MISSING DAD - WHY DOGS BITE
Ben Whitmer
A hot day. A sloppy mean heat that holds the boy in check and keeps him low over his bicycle. He wipes at his forehead and hunkers down even lower, laboring for a current.
An unpaved road. There are so many ruts that level neither begins nor ends. Around it lies vast fields of bone-dead grass, an occasional island of forest popping out of the void. The boy’s wheels kick up an ever-winding trail of dust, mocking his
small body.
His eyes dart ahead, seeking out landmarks. A telephone pole or a driveway. Once he finds one he keeps his gaze set upon it, and then looks on for another. Anything to gauge his distance against.
At times he rides with his eyes closed for a few seconds, sensing at the ground with his tires. His eyes pop open at the first true tremble of his bike and he laughs aloud. Other times he fixes his stare straight down on the road and watches it whisk past. The closer the ground he stares at, the faster it flies by. An old trick, and even as young as he is, it bores him quickly.
And of course, just when he gives up on his destination, his farmhouse peeks up over the horizon. It no different than the others. The siding peeled back at the corners, the roof-tiles staggered just a little off pattern, the mail box leaning in a slow slant to the left.
And of course, when the boy sees his home he concentrates all his energy on not acknowledging it. He focuses everything on the road ahead of him, rolling past the closest neighbor’s with a burst of speed.
And as such, the boy barely even sees the dog.
He catches a sharp volley of black from beneath a battered Ford and then he is down, his bike straddling him.
Just that quick, he is in the ditch, bitten.
Dazed and swallowing dryly, the boy twitches his head around and finally fastens on the dog, which has returned to the truck’s shade.
The dog watches him quizzically through its fat, stupid eyes. The boy steady watches the dog right back, paralyzed beneath his bike.
The dog snaps moronically at a fly.
The boy heaves the bike up and jumps on. He pumps the pedals frantically and storms away from the driveway, glancing back after a good hundred yards to see nothing moving. Every muscle and joint in his body is quivering with adrenaline.
His vision becomes precise on his house. He peddles in
acute explosions until he can’t peddle anymore. Then he coasts, regaining his energy for the next eruption. He swings down his driveway, casts his bike into the lawn, and crashes through the door.
His mother glances up at him from the television. She has the remote control in one thick hand, a cigarette in the other. She stubs out the butt in an ashtray. “What happened to you?” she asks. She flips a couple channels through as she speaks.
“Nothing,” Joe says, “I got bit by a dog.”
Her attention flickers back and forth from the blood to the television. “Looks like you did,” she says, hitting a lever on the side of her chair and reclining it. “MARK, GET DOWN HERE. THE BOY GOT BIT.”
Joe stands in the doorway, afraid to enter for the blood. He drops his weight on his wounded leg and presses down and the pain increases and increases until it is gone.
Mark steps into the living room, tucking a T-shirt into his jeans. His hair is pillow-tossed, his beard on end and in need of a trim. “Well,” he says, folding his arms across his chest. “You sure did get bit.”
Joe makes the mistake of taking his full weight off of the
leg and it immediately begins to ache.
Mark crouches in front of him and scrutinizes the hole in
his jeans. “Drop your pants and let’s see it.”
Joe hesitates. He clutches his waistline and glances tentatively at his mother. Her gaze is held unshaken, tuned into a talk show. The crowd is screaming. A man up on the podium shakes a fist at a woman whose every other word is being beeped.
“C’mon,” Mark says, “drop your pants.”
Joe unbuttons the shorts and lets them fall to his ankles.
The air feels fresh on his genitals, he flushes deeply. “Damn,” says Mark, staring
his shriveled penis in the face. “You ain’t got no clean underwear?”
Joe shakes his head mutely.
Smirking, Mark examines the four perfect punctures in Joe’s leg. The wound is clean and puckered around the edges, less like a bite than something left by a precision instrument. He gets up and walks into the bathroom, leaving Joe there with his pants around his ankles.
Joe watches his mother for any indication that she might look his way. He fixes everything he has on her. He knows better than to even blink.
Mark brings back a bottle of iodine and a rag ripped from a flannel shirt. He holds the bottle against the rag and up-ends it. “This’ll hurt,” he says, checking Joe’s face.
Joe shrugs.
“There you go,” says Mark. He dabs at one of the holes with the rag and Joe shows nothing. “There you go,” he says again, and cleans the punctures thoroughly, taking his time and working around the edges.
Joe waits for the cleaning to begin to hurt, but it doesn’t.
He clenches his fists and unclenches them to show that he is in pain and taking it well.
“That’s it,” Mark says, screwing the cap on the iodine. “Pull up your pants, I’ll be right back.” He takes the iodine to the bathroom, and then moves to the kitchen and Joe can hear him rummaging around the cabinets.
Joe eases his pants up, glancing at his mother. If she was watching no sign of it shows on her face. He breathes a long breath and exhales it silently.
“You got a squirt gun?” Mark asks from the kitchen.
“YEAH,” Joe yells back, too loudly.
Mark chuckles. “Well, go get it.”
Joe dashes out of the living room and up the stairs. He takes a minute to compose himself and then shuffles through his room, digging through a stack of dirty clothes, peering under his bed. He finds the squirt gun, an imitation .45 in neon orange, buried in a stack of comic books. He runs it to the kitchen, puzzled by the request, but taking the stairs down three at a time.
Holding a bottle of ammonia, Mark grabs the pistol and smiles. “We’re gonna go find that dog,” he said, filling the gun with ammonia. “It ain’t gonna bite at you again.” He pops in the plastic plug and thrusts forth the gun to Joe.
Joe holds it awkwardly, wanting to fix it in his pants. He almost does so, but he thinks it would appear childish.
“Put it in your pants, boy,” Mark says. He steps out into the living room and in front of the television. “We’re going out for a minute,” he says.
She tries to move around his legs to see the television,
then she realizes more’s expected of her. “Where to?”
Mark winks outrageously at her. “I’m gonna teach Joe something about dogs,” he says, and walks out the front door, Joe slagging behind.
Walking isn’t any different from riding, the boy just has to make the landmarks a little closer. He can feel the water pistol leaking in his pants. The ammonia stinking and dribbling slowly down his leg, he too nervous to rearrange the gun.
Mark walks quickly, taking the road in long mean strides.
Dodging the pot-holes gracefully in his steel-toed boots, swinging his arms up to take space. “Your mother loves you, Joe.”
With a quick sprint, Joe catches up to him.
“She may seem overprotective, but she’s a mother.” He reaches into his Dickies, extracts a pack of Camel unfiltereds, and lights one with a match. “She forgets that you’re about a man. You can’t blame her for being concerned when you show up all bloody.”
“She seemed okay,” Joe says.
“Well, that’s your mother. She has a hard time expressing
her feelings.”
The boy’s on an electric pole about a hundred yards away,
watching it draw up.
“Anyways, she thinks you need a man around full time.” Mark picks a piece of tobacco off his tongue and flips it in the dust.
“What do you think?”
Joe shrugs. The electric pole moves up by his side and the house with the dog is the only next landmark.
“Somebody needs to show you the ropes,” Mark says. He stops and faces Joe. “I plan on being him.”
The boy can see the truck, he can even see the dog slavering between the front tires. “Good,” he says.
“Alright,” Mark says, and regains his stride. “I’m glad you said that.”
They take the last fifty feet, and Mark stands in the driveway. “Is that the dog?” He points beneath the truck. The dog lolls its head lazily and stares out at them, its oily tongue hanging in the dust.
The boy nods.
Mark leads forward a few steps until they’re within ten feet of the indolent mutt. “Take out that squirt gun,” he says.
The boy fumbles it out of his pocket and aims it ineptly at the dog.
“You gotta squirt it in the eyes,” Mark says. “Squirt it
right in the eyes and it won’t bite you again.”
The front door of the house slams open and a bald man in black jeans and no shirt steps out. He walks, barefoot and rippling with massive muscle, towards them. Tattoos squirm around his arms, and he swings an ax-handle at his side. “What the fuck are you all doing?”
“Your dog bit my boy,” says Mark, without looking up.
The bald man treads up at Mark’s shoulder and looks at the boy, his arms rigid and straight, clenching the water pistol. “So you’re gonna squirt her?”
“Gonna squirt her in the eyes with ammonia,” Mark says.
“Teach the mutt not to bite people.”
Crossing his arms, the bald man gives that some thought. “You squirt her in the eyes and you’ll blind her,” he says.
Mark drops his cigarette in the driveway and grinds it out with his boot. “That’s kind of the point.”
The boy has the gun down and is trying to keep from looking at either one of them. He concentrates on the dog and she concentrates back on him, an inane expression on her face.
“Well you ain’t gonna blind it,” the man says, “that’s for
goddamn sure.”
“You’re lucky I don’t take my shotgun to the bitch.”
The man uncrosses his arms. “That’d be something else,” he says, “but you ain’t going to blind her.”
Mark doesn’t look at him. “Joe,” he says, “squirt that
bitch straight in the eye.”
The boy clenches one eye shut.
“Dogs bite,” says the man. “They do that sometimes. Your
boy been bit, I’ll pay the doctor bill.”
“You squirt that bitch,” says Mark to the boy.
The man brings the ax-handle up, cocked. “Your boy squirts the dog and I’ll bust your fucking skull.”
“You say,” says Mark, “but he’s still gonna do it.”
Joe glances away from the dog at Mark. Mark’s eyebrows are drawn rough and he is staring across the fields at nothing.
The bald man chokes up on his club.
“Hit it in the eyes,” Mark says.
And that’s all the boy needs. He squirts the ammonia
straight into the dog’s eyes.
There’s a huge and hollow crack and Mark is on the ground, holding his face, blood spurting around his fingers. His feet paw at the ground and dust flies at his heels. He rolls face down in the dirt and presses at his broken nose frenziedly. Screaming out strangled curses and for Joe to get the bastard.
The bald man drops the stick low and looks long at Joe.
Joe sticks the squirt gun in his pocket and hangs his head. “Go inside,” the man says, clapping Joe on the shoulder. “The phone’s in the kitchen.”
Joe ogles him like an idiot. Behind them the dog slams its head into a tree trunk, scraping and thrashing, trying to snag its eyes out.
“Go boy,” the man says, “call the dumb fucker an ambulance.”
He spits and shakes his head, a knowing half-smile washing quickly over his face.
Mark’s tantrum slows to a lulling sob. His hands still enclose his face but he no longer seeks out pressure points to halt the pain. He’s just holding on, unable to relax his grip, knowing something might fall off.
Joe steps over Mark carefully and moves for the door. His
gut seizes with a laugh that could be hysterical.
The dog hasn’t got either of her eyes out, they’re set too far back in the sockets. But there is a long streak of blood on the tree, and her forehead is rubbed completely raw.
She gives up on the tree and digs with her paws, flopping fiercely in the grass. She can’t figure out what is making her eyes burn like they are.
Everything’s moving in shadows and the last thing she remembers seeing is the boy and his ridiculous plastic hand. She lets out a faltering and mean howl. Which doesn’t help at all.
