Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley (19 page)

“Well,” the last one said. “People are different.”

MATLEY STANDING AT
his little sink washing up supper dishes, skillet-sized pancakes and gravy from a can. His dogs have took up a dusk-time song. An I'm gonna bark because I just want to song, a song different from an I'm barking at something I wanna catch song or I'm barking at somebody trying to sneak up song or I'm howling because I catch a contagion of the volunteer fire department siren-wailing different from I'm barking at a trainful of gawkers song. A sad sad song. The loose parts in him. Daylight puts a little hold down on it, but with the dark, nothing tamps it, you never know. You got to hold tight. He'd seen Johnby again that morning, humping along through the ditch by the road, and now, behind his eyes, crept Johnby, hulking and hunching to the time of the song. Dogs sought Johnby because Johnby wasn't one to bathe much and dogs liked to pull in his scents, Johnby could no doubt bait dogs to him, Matley is thinking. The way Johnby's lip would lift and twitch. Muscles in a dead snake moving. Tic.

Matley stepped out, pulled Guinea from his pocket, and took a look. As sometimes happened, for a second he was surprised to see her tail. The dog song made a fog around them, from sad to eerie, Matley heard the music go, while Matley counted those dog voices, one two three to twelve. Matley hollowing under his heart (the part slipping), the fear pimpling his skin, and then he called, moany, a whisper in his head:
come out come out come out come out
.

He breathed the odor the place made of an evening, a brew of dropping temperature, darkness, and househole seep. A familiar odor. The odor of how things fail. Odor of ruin in progress, of must
and stale hay, spoiling silage, familiar, and mildew and rotting wood and flaked paint; twenty-year-old manure, stagnant water, decaying animal hides, odor of the househole and what falls in it, the loss smell, familiar, the odor of the inside of his head. And Matley stroked little Guinea, in full dark now, the dog song dimming, and he heard Mrs. Mitchell again (“but I never did want to have more than two or three”), the not-question she used to ask, him not thinking directly on it, but thinking under thinking's place, and he knows if you get a good one, you can feel their spirits in them from several feet away, right under their fur, glassy and clear and dew-grass smelling. If you get a good one. You can feel it. No blurriness to the spirit of a dog, no haze, they're unpolluted by the thinking, by memories, by motives, you can feel that spirit raw, naked bare against your own. And dogs are themselves and aren't nothing else, just there they are, full in their skins and moving on the world. Like they came right out of it, which they did, which people did, too, but then people forget, while dogs never do. And when Matley was very young he used to think, if you love them hard enough, they might turn into people, but then he grew up a little and knew, what good would that be? So then he started wishing, if you loved one hard enough, it might speak to you. But then he grew up even more and knew that wasn't good either, unless they spoke dog, and not just dog language, but dog ideas, things people'd never thought before in sounds people'd never heard, Matley knew. And Matley had studied the way a dog loved, the ones that had it in them to love right, it was true, not every dog did, but the ones that loved right, Matley stroking, cup, cradle, and hold, gaze in dog eyes, the gentle passing. Back and forth, enter and return, the gentle passing, passing between them, and Matley saw this love surpass what they preached at church, surpass any romance he'd heard of or seen, surpass motherlove loverlove babylove, he saw
that doglove simple. Solid. And absolutely clear. Good dog. Good dog, now. Good. Good.

MEREDITH. WAS JUST
a couple weeks shy of dropping her pups, no mystery there, she was puffed out like a nail keg, and who in their right mind would steal a pregnant lab-Dalmatian mix? It could only be because they were killing them, if Matley'd ever doubted that, which he had. Which he'd had to. Meredith'd been a little on the unbrightish side, it was true, had fallen into the househole more than once in broad day, the spots on her head had soaked through and affected her brain, but still. And it was her first litter, might have made some nice pups, further you got from the purebloods, Matley had learned, better off you'll be. Meredith went on October 17.

Muddy Gut. A black boy with a soft gold belly, and gold hair sprouting around his ears like broom sedge, soft grasses like that, he had the heaviest and most beautiful coat on the place, but the coat's beauty the world constantly marred, in envy or spite. Muddy Gut drew burrs, beggar's lice, devil's pitchforks, ticks, and Matley'd work tirelessly at the clobbed-up fur, using an old currycomb, his own hairbrush, a fork. Muddy Gut patient and sad, aware of his glory he could not keep, while Matley held a match to a tick's behind until it pulled out its head to see what was wrong. A constant grooming Matley lavished over Muddy Gut, Matley forever untangling that lovely spoiled fur, oh sad sullied Muddy, dog tears bright in his deep gold eyes. Muddy Gut went on October 21.

Junior Junior. Matley'd known it was bound to happen, Ray Junior or Junior Junior one. Although they were both a bit ill tempered, they were different from the rest, they were Raymond descendants several generations down. Junior Junior was Ray Junior's son, and Ray Junior was mothered by a dog across the river called Ray Ray, and Ray Ray,
Mr. Mitchell swore, was fathered by the original Raymond. In Junior Junior there was Raymond resemblance, well, a little anyway, in temperament for sure, and Matley didn't stop to think too hard about how a dog as inert as Raymond might swim the river to sow his oats. Raymond was the dog who came when Matley could no longer make the toy dogs live and who stayed until after the flood, and for a long time, he was the only dog Matley had to love. They'd found Raymond during a Sunday dinner at Mrs. Fox's Homestead Restaurant when Matley had stretched out his leg and hit something soft under the table, which surprised him. Was a big black dog, bloodied around his head, and come to find out it was a stray Mrs. Fox had been keeping for a few weeks, he'd been hit out on 50 that very morning and had holed up under the table to heal himself. Later, Revie liked to tell, “Well, you started begging and carrying on about this hit dog, and Mrs. Fox gave him up fast—I don't believe she much wanted to fool with him anyway—and here he's laid ever since, hateful and stubborn and foul-smelling. Then after we got done eating, Mrs. Fox came out of the kitchen, and she looked at our plates, and she said, ‘You would of thought finding that hit dog under your table would of put a damper on your appetites. But I see it didn't!' It was a compliment to her cooking, you see.” Junior Junior was Raymond's great-great-grandson, and he disappeared on Halloween.

Matley in the bunk at night. He'd wake without the knowledge. He'd lose the loss in his sleep, and the moments right after waking were the worst he'd ever have: finding the loss again and freshly knowing. The black surge over his head, hot wash of saw-sided pain, then the bottom would drop out. Raw socket. Through the weeks, the loss rolling, compounding, just when he'd think it couldn't get worse, think a body couldn't hold more hurt, another dog would go, the loss an infinity inside him. Like how many times you can bisect a line. They call it heartbreak, but not Matley, Matley learned it was not that clean,
nowhere near that quick, he learned it was a heartgrating, this forever loss in slow motion, forever loss without diminishment of loss, without recession, without ease, the grating. And Matley having had in him always the love, it pulsing, his whole life, reaching, for a big enough object to hold this love, back long before this crippling mess, he reached, and now, the only end for that love he'd ever found being taken from him, too, and what to do with this love? Pummeling at air. Reaching, where to put this throat-stobbing surge, where, what? the beloved grating away. His spirit in his chest a single wing that opens and folds, opens and folds. Closing on nothing. Nothing there. And no, he says, no, he says, no, he says, no.

COME NOVEMBER, MATLEY
was still running his ads, and he got a call from a woman out at Shanks, and though he doubted a dog of his would travel that far, he went anyway. The month was overly warm, seasons misplaced like they'd got in recent years, and coming home right around dusk, he crested High Boy with his windows half-down. At first, he wasn't paying much mind to anything except rattling the Chevette over that rutty road, only certain ways you could take the road without tearing off the muffler. But suddenly it came to him he didn't see no dogs. No dogs lounging around their houses, and no dogs prancing out to meet him. No dogs squirting out the far corners of the clearings at the sound of the car, even though it was dog-feeding time. No Guinea under the camper, no Hickory and Tick fighting over stripped-down deer legs, no welcome-home dog bustle. Not a dog on the place. None.

A panic began in the back of Matley's belly. Fizzing. He pushed it down by holding his breath. He parked the car, swung out slow, and when he stood up (hold on tight) there between the car seat and door, he felt his parts loosen. A rush of opening inside. He panic-scanned Winnebago and househole, sunken barns and swaying sheds, his head
cocked to listen. Doghouses, tracks, bottom, and trees, his eyes spinning, a vacuum coring his chest, and then he heard himself holler. He hollered “Here!” and he hollered “Come!” and he hollered “Yah! Yah! Yah!” still swiveling his head to take in every place. Him hollering “Here Fella! Tick, C'mon now! Yah, Big Girl, Yah,” his voice squalling higher while the loose part slipped. Matley hollered, and then he screamed, he clapped and hooed, he whistled until his mouth dried up. And then, from the direction of the sheep barn, way up the hill, he spied the shape of Guinea.

Little Guinea, gusting over the ground like a blown plastic bag. Matley ran to meet her. Guinea, talking and crying in her little Guinea voice, shuttling hysterical around his shins and trying to jump, and Matley scooped her up and in his pocket, stroking and trembling, and there, Guinea. There. And once she stilled, and he stilled, Matley heard the other.

Dog cries at a distance. Not steady, not belling or chopping, not like something trailed or treed. No, this song was a dissonant song. Out of beat and out of tune. A snarling brutal song.

Matley wheeled. He charged up the pasture to the sheep barn there, grass tearing under his boots. He leaned into the path towards the subdivision, despite dark fast dropping and him with no light. He pounded that game path crazy, land tilted under his feet, his sight swinging in the unfocus of darkened trees, and the one hand held Guinea while the dead leaves roared. He was slipping and catching his balance, he was leaping logs when he had to, his legs bendy and the pinwheel of his head, and the parts inside him, unsoldering fast, he could feel his insides spilling out of him, Matley could no longer grip, he was falling. This land, this land under him, you got to grip, tight, Guinea crying, and now, over top the dry leaves' shout, he heard not only yelping, but nipping and growling and brush cracking, and Matley was close.

It was then that it came to him. He dreamed the dream end awake. Him helling up that endless hillslope, but the slope finally ends, and he sees the white dog tree-tied ear-cocked patient waiting, but still, Matley knows, something not right he can't tell. Black trees unplummetting out of white snow skiff, and Matley helling. Him helling. Him. Helling. He reaches, at last he reaches her, a nightmare rainbow's end, and he's known all along what he has to do, he thrusts his hand behind her to unleash her, free her, and then he understands, sees: behind the live dog front, she is bone. Her front part, her skin and face, a dog mask, body mask, and behind that, the not right he's always sensed but could not see, bone, and not even skeleton bone, but chunky bone, crumbled and granular and fragrant, the blood globbed up in chunks and clots, dry like snow cold day skiff and Matley moaning, he'd broke free of the woods and into a little clearing below the subdivision, ground rampant with sumac and dormant honeysuckle and grape and briar. It truly darkening now, and the way it's harder to see in near dark than it is in full dark, how your eyes don't know what to do with it, and Matley was stopped, trembling, loose, but he could hear. A house-sized mass of brush, a huge tangle of it making like a hill itself, dense looped and layered, crowned with the burgundy sumac spears. That whole clump a-sound with dog, and Matley felt himself tore raw inside, the flesh strips in him, and Matley started to yell.

He stood at a short distance and yelled at them to come out, come out of there, he knew inside himself not to dare go in, he knew before seeing what he couldn't bear to see. But nary a dog so much as poked its head out and looked at Matley, he could hear them snarling, hear bones cracking, see the brush rattle and sway, but to the dogs Matley wasn't there, and then he smelled it. Now the smell of it curled to him on that weird warm wind, as it had no doubt curled down to the househole and lured the dogs up, and he was screaming now, his voice
scraping skin off his throat, ripping, and Matley, with the single ounce of gentle still left in his hand, pulled out Guinea and set her down. Then he stooped and plunged in.

Now he was with them, blundering through this confusion of plant, and he could see his dogs, saw them down through vine branch and briar. Louise, the biggest, hunkered over and tearing at it, growling if another dog got close, she held her ground, and Ray Junior writhing in it on her back, and Honey lavering his neck in dried guts. Big Girl drawn off to the side crunching spine, while Hickory and Tick battled over a big chunk, rared up on their hind legs and wrestling with their fronts, and Matley pitched deeper, thorns tearing his hands. Matley tangled in vine and slim trunk, the sumac tips, that odor gusting all over his head, and he reached for Tick's tail to break up the fight. But when he touched Tick, Tick turned on him. Tick spun around gone in his eyes, and he drew back his lips on Matley and he bared his teeth to bite, and Matley, his heart cleaved in half, dropped the tail and sprung back. And the moment he did, he saw what he'd been terrified he'd see all along. Or did he see? A sodden collar still buckled around a rotting neck, did he? The live dogs eating the dead dogs there, what he'd suspected horrified all along, did he? And then Matley was whacking, flailing, windmilling looney, beating with his hands and arms and feet and legs the live dogs off the dead things because he had nothing else to beat with, he was not even screaming any longer, he was beyond sound, Matley beyond himself, Matley reeling, dropping dropped down.