I hated that dog the way I hated Skipper. In a way, I suppose, it was Skipper. I had to go by Mrs. Bukowski’s on my way to school unless I wanted to detour all the way around the block and get called a sissy-boy, and I was terrified of the way that mutt would run to the end of its rope, barking so hard that foam would fly off its teeth and muzzle.
Sometimes it hit the end of the rope so hard it’d go right off its feet, 231
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boi-yoi-yoinng, which might have looked funny to some people but never looked funny to me; I was just scared the rope (not a chain, but a plain old piece of rope) would break one day, and the dog would jump over the low picket fence between Mrs. Bukowski’s yard and Dugway Avenue, and it would rip my throat out.
Then one day I woke up with an idea. I mean it was right there. I woke up with it the way some days I’d wake up with a great big throbbing boner. It was a Saturday, bright and early, and I didn’t have to go anywhere near Mrs. Bukowski’s if I didn’t want to, but that day I did want to. I got out of bed and threw on my clothes just as fast as I could. I did everything fast because I didn’t want to lose that idea.
I would, too—I’d lose it the way you eventually lose the dreams you wake up with (or the boners you wake up with, if you want to be crude)—but right then I had the whole thing in my mind just as clear as a bell: words with triangles around them and curlicues over them, special circles to hold the whole shebang together . . . two or three of those, overlapping for extra strength.
I just about flew through the living room (Ma was still sleeping, I could hear her snoring, and her pink bakery uniform was hung over the shower rod in the bathroom) and went into the kitchen. Ma had a little blackboard by the phone for numbers and reminders to herself—MA’S DAYBOARD instead of DINKY’S DAYBOARD, I guess you’d say—and I stopped just long enough to gleep the piece of pink chalk hanging on a string beside it. I put it in my pocket and went out the door. I remember what a beautiful morning that was, cool but not cold, the sky so blue it looked like someone had run it through the Happy Wheels Carwash, no one moving around much yet, most folks sleeping in a little, like everyone likes to do on Saturdays, if they can.
Mrs. Bukowski’s dog wasn’t sleeping in. Fuck, no. That dog was a firm believer in rooty-tooty, do your duty. It saw me coming through the picket-fence and went charging to the end of its rope as hard as ever, maybe even harder, as if some part of its dim little doggy brain knew it was Saturday and I had no business being there. It hit the end of the rope, boi-yoi-yoinng, and went right over backward. It was up 232
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again in a second, though, standing at the end of its rope and barking in its choky I’m-strangling-but-I-don’t-care way. I suppose Mrs.
Bukowski was used to that sound, maybe even liked it, but I’ve wondered since how the neighbors stood it.
I paid no attention that day. I was too excited to be scared. I fished the chalk out of my pocket and dropped down on one knee. For one second I thought the whole works had gone out of my head, and that was bad. I felt despair and sadness trying to fill me up and I thought, No, don’t let it, don’t let it, Dinky, fight it. Write anything, even if it’s only FUCK MRS. BUKOWSKI’S DOG.
But I didn’t write that. I drew this shape, I think it was a sankofite, instead. Some weird shape, but the right shape, because it unlocked everything else. My head flooded with stuff. It was wonderful, but at the same time it was really scary because there was so fucking much of it. For the next five minutes or so I knelt there on the sidewalk, sweating like a pig and writing like a mad fiend. I wrote words I’d never heard and drew shapes I’d never seen—shapes nobody had ever seen: not just sankofites but japps and fouders and mirks. I wrote and drew until I was pink dust halfway to my right elbow and Ma’s piece of chalk was nothing but a little pebble between my thumb and finger. Mrs. Bukowski’s dog didn’t die like the flies, it barked at me the whole time, and it probably drew back and ran out the length of its rope leash another time or two, but I didn’t notice. I was in this total frenzy. I could never describe it to you in a million years, but I bet it’s how great musicians like Mozart and Eric Clapton feel when they’re writing their music, or how painters feel when they’re getting their best work on canvas. If someone had come along, I would have ignored him. Shit, if Mrs. Bukowski’s dog had finally broken its rope, jumped the fence, and clamped down on my ass, I probably would have ignored that.
It was eventual, man. It was so fucking eventual I can’t even tell you.
No one did come, although a few cars went by and maybe the people in them wondered what that kid was doing, what he was drawing on the sidewalk, and Mrs. Bukowski’s dog went on barking. At the end, I realized I had to make it stronger, and the way to do that was 233
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to make it just for the dog. I didn’t know its name, so I printed BOXER
with the last of the chalk, drew a circle around it, then made an arrow at the bottom of the circle, pointing to the rest. I felt dizzy and my head was throbbing, the way it does when you’ve just finished taking a super-hard test, or if you spend too long watching TV. I felt like I was going to be sick . . . but I still also felt totally eventual.
I looked at the dog—it was still just as lively as ever, barking and kind of prancing on its back legs when it ran out of slack—but that didn’t bother me. I went back home feeling easy in my mind. I knew Mrs. Bukowski’s dog was toast. The same way, I bet, that a good painter knows when he’s painted a good picture, or a good writer knows when he’s written a good story. When it’s right, I think you just know. It sits there in your head and hums.
Three days later the dog was eating the old dirt sandwich. I got the story from the best possible source when it comes to mean asshole dogs: the neighborhood mailman. Mr. Shermerhorn, his name was.
Mr. Shermerhorn said Mrs. Bukowski’s boxer for some reason started running around the tree he was tied to, and when he got to the end of his rope (ha-ha, end of his rope), he couldn’t get back. Mrs.
Bukowski was out shopping somewhere, so she was no help. When she got home, she found her dog lying at the base of the tree in her side yard, choked to death.
The writing on the sidewalk stayed there for about a week; then it rained hard and afterward there was just a pink blur. But until it rained, it stayed pretty sharp. And while it was sharp, no one walked on it. I saw this for myself. People—kids walking to school, ladies walking downtown, Mr. Shermerhorn, the mailman—would just kind of veer around it. They didn’t even seem to know they were doing it.
And nobody ever talked about it, either, like “What’s up with this weird shit on the sidewalk?” or “What do you suppose you call something that looks like that?” (A fouder, dimbulb.) It was as if they didn’t even see it was there. Except part of them must have. Why else would they have walked around it?
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X
I didn’t tell Mr. Sharpton all that, but I told him what he wanted to know about Skipper. I had decided I could trust him. Maybe that secret part of me knew I could trust him, but I don’t think so. I think it was just the way he put his hand on my arm, like your Dad would. Not that I have a Dad, but I can imagine.
Plus, it was like he said—even if he was a cop and arrested me, what judge and jury would believe Skipper Brannigan had driven his car off the road because of a letter I sent him? Especially one full of nonsense words and symbols made up by a pizza delivery-boy who had flunked high school geometry. Twice.