love,” I said, sniffing the air.
DOG PARTY
Well a long time ago, when I was young, the other kids and I were pretty much left to ourselves — not much supervision or anything. We were all pretending we were happy, watching Leave It To Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet but feeling this gnawing loneliness. And this anger. Like it wasn’t supposed to be like this, like we were getting tricked. We were always fighting and our fathers always talked about the war. Until we began to feel like targets or something.
There was a boy living on our street. He had this thing with dogs, ya know? (Pause.) He had an inordinate attraction to them. None of us knew why. We knew he loved them, but still. . . . He was a strange boy with a strange laugh, a fourth grader with bleeding bite marks and scratches all over his arms. We’d see him following an old lady’s cocker spaniel or feeding somebody’s mutt through a fence. Calling and crooning — anybody’s dog. He’d devote his whole weekend to one dog. We’d need another kid to play outfield, or we’d be alone and want to play catch. Nope. He’s got no time. (Girl leaves the stage.) He’d be waiting for Fido. He’d just wait. He was inexhaustible. The dogs knew what was on his mind. They’d hide. The kid knew they knew, and that made it better for him. He’d wait for hours until they made their false move. They’d get hungry and take the bait, or they’d finally give in to the hope against hope that the boy wouldn’t really do it. They were wrong. He was quick. He’d grab them and he’d say, “You fool — I’m going to drown you, Fido.” He called every dog Fido, don’t ask me why.
For a couple of months he did it in secret. But by then we knew he had an odd devotion to dogs. He had witnessed their desperation, he’d watch their losing cause. He weighed each dog’s pain threshold. He knew what they could take, he was impressed. He’d stroke them, hold them in his arms as they shook with fear. He’d whisper to them. Then he’d take them to a big fifty-five-gallon drum that his father brought home from the Army base, and drown them. Normally we used the drums for trash cans. I remember he was always so happy on Wednesdays. The trash trucks emptied the cans on Wednesday. (Sound of trash trucks stops.) He called it “Anything Can Happen Day.”
He’d drag the garden hose to the black drums, greasy pieces of who-the-hell-knows-what floating with lettuce and tomato skins. He’d be talking real softly to these desperate, writhing, wimpering dogs. Somehow he’d get one into the spinning water. You don’t know how long it takes for a Labrador to drown. You don’t measure it in minutes. Eternity is more like it. Eternal moments. They fight like hell. They fight to stay out of hell, swimming that pathetic pointless upright paddle, nose bleeding from the broom handle he used to push them under, pinning them to the bottom. Panic. Wildest eyes you’ll ever see. Then, just when they were on the other side, as soon as their bodies stopped struggling and only twitched, he’d rescue them. He’d pull them out of the barrel. He’d hold them upside down. Pink water draining out of their mouth and nose. Then it looked like a little light would go on behind their eyes. He’d look relieved and he’d start to cry, saying, “See? There it is!” He’d be smiling at them as they began to figure out where they were. He’d lie down beside them on the ground. They’d be too weak to move. He’d pet them and put his arms around them.
The dogs would think that the boy had saved them, although they would always have a fear of the green garden hose and the barrel. And on Wednesdays after that summer, the whole street would howl when the trash trucks turned the corner. You could see that the dogs sensed something else. Belief, I guess.
The dogs wanted to believe that the boy had saved them. It was easier than facing what the boy had really done. So they let their memory start from the moment they saw his smiling face. The dogs loved him. Really. They followed him everywhere. If you ever saw him, he’d be with a couple of dogs. All by himself, with a couple of dogs trailing behind him.
I asked the boy, “What did you have to do that for?” He looked at me like I was stupid. He said, “I’m looking for love, something bigger than my life.”
DASHBOARD
“What the fuck should I be trying to write lines for?” He wiped the running nostril awkwardly with the heel of his hand. His drunken eyes focused on the grimy visor over the filthy dashboard. The 1949 Ford truck bounced over a series of potholes. The drunk’s eyelids took a second and a half to raise and lower over his wet red eyes. He turned to the driver. “I can’t even play guitar.” He thought this remark was very funny. He managed a slack smile to show the driver he got his own joke.
“Can’t sing, either. Wish I could, but. . . .” He shook his head with sloppy emphasis, “I can’t.”
His shoulders twisted to his side window. He stuck his head outside the cabin, looking backward down the road. He pulled his head in again, swung himself back around, and faced the dashboard. He stared coldly for a long moment, then examined the floor of the truck cabin, muttering, “I know that fuckin’ bitch.”
Looking into his rearview mirror, the driver caught a long-legged girl stumbling in her blue jeans and red jacket. Her boots kicked up small stones and dust. The driver down-shifted, let up on the gas, backfiring the truck, pressed his sweaty palm on the steering wheel and spun it counterclockwise from ten to two o’clock. The drunk’s weight pressed on his door. Afraid his passenger would fall out, the driver grabbed a handful of sweaty yellow T-shirt and yanked against the centrifugal force.
The driver straightened the wheel, ground the gears into third, saying “Fuck,” and began to accelerate. The truck jumped forward, lost some of its traction on the dirt road and slid from the far right shoulder to the far left. A here-comes-a-rowdy-farm-boy cloud of brown dust billowed behind the tailgate. Irrigation ditches sat deep on either side of the road and cattails began waving from side to side in the brown air as the truck continued to gain speed.
The driver punched into fourth gear. The truck did what it had going into third. The accelerator remained flat on the floor. “Stand on the maafucker, Lyle!” the drunk hooted.
Lyle asked the drunk who the girl was. “The biggest slut in El Cajon,” muttered the drunk, his high spirits disturbed by something. “Ya fuck her?” inquired Lyle. “Yeah, sure, once — me an’ about twenty other guys.”
The driver smiled to himself. He straightened his elbows back from the steering wheel, pressed his weight against the back seat and hit the brakes with one serious jolt. The drunk didn’t have a chance. He had been looking at the buttons on his Levi’s. Completely vulnerable, he flew forward. His skull jammed into the corner where the windshield met the dashboard.
During this micro-second, he was thinking clearly. He heard the voice in his head say “dashboard.” His memory provided a total recollection of his aunt’s farm in Oklahoma. He hadn’t seen the place in fifteen years. He remembered her grating voice whining, “Clifford, you be careful on that swing. . . .” He could feel the warm summer wind blowing across his aunt’s front yard. He could feel the gravity and release of the rope swing he was pulling against. He could see the blue sky and his little-boy knees, bare and skinned. He saw a dirty white tape bandage on his left big toe, which he held just a little bit higher than his other dirt-encrusted foot, both pointing directly into the sky. He heard his aunt cough, clear her throat, and finish her warning, “. . . or you’ll just dash your little brains out.”
Clifford’s head wobbled on his broken neck. His arms flapped awkwardly; a giant blood blister formed like a bruised peach over the mushy crown of his head. His ear hit the wind-wing support bar and sent blood splattering out the window and over the back of the bench seat. He shit his pants, in a single convulsive explosion; a huge volume of piss firehosed down his pant leg. His legs slid to the left along the floor, knocking Lyle’s
