‘What the hell? Huddie said.
D took five or six stiff, backing steps away from the screen door, looking sort of like a rodeo horse in a calf-roping event. I think I knew what was going to happen next, and I think Huddie did, too, but neither of us could believe it. Even if we had believed it, we couldn’t have stopped him. Sweet as he was, I think Mister Dillon \vould have bitten us if we’d tried.
He was still letting out those yipping, hurt little barks, and foam had started to splatter from the corners of his mouth.
I remember reflected light dazzling into my eyes just then. I blinked and the light ran away from me down the length of the wall. That was Unit 6, Eddie and George coming in with their suspect, but I hardly registered that at all. I was looking at Mister Dillon.
He ran at the screen door, and once he was rolling he never hesitated. Never even slowed.
Just dropped his head and broke on through to the other side, tearing the door out of its latch and pulling it after him even as he went through, still voicing barks that were almost like screams. At the same time I smelled something, very strong: seawater and decayed vegetable matter. There came a howl of brakes and rubber, the blast of a horn, and someone yelling, ‘
Watch out! Watch out!’ Huddie ran for the door and I followed him.
THEN:
Eddie
We were wrecking his day by taking him to the barracks. We’d stopped him, at least temporarily, from beating up his girlfriend. He had to sit in the back seat with the springs digging into his ass and his fancy boots planted on our special puke-resistant plastic floormats. But Brian was making us pay. Me in particular, but of course George had to listen to him, too.
He’d chant his version of my name and then stomp down rhythmically with the big old stacked heels of his shitkickers just as hard as he could. The overall effect was something like a football cheer. And all the time he was staring through the mesh at me with his head down and his little stoned eyes gleaming — I could see him in the mirror clipped to the sunvisor.
‘JACK-you-BOYS!’ Clump-clumpclump! ‘JACK-you-BOYS!’ Clump-clumpclump!
‘Want to quit that, Brian?’ George asked. We were nearing the barracks. The pretty nearly empty barracks; by then we knew what was going on out in Poteenville, Shirley had given us some of it, and the rest we’d picked up from the chatter of the converging units. ‘You’re giving me an earache.’
It was all the encouragement Brian needed.
‘JACK-you-BOYS!’ CLUMP-CLUMPCLUMP!
If he stomped much harder he was apt to put his feet right through the floorboards, but George didn’t bother asking him to stop again. When they’re buttoned up in the back of your cruiser, getting under your skin is just about all they can try. I’d experienced it before, but hearing this dumbbell, who once knocked the books out of my arms in the high school caff and tore the loops off the backs of my shirts in study hall, chanting that old hateful version of my name . . . man, that was spooky. Like a trip in Professor Peabody’s Wayback Machine.
I didn’t say anything, but I’m pretty sure George knew. And when he picked up the mike and called in — ’20-base in a tick’ was what he said — I knew he was talking to me more than Shirley. We’d chain Brian to the chair in the Bad Boy Corner, turn on the TV for him if he wanted it, and take a preliminary pass at the paperwork. Then we’d head for Poteenville, unless the situation out there changed suddenly for the better. Shirley could call Statler
County Jail and tell them we had one of their favorite troublemakers coming their way. In the meantime, however—
‘JACK-you-BOYS!’ Clump-clumpclump! ‘JACK-you-BOYS!’
Now screaming so loud his cheeks were red and the cords stood out on the sides of his neck. He wasn’t just playing me anymore; Brian had moved on to an authentic shit fit. What a pleasure getting rid of him was going to be.
We went up Bookin’s Hill, George driving a little faster than was strictly necessary, and there was Troop D at the top. George signaled and turned in, perhaps still moving a little faster than he strictly should have been. Lippy, understanding that his time to annoy us had grown short, began shaking the mesh between us and him as well as thumping down with those John Wayne boots of his.
‘JACK-you-BOYS!’ Clump-clumpclump! Shake-shakeshake!
Up the driveway we went, toward the parking lot at the back. George turned tight to the left around the corner of the building, meaning to park with the rear half of Unit 6 by the back steps of the barracks, so we could take good old Bri right up and right in with no fuss, muss, or bother.
And as George came around the corner, there was Mister Dillon, right in front of us.
‘ Watch out, watch out!’ George shouted, whether to me or to the dog or possibly to himself I have no way of knowing. And remembering all this, it strikes me how much it was like the day he hit the woman in Lassburg. So close it was almost a dress rehearsal, but with one very large difference. I wonder if in the last few weeks before he sucked the barrel of his gun he didn’t find himself thinking I missed the dog and hit the woman over and over again. Maybe not, but I know I would’ve, if it had been me. Missed the dog and hit the woman. How can you believe in a God when it’s that way around instead of the other?
George slammed on the brakes with both feet and drove the heel of his left hand down on the horn. I was thrown forward. My shoulder-harness locked. There were lap belts in the back but our prisoner hadn’t troubled to put one on — he’d been too busy doing the Jacubois Cheer for that — and his face shot forward into the mesh, which he’d been gripping. I heard something snap, like when you crack your knuckles. I heard something else crunch. The snap was probably one of his fingers. The crunch was undoubtedly his nose. I have heard them go before, and it always sounds the same, like breaking chicken bones. He gave a muffled, surprised scream. A big squirt of blood, hot as the skin of a hot-water bottle, landed on the shoulder of my uniform.
Mister Dillon probably came within half a foot of dying right there, maybe only two inches, but he ran on without a single look at us, ears laid back tight against his skull, yelping and barking, headed straight for Shed B. His shadow ran beside him on the hottop, black and sharp.
‘Ah Grise, I’be hurd!’ Brian screamed through his plugged nose. ‘ I’be bleedin all fuggin
over!’ And then he began yelling about police brutality.
George opened the driver’s-side door. I just sat where I was for a moment, watching D, expecting him to stop when he got to the shed. He never did. He ran full-tilt into the roll-up door, braining himself. He fell over on his side and let out a scream. Until that day I didn’t know dogs could scream, but they can. To me it didn’t sound like pain but frustration. My arms broke out in gooseflesh. D got up and turned in a circle, as if chasing his tail. He did that twice, shook his head as if to clear it, and ran straight at the roll-up door again.
‘D, no!’ Huddie shouted from the back stoop. Shirley was standing right beside him, her hand up to shade her eyes. ‘Stop it, D, you mind me, now!’
Mister D paid zero attention to them. I don’t think he would have paid any attention to Orville Garrett, had Orville been there that day, and Orv was the closest thing to an alpha male that D had. He threw himself into the roll-up door again arid again, barking crazily, uttering another of those awful frustrated screams each time he struck the solid surface. The third time he did it, he left a bloody noseprint on the white-painted wood.
During all of this, my old pal Brian was yelling his foolish head off. ‘Help me, Jacubois, I’be bleedin like a stuck fuggin pig, where’d your dumbdick friend learn to drive, Sears and fuckin Roebuck? Ged me outta here, my fuggin dose!’
I ignored him and got out of the cruiser, meaning to ask George if he thought D might be rabid, but before I could open my mouth the stink hit me: that smell of seawater and old cabbage and something else, something a whole lot worse.