anything.
He didn’t, and pretty soon I got to the dump gate. I put the bag inside my shirt, climbed
the gate, and monkeyed down the other side. I was halfway across the dump area when I
saw something I didn’t like – Milo Pressman’s portholed ’56 Buick was parked behind his
tarpaper shack. If Milo saw me, I was going to be in a world of hurt. As yet there was no
sign of either him or the infamous Chopper, but all at once the chain-link fence at the
back of the dump seemed very far away. I found myself wishing I’d gone around the
outside, but I was now too far into the dump to want to turn around and go back. If Milo
saw me climbing the dump fence, I’d probably be in dutch when I got home, but that
didn’t scare me as much as Milo yelling for Chopper to sic would.
Scary violin music started to play in my head. I kept putting one foot in front of the
other, trying to look casual, trying to look as if I belonged here with a paper grocery sack
poking out of my shirt, heading for the fence between the dump and the railroad tracks.
I was about fifty feet from the fence and just beginning to think that everything was
going to be all right after all when I heard Milo shout. ‘Hey! Hey, you! Kid! Get away
from that fence! Get outta here!’
The smart thing to have done would have been to just agree with the guy and go
around, but then I was so keyed up that instead of doing the smart thing I just broke for
the fence with a wild yell, my sneakers kicking up dust. Vern, Teddy, and Chris came out
of the underbrush on the other side of the fence and stared anxiously through the chain-
link.
‘You come back here!’ Milo bawled. ‘Come back here or I’ll sic my dawg on you,
goddammitr
I did not exactly find that to be the voice of sanity and conciliation, and I ran even
faster for the fence, my arms pumping, the brown grocery bag crackling against my skin.
Teddy started to laugh his idiotic chortling laugh, eee-eee-eeee into the air like some reed instrument being played by a lunatic.
‘Go, Gordie! Go!’ Vern screamed.
And Milo yelled: ‘Sic ‘im, Chopper! Go get ‘im, boy!’
I threw the bag over the fence and Vern elbowed Teddy out of the way to catch it
Behind me I could hear Chopper coming, shaking the earth, blurting fire out of one
distended nostril and ice out of the other, dripping sulphur from his champing jaws. I
threw myself halfway up the fence with one leap, screaming. I made it to the top in no
more than three seconds and simply leaped -1 never thought about it, never even looked
down to see what I might land on. What I almost landed on was Teddy, who was doubled over and laughing like crazy. His glasses had fallen off and tears were streaming out of
his eyes. I missed him by inches and hit the clay-gravel embankment just to his left. At
the same instant, Chopper hit the chain-link fence behind me and let out a howl of
mingled pain and disappointment. I turned around, holding one skinned knee, and got my
first look at the famous Chopper — and my first lesson in the vast differences between
myth and reality.
Instead of some huge hellhound with red, savage eyes and teeth jutting out of his
mouth like straight-pipes from a hotrod, I was looking at a medium-sized mongrel dog
that was a perfectly common black and white. He was yapping and jumping fruitlessly,
going up on his back legs to paw the fence.
Teddy was now strutting up and down in front of the fence, twiddling his glasses in
one hand, and inciting Chopper to even greater rage.
‘Kiss my ass, Choppie!’ Teddy invited, spittle flying from his lips. ‘Kiss my ass! Bite
shit!’
He bumped his fanny against the chain-link fence and Chopper did his level best to
take Teddy up on his invitation. He got nothing for his pains but a good healthy nose-
bump.
He began to bark crazily, foam flying from his snout. Teddy kept bumping his rump
against the fence and Chopper kept lunging at it, always missing, doing nothing but
racking out his nose, which was now bleeding. Teddy kept exhorting him, calling him by
the somehow grisly diminutive ‘Choppie’, and Chris and Vern were lying weakly on the
embankment, laughing so hard that they could now do little more than wheeze.
And here came Milo Pressman, dressed in sweat-stained fatigues and a New York
Giants baseball cap, his mouth drawn down in distracted anger.
‘Here, here!’ He was yelling. ‘You boys stop a-teasing that dawg! You hear me? Stop it
right now!’
‘Bite it, Choppie!’ Teddy yelled, strutting up and down on our side of the fence like a
mad Prussian reviewing his troops. ‘Come on and sic me! Sic me!’
Chopper went nuts. I mean it sincerely. He ran around in a big circle, yelping and
barking and foaming, rear feet spewing up tough little dry clods. He went around about
three times, getting his courage up, I guess, and then he lauched himself straight at the
security fence. He must have been going thirty miles an hour when he hit it, I kid you not
— his doggy lips were stretched back from his teeth and his ears were flying in the
slipstream. The whole fence made a low, musical sound as the chain-link was not just
driven back against the posts but sort of stretched back. It was like a zither note –
yimmmmmmm. A strangled yawp came out of Chopper’s mouth, both eyes came up blank,
and he did a totally amazing reverse snap-roll, landing on his back with a solid thump that
sent dust puffing up around him. He just lay there for a moment and then he crawled off
with his tongue hanging crookedly from the left side of his mouth.
At this, Milo himself went almost berserk with rage. His complexion darkened to a
scary plum colour – even his scalp was purple under the short hedgehog bristles of his
flattop haircut. Sitting stunned in the dirt, both knees of my jeans torn out, my heart still
thudding from the nearness of my escape, I thought that Milo looked like a human version
of Chopper.
‘I know you!’ Milo raved. ‘You’re Teddy Duchamp! I know all of you! Sonny, I’l1 beat
your ass, teasing my dawg like that!’
‘Like to see you try!’ Teddy raved right back. ‘Let’s see you climb over this fence and
get me, fatass!’
‘ WHAT? WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?’
‘FAT-ASS!’ Teddy screamed happily. ‘LARD-BUCKET! TUBBAGUTS! COME ON!
COME 0N!’ He was jumping up and down, fists clenched, sweat flying from his hair.
‘TEACH YOU TO SIC YOUR STUPID DOG ON PEOPLE! COME ON! LIKE TO SEE
YOU TRY!’
‘You little tin-weasel pecker wood loony’s son! I’ll see your -other gets an invitation to
go down and talk to the judge in court about what you done to my dawg!’
‘What did you call me?’ Teddy asked hoarsely. He had stopped jumping up and down.
His eyes had gone huge and glassy, and his skin was the colour of lead.
Milo had called Teddy a lot of things, but he was able to go oack and get the one that
had struck home with no trouble at ill – since then I have noticed again and again what a
genius people have for that… for finding the LOONY button down -.side and not just
pressing it but hammering on the fucker.
‘Your dad was a loony,’ he said, grinning. ‘Loony up in Togus, that’s what Crazier’n a
shithouse rat. Crazier’n a buck with tickwood fever. Nuttier’n a long-tailed cat in a room
fulla rockin’ chairs. Loony. No wonder you’re actin’ the way you are, with a loony for a f-‘
‘YOUR MOTHER BLOWS DEAD RATS!’ Teddy screamed. ‘AND IF YOU CALL MY
DAD A LOONY AGAIN, I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU, YOU COCKSUCKER!’
‘Loony,’ Milo said smugly. He’d found the button, all right. Loony’s kid, loony’s kid,
your father’s got toys in the attic, kid, tough break.’
Vern and Chris had been getting over their laughing fit, perhaps getting ready to
appreciate the seriousness of the situation and call Teddy off, but when Teddy told Milo
that hjs mother blew dead rats, they went back into hysterics again, lying there on the
bank, rolling from side to side, their feet kicking, holding their bellies. ‘No more,’ Chris
said weakly. ‘No more, please, no more, I swear to God I’m gonna bust!’
Chopper was walking around in a large, dazed figure-eight behind Milo. He looked
like the losing fighter about ten seconds after the ref has ended the match and awarded the