Red Dog (3 page)

“No, thanks. I'm plenty relaxed.”

“Ever been dog-bit, son? I mean, really bit? Pit's bite tops out in the neighborhood of two hundred thirty-eight PSI. How much you weigh?”

“You know what, I think I'll take those tranqs.”

After a while, I had my kit together, and Lew and I went back to the house, where I found Anci sitting on an air-conditioning vent with a zoology book propped on her bare knees.

She said, “Eun Hee wants me to stay and visit.”

“Lew does, too.”

“There's a fox out here, man. An actual fox.”

“We got foxes at home.”

“Those are stand-off foxes, though. Snooty foxes. This one, you can pet.”

Eun Hee came into the room with a tray of sandwiches and cookies and a couple of those bottled orange sodas that seem to follow Anci around. I don't know how she does it. It's like she phones ahead.

Eun Hee said, “He was caught in a trap. Someone found him and freed him and called the county. The county called Lew.”

I turned to Anci.

“I thought you were going to keep me from getting eaten by a dog.”

“That was before I knew there were foxes involved.”

That was fair enough and I said so. Secretly, I was happy she'd decided to stay on her own and save us the argument. I hung around long enough to eat a sandwich and a couple of
cookies. I even saw the fox, which wasn't much more than a kit, in a pen behind the house.

“I already named him Dave,” Anci said. “So don't bother.”

“Dave's a fine name for a fox,” I said.

“Agree in full.”

I kissed my daughter. I said good-bye to Lew and Eun Hee and Dave, and pretty soon I was on the bridge back into Illinois.

E
AST ALONG 146 IS THE IRON FURNACE AND JUST PAST THAT
is Union City, not far from where I figured the Cleaveses' little farmstead was situated. It's mostly fields of soy or corn out that way, and a coal mine or two, though these days the coal works are as often as not abandoned. By the time I arrived at Loves Corner and the Classic Country Showroom, it was nearly seven o'clock—still daylight, but now with dusk's purple threads showing themselves above the low foothills somewhere far away to the west.

It was Sunday, and the place was closed. I parked in the dirt lot and climbed down from Lew's truck. I folded the leather gloves and tranqs into my back pocket and retrieved the rod and noose from the bed of the truck and walked up. Some grackle birds burst from the high grass at the edge of the lot and squawked at me a little before fluttering off into purpling sky. I told them where they could put their squawks. I was on important business and had sixty-five honest dollars to earn. I walked up to the club to pick a lock.

They were good ones, Reach's locks—commercial
Grade 2 with the cylindrical levers that made them a pain in the ass to crack. When I finally popped the door I found the inside of the club empty and quiet. There wasn't anything more threatening to the Classic Country than one of those fancy El Toro mechanical bulls looming in a corner and an elevated dance platform I managed to trip over in the dark. I searched the rest of the place. There were tables and stools and a small stage with spotlights for the band and lots of TV screens for sports-watching and such. There didn't seem to be a dog anywhere. The floors smelled of cleaner, and the bathrooms were fully stocked and their counters slick, so I figured I'd missed the janitor by no more than a half hour. In the back was a fry kitchen and a walk-in cooler for beers and burger patties and that sort of thing. If Reach kept a business office somewhere, it wasn't on-site.

Well, then, I thought, maybe it was in his house, which was up a path a ways behind the club. This was one of these underground builds that were a fad for a few seconds in the energy-anxious days of the mid-seventies, and in the failing light I almost missed it: a bit of window and siding squeezing itself from under a grass-covered hummock as though the landscape was devouring it, but slowly, because it almost couldn't bear the taste. There was some tall grass and the crook of a solitary oak. There was a bit of boardwalk, too, a DIY project that'd never been finished or sealed and now buckled under the weight of neglect. A beat-up red Trans Am hunkered nearby on bent rims. There was a lamp in the front window, and the lamp was on so I went up. If Reach really was holding Shelby Ann
Cleaves hostage, I'd do the noble thing, punch him in the brain and take her back. And if he wasn't, I figured we'd share a laugh over it all. Shake hands. Part buddies. In my heart, I'm an optimist.

I knocked on the door but no one answered. I turned the knob and found it unlocked and pushed my way inside. I called Reach's name—quietlike, so not to startle him—but no one answered. One of those giant high-def TVs was on and turned up loud with some sports program. Despite the time of day, there were breakfast smells issuing from the next room over, and a ruckus, another noisy TV set, maybe, or a radio, so I made my way in that direction through the sparsely furnished space and past a large fireplace that took up nearly an entire wall. Beside the fireplace was a tool rack and in the tool rack with the poker and brush and pan was a machete. Thing like that catches the eye. I'd paused a moment out of curiosity to pick it up and look at it when suddenly a bullet tore the air just above my left shoulder.

The bullet had come from a gun, and the gun was in the hand of a man standing in what I took to be the doorway to the kitchen. Dennis Reach, by the Cleaveses' description. He was maybe six two, and he had dark curly hair and a chest you'd have trouble squeezing into a rain barrel. His face was wide and red-cheeked and full of murder, and he was wearing one of those short-short bathrobes from which his butt hung like a hairy bell and that otherwise left tragically little to the imagination. He was holding a nickel-plated pistol. .45 auto, I guess it was. He showed me his gun barrel again.

I decided against getting shot. I came in low and crossed the short distance between us as the gun fired, once more missing high. Way he was holding his piece, he was always going to miss high. Unless you were a giraffe, you were probably pretty safe around him. I raised up hard and hit Reach in the chin with an uppercut and followed it with an elbow strike to the face. He took two steps back and dropped the pistol, but he was faster than he looked, and he leapt forward suddenly with a lunge-kick that sent me flying backward onto a coffee table. I came to my senses and rolled to the floor before he stomped me in half like a communion wafer. The table wasn't so lucky.

He said, “Why, you little pecker. That was my table. Tables are expensive. Now I'm really going to kick your ass.” He bent down and picked up the .45 and aimed it at me, more carefully this time, and said, “Good night, asshole.”

The gun fired a third time, but I was already moving. Moving like a wild dog. I went down below his knees and I could feel the hot kiss of his gunshot above my shoulder blades. Not especially high this time, but higher than me. I picked up the fireplace machete from where it'd fallen on the carpet and brought it up smoothly and swiftly in an arc between us.

Well, I meant to hit the gun mostly but my aim was just slightly off and then so was Dennis Reach's left thumb. Part of it, anyway. The top part. It flew across the room and hit the screen of the big TV, where it left a red blot before dropping to the floor with a thud. We both stood there a moment, blinking at it. Then Reach looked at me. I looked
at Reach. I punched Reach in the brain, and he pitched backward onto a nearby armchair and held the remainder of his hand like he meant to keep that from flying away, too.

“Sweet fancy Moses,” he said. “You chopped off my thumb.”

“Didn't mean to,” I said. I picked up the Colt and stuffed it in my jeans. I went and found the thumb and picked that up, too, but I didn't put it in my jeans. The machete was as sharp as it looked. The digit was cut in a neat line above the joint. I didn't look at it long enough to paint a picture. I said, “You're Dennis Reach, I guess?”

“That's me. Little less of me than before, but me.”

“Okay, Mr. Reach, let's turn off your breakfast before it burns.”

“Burns more, you mean.”

“Have it your way.”

In the kitchen, I opened the freezer and dropped the thumb into a box of ice cubes. I moved a pan of steak and eggs off the stovetop and put a lid on it to trap in some of the smoke. I tossed some blackened toast into the sink. Reach grunted as though to say he'd been right about breakfast. He wrapped his hurt in a dish towel. There was a bottle of Dickel on the counter. I looked a question at him and he nodded so I poured him a shot.

He said, “You cut off my thumb. You might as well drink my whiskey, too.”

“I'll pass. How's the hand?”

“You'd think it'd hurt, losing a finger, but it don't hardly at all.”

“It will,” I said. “You're all adrenaline now, but that'll wear off pretty soon.”

“I guess,” he said. “What do you want? You already got my thumb, and I don't keep anything valuable around here to speak of.”

“You might have asked me before, instead of trying to turn me into a sprinkler.”

“You surprised me,” he said. “Standing in my living room like that.”

“I'd heard tell about that robe of yours. Wanted to ask where you bought it.”

“Plus, you were holding my machete. Or did you bring your own?”

“It was yours.”

“You were holding my machete, and I thought you meant to do me harm.”

I nodded. It all made sense.

I said, “Fortunately, you just happened to be cooking breakfast at seven o'clock at night with a forty-five auto close at hand. Like regular, churchgoing folk will.”

“I work funny hours. Live in a funny world.”

“Kinda gives new meaning to the idea of getting shells in your eggs, though, don't it?”

He shook that off. He didn't want jokes.

I was curious about something, so I asked, “Why do you keep a machete in here? Near the fireplace?”

“Snakes in the woodpile,” he replied. “I use it on them sometimes. Should have been worried about snakes in my living room. Buddy, what do you want with me?”

I took out my phone and showed Reach the picture of Shelby Ann that A. Evan had texted me. She was sitting in some tufts of high grass and smiling up at the camera with her tongue lolling from her mouth and the sun on her red fur.

Reach took a long time to answer. He opened his mouth and closed it. He licked his lips and cleared his throat. Then cleared it again. Finally, he said, “You wanted me to get you a puppy, all you had to do was ask.”

“You're fun, Reach. I like you.” I dragged over a stool and took a load off. I was trying to put on casual airs, but my casual airs were running through the town square screaming, “
Someone actually has the goddamn dog!
” I tell you, I couldn't believe it, but there it was, and I felt like I'd won some kind of crime fighter's lottery. I said, “By the way, the sooner you get to the hospital, the sooner you can get that digit sewed back on.”

“Don't know anything about it. You, the dog, none of it.”

“How much time you figure before you lose it for good? An hour? Hour and a half?” Really, he had more like fifteen or sixteen hours—fingers are tougher than you think—but I counted on him not knowing that.

He said, “I'm sure it'll be fine. In fact, I'm confident about it. I got that Obamacare now. I think they do thumbs.”

“But what if they don't? Think about it for a minute, will you? You've spent your entire life as a two-thumbs-up-his-ass kind of guy. How are you going to get along with just the one?”

“What was it you said you wanted again?”

I threw up my hands. “Jesus, Mary, and Jolene. There's no stubborn like country stubborn.”

“Wish I could help you. Really I do.”

“Buddy, your partner gave up your name,” I said. “Slipped and gave you up on the phone. That's the help for you these days.”

That got through. Reach shook his head and looked at the nub of his thumb through the folds of the bloody towel and muttered, “He really did that?”

“How do you think I found you? Drew your name out of a bedpan?”

“Wesley, you dumb bastard.”

“Where is she?”

He looked at me sharply, face begging for sympathy. “They owe me money, you know? Really they do.”

“They owe me money, too. Also, really. Where's the dog?”

“First Carol Ray fucks me over and now this,” he said. “We were doing this the fair way, you'd have to get in line behind her.”

I looked at my watch and sighed like high school theater.

“Oh, to hell with it then,” he said, and gave it up, the information I wanted. The address wasn't more than a few miles up the road. Reach liked his dognapping convenient. The addressee, according to Reach, was a Classic Country bar-back, name of Wesley Tremble.

“Dangerous?” I said.

“As a Jell-O mold.”

I thanked him, and I meant it. I was grateful. I told him
to stand up, and he did so without fuss. I led him to the sink and made him sit. I wrapped his injured hand in the towel and tied it off. Not too tight but tight enough it would staunch the bleeding and not slip off. Then I handcuffed him by his good hand to the pipe under the faucet.

He said, “You can't leave me here like this. Bleeding. Missing a finger. It ain't humane.”

“Said the dognapper.”

He shook his head. “You're fixated on that. Dwelling on it. Put it aside for a moment. I got to get to an ER.”

“You will. I'm even going to drive you. But first I need you to wait here for me.” Moments like this one you reflect on later, question, regret even. If I were a praying person, maybe I'd do that. Ask forgiveness. Or mercy. But I didn't do any of it—pray, question, or regret—at the time. At the time, I wanted to get to Tremble and the dog as quickly as possible. Taking Reach with me was out of the question, and leaving him able to access a phone was even more so. It turns out I was making a mistake, a tire fire of a mistake, but I didn't know it yet. I said, “You want one for the road?”