Blood Relations (20 page)

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?”

When we strolled into Bloody Sundays, we were showered with
whoo-whoo-whoos
as if Terry had the world’s finest woman on his arm. “Looky look,” Danny said as I took a stool beside Terry. No one even seemed to notice the dog. The bartender slapped two pints of Guinness in front of us, laughing. “You can take the boyo out of the Bloody, but you can’t take the Bloody...”

I immediately took my beer and placed it on the floor in front of the dog, who inhaled it.

“Hey. Don’t do that again,” Terry said. “He has a problem.”

“Where’s Augie?” one of the big fat Cormacs asked Terry, adding, “Hey, Mick,” as if he’d just seen me yesterday.

“I ain’t seen him,” Terry said. “He’ll be here. Spooks show yet?”

Cormac laughed. “Think maybe you could tell if they was here or not, bro?” He gestured around the room full of puffy round faces in various grades of white and pink.

Terry laughed too. Then he gave me the rundown.

“Nigs from Mattapan, Jamaicans, are bringin’ by their hot shit dog tonight, stupid shits. Gonna get his ass
whipped
tonight, for sure.”

I leaned back, away from him. I pointed at Mickey the dog. “Your dog’s here to fight, Terry?”

“Nah, he’s just here to watch, he ain’t ready yet. I want him to learn a few things. It’s Bobo. These fools heard about him and came lookin’ for a match. Word’s spreadin’ all around the goddamn city about how Bobo’s thirty and 0. Like gunfighters, they’re poppin’ up all over.”

This made Terry suddenly giggle hysterically. “We’re gettin’ stinkin’ rich on it.
And
we get to put certain ignorant, cocky sonsofbitches in their places at the same time. Heh. Bobo’s enjoyin’ the shit out of it too.”

I stared at Terry as he chugged heartily on his drink, slapping the bar for more while the first one was still on his lips. Staring blankly had no impact on Terry, so I was forced to talk to him.

“This is what you do now? For fun?”

“Yup. You’ll see. It’s a fuckin’ unbelievable rush when it happens. Like nothin’ else. My favorite part is watchin’ the faces of the assholes who own the loser dog. They just about die. I been lookin’ forward to these Jamaicans, boy. ...I swear, I might cream myself when it happens. You’ll see. You can’t resist it.”

“I think I probably can resist it, thanks.”

He clearly didn’t think that was possible, grinning sagely as he picked up his glass. He was sure we shared this animal lust on some deep level. I wanted to kill him with my bare hands, open his jugular with my own teeth. But that didn’t exactly seem like the way to prove him wrong.

“He could lose, you know,” I said, trying to derail him.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “Bobo? Never happen. For sure not tonight. Jamaicans love Dobermans, while your regular American spooks prefer Rottweilers. Good, mean dogs, the Dobermans, lotsa heart, but not enough body. They ain’t big enough to take on the beasts, and they’re too ballsy to quit. So”—he shrugged—“when they don’t win, they get shredded. Kay-ser-fuckin’-ra, ser-ra.”

The eight Jamaican men filed in behind their dog—a Doberman, all right—like a military outfit. Mirror sunglasses, rigid posture, expressionless. Mickey stood up and started barking, snarly and wild barking. The Doberman didn’t even look, maybe couldn’t turn because of his owner’s grip. Four men took spots at the bar, four more standing behind. They drank double rums and beers. Terry picked up the tab, nodding and smiling a ratty thin smile across the bar. The owner of the dog nodded and said something to the bartender, who pointed to the back door. They all filed out to the fenced-in lot in back of the building.

Slowly, others began slipping out there. The Cormacs went, and Danny, and ten of the other regulars. Terry looked at his watch. “Where is he?” Danny asked nervously.

One of the Jamaicans came in, walked up to Terry. “Time,” he said.

“Five minutes,” Terry said.

Ten minutes passed. The Doberman’s owner came in. “What?” he said, holding out two upturned palms as if he was waiting for rain.

“Late,” Terry said.

“Lose,” the man said.

“Bullshit.”

“Chickenshit. No show, money go. Too damn bad, mon.”

“Just give us some time,” Terry said.

“Got no time for you,” the man said. He took a look around the bar, sniffed disgustedly. “Did have time, wouldn’t waste it here anaway.” Then he looked down, pointed at Mickey. “What wrong wit him?”

Terry looked down, surprised. “Him? No, not him. He’s not—”

“Shit,” the man said, miming as if to slap Terry’s face back and forth. “Give me my damn money, boy.”

Terry’s face went scarlet. He sat on the stool for a half minute without so much as blinking. All activity in the bar—even sipping—stopped.

“Lead the way—boy,” Terry said to the man, giving Mickey the dog a needlessly hard yank.

I didn’t leave my stool. I didn’t need to. When they pushed through the back door, the small crowd outside made the noise of a full NFL stadium. I could barely hear the dog noises over the din, but they did come through in a wail here and a throaty growl there. Something live crashed into the door again and again. A woman screamed an ear-shattering scream, and demanded to be let back in. But they would not open the door during the match. The men screamed until there were no more words, only primal, raked-throat squalling.

Then, of course, there was nothing. The door opened and people began silently pouring back in. The Jamaicans filed through as orderly as they had arrived, only this time with their dog breathing hard and excited, bouncing, leaving his feet, snapping at the air, licking blood off as much of his face as his tongue could reach. They took up their spots at the bar for the victory drink.

No Terry. I didn’t want to see what was out there, but I had to. I got up and walked through the wake that the bar had become, and paused at the door. I was operating on some kind of animal curiosity and a foggy sense of what I
should
do, but the one thing I felt certain of was that I was going to throw up when I got out there.

As soon as I’d forced myself through the door, I slammed it behind me so as not to put on a show. But I was still only staring at my feet. Gradually I raised my eyes up and up until I hit on it.

Terry stood, hands on hips, looking down on his dog. Mickey. Mickey’s head, on top of that fine horse neck, was turned around. From the look of it, the Doberman had grabbed Mickey’s face, and twisted it backward. Then he got what he was after, what all fighting dogs seem to be after, the throat. As I stood mesmerized, I could see the fully exposed apparatus of Mickey the dog’s throat, working up and down, struggling for one last swallow.

I laughed.

As I laughed, I listened. I heard the gurgling, the struggling for breath. I saw Terry’s face. I put them together, and I laughed.

Terry twisted his face my way. His eyes became slashes, meaner and more dangerous than his drunken squint. His hands remained on his hips.

“I told you,” he said through gritted teeth. “I told you you was gonna love it. I told you you couldn’t resist.” He pulled back and kicked the dog, what was left of the dog. He looked back at me. He looked back at the dog. He kicked the dog again while looking at me. “Inferior dog, that’s all we got here. A loser.”

Finally we were there, and he no longer had the advantage. He hated me as much as I hated him. I thought I was going to cream myself.

“You were right, it was great fun,” I said, laughing myself into a wheeze as he sunk his foot into Mickey, laminating his good work boot with blood.

Chris Lynch (b. 1962) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the fifth of seven children. His father, Edward J. Lynch, was a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority bus and trolley driver, and his mother, Dorothy, was a stay-at-home mom. Lynch’s father passed away in 1967, when Lynch was just five years old. Along with her children, Dorothy was left with an old, black Rambler American car and no driver’s license. She eventually got her license, and raised her children as a single mother.

Lynch grew up in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood, and recalls his childhood ambitions to become a hockey player (magically, without learning to ice skate properly), president of the United States, and/or a “rock and roll god.” He attended Catholic Memorial School in West Roxbury, before heading off to Boston University, neglecting to first earn his high school diploma. He later transferred to Suffolk University, where he majored in journalism, and eventually received an MA from the writing program at Emerson College. Before becoming a writer, Lynch worked as a furniture mover, truck driver, house painter, and proofreader. He began writing fiction around 1989, and his first book,
Shadow Boxer
, was published in 1993. “I could not have a more perfect job for me than writer,” he says. “Other than not managing to voluntarily read a work of fiction until I was at university, this gig and I were made for each other. One might say I was a reluctant reader, which surely informs my work still.”

In 1989, Lynch married, and later had two children, Sophia and Walker. The family moved to Roslindale, Massachusetts, where they lived for seven years. In 1996, Lynch moved his family to Ireland, his father’s birthplace, where Lynch has dual citizenship. After a few years in Ireland, he separated from his wife and met his current partner, Jules. In 1998, Jules and her son, Dylan, joined in the adventure when Lynch, Sophia, and Walker sailed to southwest Scotland, which remains the family’s base to this day. In 2010, Sophia had a son, Jackson, Lynch’s first grandchild.

When his children were very young, Lynch would work at home, catching odd bits of available time to write. Now that his children are grown, he leaves the house to work, often writing in local libraries and “acting more like I have a regular nine-to-five(ish) job.”

Lynch has written more than twenty-five books for young readers, including
Inexcusable
(2005), a National Book Award finalist;
Freewill
(2001), which won a Michael L. Printz Honor; and several novels cited as ALA Best Books for Young Adults, including
Gold Dust
(2000) and
Slot Machine
(1995).

Lynch’s books are known for capturing the reality of teen life and experiences, and often center on adolescent male protagonists. “In voice and outlook,” Lynch says, “Elvin Bishop [in the novels
Slot Machine
;
Extreme Elvin
; and
Me, Dead Dad, and Alcatraz
] is the closest I have come to representing myself in a character.” Many of Lynch’s stories deal with intense, coming-of-age subject matters. The Blue-Eyed Son trilogy was particularly hard for him to write, because it explores an urban world riddled with race, fear, hate, violence, and small-mindedness. He describes the series as “critical of humanity in a lot of ways that I’m still not terribly comfortable thinking about. But that’s what novelists are supposed to do: get uncomfortable and still be able to find hope. I think the books do that. I hope they do.”