Dog Eat Dog Read online

  Sully looked at me, which he hadn’t done until we were alone. “Goofy, huh?”

  “Ya,” I said, with admiration.

  “Well, it’s sort of official now, you’ve been adopted. You’ve been made an honorary Sullivan.”

  “Ooooh,” I cracked, too stupid to act honest yet. “Oh, that’ll open some doors for me, huh?”

  “Stop bein’ an asshole, Mick.”

  He kept staring into me. Very un-Sully.

  “Okay,” I said.

  That was the good part of what came from my big weekend. Out of the fire, more or less. The Sullivans took me in. Took me deeper than before, and that was nice. Strange as hell, but nice. Who could figure? I couldn’t figure that. Family stuff, who could ever figure?

  The not-so-good part was Toy pursuing me.

  “You wanted to talk to me?” He was at my locker.

  “Ya. But I gotta run, Toy.”

  “You wanted to talk to me?” He was in gym, aiming a white leather ball at my head.

  “Gotta run,” I said about a quarter-step too slowly. The gym teacher, who was also the school nurse, gave me an ice bag for my nose.

  “You wanted to talk to me?” He was sitting in front of the superette, smoking a long thin cigar.

  “Ya, but jeez, Toy, now I completely forgot what it was about. I’ll catch ya—”

  “Now. You’ll catch me now, Mick.” He had a grip on the back of my shirt, pulling me down to sit on the milk crate next to his. He held up a cigar, and I took it.

  “Acting pretty damn weird lately, Mick.”

  I nodded, bobbing my head in and out of the smoke cloud that hovered in front of me. “Feeling pretty weird lately, Toy.”

  “Hmmm?” he said coyly. “You mean, like, guilty?”

  “Ahhh.” I inched my crate away as I spoke. “Maybe, maybe guilty is it, I don’t know. It’s a lot of things, feels like every kind of feeling in me all at once.” I watched him out of the corner of my eye to see if he knew, if he was guessing, if it was just coincidence. I could see nothing.

  I was so scared, when I pulled the cigar out of my mouth I sneaked—for the first time in many years—a little tiny sign of the cross, drawn with my thumb tip across my lips. If I was going to be dead in a second, I wanted my grammar school God right there with me. Toy scared me in a lot of ways, more than Terry and his friends and their attack dogs and all the rest combined.

  “Why’d you do that?” He’d caught it.

  “I had a little tobacco spit on my lip, that’s all.”

  “Funny shape for a spit,” he said.

  We paused, smoked.

  “What’s it about, do you suppose... your guiltiness?”

  “I didn’t say I was guilty, exactly.”

  “You done something you shouldn’t have? Something bad?” He exaggerated the word bad, mocking it, as if he didn’t believe in it.

  “Nope,” I said, steely.

  “Yes you did,” he said.

  I waited. I even closed my eyes for it. The only good thing was that Toy was so tough that I’d probably be dead before I felt anything.

  “I heard you set Sullivan’s house on fire. True?”

  I let out a very, very loud pheewww sound, like the sound of a fire extinguisher. That was all he knew?

  “Ya, ya,” I said happily. “Practically burned a whole wall down.”

  “What are you, proud? I would have killed you. Did the old man kill you?”

  “No. He threw me out, though, but then he let me back in.”

  “He took you...? Mick, can I tell you that I don’t understand the way your neighborhood works at all? Can I tell you that? Myself, I’d have killed you. Would have torn your lungs right out if you did something like that in my house.”

  I accidentally inhaled the cigar smoke. Coughing, coughing, hacking, I felt my whole head get flushed. My lungs felt like they were tearing, but at the moment it was good to feel them still in there.

  “You all right?” Toy said, beating on my back hard.

  I nodded, slowly regained my breath. The feeling of Toy’s big hand covering most of my back relaxed me, took away a lot of the fear. When I stopped being afraid of him, I felt a need to talk to him.

  “I almost left, you know. I packed my bag and left the Sullivans’ without even knowing where I’d go. Just wanted to once and for all bolt from this town.”

  He nodded. He relit his cigar.

  “But I didn’t leave.”

  “But you didn’t leave.” Toy said it as if there was no other possible end to that story like, of course I didn’t leave.

  “Why didn’t I leave? I still don’t have a real answer to that. I look around and I can’t see why I’m here. So...?”

  He nodded again, as if I had said something to agree with.

  “You understand, I know it, Toy. Let’s talk about you, for example.”

  “Let’s not,” he said with the cigar clenched in his teeth.

  “No, really. You go on trips all the time. And you always come back.”

  Very slowly he drew the cigar out of his mouth. “One time I won’t,” he said quietly.

  “Where do you go, Toy, on your trips? Huh, where do you go?”

  He stuck the cigar back in his mouth and talked around it again, turning away from me at the same time. “Mick, did I tell you a long time ago that it was none of your business where I go? I don’t remember, did I tell you that?”

  “Ah, ya, I believe you did, now that you mention it.”

  “Good, so I don’t have to tell you that now.”

  “I guess you don’t.”

  Toy stretched out, groaned, stood to go.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, panicky. I needed to get something from him. Something. “The reason I asked is that I think maybe I should start by doing what you do, you know, just taking regular trips instead of leaving for good yet. Do you think?”

  “I think you already take regular trips, is what I think.”

  “Don’t say that. I’m straight now. I’m not wasting myself anymore.”

  Toy put his hands on his hips and spat the stub of the cigar out in my direction. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that. That was the first step, to not be a fuckup anymore. The next step is to be more like you. You just have it all together. I want that.”

  “Okay, you want it?” He growled the words at me. “The story is that you are like me. I’m a fake, and so are you. Just because I don’t tell you things about myself doesn’t mean I’m not lying at the same time. And you, all you want, Mick, is to bingo-bingo, snap your fingers and change into something you think is cool. But you know it didn’t work. Dressing up like Ruben didn’t deliver you. Hanging with me, chasing Evelyn, that didn’t deliver you. Running away from here wasn’t going to deliver you either and at least you finally realized that, that you were just going to carry your crap along with you.

  “Problem with you, Mick, is you think you’re a better guy by changing your clothes or your address. You think your disease is in the leaves, when it’s in the roots.”

  I couldn’t look at him now, so I stared at his boots. Funny, when Carlo threw me out with no clothes on, I didn’t feel like I was naked in the street, but now? Now I felt naked in the street. I always figured this, that Toy knew a lot about a lot. I just never should have asked.

  “Mick, don’t pout. That’s another thing you need to quit. Stop acting like the victim all the time. Get on with it finally, will you please? I’m happy to help you out, if I can, but it gets hard after awhile to be patient with you.”

  I tried hard to stop pouting, but I could feel the face still there. It wouldn’t go away while Toy was in front of me.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Toy said, his timing as fine as always.

  Mickey the Dog

  GET ON WITH IT, Mick. Disease in my roots. Victim all the time. Just going to carry the crap with me. Wherever. Get on with it finally, will you please?

  Finally, it was clear. Finall
y, something was clear to me. I had to kill the disease.

  “Mick, phone,” Mr. Sullivan boomed. He shook his head.

  “Family?” I asked. He nodded and grinned.

  “I want you to come for dinner.” It was my mother.

  “No.”

  “Please? For me.”

  “Um... no.”

  “Mick, you cannot continue this way forever.”

  I did know that. Finally. I had come to that conclusion. “Is he going to be there?”

  “He really wants to see you, Mick. He says as much every single day.”

  “I’m not coming, Ma.”

  I could hear her fingers drumming on the telephone table. “Well... what if Terry wasn’t here? Would you come then?”

  “I might. Are you saying he won’t be there?”

  She hesitated. “I’m saying that, yes. Will you come?”

  I got a little morbid thrill out of the thought of going back there. But also, I had a need, a condition that needed treating.

  “I’ll be there.”

  Half an idea. When I got myself together for dinner at my parents’ house, I did it the way I did everything, with half an idea. I knew I wanted to look good, to look like I was successful and not needy, but I didn’t know what I wanted to look like. I knew I wanted to stuff it in Terry’s nose, that I got some of what I got from him, but I didn’t want to come in wearing the evidence. So I didn’t wear any of the clothes I stole from him, but I went clothes shopping with the money I stole from him.

  I stood at the door wearing shiny black Doc Martens, the ugliest footwear of all time, but an item they could all recognize. I wore a red silk shirt buttoned to the collar, brown Levi’s 554 baggies, a huge black satin baseball jacket, and matching Chicago White Sox cap. Tiny oval sunglasses that barely blacked out my eyes.

  My father answered the bell.

  “Told ya he’d wind up selling drugs,” he called over his shoulder to Ma.

  She slapped him on the shoulder. “Mick, you look very sharp,” she said, and gave me a quick shoulder hug. She took my jacket, hat, and glasses as I sat at the table. I hadn’t even warmed the chair yet when she started serving. She buzzed nervously around, rushing to the kitchen and back, slapping mushy vegetables, mushy mashed potatoes, mushy boiled ham onto plates. “You look very healthy, you look very nice,” she jabbered.

  “You look very pimp,” Terry said, winging his leg over the back of a chair.

  “Ma!” I called as she disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Keep your voice down,” Dad growled as he started peeling beers off the ring. “That what they do over Sullivans’? Scream at each other like animals?”

  I waved my beer away. Terry snatched it up, nodding, his mouth already overflowing with food.

  “You coming home yet, or what?” Dad asked.

  “We got no room for him,” Terry answered.

  Ma sneaked up on her chair, slipped into it under my glare. “Of course we have room for him,” she said. “We will always have room for him.”

  “Ya,” I said. “Not that I’m coming back, but of course you have room for me. My room, remember?”

  Terry shook his head gleefully. He started talking, then put meat in his mouth, without slowing down. “Uh-uh. Dog lives in there now.”

  I stared at my mother some more. When she wouldn’t stop averting her eyes, I just spoke up. “I thought he wasn’t going to be here,” I said.

  “Why shouldn’t he be here?” Dad barked. “He lives here. Gettin’ awful snotty there, Mick, lately.” His voice trailed as he bore down on his food. “Goddamn Sullivan.”

  “Ya, Jesus, kid, don’t be such a piss now,” Terry said. Terry was having a fine time. “Dontcha even want to know his name?”

  “Ma?” I said, trying to address my original question.

  “Please, Mick,” she whispered, trying not to answer it.

  “Ma,” I said more forcefully.

  “Mick, I am his mother. Why can’t you understand that? I’m his mother just like I’m yours. You might see yourselves as being two very different creatures, but I cannot. I might just as well cleave myself in two, as pretend even for a minute that I have one of you and not the other. It may not make any sense at all to you, but I just haven’t got a better explanation than that.”

  She couldn’t have been more right, about me not being able to see it. And from the barely contained laugh rumbling in Terry’s throat, this was one of the few things we agreed on. But Ma did manage to shut me up with it.

  “And that is why you have to come home,” Dad said. “You’re killing your mother.” He refreshed his palate with a full beer.

  “What about Mickey?” Terry said to Dad. Then he tipped a glance to me. “His name’s Mickey. I named him for you, you ungrateful sonofabitch.”

  “Build a doghouse out back,” Dad said. “’Cause he can’t have run of the house.”

  Terry turned to me again. “That okay with you, bro? You won’t mind living in a doghouse? We can get you some curtains and a rug. ...”

  “No thanks, Ma,” I said. “I’m set now. Really I am.”

  She looked down now and played with her food. Her terrible sloppy overcooked food that she always made unless she burned it. I didn’t miss the food, but I could live with it, no problem. She was hurting, I could finally see, and I was surprised by that. Somewhere inside, I was pleased by that. As I looked at her, I understood I was hurting too, and I was most surprised by that. I would be back, I wanted to tell her, but not till Terry was out of the picture. I wasn’t here because of him, and I couldn’t accept that anymore.

  There was nothing really left to say. Ma brought me there for that one conversation, and we were no good at anything like natural give-and-take. Dad didn’t particularly care whether I was at his table or not, as long as I didn’t get between him and the refreshments. All that was left, creepily enough, was the Terry dance. He stared, he bit, he drank, he slobbered, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He smirked at me, he winked, he coughed little pieces of food so they landed on my plate. I looked back at him, not shying away like I used to. We set it all up right there across the table, without words. A bull and a bullfighter, or just a bull and another bull. We had a date. I was either coming over to the other side, or else. ...

  “Ma, supper was great,” Terry said as he got up. “We gotta go now.”

  “We?” she asked,

  He looked down at me. “Ya.”

  Ma looked to me, her face questioning.

  “Ya,” I said firmly.

  “We’re gonna take Mickey for a walk.”

  Ma looked both hopeful and afraid, even more confused about all this than I was. Dad just waved his fork at us. “You two don’t make no sense at all.”

  I waited on the porch while he retrieved the dog, a brown shepherd-Doberman monstrosity. It strained at the leash, wheezing in the choke chain as it pulled harder and harder, strangling itself. I hopped up and walked backward down the stairs, as I was the thing it was trying to reach.

  They were perfect for each other, and the beast calmed right down when Terry addressed it. “Ain’t he beautiful?” he said sincerely, making goo-goo eyes at the dog, bending down to kiss him on the mouth. It was the closest I’d ever seen Terry come to something like love.

  “No,” I said, because the animal was not beautiful. He was big, in a clumsy, retarded way, and still growing. He looked strong and dangerous and about to fall over all at the same time. Some of his hair was short and some of it was long, like a mange pattern, and all of it was orange, like Terry’s. He had a very pointy face.

  “Gotta get y’self a dog, Mick. Gotta.”

  “Don’t gotta,” I said, in his stupid voice.

  He shook his head at me, waved me to start walking. “You don’t understand nothin’, man, dogs is where it’s at today. A guy’s dog is who he is. Dog can be you, y’know? Like, let’s face it, mosta your white guys, they can’t fight no more, life’s been too good to them, what with
bein’ lucky enough ta be born white and all. So they’re soft. Like you. Niggers are stronger, spics are faster, and even the gooks and the heebs—people ya used ta be able ta count on—now even they’ll stick ya in a damn heartbeat. You get a blade, they get a machete. You get a nine millimeter, they get a Uzi. It just don’t pay.”

  “No, it don’t.”

  “You’re gettin’ wise wit me, boy, but you still don’t get it. This is, like, the wave of the future, where the dogs do the fightin’. Your dog is special. You train him, you raise him, maybe you even breed him perfect, till your dog is like a dog version of yourself. Cunnin’. Mean. Smarter than all the other dogs. Then he does all your killin’ for ya, and you don’t gotta get your head knocked at all, ’cause now it’s the best dog-man, the sharpest, that winds up on top and everybody else can just kiss my ass.”

  I was stunned. I could not recall Terry ever before stringing together three sentences on one subject without forgetting what he started to say. He had clearly been working on this.

  “What do you get out of all this, Terry?”

  He slapped his dog on the back of the head, out of anger at me. “You’re so stupid, Mick. You’re so ignorant. It puts things back the way they belong. It puts us back in position, y’know. The future of warfare. It’s high fuckin’ tech.”

  Terry’s snapping at me got his dog agitated. He started straining again to get at me.

  “No, Mickey,” Terry yelled, yanking the chain, letting it go slack, then snapping it tight again.

  “Let him smell your hand,” Terry said, talking to me the same way he talked to the dog. “No, no, no, turn it palm up. You want it to be a stump?”

  I let the dog smell me. His lip curled in a snarl as he did. I froze.

  Three or four long whiffs later, Mickey decided. His ears, which had been lying back flat on his head, stood up. The hair on his long curved horse neck smoothed out too. He stood at attention beside Terry, which seemed for him to be a relaxed state.

  Terry smiled. “See? He likes ya. ’Cause ya smell like me. He can smell that, your insides, that they smell like mine. Dogs know the real stuff.”

  I didn’t take the bait. “Where are we going?” I asked calmly.

  “Are you just bein’ stupid on purpose, or have you been gone that long?”