Authors: John Vigna
The women got up and danced together. Brian recognized them as hairdressers from a salon in town. They danced in a tight circle, giggled, each with a beer in one hand, cigarette in the other, glancing over their shoulders. No one approached them. It was too early in the night, and no man would do that
to himself until later, when the music got louder and the alcohol had thoroughly erased his doubts.
The waitress brought Brian two high-tests. “He's awful, isn't he?”
Brian handed her a ten. “Least he's up there. Counts for something.”
“Yeah, it counts for being a fool.” She sighed. “I keep telling them to get that jukebox back in here. People want the real thing.”
He wanted to point out that singing was the real thing, not the canned music thumping from a box in the corner of the bar. He wanted to ask her if she'd ever tried singing up there, but asking questions only opened the door to more talk, and he'd had enough talk for the day. He waved his hand when she offered the change.
“You sure?”
He nodded.
“Thanks.”
The song ended, and the hair stylists stumbled back to their table, leaned into one another, laughing. One of them smiled at Brian. He fiddled with his tobacco pouch, rolled a cigarette. A few weeks after the wedding, he'd brought Tracy back to the bar and hoped she'd enjoy it as much as he did. She'd made biting, sarcastic remarks about the people who sat around drinking, playing the slots along the dark walls, or dancing like idiots. She barked a falsetto laugh every time someone sang karaoke. He never brought her back, and she never asked to come with him. He looked toward the woman, but she had turned to her friends. They lifted their shot glasses and then knocked them
back, slammed the thick glass heels on the table.
Brian drank and ordered two more, drank those a little slower, waited for the buzz to seep inside him. He closed his eyes and listened to the old man sing, “Baby, I Love Your Way,” his voice raspy and injured. Brian moved his lips along to the chorus. The music made him happy. He saw himself on stage and thought of Tracy, the anger in her voice; she always seemed mad at him, no matter what he did. Must be hormones. She was a raging lunatic when she was expecting. After the birth of Junior, nothing could get between her and the boy. Still the same. No room for anyone else in there. He didn't know how Sean did it.
A hand touched his arm, startled him. He opened his eyes; the hair stylist stood in front of him in a floral sundress and red cowboy boots. A heart-shaped locket dangled from her neck on a thin gold chain.
“Hey, wanna sing one together?” Her friends bowed their heads close to each other and watched him. “We could split the jackpot if we won.”
“No. No thanks.”
She pulled her hand away.
“I can't much sing.” But that wasn't true. Tracy loved his voice. He used to sing Junior to sleep in the middle of the night during the first few weeks after he was born.
“It's just a song. I'm a terrible singer myself. We can share the pain.” She giggled, touched his arm again.
“I never said I was terrible.” The word hung between them like a bad note.
She slapped him on the shoulder. “You're funny.”
He picked at the beer bottle label and sighed, leaned back in
his chair. The old man neared the end of the song and Brian realized he had missed the best parts, the words he knew so well, the ones that reminded him of Tracy. What song didn't? “Sorry, maybe another time. I should get going. I have to work tomorrow.” It made him feel good to say work, as though he had a legitimate purpose.
“Work, huh? Never heard that one before.”
He got up to leave. Everything seemed to be turning on itself. Other men in the bar looked him over as he walked toward the exit, a strange hush between songs. He heard the women laugh as he reached for the door.
“Whoa, padre, where's the fire?” Jasmine pushed open the door and slung his arm around Brian's shoulder. “Was it something I said?” He laughed. “C'mon, let's blow off some steam. I know you're a shrewd businessman.”
Brian searched his face for mockery.
“Have I got a deal for you.” Jasmine steered them to the bar and ordered tequila. “For my
hombre, compadre
, burrito. Whatever. For my new business partner!” Jasmine raised his glass and downed it straight. “Go on, it's not gonna kill you.”
Brian drank the tequila.
“You should be thanking me.” Jasmine ordered four more shots.
“Thanking you? For messing up my dog?” Brian bristled. He had brought Penny along slowly, kept her away from the others, tied her up, and worked her into being a prized fighting dog. “I'll tell you what I should do isâ”
“Your puppies to clear your debt.” Jasmine raised his shot glass.
Brian set his glass down, drew circles on the bar top with it, studied the damp drawings.
“What use are inbreds to you?” he said quietly. There would be all kinds of health issues, deformities, nasty side effects; they wouldn't be good for fighting or breeding.
“What do you care? Those puppies will truly be gruesome creatures. You won't miss them.” Jasmine raised another glass. “Deal?”
“I'm thinking.”
“Not your strongest suit.” Jasmine ordered two more, and when those were finished, they shook hands and celebrated with another shot. Brian felt lucid and lighter than he had in a long while. It's the booze, he reminded himself, though he knew the settling of his debt gave him this feeling. He could move on, start fresh, find more work, save, and show Tracy that he was everything she claimed he wasn't. He motioned for more tequila.
“That's the spirit. Partners,” Jasmine said. They drank. The music bellowed and screeched from the jukebox behind Brian. He slapped the bar top with his palm in unison to the songs, and at one point he heard himself shout out, “We salute you,” and saluted the hair stylist across the bar. Her friends pushed her forward. She strode across the room toward Brian, and he saw how everything, from the sheen on her hair to the fit of her dress and the glint of her pendant, was too perfect. She weaved in and out of the chairs, smiled when she dodged the waitress carrying another round for him and Jasmine. Brian pushed off from the bar, dragging his barge of baggage behind him, inevitable but unseen to her until she would get to know him, a time he knew would never amount to more than a night or two. And then he
could cruise away, looking for the shore, never docking for long, staying buoyant for as long as he could manage. Jasmine grabbed him, his fingers digging deep into his shoulder, and whispered, “It must suck to know that your old lady's fucking him right now, in your home, with your retard son in the other room.”
For eight weeks Brian and Sean punished the dogs, drove them to exhaustion until their bodies developed tight, gnarled knots of muscle that seemed to quiver when the breeze passed over them. Their noses twitched when the men came near, and their eyes were shining dark orbs that gave no real sense of the menace beneath them. Aspen buds popped and greened the stark limbs around the property; the warm air hummed with insects and birds. Penny's teats lengthened like thick pink worms, her sides filled out like a bloated sack.
Inside the studio, the men taped Gyproc while Brian Jr jammed his fingers in a small pail and scooped out gobs of mud, spreading it on a section of tape that Sean had stapled on a board.
“What the hell is Jasmine going to do with them?”
“Language,” Brian said quietly, turning to his son.
“We won't tell Mommy, will we?” Sean grinned. The boy played with a fly caught in the mud. He ripped a wing off and watched it struggle in the muck.
Brian turned away. “Don't know. Don't care. Not my business.”
“Christ, who knows how those things will come out, all disfigured and shit.”
Brian Jr tore the other wing off the fly and then dug into the pail, plopped more mud on the tape. He stacked mud over the fly
on the board, shaping a large mound over it like a grave.
“Not my problem,” Brian said.
“Mommy, Mommy.”
Sean stopped trowelling the wall and faced Brian, pointed the trowel at him. “If one of them inbreeds gets into my stock, I'm finished. Think about that.”
“Your stock? Since when are they yours?”
“Since I fronted the cash and the space to raise them. Since I spend every spare moment taking care of them while you're fucking off wherever. Do you want me to go on?”
“Won't happen.”
“It better the fuck not.”
“It's a done deal.” Brian wiped mud from his shirt.
Sean glared at Brian for a moment longer before he lowered the trowel so that Brian Jr could slap mud on it.
“Fuck not, fuck not,” the boy said.
Brian found Penny in a cramped space beneath the porch. Her stomach rose and fell as she panted; her eyes calm, dilated. He snapped away the lattice and laid out a blanket for her, but she paced back and forth, dug frantically. She abruptly lay down trembling. Her stomach convulsed in spastic jerks. She stood, paced again, and vomited. Brian nudged a water pail toward her.
“Drink some of this. You're going to need it.”
She lay down again and stared at him. He lit a tailor-made and smoked until she started to contract. He knocked the ash off the cigarette on his boot heel and carefully inserted it in the package with the others.
The first puppy slid out a few minutes later, a damp plop on the blanket. Penny chewed away the slimy membrane, licked the hairless pup from top to bottom. Brian sliced the umbilical cord. Penny lay breathing heavily, ignored the pup struggling on the blanket. She strained hard again and the next three came out tail end first. Her pauses were longer now; tiny nubs of bald flesh surrounded her, gnawing at her teats, soft muffles in the straw. The fifth one came out slow and motionless. Penny bit the membranes away but stopped before she was done. Brian placed his palm on the pup. It was warm and wet and lay motionless. He pulled his hand back quickly, pushed it aside with his boot. “Had enough?” Two more struggled out.
“Beautiful, isn't it?” Tracy stood behind him on the porch. She touched his shoulder. “Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you.” Her wrist was scarred from Jasmine's dog; she held a cup of coffee. “Here, looks like you could use it.”
Brian took the cup, sipped from it. “Your hand okay?” Her belly seemed more distended up close. He turned back to the puppies so she couldn't see his damp eyes.
“Yeah, Sean fixed me up.”
“He's a good man.”
“He's got his moments.”
Brian wiped his eyes and looked up at her, pointed his cup at her stomach. “Why didn't you tell me?”
The clatter of crickets clawed at the edge of the property. Soon it would be dark, and he'd leave for town, the bar, and then sleep it off in his car. He wanted her to soften, face him with eyes that smiled back at him.
“What's there to tell?”
She had a point. Her future stood in the way now, one with Sean and his son and another on the way. He wasn't a part of it anymore.
“I suppose you're right. Congratulations. It'll be good for Junior to be an older brother.” He turned to the pups. They wriggled over each other to latch onto Penny, blind, bonded through their need to be warm and fed. They looked all right, nothing strange about them; four paws, two eyes, two ears. Once Jasmine got ahold of them, the puppies wouldn't have a chance. Not much of a world to bring them into.
Tracy crouched down, took turns stroking each of the puppies. “They're amazing. So helpless. Miracles of life.”
He closed his eyes and listened to her low voice, to the puppies' murmurs and their soft paws on the blanket, to the crickets in the distance, and for a moment he felt stillness.
“For better or worse.” He stood. “For better or worse.”
But Tracy wasn't paying attention to him as he walked toward his car, the yips of puppies drowned out by the hiss of twilight, flooding the sky like a purple bruise.
Brian found Tracy on the porch each morning, playing with the puppies. He would wake up in the back seat of his car and hear her voice, low, cooing. He'd lie there, close his eyes, and imagine Tracy speaking to him, tracing the outline of his collarbone with her fingertip, the palm of her hand on his neck. She used to lay her head on his chest and tell him to shush so she could listen to his heartbeat; she'd close her eyes and lie there smiling. He felt himself stir and closed his eyes tighter, tried to block out the
daylight that seared through the windows, but it was no use; it would be minutes before Sean showed up and started banging on the front hood of the car.
He got up and climbed the Hump to work with Sean and Junior, snuck glances at the porch down below.
“Somebody die?” Sean said.
Brian listlessly sanded the drywall, aware that the work on the studio was nearing completion and that he'd have no excuse to stay anymore. Junior tore a sheet of sandpaper into small pieces and tossed it in the air like corroded snowflakes, waved his arms up and down.