heel)
herded them to a dense circle.
Annie’s boys huddled round her defensively,
Snarling wild, snapping at the men
who fired their guns into the air,
driving the dogs
into the bed of the truck.
The big factory was to the north,
on the rough side of the border city called Nogales.
The workers came and went
while the fenced yard of wild dogs provided security.
Choler and venom bristled there
as the raw summer heat fired the dogs’ anger.
Annie and the rest were thrown in with them
finding dirt and dust and bad meat along with
an endless mean war against the other dogs.
Snapping, biting, her pack was naturally stronger but tired
and then more tired as the battles wore on.
One of her pack went down after a week