by Robert Ward
I kissed her on the head, balled up the note I’d written her, and slipped it into my pocket.
I should have stayed home. I know it. She deserved that, Christ, and much more. But it was like a ghost had come over me, brought me back to life, and if I stayed in that kitchen for one more minute, I’d lose it. I felt that shadow come over me again. Sucking me dry. It was lame, cowardly, and wrong, but if I hadn’t left just then, I would have felt like the man with no nose. I couldn’t tell what would happen. What I might break. It had gotten like that.
• • •
When I hit the street I expected to see the down-and-out Dog I’d talked to on the phone the last few weeks, a mumbling, snarling drunk with a personality like a wolverine.
Instead I got the Dog of old, the ass-kicking, crazed-party Dog, with his new Levi jacket, black corduroy pants, clean-shaven and bright-eyed. He had his tape deck on too, Merle Haggard singing “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive,” and he was wailing along with it.
“Down every road there’s always one more city.
I’m on the run, the highway is my home … “
“For Christ’s sake, Dog,” I whispered, giving a half look back at the window to see if Wanda was checking us out. “I told Wanda you were down and I had to go talk it over with you. Turn that goddamned thing down, and let’s get the hell out of here before she comes out the door.”
“Hey, hey, don’t remind the old Dog, amigo,” he said. “I just started feeling better about an hour ago. I can’t figure out why, but something just told me that things are looking up. Way, way up.”
He gave this crazy laugh with his head thrown back, which made me laugh but sent a shiver down my back too. He was crazy as hell, I could see it, and I knew, I guess, even then, that as high as he was, he would soon fall just that low.
But I tried not to dwell on that. Hell, I needed a night off from it all, needed to drink some and see my sweet Crystal and just set it aside.
So we took off, with old Merle blasting away and both of us hitting the Wild Turkey, and I even popped a quarter of a Dr. Raines just to keep it moving in the right direction.
It was snowing like hell, snowing and sleeting like it had for days on end, making Highlandtown into a frozen world, icicles hanging off of Rev. James T. Carter’s African Black Nondenominational Church, and Bill’s Foodtown, but now, with the music going and Dog yelling “Oh yeaaaaaaaah, having a party,” it didn’t seem bleak to me at all because it didn’t seem real. Instead I felt like we were two miniature steel men being moved by an invisible hand, exactly like the little men I used to push around in my Christmas train garden when I was a kid. I’d sit there for hours and hours as the Lionel trains went round, moving my “men” to the post office, and the department stores, and the boats by the dock, and I felt protective toward them and happy for them, knowing they were all right, because I was there to keep them from harm.
And now, riding and yelling and drinking until we were out of our own flesh, I had become one of those little men, safe and happy, and crazy as hell.
“I’ve been thinking, son,” Dog said, squeezing my thigh. “I been thinking that it don’t really matter if the mill opens or not. Hell, I can do a lot of stuff, Red. Work as a short-order cook, if I have to, do some carpentry, be a stone mason. I ain’t going to worry no more. Lord, I know it’s going to be all right. The Dog feels it, Red. Yes.”
“I know you do, Doggie,” I said back. “Red feels it too.”
Oh, he was way off the ground. That’s the stone truth of it. He was flying over the rooftops of Charm City, and after a few more hits of the Wild Turkey I just wanted to be up there with him. Let me fly, fly, fly, leap out of this tired and wrinkled skin, fly up there with the smoke from the trains that circled us like some warm, secret coil, holding us all in that cozy, snow-covered village where no one ever cried and a man didn’t ever get old.
I had gotten so far deep into my own thoughts that I didn’t even notice that Dog wasn’t headed for the Paradise.
“Hey, where you taking us?” I said.
“Going down the kennels,” Dog said. “Got to take me a quick peek at Sadie … Grady’s training pups now.”
“Oh no,” I said, “we’re going to the Paradise.”
“Now now,” Dog said, squeezing my arm until the blood stopped, “don’t get yourself into an uproar. I just want to see my new babies.”
There was no use arguing with him. Dog got his name because of his love of dogs, any and all dogs. When we were kids he had eight of them at one time. They tore up his backyard, pissed in his parents’ house, and raised hell with the postman, but no one on this fair earth could get him to give them up.
Now we turned off the North Point Boulevard and headed down to Grady’s Kennels, Dog smiling and raving on as though he had all the confidence in the world.
“Yessir, Red, I been thinking, when this is over I might go in with old Grady down here. Raise hunting dogs … If I could just get a stake. Need a couple grand to become a partner.”
“I thought it was more like ten grand,” I said.
Dog smiled as we turned up the gravel road. Suddenly there were big trees hanging over us, oaks with icicles on them, frozen like phantom hands with long brittle fingers. I felt a pressure released inside of me. Doggie smiled to himself and began to hum in a quieter, less crazed way.
We drove over the rough, bumpy road, shining our lights into the snow-covered bushes. Then we saw Grady’s old house. It always amazed me that it still stood. Only four miles away from all our brick row houses, a taste of the country.
“God, it feels like we’re in another world,” Dog said. There was a clearness to his voice, and he held his head up and looked around him as we pulled to a stop.
In front of us was the farmhouse, all lit up and cozy, like something in a children’s book. We could see Grady’s outline leaning against a porch post, his long, lean body dressed in hunting boots and his shell vest, a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
Dog got out of the car fast and crunched across the snow. Suddenly the pointers in their running stables came out into the cold, and I heard Sadie begin to give a loud yelp. She knew Dog even in the dark.
“Hey there,” Grady said. “What you doing, boys?”
“Hey, old-timer,” Dog said. I walked behind him. I’d been anxious as hell to get down the Paradise and see Crystal, but there was something about this old place. I knew why Dog loved it so …
An uncommon stillness hovered over Grady’s place, shut down the voices clanging together like the raw machinery down the plant.
And Grady himself was part of it. He moved slowly, not like an old man but like a person who knew how long a time he needed to take to get somewhere.
“Well, Sadie’s doing fine, and them puppies are looking good. Couple of ‘em might even make real bird dogs.”
He smiled like old creased leather, and Dog smiled back at him, looking somehow younger and calmer, as if Grady had rubbed a magic cloth over his face and washed away his fears.
“Come on down the kennel,” Grady said. “Going to feed them babies right now.”
We tracked across the snowy ground, toward the white concrete building surrounded by the cyclone fence.
The dogs were out in the run now, yelping and jumping up, pressing their noses to the frozen fence and jumping back as the ice nipped them.
Dog turned to me and smiled, and in the half light from the moon, I saw what a sweet, cheerful look was on his face.
He loved it here. It suddenly occurred to me that he was living the wrong life, that his family should have never come up from the country down in Marlboro. He would have been happier on a tractor somewhere or out hunting birds under a cloudless sky.
We walked into the bare-bulb kennel, the wet, dripping concrete reflecting the hot yellow light. The dogs came racing back into the kennel, barking and yelping, and Dog smiled and hung on the fence.
“Damn, they’re getting to be big little buggers,” Dog sai
d. “Look at that one there, Red.”
He pointed to a lemon-colored pointer with the saddest eyes of the bunch.
“You two just tourists or you want to help feed these guys?”
Dog smiled again, softly, and I thought just then that there was something between him and these animals. It seemed to me that their brown-eyed gazes were aimed at Dog and Dog alone, as if he had some calm and loving bond with them that I would never understand.
Dog picked up the big sack of Jim Dandy as Grady opened the cage.
When he went inside, all of them crowded around him, even Sadie, who usually growled if anyone else got near them. Dog reached down and picked up his favorite. The dog began to suck on his fingers, and Dog stroked her softly and I watched his whole frame relax.
“Tough little bugger.”
“She’ll be a hunter,” Grady said. He reached into his shell jacket and pulled out his thunder whistle as Dog poured the Jim Dandy meal into the bowls.
The dogs went for the meal, and Dog smiled at them again.
“Ain’t a bad life, huh, Red? Chasing birds and eating?”
I smiled at him and thought of the way he had set the little dog down softly on the ground. As the dogs ate, Grady blew the thunder whistle three or four times in short, startling bursts, to teach them to get used to noise.
Two of the puppies jumped back and coiled their heads to the ground, and Dog and Grady smiled.
“Got a ways to go, babies,” Dog said.
He picked up the old cap pistol with the steer on the plastic handle, and popped three or four rounds.
Again the dogs jerked a little, and Sadie looked up at him, curiously, then went back to eating.
“They coming along pretty good,” Grady said. “Getting used to the sound.”
Dog smiled again and sat down against the kennel wall. For a second it occurred to me that he was going to eat out of the dish with them, and I got the crazy idea that not only was he a city boy by mistake, but that maybe by mistake God in heaven had made him a man.
“Dogs doing damned good, Grady,” Dog said, running his hands through his thick, tousled hair.
“Pretty well,” Grady said. “We going to get some hunters out of them.”
“Think you’ll get another Bruno?” I said.
Dog’s face softened, and he shook his head. “There will never be another Bruno.”
Dog had hunted with Bruno for eighteen years. A big black Labrador, Bruno was the greatest hunting dog anybody in these parts had ever seen. He had died three years ago at the age of twenty-two, and Dog still grieved over him.
Sadie finished her meal while the pups squealed and fought for position around the bowl.
Sadie came over to Dog and lay at his feet, and Dog took out his bottle of Wild Turkey.
“Hell,” Grady said, smiling at me, “it’s old Doggie, the King of Beasts.”
“Hey, girl,” Doggie said. “Used to beat your ass, didn’t I? But she knows how to hunt. Never seen this old girl point at no rabbit yet. Yeah, good old Sadie.”
He shut his eyes and ran his fingers over her back, and two of the pups came and began to bite at Dog’s shoe. Two more ran over his plaid jacket, and Dog touched each of them gently with his huge hands.
Grady lit a cigarette and shook his head.
“Hell, ought to get a picture of that,” he said.
Dog’s eyes almost closed, and he looked up at me.
“We ever get us some money, this is where I want to be,” he said.
Doggie smiled at me and tossed the pint of Wild Turkey up to Grady.
“You boys on a tear tonight?” Grady said, taking a sip.
“Maybe a touch of one,” Dog said. He got up slowly, the pups jumping off of him and clustering around his boots.
Grady took a swig and started to hand the bottle back, but Dog shook his head.
“You keep it.”
He looked fresh-faced, the lines smoothed out under his eyes. When he locked the kennel, he stood for a long while just staring in at them.
“Okay,” he said, after a while. “We got to get going. The night is young, and the girls are waiting.”
“Wish I was fifteen years younger so I could go make a fool of myself too,” Grady said.
Dog turned and put his arm around Grady’s shoulders.
“The Dog will drink three extra whiskeys tonight in your honor,” he said. “I’m coming back on Sunday. Want to work some of these babies with you, okay?”
Grady smiled and shook his head.
“Sure,” he said. “But don’t come early. I got me a lady friend spending the night.”
Dog squeezed him tightly and cuffed his head.
“Hell,” he said. “This is the life.”
• • •
Inside the black-velveteen-walled bar, we smelled the smoke and heard the men yelling encouragement to Miss Dolly James, another of Vinnie’s dancers, who was bumping and grinding to one of those disco songs I can’t ever name. All I know is they have a lot of bass and a beat that sounds like a Nazi military march. Half expect to see people start goose-stepping all around the horseshoe bar.
The place was filled with hard hats from Bethlehem Steel (those of whom were left working), a couple of college kids from down the Community College, and old-timers trading bullshit stories about the O’s.
Down at the end, where the girls and Vinnie usually sat around, I saw Crystal. She looked up at me and gave me a big, warm-faced, loving smile, and I felt my whole body ease up. Lord, I loved her, not like Wanda, not with history and muscle and bone, but like something new, some bright flower found somewhere, or maybe something seen only once and suddenly, like the sight of a covered bridge at sunset in western Maryland.
Now Dolly was revving it up, moving and shaking, while the old-timers drank their cheap bar whiskey and the college kids with their Big Cat hats on (so they’d look like workers) yelled too.
“Shake it, honey.”
“Tell the truth now, girl.”
“Whew … go baby … go for it now!”
Dolly smiled her gapped-tooth grin, bouncing her breasts up and down while giving them all a little tongue action.
“Everything I got the Lord gave me, boys!” Dolly yelled down, and then she turned fast and showed everyone her blue panties. The crowd of guys screamed, and Dog banged on the bar.
“Oh yes, love Miss Dolly James.”
I left Dog at the bar and walked down toward Crystal and Vinnie, who looked up at me and gave me a nice, hateful smile. Sometimes there is nothing to add juice to your life like seeing an enemy. He had on his green-checked gangster-special leisure suit tonight, and his thin, greasy hair was conked up on top of his head, like black whipped cream.
“Hey, look who it is,” Vinnie said in his bad Godfather imitation. “My old friend. How you doing, Red? They made you president of the Maryland National Bank yet?”
He laughed in his actorish way and turned to Frankie Delvecchio, who had on so many gold chains I wondered how he held his head up. Frankie opened his mouth and showed me his noiseless and joyless smile.
“Bank president,” he said. “This bum as a bank president.”
“That’s real good, Frankie,” I said. “Say it again and Vinnie’ll give you a banana.”
“Hey, fuckface,” Frankie said, stepping forward, “you want something?”
“Not me,” I said, taking Crystal’s hand. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
“Lovers got to have money,” Vinnie said.
“Don’t worry about us,” Dog said, coming up from behind me and putting his big friendly hand on my back. “We doing fine.”
“Yeah,” Vinnie said. “I can see that. Hey, but I heard about a job you two aces could get.”
“Gimme a break,” I said, squeezing into the barstool next to Crystal.
“Yeah,” Dog said, sipping his whiskey and Boh back. “Break it off, Vinnie, it stinks some.”
“Hey,” Vinnie said, opening his arms, palms u
p, “I’m serious.”
“Do that again for a minute,” I said quickly.
“Do what, Baker?”
“Open your arms again, like you just did.”
“What? What you mean, like this?”
He opened them wide, grubby palms up.
“That’s amazing,” I said, winking at Crystal.
“What?”
“When you do that just right, you look exactly like Wayne Newton. I’m not shitting you, Vinnie. Listen, this time do it and start in with a little ‘Danker Shane.’”
This brought a big laugh from Crystal and Dog, two fine Wayne Newton haters.
Vinnie looked around at Frankie and then back at me. His lips were bunched up like curled worms.
“Hey, you think you’re putting me down?” he said. “But I was in Vegas last year with Darla, and it just so happens we took a personal tour of Mr. Wayne Newton’s estate, and I’m here to tell you he’s one classy guy. He’s got more class in his pinkie ring than you do in your whole fucking empty head, Baker.”
“That hurts a lot, Vinnie. All the years I been coming in here and you can say a thing like that.”
Crystal and Dog laughed again, and Frankie looked like he was dying to reach into his coat.
“Hey, but listen,” Vinnie said, “I know a couple of jobs you guys can get. Some Dots are opening a curry joint downa road, and they need some assholes to slaughter the goats. The two of you clowns hurry up, you might start whole new careers.”
“A couple of what?” Dog asked, staring down at Vinnie like he was looking at a large roach.
“Dots! You know, Indians from India. They got them things … them dots on their heads.”
“Christ, that is ignorant,” Crystal said, putting her arm through mine. “Jesus, Vinnie, they are very cultured people.”
“If they’re so fucking cultured, what are they doing in Baltimore?” Vinnie asked.
“Hey, they happen to know a great town when they see one,” Crystal said.
“Yeah,” Frankie said, grabbing a beer, “and besides, it’s a hell of a lot better than living in teepees.”
This wisdom stopped everybody cold.