The Black Marble (17 page)

Philo Skinner decided he had half an hour before his next dog was due in the ring. Maybe longer because the show was running long. Philo went staggering around the arena floor, hands in his pockets, cigarette dangling from the corner of his tobacco-flecked lips, grinning, winking, leering at every female handler, exhibitor, or groomer, under the age of fifty. He was suddenly in a jovial
helpful
mood.

A buxom owner and a mousy woman handler were at a grooming table near the grandstand working on a Maltese terrier. Philo stood, hands in pockets, and shook his head.

The Maltese was rolled in oil and tissue paper and tied up with rubber bands so his long hair couldn't drag on the ground and break off. But the Maltese terrier's coat wasn't the problem. His balls were. One was lost.

“What do you
mean?
” the frantic owner demanded, her diamond earrings dancing. “How can you
lose
it! My God, how can you
lose
a testicle!”

“Mrs. Dilfaunt, it happens all the time!” the harried handler explained, while two other dog groomers worked on a pair of bored spaniels who had been through it all too much to lose
their
balls.

“Happens all the time! To
lose
a testicle!”

“You're new to dog shows, Mrs. Dilfaunt,” the handler tried to explain. “The dog is monorchid at the moment.”

“Monorchid.”

“Yes. He's tense, nervous. It's his first show. He's just sucked one testicle up, that's all. We've got to help him bring it down. The judges will reach under there and feel and there
has
to be two.”

“My God!” the new owner screamed. “I pay a thousand bucks for a one-nutted dog!”

“I used to get the same way when I was tense,” she suddenly heard a voice wheeze in her ear. Then she smelled sour tobacco breath and stale sweat and was staring into the heavy-lidded, boozy eyes of a gangly stranger with blue-black hair. “Tickle the end of my pecker, and I'll drop
my
nut every time!”

“Officer!” the woman screamed, as Philo went slinking off through the crowd. Giggling.

When Pattie Mae returned, she put her hand surreptitiously into Philo's coat pocket and said breathlessly: “One's Colombia Gold, the other's Maui wow-ee.”

“Maui wow-ee!” Philo yelled, causing the cringing whippet to defecate for the third time.

And as crowds of the faithful trooped in and out of the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, larger crowds, though not necessarily
more
faithful, began choking the inadequate roads into the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on a brisk, bright, perfect California football day. And if Philo Skinner had previously been ten times more tense than the entire offensive line of the Minnesota Vikings, he was okay at the moment. Okey-dokey. Philo left Pattie Mae with the animals, and went slinking around the outside rings to watch the working and sporting dogs. He had the two joints in his pocket.

He walked right up to a throng of nail-biting owners of golden retrievers and tried an experiment. He deliberately lit a joint with the butt of his Camel. Then he stood in their midst, hands in his pockets, chuckling to himself, smoking the joint right down to a roach. Once he tapped a man in a suede shooting jacket and said, “Your handler is standing the dog on a little hump of turf. He shouldn't face him downhill like that. That dog has a sloping top line and the downhill lie just emphasizes it.”

The sport in the shooting jacket turned to Philo, looked him squarely in the face and said, “Sir, that dog is
perfect.
” Then he whirled and turned back to watch the judging with the rest of the nail-biters. Philo was grinning, the stick of Colombia Gold hanging out the side of his mouth. It went unnoticed. Goddamn, it was
fun
being an outlaw!

Philo smoked his Maui wow-ee while watching the German shepherds. He had never found a dog show so funny. The middle-aged handlers were really being put through it by a squinty woman judge who was every bit as tall as Philo but lots tougher. She looked as though she was enjoying their agony as much as Philo was. They couldn't satisfy her. Around and around the ring they ran. The tongues of the handlers were soon dangling longer than the shepherds'. Philo couldn't contain himself. “Atta girl, Granny!” he yelled. “Run their buns off!”

Then for the first time someone noticed. A teenaged boy in the crowd turned, looked at the emaciated dog handler, and said, “Hey, that guy's smoking grass!”

But too late. The outlaw was slithering away through the crowd, the joint cupped in his hand, still giggling.

When Philo was back in the arena heading toward his grooming area, he saw a tight little group of groomers and handlers kneeling on the floor next to a howling Great Dane.

“It's
your
fault,” the exhibitor barked.

“It's
not
my fault, Mrs. Von Geldt.
You
had the dog all week!”

“It's
my
fault,” a young groomer wailed. “I should have noticed.”

“I'm changing kennels!” the exhibitor said.

“That's not helping matters. Just give me a chance …”

“Is there a doctor in the house!” the exhibitor screamed.

On a whim, Philo Skinner walked up and said, “I'm Doctor Skinner, what can I do for …”

Then he recognized the older dog handler kneeling behind the other one.

“Hello, Philo,” the handler said. He was a well-known veteran on the circuit, so Philo's fun was cut short. “Anal glands impacted.”

And then, loaded on bourbon and marijuana, certainly not feeling like going up a Great Dane's ass, Philo Skinner bent his gangling frame and squatted. He could never stand to see an animal suffer.

“I thought he had worms, the way he was sliding around on his bottom,” the exhibitor cried.

“I think it happened today, Philo,” the old handler said. “His eyes still look good.”

“Yeah,” Philo nodded, and without asking the leave of anyone, rancid Philo Skinner, smelling like thirty days in a dog run, probed the Dane's anus, and with thumb and forefinger—gently, ever so gently—pushed in until he was sure he was behind the glands. Then the dog yelped as Philo squeezed and pulled out and up and the secretion flowed through the anus. The secretion smelled worse than the armpits of Philo Skinner.

“Wash him off, he'll be okay,” Philo said.

“Good hands, Philo,” the old handler grinned. “You still got those good hands.”

But Philo was up and loping sideways as though catching a Kenny Stabler pass. “
Great
hands!” Philo yelled. “Just like Fred Biletnikoff!”

After scoring his touchdown and washing his great hands, he returned to the tense group of people swabbing and toweling the anus of the Great Dane. The relieved exhibitor wearing an orchid carnation had her back to him. She caught a whiff of sweat and tobacco as a voice croaked: “Honey, if you ever need any help with
your
anal glands …”

Then he was off and running. It was a hell of a fun day. By God, Philo Skinner
would
miss the dog show circuit!

“Mr. Skinner,” Pattie Mae said, shaking her head when he came reeling back to the grooming area. “I see you smoked the Gold.”

“You know, Pattie Mae, tell the truth I never liked grass before. I just might switch.” And with that he gave her a smack on the bottom. “Damn, I
knew
you didn't have any panties on!”

“Mr. Skinner, I just don't know how you're going to show the Dandie.”

He looked at the dogs in the exercise pens. She'd groomed them beautifully. Philo Skinner knew he couldn't have done much better.

“You got good hands too, kid,” he said seriously. “And Philo Skinner doesn't toss around compliments very often.”

Then he sat in his director's chair and smoked and listened to the buzz of the crowd and the incessant voice on the public address system: “Janitor, ring nine. Janitor, ring four. Janitor …”

Endless. It was endless. The world was one big heap of shit. There were those that dropped it and those that cleaned it up. Well, Philo Skinner had scooped up his share of shit and now it was somebody else's turn. He started getting very depressed now and almost felt like crying. It was sad when you thought too much about it. The whole fucking world. Just one big mountain of shit.

Then he heard another crowd cheering. He looked blankly down to the next grooming area. A small television set was being adjusted by the handler there. Jesus Christ, he had forgotten for a minute. Jesus Christ, this goddamn dope boils your brain. The Super Bowl was about to begin! Philo Skinner's heart thumped in his throat. He lit his sixty-first cigarette.

By terrible coincidence they were showing the Dandies in ring number eight just five minutes before the kickoff of Super Bowl XI. Philo Skinner was standing like a zombie and peering through the hair of an English sheepdog on a grooming table trying to see the small television set.

“Mr. Skinner,” Pattie Mae said, pulling on his arm. “Mr. Skinner, it's time to show the Dandie.”

“Later,” he mumbled, glued to the tube.

“Mr. Skinner! It's time!”

Then he turned his drug-dilated eyes to the frantic girl and said, “Pattie Mae, what the hell! Now's as good a time as any.
You
show the Dandie.”

“Me!
Me
show the Dandie!”

“You.”

“Me!”

“Get hold a yourself. You've been to plenty a dog shows.”

“As a spectator!”

“Look, show the Dandie,” Philo said, reeling from the effects of marijuana and bourbon. “Show the dog or fuck the dog, I don't care
what
you do with the dog, but leave me alone.”

“Mr. Skinner, I'm quitting tomorrow morning. I'm not working for you anymore.”

“That's funny. Oh, God, that's funny,” Philo croaked, then broke into a wheezy laughing fit that ended in an ounce of black phlegm being gagged into his handkerchief while Pattie Mae blanched. “Listen,” he gasped, still chuckling wheezily. “
I
won't be working for me, come tomorrow.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Go show the goddamn Dandie. It's good experience for you.”

Mrs. Dexter Berryberry had been enjoying the dog show enormously up until that time. And here was the moment she'd been waiting for. She had bought tickets for seven members of her bridge club and they were all chatting excitedly in the grandstand waiting to see the Berryberry Dandie Dinmont do his stuff. Then Mrs. Berryberry began looking concerned. Where the hell was Philo Skinner? She counted one, two,
eight
Dandies. And the fourth one looked like her Pretty Pennie, but who the hell was that kid with the tits leading her Pretty Pennie?

Mrs. Dexter Berryberry wasn't there when her bridge club began the polite applause for Pretty Pennie of Hancock Park. She was hotfooting it down the stairs to the grooming area of Philo Skinner, searching the crowd for that slinky, teased-and-dyed, mangy bastard. She looked everywhere but in the small cluster of sports fans huddled around the television set.

Meanwhile Pattie Mae was knocking them dead in ring number eight. Perhaps not all of them, but certainly the sixty-year-old judge, Landon McWhorter, whose eyes started popping the moment the frazzled girl came bouncing into the ring. He stopped all the handlers once around, except for poor Pattie Mae, jogging along, turning her ankles on those seven-inch clogs. Old Landon grinned more with each bounce and hop, and made the girl do an L away from him, and if that wasn't enough, a T. He made her trot back and forth so much her wraparound skirt was unwrapping.

Unlike most judges he didn't stand his ground as she moved away, but followed along, making furious notes on his clipboard. His notes said: “Brisket flat and muscular. Hock shapely and well defined. Stifle magnificent!” And the dog wasn't bad either.

Mrs. Dexter Berryberry never saw Philo Skinner squatting on the floor in front of that television set smoking his sixty-eighth cigarette. When she returned to the grandstand, her bridge club stood and applauded her win. She accepted it graciously, thinking she must remember to give Philo a bonus for finding a little pigeon with tits big enough to bring old Landon McWhorter back to life.

At 1:20 p.m., early in the first quarter of Super Bowl XI, Philo Skinner, sobering up slightly, decided he'd had enough. He began rooting for the Minnesota Vikings! He only wanted to cover his gambling debts. He was a dog handler and a good one. His life wasn't so bad considering the alternatives. He swore he'd never bet on another horse or another football game if the Vikings could pull it off. So long, Puerto Vallarta! With his luck he'd die of Aztec Revenge anyway, first time he had a Bibb lettuce salad. Or he'd catch clap in some Mexican whorehouse and a swarm of vermin would penetrate his blood and go rushing madly to his brain and … Come on, you Vikings!

But at 1:26 p.m. Earl Main kicked a field goal for the Oakland Raiders.

“Mr. Skinner, we
won!
” Pattie Mae screamed, throwing her arms around his neck. For the firs time, she kissed his cheek. “We
won
, Mr. Skinner! The Dandie
won!
”

“That's great, kid, that's really swell,” Philo said. “How about going back and getting the bullterrierready? He's next.”

“Sure, Mr. Skinner. I'm so exited. We might win best of breed! My very first show!”

“Listen, honey, maybe you'd like to show the bull too.”

“Would I?
Would
I?”

And she was off, running toward the grooming table, deciding to add just another touch of cornstarch.

At 1:42 p.m. the Oakland Riders scored on a Kenny Stabler pass.

“My God,” said Philo Skiinner. The pile of butts at his feet had grown.

“Janitor, ring ten. Janitor, ring fifteen. Janitor …”

It was all turning to shit. He
would
be a criminal. As sure as there's shit in those shovels. It was Philo Skinner's destiny. He had no control over it. He had no choice in the matter. Fate had brought him here. And Philo Skinner found it as easy to accept a deterministic philosophy as had thousands of criminals More him. Dame Chance was guiding his destiny. His fate lay in the lands of that bearded, left-handed quarterback.