Canis Major

by Jay Nichols

Chapter 21

  Russell was lying in bed crossways, flipping through an old Guitar World magazine, when a vehicle screeched to a halt in front of the house.

  "What the—" he grumbled, getting up and moving for the dormer.

  Apollo following.

  Russell crawled across the long dais and peered down the slanted roof, but the oaks blocked his view. Outside, a car door slammed shut. A second later: Hector’s crewcut head speeding up the path.

  "What the hell does he want?"

  The walls shook; the guitar picks on his night stand rattled. A green one teetered and slid over the edge. Russell watched it fall with an expanding bloom in his stomach. As quickly as the shaking started, it stopped. But the respite was brief. Five seconds later, the walls were trembling again, their vibrations instigated by three heavy blows to the front door—all in rapid succession—courtesy of the brute three stories below.

  I hate you, Hector.

  Tromping down the stairs (with Apollo trailing, of course), his father called out his name from the foyer.

  "Rustyyyy!"

  Russell didn’t answer. There was no need to: he was already plowing through the piano room. Then, moving through the foyer door, Russell met his father, who only shrugged and gave him a look that said This is between you kids before retreating down the hall; then he saw the hulking frame standing in the amber porch light.

  Hector heaved violently, his massive gut expanding and contracting, stretching the fibers of his brown cotton shirt to their very limits. Deep purple splotches ran the lengths of his florid cheeks; his eyes seethed a hatred so vile that Russell didn’t know whether to run or collapse. And he would have collapsed, too, had Apollo not barked, snapping him to attention, boosting him up, flooding his innards with courage where only seconds before there had been dread.

  Apollo will protect me. I don’t have to be afraid of this idiot.

  With one hand tucked under his dog’s collar, Russell stepped forward to face the creature on the porch.

  "What do you want, Hector?"

  The fire faded from Hector’s eyes, and his fat, plum-colored bottom lip quivered. Russell thought he was going to cry, like he had cried at the corner of Michelle’s street, but he didn’t. Instead, Hector thrust out his flabby arm. In his hand he gripped a dog collar.

  Shit!

  "What?" Russell asked coolly.

  "What do you mean what?" Hector spat. "You know what this is, don’t you?"

  Russell took Hector’s stout wrist and forcefully lowered his arm.

  "Get that thing out of my face. It stinks."

  "Yeah it stinks!" Hector fired back. "It’s Lola’s." He glanced down, pressed his lips together until they formed a thin, blue line, then snorted.

  What the hell was that? Is he crying?

  Hector raised his head and flared his nostrils. In the dim light, his eyes flickered with a tenebrous fire.

  Is he going to charge me? Is that what he’s steeling himself to do?

  Russell gave Apollo’s collar a slight tug. Don’t let him hurt me was the message he attempted to convey, knowing full well his companion would willingly sacrifice himself so that he could live.

  But Russell wasn’t going to allow things to escalate that far. There was a way out that didn’t involve violence. He had an ingenious escape plan in his head somewhere. He just had to find it. The confrontation didn’t have to end with him and Hector battling it out on the front porch, and Apollo barking and biting Hector’s thick hide until one of them gave up, or until one of them got seriously injured.

  O’Brien, you fucking Judas. You set me up.

  "YOU KILLED LOLA!!!"

  Russell raised his hands innocently. "Okay, Hector, just calm down…calm down…atta boy. I think it’s time we had a little talk."

  Without warning, Hector dropped the collar, raised a clenched fist, and lunged for the person standing in the doorway.

  With equal speed, Apollo dashed in front of his master, curled his lips back, and growled at the attacker, who froze less than a foot away from the Great Dane’s eager maw.

  Just try it, Hec. He’ll rip your goddamn throat out.

  Hector backed away, and Apollo’s teeth disappeared behind his lips. The dog remained poised in front of Russell, though, guarding him.

  "I see how it is, Rusty. Hiding behind your dog. What—you too afraid to fight me like a man?"

  "I don’t weigh three hundred pounds," Russell replied. "So, yeah, I guess I am."

  "You’re chickenshit, you know that?"

  Russell nodded dismissively. "So they tell me. Now, if you’ll just let me explain a few things—"

  "What’s there to explain, faggot? You killed Lola and now I’m gonna kill you."

  Russell ignored the threat, and the insult. "I believe I told you to calm down. There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this."

  Hector’s face contorted, and when he spoke, he mimicked Russell. "‘Perfectly reasonable explanation, blah-blah-blah—I’m so smart. I’m so cool. I know the answer to everything that’s going on.’ You sound just like Pete. You know that?"

  "Not funny," Russell said dryly. "Leave Pete out of this."

  "Oh, yeah," Hector said, as if to stab Russell. "I forgot that your girlfriend committed suicide. Too bad. I heard they had to use a spatula to scrape him off the ground."

  Adrenaline surged through Russell’s body, making his muscles quake and his knees buckle. He wanted to bury his fist in the fat kid’s stomach, to knock the wind out of him, to rattle that dusty, unused thing he called his soul.

  He doesn’t have one. I know that now. He can’t, because to say those things about Pete and to treat his mother the way he treats her requires the absence of one.

  Russell looked up from his knocking knees and said, "I thought you’d changed, but you were obviously lying that day I saw you crying at the corner of Michelle’s street. Those tears: fake. You saying you were trying to change and shaking Pete’s dad’s hand at his funeral: fake, fake. You’re just one big fat phony who doesn’t have a clue as to what it means to be human. All you care about is yourself and your stupid, dead Bloodhound—who, by the way was never seventeen. Your mom told me never to tell you this, but she bought her for you when you were six, so that made her, what…eleven when she died? How can you not remember getting Lola? Only a moron would forget something like that. Or an—"

  "You lie."

  "No, you lie!" Russell fired back. "You pretended to change, but you only did it to get back with Michelle."

  "It worked." Hector grinned.

  "And she’s a stupid bitch for falling for your bullshit. She’s just as blind as you are."

  Hector picked up the collar from the porch boards and threw it at Russell’s head. Russell ducked and the collar struck the door.

  "DON’T YOU DARE TALK ABOUT MICHELLE THAT WAY!!!"

  Apollo growled and Hector lowered his voice.

  "Don’t you dare call her a bitch," he said more quietly.

  This time Russell grinned. "You called her a bitch, too. Remember? When we had our little conversation a couple of days ago?"

  Hector eyed his opponent confusedly. "That was more like a couple of weeks ago."

  "Whatever. You called her a bitch. Her and your mom. Or did you forget? The same way you’re forgetting that Sheriff Price lives next door and that if you keep screaming like the overly-dramatic attention whore that you are, he’s bound to step outside to see who’s making so much noise."

  Swatting a mosquito on his leg, Hector laughed. "Where the hell have you been, Rusty?"

  Russell stared at him, then past him.

  "Price resigned weeks ago, man! He’s off the force, or out of office, or—who gives a fuck?! He can’t do shit to me now."

  "Is that right?" Russell asked.

  "Yeah. That’s right."

  [Hurt him. Stun him. Get him on the defensive again. He’s scared of you, Rusty. You confuse him.]

  Not you again, he
told the alien, insect voice. Leave me alone.

  [I’m not an alien voice. I’m your true voice, the one you’ve forgotten.]

  I have only one voice, and I’m not schizo. I don’t care how loudly you speak in my mind.

  [You have a duty you must fulfill, and your success will depend on following my orders no matter how messy things get.]

  Go away, go away, go away, go away, go away…

  [Not until you get him off your tail. You’re going to need it for later.]

  "Hector?"

  "What?" Hector asked dubiously.

  "What’s in your pocket?"

  Hector reached into his front pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. "It’s the letter you wrote me, jackass." Eyeballing Russell suspiciously, he added, "Wait—how did you know it was in my pocket?"

  "What letter?"

  "Answer me first."

  "Fine. I heard it. What letter?"

  "The letter you left on my porch saying you killed Lola."

  O’Brien.

  Russell extended his arm. "Give it to me."

  Hector approached; Apollo rumbled. Russell snatched the eggshell-colored sheet from Hector’s sweaty mitt.

  He unfolded the letter. In sloppy, backhand script were the words:

  Dear Hector,

  I killed you’re dog with a ho. I’m sorry but I had to do it. Here’s the coller. Maybe we can talk about this?

  Rusty Witford.

  Russell crumpled the familiar-feeling sheet of paper and tossed it back to Hector, who caught it and immediately crammed it into his pocket. "You idiot," Russell said, shaking his head. "After all this time…after all this time, I’m still unable to wrap my mind around how stupid you actually are."

  "What?"

  "Jesus, Hector—did you even look at the handwriting? Did you not notice all of the spelling and grammatical errors? Come on, even you know I don’t spell my last name that way."

  "You don’t?"

  "No!" Russell shouted. "Don’t you see what this is? Don’t you see what he’s doing?"

  "Who?"

  "O’BRIEN, you moron! I’d recognize his handwriting anywhere—I tutored him in English, you know. He’s trying to pit you against me."

  Hector appeared genuinely dumbfounded, any semblance of anger gone from his face. "Why would he do that?"

  Russell felt the creative juices bubbling, enticing him to say what needed to be said, to turn the situation on its head and manipulate its outcome, to exploit Hector’s denseness, to make him an ally in his own nefarious scheme. It came to him in a wave.

  "Because O’Brien killed Lola, dumbass! Why else would he try to pin it on me? He’s scared of you."

  No. I’m the one who’s scared of you, Hector.

  "He’s afraid you’ll kill him. And he knew I’d rat him out eventually."

  "What do you mean?"

  Russell smiled inwardly (he was too good at this) and lowered his voice to a whisper. "Okay, don’t tell him I told you this, but a couple of weeks ago—I can’t believe it’s been that long—Mike came over to my house all worked up over something…"

  That’s true, so far. He did come over to my house all worked up. All good lies (all plausible lies) contain an element of truth buried inside them. Only true geniuses know how to pull that truth out and tweak it so that, in theory, the truth becomes a lie but still remains believable as a truth. I can do that. I know I can. Besides, I’d like to see that idiot-savant O’Brien try to refute my version of events. Who’d ever believe him anyway?

  "…and he’s crying, bawling in fact, saying he’s done something terrible. And I’m like, ‘Hey, calm down. It can’t be that bad. What did you do?’ And he’s sitting right where you’re standing, and he says to me, ‘I think I killed Lola.’"

  "That son of a bitch!" Hector hissed through clenched teeth.

  "Shut up and let me finish."

  Hector dropped his head and began pacing the porch.

  "Anyway, as I was saying, Mike had Huey with him. They had run all the way from his house to mine, and they were both pretty loopy because of the heat and all. And you know how O’Brien is: all worried one minute, walking like a crab across the kitchen floor the next. At that point, I didn’t know what to think. Did he kill Lola or not? So I brought them inside, gave them some water, and asked him flat out: ‘Did you really kill her, Mike, or are you shitting me again?’ And he’s sitting on the floor, drinking water out of the same bowl as Huey, looking up at me all innocent with his stupid puppy dog eyes. He looked confused, like he didn’t know how he’d arrived at my house, and he says to me, ‘I didn’t hear you. Rusty. I was drinkin.’ So I repeat myself, and he starts crying again, like a baby, and then his dog joins in, both of them howling like a couple of hounds. ’Okay,’ I say. ‘Let’s go take a look.’"

  "Did he run her over?" Hector asked, leaning in.

  Russell shot him a caustic glance. "Since when has Mike ever driven a car? It’s a miracle he can even walk."

  Except Russell didn’t believe that about Mike O’Brien at all. No one gets to the eleventh grade without having a little bit of the gray puddin’ crammed under their dome. Mike turned his oddness on and off. Russell was sure of it now.

  [But why does he do it? Why does he want everybody thinking he’s crazy?]

  Be quiet! Russell told the voice. Then, answering its questions: He does it for attention. Why else?

  "Shit, I don’t know," Hector said. "Maybe he’s taking lessons."

  "Are you gonna let me finish? Because once I do, you’ll have all the answers you’ll need."

  "I’m sorry. Go ahead."

  "Thanks." Russell composed himself and plowed further into the realm of make-believe, a realm to which he had free access. "We get in the truck, drive over to his house, and head off into the backyard. ‘She’s back here,’ he says, leading me through the gate. We go in, and Hector, it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen."

  Hector brought his fists up to his eyes. "I don’t wanna hear."

  "No, it’s not what you’re thinking. It wasn’t like that—I didn’t even see Lola until later—but it was something. It was awful, man," Russell closed his eyes, lowered his head and shook it, as if reliving the ordeal. In a sense, he was. The only difference was that his new version was far from the sphere of truth.

  One big fucking lie, he told himself. And I’ll probably go to hell for what I say next.

  Hector stared at the storyteller with huge, egg-like eyes.

  "There were bloody rabbits everywhere—hares, really; there’s a difference—and other dead animals. But mostly it was the rabbits—hares—my eyes were drawn to. There were hundreds of them, their guts strewn out all over the place, and us slipping and sliding in the bloody grass. I’m floored by the whole scene, to the point where I can barely mutter, ‘What the hell happened here?’ And Mike says back to me, ‘I dunno’ as if it’s old news. Then he shrugs and walks away. ‘Did you do this?’ I ask him, and he yells back, "No! What do you think I am, some kind of animal?’"

  At once, Hector went pale. He prayed the soft glow of the duel porch lights dampened his dramatic loss of color, the same way he prayed that Russell was too involved with his story to notice. But they didn’t, and he wasn’t. Russell saw everything.

  But Russell pushed on as if he hadn’t just witnessed the fat kid’s face lose about seventeen shades of red in under two seconds. "So, I say, ‘Who did this then? Huey?’ And Mike snaps back, ‘Huey would never do anything like this.’—you know, real snobbish-like. I swear to God, that kid is fucking nuttier that a squirrel’s turd. But, anyway, he motions for me to follow him, so I do, and he leads me over to the wooden fence, not the wire one, and that’s where I found Lola, buried deep in the grass, dead."

  "I’m gonna kill him." He said it simply, as if it were already a done thing. And perhaps it was. Generally, once a decision like that is made by someone like Hector, there’s very little chance of the victim escaping alive. The only except
ion is for slippery creatures like Russell, who are too clever, and too sharp, to get caught by the Hector Grahams of the world.

  I’m a sly little dog, Russell thought.

  [You’re not a dog.]

  Hector turned and stomped down the brick path, away from the house. Echoes of Pete ricocheted through Russell’s head.

  "Wait!" Russell called out. "Come back. I’m not done yet."

  Reluctantly, Hector returned to the light, and Russell resumed. "It wasn’t his fault."

  "How? You just said he killed her."

  "Lola was rabid. She’d attacked Mike earlier that morning, but somehow he was able to fight her off. In the process, he killed her. Accidentally."

  "How did he kill her?" Hector asked. "You said he used a hoe. Did he beat her to death?"

  "Look, Hector. I’m not going to tell you that—not because you don’t deserve to know, but because it’s just going to piss you off even more. And it wasn’t me who told you. It was O’Brien. Remember? He was the one who wrote you that note. My point is Mike only did what he had to, what either of us would have done in the same situation. The Lola he killed wasn’t the dog you grew up with. She was a rabid animal, one that was in a lot of pain and on the verge of death anyway. Let’s face it: Lola was no spring chicken, and rabies is always fatal. Always."

  "Oh yeah," Hector huffed, glancing at Apollo. "How do you know she was rabid?"

  "Look at me," Russell commanded. "I saw her with my own two eyes. There was foam all around her nose and mouth, and a lot of her skin had been torn off. She’d looked like she had gotten into a couple of scrapes with some bigger animals. Bears maybe."

  "Bears?"

  "She was all bloodied up and rabid. That’s all I know for sure."

  "And Mike killed her?"

  [Careful, Rusty. Choose your next words carefully.]

  "Technically, yes."

  [You dirty liar.]

  I don’t have much of a choice. It’s either me or Mike. I may go to hell for this, but at least I won’t arrive there with two broken arms and a feeding tube shoved down my throat.

  Hector’s complexion instantly darkened to a shade of red Russell didn’t know was achievable in humans, a kind of crimson-purple that rang alarm bells in his head. When Hector’s eyes began bulging from his face, Russell shifted his gaze to his thick, flaring nostrils, half expecting to see steam shooting out in twin vaporous jets.

  Is he choking?

  No, he’s mad—perhaps madder than he’s been in his entire life.

  Hector glanced at Apollo, then at Russell, and declared once more, "I’m gonna kill him," before storming off and soaking into the night.

  Russell called out to him. When that didn’t work, he and Apollo chased him down the path. "Wait!" he yelled as Hector slammed the door to his Jeep. "Where are you going?"

  Russell pounded his fist against the windshield and the engine rumbled to life. Apollo began to bark. "Where are you going?!" Russell shouted over the combined noise. Hector didn’t look at him. He just stared straight ahead, speaking words Russell couldn’t hear.

  Russell pounded on the windshield a second time, but Hector ignored him and shot the vehicle like a missile down Deer Street. The Wrangler’s side mirror struck Russell’s right shoulder and sent him tumbling to the ground, where he barrel-rolled in the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. When he came to a stop, he turned over onto his back and immediately began massaging his right shoulder with his left hand. From out of nowhere, the fiery pain flared in his left palm, forcing him to abandon kneading his shoulder for kneading his palm.

  "Oh Apollo," he said, writhing in the dry grass. “It hurts so much.”

  The Great Dane approached, stepped over his master’s torso, and sat down on his chest. Russell stopped squirming and held out his betraying hand for Apollo to lick. The dog lapped at the palm, but it did nothing to alleviate the pain there. If anything, it made it worse. Russell allowed him to continue anyway. Sometimes it was just too heartbreaking to tell someone (even a dog) that what he was doing, while coming from an altruistic place, wasn’t doing a damn thing to make things any better. So they stayed like that for several minutes: the giant dog sitting on top of the human, licking his master’s throbbing hand.

  Together, they listened to the roaring Jeep rip down unseen streets and unknown avenues—all the time growing fainter and fainter—on its way to a destination Russell feared would be the sight of disastrous bloodshed.