Bobby D. Lux - Dog Duty (4 page)

Officer Hart and Mrs. Hart sat up front. Simon, the Hart’s ten-year-old boy with hair and freckles in every direction, rode in the backseat. He sat sideways with his back to the window, the seatbelt somehow wrapped around both of his arms & waist, and his shoes up on the seat. When prisoners pulled that nonsense with the shoes up on the seat, Officer Hart put an end to it quick.

“High side left!” he’d call out
, and then slam on the brakes, making the prisoner tumble over in the back. This worked especially well on the overly inebriated. On occasion, we could high side them until they puked all over the back and would make them clean out the car when we returned to the station.

“Honey,” Mrs. Hart
said. “Please take your shoes off the seat.”

“Fine,” Simon said,
as he used his toes to peel off the heels of his crisscrossed, superhero-movie tie-in Velcro shoes. He shook his ankles until the shoes, and an inch of sand, flopped onto the floor of the Intimidator. He kept his feet and wet socks up on the seat. I smelled those feet immediately. You want to know what human feet smell like once and for all? Just plain unnatural. A smell that you wouldn’t expect to exist on the same planet that’s home to barbecue sauce. A smell that hits you with the same force as when someone who (wisely) doesn’t live with cats enters the dwelling of someone with several feline roommates. The smell isn’t going to kill anyone and it goes away as you get used to it, but that first whiff is like sprinting into a fence.

“Your mom told you to take your shoes off the seat.”

“I did, dad.”

“Honey, stop,” Mrs. Hart said. “Aren’t you excited about Fritz, Simon?”

“I like Nipper.”

“Don’t you like Fritz?”

“I like Ernie.”

“Ernie is fine too, but let’s focus on Fritz, okay?”

“I even like Missy.”

Nipper? Ernie?
Missy?
Fine names on their own, but I didn’t know where this kid got off thinking he was going to start changing my name. You’d run into a guy in cuffs on the curb and he’d start in with the same one-liners:
here poochie pooch
;
hey, Fido
;
c’mere, Lassie
. If no one was looking and I caught some scumbag saying that to me, I’d bite ‘em just a little. But you can’t even take just a little nibble on a kid, not that I’d want to. I got up and put my head over the seat to see what Simon was talking about.

“Move, Fritz,” he said,
as he pushed my head back. “Jeez.”

“Honey,
you can’t push Fritz like that,” Mrs. Hart said. “We talked about how he’s different.”

“What’s going on?” Officer Hart said,
as he looked back at while he kept the Intimidator straight. Mrs. Hart put her arm up as to grab the wheel with a “honey” that rang more critical than the “honey” Simon received. Hasn’t she seen him drive before? We’ve gone triple digits off road through the rain on chases and she’s worried about him turning his head?

“Fritz’ shadow is blocking the TV, dad. I’m trying to watch this, so I made him move.”

“You can’t do that with Fritz,” Officer Hart said.

“I do it to the other dogs.”

“Fritz isn’t like other dogs-” I didn’t even care what he said after that. Those five words were the only bright spot I’d had in days. That’s right; I wasn’t like other dogs. I’d run twelve miles without as much as a pant, even in the sun. I sniffed out the best hidden contraband; try hiding it in a baggie in your rewrapped plastic shampoo bottle, I dare you. I ran in after they threw the tear gas and yanked the hijacker out by his arm. I pulled an all-nighter in the cold chasing someone through a forest and I still looked good on no sleep for the PR gig in the morning. I dodged bullets when I had to. I bet you couldn’t name another dog who’d done all that and was still standing. “-so you can’t treat him the way you treat other dogs, you understand?”

I understood perfectly.

“Fine,” Simon said, reaching over to scratch my head. “Sorry, Fritz. Just don’t get in the way of my TV again, okay?”

By this time, we were somewhere between the third and fourth levels of suburbia, beyond the supermarket and hair salons and just getting to the churc
hes and parks. The deeper you got into this place, the bigger everything became. The houses were all painted from the same palette of light hues. The boats were all the same color of blood. The sports cars were painted like the moon. The flowers smelled like poisons. The Intimidators and their kin were dark and shiny. And somehow there I was riding in the back of the Hart family Intimidator on my way to the rest of my life in the suburbs. My leg was still bandaged, but I kept myself occupied trying to pull that thing off before we got home. Home. There’s a concept.

Then it hit me. I hadn’t had a clean place to mark in years. I couldn’t remember the last time when I was the first to claim a spot for my own territory. It might have been that time out behind the Atlantic Octo-Plex movie theater when I wanted to cover some unsightly graffiti. They discouraged us
from marking on the job. It didn’t look professional and I agreed. Maybe somewhere else that’s no biggie, but that’s not how we did things in Grand City. I’d been everywhere and now there was nothing left for me. Just high end track homes with too many pesticides in the yards. There was nowhere left for me. To mark or otherwise.             

The streets were
as flat as the lawns. The driveways were inclined. Pigeons didn’t sit on the streetlights. The mailboxes were all cemented into the sidewalk. The fences were all the same height, just too high to peek over without a ladder. The trees lining the sidewalks were all decades older than the homes and did an excellent job of keeping the power lines out of sight.

One thing distinguished the Hart residence from the other: a carved rustic-looking wooden trinket that hung below the address numbers and said “Home is where the Harts are!” with a silhouette of a mom, dad, son, and a dog carved int
o it. One of those things you got at the swap meet for the same price as the bag of organic coffee being sold the next booth over. In the academy, they tell you to never give away your position when you’re in the field. There was no need for a strategic advantage out in that neighborhood. 

“Are you ready for your new home, Fritz?” Mrs. Hart
said, turning to me. Officer Hart killed the ignition.

Did I have a choice?   

You know the anticipation you’re supposed to feel, but don’t, when you’re standing outside an open door waiting to go in somewhere you’ve never been before? You ever been at a place where you recognized every smell, but none are familiar? You ever not know what was on the other side of that door and not care? You ever look around and not be interested in anything in any direction?

You ever fel
t the slight push of the air as the front door opened, pulling you inside like water down the drain? You ever tried to stay outside as long as you could until she nudged you in, complaining about how cold it is outside? You ever get promised a treat just for entering? You ever smelled another dog off to your left? You ever heard your nails go tap-tap-tap on the floor? You ever stopped walking because you don’t know where to go next? You ever realized how dumb you must look; standing there like a fool when everyone else just went in and got on about their business like it was nothing? You ever not believe them when they said “This is your home now” and they dropped a treat in front of you that snapped in three pieces as it hit the linoleum? You ever know that you’re being told the truth and you wished it was a lie?

You ever think about how many chemicals
went into making something look and smell clean? You ever tried to figure out where you’re going to sleep for the night within two hours of waking up? You ever looked around to find where someone else decided was the place to leave your food?

You ever think it was
over there?

You ever think it might
have been over here?

You ever think it was
in another room?

You ever get suspicious when that
smell from the other dog hadn’t moved or changed its slow breathing? You ever thought that you needed to figure out who else was in that room before you worried about food and shelter? You ever smelled scented dog shampoo? You ever wondered if they got vanilla confused with just plain old cheap soap? You ever feel relieved when the kid runs off into the house and you wouldn’t be stuck having to play with him? You ever smelled a roast from the kitchen and knew that you weren’t going to get a bite of it, and if by some chance you did, it was going to be the lousy overcooked center?

You ever wonder
ed if that other dog knew you we’re there? You ever finally walked down off the circular step a few feet beyond the door into the living room? You ever wondered why they put a step there in the first place? You ever realized that in a fire or some other kind of pressure situation, to take a single step up a few feet before the front door, is a hazard for most humans?

You ever fe
lt like an idiot when you discovered that what alerted your senses and put you on guard was a sleeping poodle, curled up in a puffy bed next to the television? You ever choose to have some fun at someone’s expense only to instantly realize that you we’re overcompensating for feeling a moment of weakness? You ever crept up on a sleeping dog to see how far you can get before it woke up? You ever justified your bit of cruelty by saying that you were testing to see if you still had some of the same functioning skill set you had three years ago? You ever heard him in the background tell her to not worry and that you’ve had the best training in the world while being totally aware of the apprehension that reverberated through his words?

You ever fe
lt like a common criminal because you knew that you we’re acting like a bully, but that it was too late to back out because you we’re inches away from someone you should’ve just left alone? You ever pondered what someone was dreaming about while you watched them sleep? You ever saw eyes awaken and leap from zero-to-terror in a heartbeat? You ever watched a white bundle of fur shoot straight up and fly across the room, nearly crashing into the table leg?

You ever hear
d them scream “Missy, it’s okay” and your heart dropped?

You ever fe
lt like a fool?

You ever been told that “well, this experiment failed” and that you
we’re going to be an “outdoor dog” now?

I have. And I bet you have too.

“I know it’s no department kennel,” Officer Hart said, sounding more like the partner I remembered, “but I’d say it’s a nice place to retire, buddy.”

He closed the French doors behind us and walked me into his backyard. My final resting place. You know, you toss a roof on a backyard and you essentially have yourself a jail cell. Let that rattle around your dome a bit.

“Dammit,” Officer Hart said, tripping over a Wiffle ball bat and spilling most of the water he had for me in the bowl. He placed the bowl off to the right of the doors, a few feet away from the barbeque; a big long metal furnace built into the wall. What I assumed was my new water bowl was placed next to an old pot, one big enough to cook a few pounds of pasta in. That too was also filled with water, not that it was fresh water, unless your definition of fresh included floating strands of grass and clotted dirt at the bottom. The bowl Officer Hart set down was constructed with dogs in mind – it was plastic and looked like it would slide across the concrete with a slight gust of wind. It even had a fading police badge painted on the front side of the bowl. “Well, here’s some water, Fritz. I’m sure you’re thirsty. Don’t drink the other water. This bowl here is special and just for you. The food is over there on the other end of the barbecue and it’s for everyone. That’s about it for now, Fritz. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of toys around here if you look. I’ll be back in a bit so just relax and enjoy your new surroundings. Good luck with your new neighbors.”

He knelt down beside me and scratched behind my ears, right on the sweet spot, the place where otherwise you’d spend hours trying to dig your paw into as deep as you can. A really good scratch requires digits with the ability to form into a hook shape. Alas, we dogs can’t pull that off. The singular flaw on an otherwise superb creation by nature.

Like any good ear scratch it wasn’t long enough. Just as I turned my head into the pressure, Officer Hart stopped. He patted me on the spine (a popular human gesture, but one that falls severely short when compared to the ear rub) and went back into the house.

I was alone. With no one around me. No other dogs. No people. Maybe this
wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all. I could hear myself think again. Thinking is one of those mundane things you don’t know you’re missing until you sit down and do it again. So, not wanting to waste anymore time, I took a moment on the patio to just think. The trouble was trying to decide what to think about. Now that my life had stopped, more or less, there wasn’t anything left to consider. All the interesting stuff had already happened. If I’d stopped to think about it when it was going on, I would have missed it. Thus, giving myself nothing to think about. It wasn’t like I could do anything about the past, which brought me right back to trying to come up with something to think about.             

A ha! I remembered a smell from my past, from my youth. I couldn’t place its origin and had a hard time deciphering what it even was, but there it was lingering right out there in front of my nose.
Maybe a dog I once met? I didn’t know if I was chasing a memory or if I was experiencing one of those smells that meant there was something wrong with my brain. I was suddenly exhausted. You’re not supposed to feel your brain working. It’s supposed to be going on automatic, feeding on instincts.

The instincts. That was it. Instincts. They
always came back when the mind was clear. I decided that’s what I would think about. How they never let me down. Not once. Your guts put you in a scary situation on the job and the instincts got you out. The trick to being in tune with your instincts was to not think about them, just let them be. That’s what I remembered. In fact, thanks to those instincts, I knew that while I sat there on the side of the Hart house, I was being hunted at that moment.

My thoughts would have to be placed on pause for the time. Without turning my head, I twisted my ear enough to the outside to know I was being watched from above and from behind. I heard something crawling, something large. One sniff confirmed a familiar smell: human child, male, approximately twelve years of age, with processed cheesy puffs smeared around his mouth. I turned and he froze. He was in the next yard over hanging on top of a wooden play fortress and his ratty eyes were aimed at me.

“You can’t get me, stupid dog,” he said, taunting.

Oh yes I could. Before he’d have time to soil himself, I could have vaulted off the patio table, pushed off the cinderblock wall, and took his arm home as a souvenir. But I’d been trained to know better. Instead I stared, sans growl. That rattled the little brat, but his distance from me seemed to only re-inflate his confidence.

I watched him shove his foot into a corner of the wooden fort for support. This play set was huge and a waste of space; far too big for one child to play on alone. I didn’t break eye contact with the varmint, but peripherally, I counted three swings, a rope climb, monkey bars, and a two-story slide. He gingerly balanced himself and stood straight up on the cross beam. To put it in perspective, his knees were parallel with the top of the block wall that separated the two properties.

“Freeze,” he said, reaching around to the back of his camouflage shirt and retrieving a bright pump action water gun with a long tube of sloshing liquid connected to the foot-long barrel. Not the first time I’d found myself in the sights of such a weapon. Only three months into my career, I led a charge into a drug lab
that was disguised as a foreclosed home in the projects. As I flew down the hallway, a junkie popped out of the closet and fired a similar weapon at me. He didn’t get a second shot off, but it wasn’t until my adrenaline wore off that I felt my right arm burning and saw that my skin was singed and my fur was gone. I licked the bare skin and whatever he must’ve shot me with made me sick. I doubted this ill-footed child was packing the same heat. “I said freeze. Don’t move and I’ll make it quick.”

One of the things you learn while working as a tool of the public relations division is that sometimes you have to take one on the chin. But since I technically was not a Grand City employee any longer, I wondered how many of the old standards I needed to heed. While I was busy thinking (that old trap), the kid shot me in the head. I wrongly assumed he would need to pump up the air pressure first, but no, he climbed that fort loaded and ready for battle while I was still getting used to the notion of a backyard for life.

The rope of water slapped me in the side of the head and across my shoulder. A clean hit with some zip to it. The water dripped below my eye and around the side of my jaw.

“Ten points! Ten points! Ten points for me! Yeah! Whooooo!” the water hunter shouted.

He threw his arms up in the air like a victorious prizefighter. In that same motion, he also threw himself off the fort. An excellent lesson about momentum and balance. His gun hung in the air like a cliché before joining with a clang to match the boy’s thud and tumble down the slide.       

And yes, I found that funny. As should you.

“You should have been there, man,” said an unknown, flippant voice. “The rush was something else. Especially when you stop in the middle of the street and just stare at them until they swerve. If you can make eye contact with them, they always get out of the way.”

“What happens if yo
u don’t make eye contact?” another voice said, this one trying too hard to be condescending.

“You better keep running.”

“So let me get this straight. You almost get hit by a semi, and it’s the time of your life?”

“Bingo. Hey, why you think they penned us in this morning?”

“I don’t know, but don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah. Sure, Nipper.”

Then the two of them came around the corner and the three of us stopped cold. There was that smell that teased me minutes ago, the same one that lost its ticket and was wandering around my mind looking for an empty seat.

“Who are you?” t
he first one, Nipper, the one closest to the side of the house who was about my size, said. Shorter, not as thick, but a better than average sized dog. Clearly, he had some shepherd in him, but not enough to correct the ears hanging low on both sides of his head. He had eyes that didn’t reveal a whole lot of depth and his arms were skinny. “What are you doing here?”

“Hold on-”
I said.

“I asked what you’re doing here.”

“Relax, Nipper,” the other one said. The other one was short, thicker than me, rust-looking, and built like a replacement engine. I had no idea what breed he was supposed to be representing.

“Whose water is that?” Nipper said.

“Mine,” I said.

“Impossible.”

“C’mon, pal,” the other one said. “What’s really going on?”

“If your partner would breathe and relax his tail back there-”

“Don’t tell me what to relax, bub. This is my, our, me and Ernie’s yard and we don’t appreciate loiterers.”

“Actually, you mean to say I’d be trespassing,” I said. “Loitering has to do with remaining in a public place for an extended period. It’s a law that’s meant to give police the ability to break up potentially unruly groups of people, the homeless, but no, what you think I’m doing is trespassing, but that’s beside the point. And really, I’m not actually trespassing either because I was invited here and no one has asked me to leave.”

“Oh, a wise guy,” Ernie said.

“The point is that I’m not trespassing, and no, I’m not loitering.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Nipper said.

“Somehow, that doesn’t seem a task too difficult to achieve,” I said.

“What’d you say, pal?”

“You heard me,” I said.
Nipper took a step towards me. I took three steps towards him. He lowered his head. I went lower. He puffed up his back. Un-puffed, I was still bigger. “And we aren’t pals by the looks of it.”

“Hold on,” Ernie said, getting between us and facing me.
He backed Nipped off and then came up to sniff me, sticking his snout under my chin and eyeballing me. He smelled sweet, like fresh dirt. Clean fresh dirt. Yes, there’s a difference between clean and dirty dirt. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation for what this guy’s doing here. Wait a second, were you crying?”

“Was I
what?
I said
.
”

“You look like you were crying, no offense.”

“Looks can be deceiving, Shorty,” I said.

“Did you just call me Shorty?”

“That’s what I said. Shorty.”

“Look, I don’t have a problem with you yet. I don’t even know your name. I just call it the way I see it and what I see is that it looks like you’ve been crying.”

“He’s crying, Ernie?” Nipper said. “That’s hilarious.”

“It’s water from that jerk next door,” I said. “He shot me.”

“Sure he did,” Nipper said.

“Hey, what in the-” Ernie said, as something caught his eye. He walked behind me and stopped at my water bowl. He sniffed it and took a quick sip. I hadn’t drank from it as of yet, so I had no official claim to that bowl. I nudged Ernie aside and stick my nose in for a gulp. Now it was mine.

“Just to clear that up,” I said.

“Whatever,” Ernie said
, under his breath. “I already got one. Besides, that one’s not yours anyway.”

“What?” I said, licking my chops.

“That’s his.”

“His who?”

“His,” Ernie said, pointing to Nipper. “Hey Nipper, remember your old water bowl? The one we thought they lost?”

“My cop bowl?” Nipper said, still sitting, but bouncing on his hind legs like he was working up the nerve to walk over. 

“Here it is. I found it.”

“This is it,” Nipper said,
joining us at the water bowl. He batted it around with a paw until the badge shown. Nipper sniffed the badge. “How’d you get this?”

“Officer Hart gave it to me.”
             

“I don’t believe you.”

“And I don’t care what you believe,” I said. “He gave it to me. It’s my bowl now. As far as you and I are concerned, it’s always been my bowl, got it, Jack?”

“Jack?
” Nipper said. “What are you talking about? Who’s Jack?”

“It’s cop talk,” Ernie said. “I heard it all the time on the streets. They call you Jack when they’re trying to act like they’re friendly, but really they’re about to bust ya.”

“Ah, I see,” Nipper said. “So this crybaby here thinks he’s gonna get tough in my yard, with my bowl.”

That was enough. I’d been insulted by worse and challenged by much better. There comes a time when words have failed and all that’s left is for you to drag your paw and draw a line through the sand. I put my paw in the bowl and slid it behind me, under my tail.

“You want this bowl?” I said, whispering through my grin. “All you have to do is make me move and then you can take it. It’s yours.”

“Nipper,” Ernie said.

“He’s bluffing,” Nipper said.

“Am I?” I said, licking my front teeth so I knew that he’d get a good look at them. Of course, I’d never do this in real life, but this
goofball was hardly real life. It worked. Of course it worked. And, of course, I was bluffing. I wasn’t going to do anything to this guy. I’d never disrespect Officer Hart like that. I knew Nipper wouldn’t try me; not even in an alternative universe somewhere on the outskirts of the cosmos was Nipper going to do anything other than step back, which is what he did. “Now can we put this issue of the bowl behind us?”