Futile Efforts (10 page)

"What did you just call me?"

One of them had been dying to get rough–maybe they were both spoiling for a match–and now the cop reached for his night stick.
 
Were they all just burning to beat the shit out of somebody?
 
Was that the only choice anybody had left anymore?
 
Or had it been that way from the beginning, but he hadn't noticed?

He'd never answered the waitress when she'd asked him if he was a boxer.
 
He'd never stepped inside a professional ring, but as a teenager he'd spent a lot of hours with Johnny
Tormino
and
Jojo
Lebowski
, training, thinking about putting his skills to the test.
 
He'd thought about it and thought about it, and by the time he decided to give it a shot his chance had come and gone.

The cop held the night stick out straight and pressed it against the center of Vin's chest, forcing him back.
 
"Am I going to have trouble with you?
 
I can smell whiskey on your breath."

"That was hours ago.
 
I told you I was in the bar."

"Why don't you go sleep it off, buddy, before I have to run you in."

Run him in, like he was a second-story man.
 
A purse snatcher.
 
There were mobsters living all over the neighborhood, but no, this one here was going to run Vin in.

"I haven't done anything.
 
I just wanted to–to say that I was there–that I saw what was going on.
 
It wasn't the dog's fault."

"Are you crazy, mister?"

Laying it out on the line like that, asking the big question.
 
Vin actually thought about it for a moment, wondering, is this insane what I'm doing here?
 
Am I being that irrational?
 
Is that what happens when you want a young fashion designer to like you?

Again with the night stick in Vin's chest, harder this time.
 
He let out a grunt and backed a step away.
 
The woman held the door open even wider.

An abrupt rage swelled within him, igniting.
 
The cop tried the move again, crowding him, driving the stick forward.
 
Vin grabbed hold of it and smacked it aside.

That was all it took.
 
The pregnant lady let out a little screech, and the dogs in back began to howl, and the cop's eyes got wide and he sneered like a maniac and started to go for his gun.

Vin said, "No."

He grabbed the officer's wrist, yanking him off balance, setting him up for a left hook.
 
Vin let one loose and felt the kid's lips smear beneath his fist.
 
It felt so beautiful and right that he gave a brief laugh.
 
He cut it off, knowing this was the serious shit now, he'd just crossed over a line.

The cop hadn't gone down but had flown backwards a few feet, doubled over holding his face with one hand, clearing the gun free from leather with the other.
 
Vin stepped close and brought a vicious uppercut into the kid's chin.
 
It lifted the officer two feet into the air and deposited him on his ass, out cold.
 
The pistol spun across the floor.

There, he thought, that was all right.

He grabbed the woman by the forearm and said, "Take me to that German Shepherd."

"You're insane."

"Whatever, lady."

"You're going to go to jail."

"There's worse things," he told her, though he really wasn't certain.
 
Was being in the can going to be worse than living on the outside with no purpose?
 
Probably not.

She brought him into the kennel and led him to a cage.
 
The German Shepherd sat there, ears back, looking terrified.
 
"Let him out."

"It'll attack."

"He's harmless.
 
Do it."

She unlocked the cage and pulled away.
 
Hesitantly, the dog stepped out and stood before Vin and licked his hand again.
 
The woman said, "It's a killer.
 
It still has blood on its fur."

"No different than any of us, lady."

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because it's time to draw a line."

The dog walked beside him and they moved back out into the main room.
 
The cop was still unconscious.
 
Again Vin felt that weird sense of pride, although he knew it would land him in prison.
 
At least he'd thrown one good punch.

As they passed by the officer, the woman shrugged free and slowly drifted from Vin.
 
So slowly that he didn't realize what was going on as she sort of squatted down.
 
The hell was this?
 
She held her belly with both hands and went to her knees.

Oh man, she's going into labor.
 
Look at this, look what I did. Vin held his hands open to her, patting the air in a calming gesture, and asked, "Are you okay?"

It took another second for him to understand that she was going for the gun.
 
He couldn't believe it.
 
She was kneeling down reaching for the cop's pistol, had her hand on it now, looking back over her shoulder at Vin with furious eyes.
 
The dog's tail flicked against his knee.

Had he really done anything tonight that was worth killing him for?
 
Even if he was nuts, even if he deserved some jail time for knocking a cop on his ass, did he deserve to get shot for it?

He went, "Wait a second–"

She closed one eye like Annie Oakley and pulled the trigger.
 
The noise started the animals screeching and barking again, except for the German Shepherd that sat silently beside Vin.
 
She'd aimed too wide and taken a piece out of the door jamb behind him

Just like that.
 
Without even saying anything.
 
Telling him to freeze or she'd shoot.
 
No, she'd just tried to put him down, another dog in the pound.

He ran at her as she sighted on him once more.

What a night, Jesus Christ.
 
Vin slammed his arm down on hers and the gun went off again.
 
She screamed and a searing pain drove through his gut.

Oh man, she actually did it.
 
I'm shot.

But even that wasn't good enough for her.
 
Damn, he thought, pregnant women are rough.
 
She held the pistol up again, centering on his face.
 
Not even his heart, she wanted to take out his eyes.
 
Vin rapped her once in the chin and she sank on top of the cop.

He'd hurt a pregnant woman.
 
Here he'd been inflated with some dumbass notion of gallantry, and instead of being a hero for a cute girl serving him scotch, he'd punched out a pregnant woman.

What would Johnny
Tormino
and
Jojo
Lebowski
say?
 
What would Vin's father be thinking of him now, from the other side of the grave?

"Oh god, I'm sorry.
 
I'm so sorry."

The German Shepherd followed him out the front doors.
 
His guts were on fire but the pain didn't impede him at all.
 
That was surprising.
 
He looked down and saw he was covered in blood, but still it didn't feel all that bad.
 
Shock.
 
They always talk about shock at times like this.
 
He didn't really know what it meant, but he realized when it wore off all that agony came flooding back in.

"Ah, shit."

He kept a stiff stride without any real notion of where he was headed.
 
The dog kept up, panting and looking around, maybe searching for his master.
 
In a couple of blocks Vin started to stagger a little, bouncing along parked cars as they picked up speed, as if heading towards something, maybe the purpose he'd been after.

The sound of breaking waves on the beach became clearer and clearer, but they were leaving the neighborhood lights behind.
 
It grew darker, and now it was as if the German Shepherd were leading him.
 
He felt the boardwalk beneath his feet, the heavy resounding thump of his footsteps bringing him back to when he was a kid.
 
When the pier was alive with families and laughter and his father making those silly seagull noises.
 
When he had more ahead of him than behind.

Another noise strengthened beneath the pulsing sound of the ocean, and it took a second to make it out.
 
Steadily it escalated.
 
Sirens.

So I'm a fugitive now?
 
Well yeah, of course he was.
 
You slap around a cop and a pregnant lady and steal a killer dog, and sure, they're gonna want to come after you.

Vin felt it now, burgeoning within him.
 
A boiling agony that was about to break free.
 
He champed his lips against it and tried not to cry out.
 
Held his hands tightly over his belly and felt the rip there.
 
The crescendo of crashing waves broke over him with a roar and Vin turned and turned, unsure of his direction.
 
That was nothing new.
 
Sweat stung his eyes and the darkness had a weight that bore down.
 
The German Shepherd barked an instant too late and Vin found himself falling.

He was underwater.
 
It snapped him awake and brought him back into himself.
 
He'd gone off the pier.
 
Man, when you start down a fucking dangerous, ludicrous path you really go all the way to the end of it.

Gasping, he rose and broke the surface and felt the German Shepherd swimming and scrambling along with him against the moorings of the pier.
 
There was more light now.
 
It was nearly dawn, and the horizon bloomed with a mounting orange.
 
He saw a slime-covered, rotting ladder but the waves bounced him against the pilings and he kept getting beaten back.
 
The dog in its terror started to bite him.
 
It snapped at his throat and missed, then locked its jaws on his forearm.
 
Another scream worked up Vin's throat but he felt it was important to keep it in, to keep everything inside.
 
Letting it out now would prove he'd been wrong, that the dog was a killer and should be gassed, injected, burned.
 
Once he started screaming he'd never stop.

"Hold on," he whispered, talking to the German Shepherd and himself, imaging his father just above on the boardwalk, leaning down and trying to help.

It hit Vin then that he didn't know the waitress's name.

Or the blind man's.
 
Or the pregnant woman's.
 
Or the dog's.
 
Or even the three tough guy jocks who'd let the loss of their ambitions drive them to such foolishness at the wrong time.

Exactly like him.

Another bellowing siren somewhere nearby, but not near enough.
 
Reaching for the ladder again he managed to grab hold of the bottom rung.
 
He slipped off but dove and managed to clench it.
 
He thought of the way Dad's arms had bulged with power.
 
It gave Vin a moment of fire where he managed to heave himself up a bit, but the weight of the dog held him down.
 
The tear in his belly opened wider.
 
I am weak, he admitted, so goddamn weak, and it's brought me to this.

He didn't want to shirk the animal free.
 
You don't kill your last friend.
 
He couldn't feel his arm anymore, the dog's teeth deep in the muscle, severing veins.
 
He turned back and saw that the German Shepherd still had its eyes open, blowing bubbles frantically from its nostrils.
 
The dog was too panicked to swim to shore but wouldn't give up.
 
Vin felt the same as they clung there together under the pier with the battering, crushing tide coming in, the eastern sky diffusing a wintry blue, the water growing a richer red around them, and yet despite all that had happened and might still happen before them, he would not let go.