by Toby Barlow
The only puzzle piece that remains is who she works for,
we don’t know, they’re far more elusive.
We will wait, we have a man watching now,
a good man I believe, the police officer whose home we visited,
you remember him.
So everything should become very clear
quite soon.”
They sit again, silent as Quakers,
until Goyo finally returns,
weighing the car down
with his considerable presence.
Venable pats his friend’s knee
as they drive off.
XXV
Right about now,
Peabody is worried
about his balls and his face.
Barking, snapping, surrounding him
in the bleak afternoon light are thirty or so
feverishly snarling dogs
as dark and angry as an insane man’s mind.
Peabody’s already pulled out his gun and
fired some warning shots into the air
but that only seemed to make the dogs angrier
and he’s got the feeling shooting two or three of them
will completely piss off the rest.
They had rushed up,
encircling him as he came round the bend
and blocking any retreat from the rear.
Now he simply stands with his hands raised in surrender
while they keep him at bay, angry and frothing though
none lunge too close and none bite,
they seem to like him
like they have him
immobile and stupid.
Then there’s another gun blast, not his,
followed by a long whistle
at the sound of which all the dogs quickly
and obediently sit.
Peabody looks up the road to find
a couple of familiar shapes walking in his direction.
“Hey!” calls Peabody, “can’t you call these dogs off?”
One-armed Ruiz doesn’t say anything.
Next to him walks the blond surfer holding
a .22 in his hand.
The blond nods toward Peabody,
“Do you have a warrant?”
Peabody grins, a little reassured to be recognized as a cop,
and shakes his head,
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I’d crossed onto private property.”
The blond shakes his head. “Right. You probably
didn’t notice the gate or the fence or any of the signs
reading private property.”
Peabody shrugs.
The blond says, “You armed?”
Peabody holds up his gun.
“Do you mind dropping it?”
Peabody looks up quizzically. “Why? I’m a police officer.”
“And you’re trespassing,” says the blond.
“I could just leave you here.”
Peabody looks down at the dogs
thinks for a second, and then tosses the gun outside the circle.
Ruiz steps toward the gun, but the blond shakes his head no
and comes over to pick it up himself.
“Why don’t you throw me your cell phone too.”
Peabody shakes his head sadly to himself.
No cop is supposed to be in a spot like this.
This is why you stay in touch, keep a partner, follow the rules,
and, above all, avoid cases as fucked as this one.
He tosses his phone to the blond who pockets it.
“Okay, let’s go back to the house,” the man says.
Just like that the dogs are up again,
and they all start walking,
the dogs staying close
like rings around his planet.
The blond is going slow while scanning
the phone book on Peabody’s cell.
“I’m not looking for any trouble,” says Peabody.
“Who ever does?” says the blond.
Peabody shrugs. “I was looking for a friend of mine, named Anthony.”
Ruiz and the blond look at each other
and Ruiz mumbles something.
You can’t work as a cop in LA for fifteen years
without learning un poco Spanish.
What Peabody hears is
“El nuevo perro.”
The new dog.
The blond nods.
“Officer,” he says, “I think we should talk about things
other than your friend Anthony.”
“We’re going to talk?” asks Peabody, relieved,
the promise of conversation implies a future, so perhaps
the moment of vulnerability, the point of menace,
has somehow passed.
“Sure,” says the blond. “We have a lot to talk about.”
XXVI
Baron’s nervous, twitchy,
wondering many things,
the most pressing of which is
whether or not to kill the whore.
He wonders what Lark would do.
There’s something else on his mind.
The pack needs money,
the jobs have been slow coming in.
There’s still some good trade off the docks and, among others,
there’s the little man who pays them to hit the meth labs.
But Baron’s spent a mint on the plan so far,
and accounts once richly spilled over
are nearing bare bottom.
The pack’s been run ragged of late,
some working the pound, some tracking the girl,
the rest managing the push for recruiting,
retrieving the lost-and-found souls,
following Lark’s old method
of pulling in kids from the VA center,
but also branching out into church basements,
juvenile detention centers, prostitution strips,
plucking up the ones who are already pretty deep in the cracks.
Then it’s just a few weeks of indoctrination,
“Feel the power kid, listen to the dream, run in the hills”
and then send them straight through to the pound
where, thanks to Potter,
none of them can be killed or even castrated
as they’re watched over by Frio and the boys.
Thanks to the large marketing campaign
currently inundating the city,
the people stream in and
pick up these mutts, scratch them behind the ears,
name them Sid or Buster or Burt and take them on home.
Once there, these new dogs obediently slip into their new role
filling a wide range of neighborhoods
throughout the greater Los Angeles area
each dog behaving, sitting, fetching,
waiting for the day when the final signal is sent
and the real change begins.
But first the whore.
Without a bitch signed on to call their own,
Baron’s been buying time by renting whores
to feed and calm the troops, to manage the tension.
He hasn’t touched one (the ghost of Sasha would tear
him to bits if he did, he’s sure of it) but the pack
needs the release. It’s an expensive staple,
even though the pack is far from picky.
Baron remembers how the Ukan way let
Lark invest cash in art, restaurants, land,
instead of burning it away
on libidos whose engines run red and fully charged.
Baron sighs. Second guesses. But
it’s far too late
to convert this pack.
This one, this particular whore, she accidentally saw something,
stumbling upon a change in progress in the warehouse,
one of the boys turning with
his flesh glistening moist, fur protruding from the swollen sk
in.
The shock sent her screaming.
Who can blame her, thinks Baron.
It’s a sight that can drive men mad,
one only the initiated should ever witness.
She went running and
would have been torn to bits for seeing things she shouldn’t
but had escaped by shutting herself in one of the meat lockers
and has been wailing loud and high in there ever since.
Her shrill cries move through the whole bunker
like the haunting of a ship.
Baron stands outside the meat locker door
knocks gently.
“Open up.”
There is only soft sobbing.
“Listen,” he says with authority,
as the other guys sit with arms crossed, watching.
They still believe in Baron.
Baron’s the only one with real doubts about Baron.
“Listen,” he says, “either you trust me when I say
that we won’t hurt you. Or
you stay in there and you die
of hunger and of thirst.”
He pauses. Studies his fingernails.
He wonders if they should kill her or let her live.
“It’s really your choice,” Baron continues. “Choose life
outside, running around with your friends, the good life.
Or face the truth of what death means
alone inside that cold hole.”
He pauses again, the sobbing inside distant
like it’s coming from the bottom of a deep well.
Maybe she’s calming down.
He looks at his watch.
He had hoped to meet with Penn about the pound.
Almost all the dogs are focused there now,
all but the recruiters and the ones he keeps at large,
noses to the ground,
desperately seeking to root out Sasha’s killer.
He senses that’s a dead end but
keeps them searching.
The pack needs the hunt.
Still, there’s no sign, no trail.
Better to just look ahead.
The plan is a good one. Solid.
Lark would respect it.
Baron checks his watch again.
The weeping seems to have died down.
“All right,” he says. “We’re going to leave now.
You can let yourself out. Okay?”
He listens patiently for the
muffled and meek “Okay” that finally
squeaks out from behind
the locker’s thick door.
Baron turns to the guys.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Stoney asks, “We’re going to let her go?”
“Yeah,” says Baron, “fuck it,
who is going to believe her?”
So they go.
As they walk outside onto the lot,
Baron looks around
still nervous, still twitchy, scanning the sky,
detecting a thin scent of trouble.
The only thing he doesn’t know
is what direction it’s coming from.
An hour later back in the meat locker
the door gingerly opens.
A small mascara-streaked face peeks out.
Doe eyes dart and,
finding the place empty, she runs naked, squeaking her fear,
like a mouse that has somehow slipped out
from the falcon’s claw.
For the next two years she will tell anyone who will listen,
bored bartenders, other tired girls, half naked and impatient johns
about how she once saw
boiling flesh churn into fur and muscle and
teeth that grew sharp and eyes that blazed like a furnace.
They all look at her like she’s crazy.
Until she finally falls from a tall story,
quite high and
completely mad.
XXVII
Back at the pound
in a steel kennel off to the side
three dogs sit watching the busy days,
as strange beasts
that smell like danger and act
as innocent as pups
are brought into the kennel and then, almost as quickly,
taken away, adopted by loving couples and young families.
The three dogs watch with arched curiosity
as they sit waiting
for the friend to return
the one who brought them affection
and good tacos.
book five
So inevitable seems the coexistence of man and
dog that, according to an ancient North American
Indian myth, the Great Creator in the Sky was
already accompanied by a dog when he created
earth and man.
THE PEOPLE’S ALMANAC
I see the gutter,
feed on the foolish
outrun and kill the strong
at daybreak I roam
awake to who follows me
I roam, I roam.
I am the hungry wolf
JOHN DOE & EXENE CERVENKA
I
Anthony wakes up in the night
thinking he heard her call his name
but knowing now it is only dream’s deception.
His pack sleeps around him,
cold noses curled into warm bellies.
He rests his chin and looks up at the moon.
She used to play a game with him,
looking out their window.
She would say “Bucket Moon.”
he would answer “Ladle Moon.”
Night after night sky revealed a
bitten moon, a butcher’s moon,
an apple moon, a thief’s moon,
a rabbit—
“Rabbit moon?”
“Don’t you see it?”
“I used to chase rabbits,” she had said,
her voice sweet and tired.
“When did you do that?”
She rolled over and sleepy-eyed him
with a mystery smile.
A mouth on a breast
a hand up a thigh,
the opening, the gentle slipping in.
Christ he misses her.
He’d howl at the moon
but it would only wake the other dogs.
He wonders if he’s not back on the beach
and this is just some broken man’s hallucination.
Maybe he’s sick on something he pulled
out of the dumpster.
That would add up.
This doesn’t.
But it doesn’t matter, it’s quiet here,
there is a peace that comes with the pack.
So he sighs and slips off into his dreams
only praying as he goes
that he’ll find her there.
Far above,
the dull, dense moon looking down
with a stone for a heart
and a rock for a brain
can only think
that Anthony looks
like any other dog.
Stupid moon.
II
In her dream she’s a little girl
sleeping in the grass outside an ancient walled city.
Around her she can hear the rustling
of the tall grass blades as a skulk of foxes
moves past. Then
the wolves approach, two by two
she nuzzles their necks,
comforted by the lush warmth of their fur.
The last one approaches and, as she reaches for him,
the beast rises, revealing instead a man dressed in wolf fur
as a Native American might for some ancient ritual dance.
“I see,” he says, “I’m not the only one who lies with the wolves.”
She wakes with a start.
She looks at the lon
g shadows falling
across the cheap motel room’s walls.
She was so strong, she thinks.
Her love made her believe
she could devour them all,
an entire city of wolves.
Her love was so strong,
she thought she could drink the blood of the past
and make it disappear.
She was such a fool and
now, she thinks, she’s just small again,
like she was before Anthony, before the pack, back
when she would lie on the floor
and Pete would stand over her yelling.
She can still feel him slapping her, pushing her,
bruising her as she lies alone in the motel bed.
Like a broken hare shivering
at the hunter’s sure approach,
her body shakes with every breath.
Maybe Lark is right,
perhaps his plan can work
but first
she must find her footing again.
Days grow hotter and life grows shorter.
Time is somehow running out.
She flips her pillow
so she won’t have to sleep on her tears.
III
In the motel’s parking lot
hours of logistics later
Lark and Tati stand just beyond the shadows
winding up their business.
“Hey, do you remember the big one, the albino?” Lark asks.
Tati laughs. “That fucker, he ate everything we had.
What was his name, anyway?”
“I don’t know, we called him Cujo,” says Lark, smiling.
“Right. Man, funny how young we were then.”
“Yep. Well, time takes what it wants.” Lark shrugs.
Tati lights up a smoke,
there’s just too much to be done
to spend time heading backward.
“You know, you don’t have to do this,” says Tati.
“What would you suggest?”
“Do what I did. Walk away.”
Lark shakes his head. “You know coyotes never last, Tati,
I’m surprised you’re still standing.”
“Well,” says Tati. “There ain’t no hard-and-fast rules.
So, yeah, coyotes generally don’t make it, but that’s
because they can’t let go of the pack.
They get all torn up
in the in-between.
But that’s a bond
you’ve just got to break.” He shrugs.
“Anyway, that’s how I did it.
I’m only back in at all because of you, Lark,
’cause I owe you and all that.