The Pit Bull

by Tom Hamilton

Part 1
Part 3
appear in this issue.

part 2 of 3

“That prick!” I murmured aloud, and my hot breath showed itself to the cold.

I could almost see the outline of his face in the silver mist, as I thought of all the times he’d looked into my eyes and lied to me:

“To Hell with that bitch man.” He fielded a ground ball with an easy and athletic prowess and flamed an accurate peg over to first. “Look at the heifer’s ass on her. One calf through the barn door and...” He took the second baseman’s glove and pulled it away from his bare hand in a widening motion. Demonstrating the radical growth of the female derriere, both during and after pregnancy.

Or,

“She don’t know how to tell the truth.” He sprayed ‘Armor All’ on the Lariot’s black wall tire until it shone like leather. “This one’s got a crush on her, that one’s in love with her. She ain’t that friggin’ attractive.” He wiped the protector around the edge of the rims with a yellow rag.

Or that old standby: “She’s a cunt, man, I hate her.”

One foot in front of the other. ( Pedaling, Pedaling, ) I battled on. One step on the gray asphalt of the deuce lane, the other dropping off the shoulder and into a limp on the weeds and gravel. Every couple of seconds another car or truck would come by, lambasting me with a new round of drizzle. Some vehicles beeped their horns needlessly. I wiped the moisture away from my eyes, with a hand that had had plenty of practice from wiping away tears.

I thought that I could spy the apartment tower in the brief distance. Even though I’d walked a few hundred yards, it didn’t really seem much closer, and if anything, the deuce lane seemed to be pulling me away from my goal. It occurred to me that I might save some time by angling through the fields. The booming roar of a semi handed me my most thorough drenching yet and I abandoned the deuce lane.

As I began to put some distance between myself and the road, I peered back over my shoulder. I could see the billboard for the mall’s theaters on the other side of the deuce lane. One of the partitions read: ‘A SOLDIER’S STORY’

I recalled that I had seen that film with the whole back-stabbing gang several weeks ago. The light from the marquee was being drank by a growing fog, which swirled into the eerie ectoplasmic faces of memory from that night. Until I had the uncanny sensation that she was standing right in front of me as she was then. It was the night I told her that she needed to make a firm commitment to our relationship. Since the footing we’d been standing on felt about as solid as San Francisco quicksand.

“Well,” She said. “We’ll see what happens when you get back from Baton Rouge.” Her shocking brown eyes sparkled like muddy ice. “I just need some time to myself... some time to think.” Instead of asking her the question which was perched on the cliff of my tongue: “Time to think about what?” I only stared at her, as if I had just absorbed an insult. My refusal to reply unnerved her, since my not saying anything left her no springboard to launch a fib from. So those great mahogany eyes of hers could only stare at the roof.

It was one of those ceilings with the campy artificial twinkles worked into the black panels, as if to resemble stars at an infinite distance. Had those false quasars been an actual stellar presentation, I’m sure that her slot machine eyes could have easily identified every astrological formation in the galaxy. That’s when she began her renouncement speech, and I’m calling it a speech because it came out very much like a practiced dialogue. Until I could almost see visible grey letters floating up and away from her spitting mouth, turning those prevaricating phrases into unbreakable padlocks which drifted towards the counterfeit starlight like concrete cigar smoke. ( Pedaling, Pedaling, )

“....the way they are now.” She concluded before trotting back down the aisle. I stood in the semi lit fraction of the hallway for some seconds. Before I stumbled out of the doorway and back down into the whale’s belly of the theatre. (Pedaling, )

I flopped silently into the burr necked seat, my stomach full of retch. Where I watched helplessly as the flickering twitch of the projector deflected shudders of licking light off of the back of her chiffon neck. I could not have told you one scene from that movie, not one line, not one of the names of the actors. But I can tell you what he said, that rat bastard. He leaned across the invisIble boundary of the homo seat and whispered: “I would have never called that bitch aside man!” (Pedaling, Pedaling)

The cold perspiration of the drizzle leant the prairie grass a moist sheen. Turning the dull bronze plants a bright orange. This made me think of angel haired spaghetti, and I was suddenly hungry in spite of nearly vomiting moments earlier.

“I can’t believe those stupid bastards blew it man.” He said before shoveling a spoonful of angel haired spaghetti into his mouth. “Jesus Christ they were up 2-0.” I took off my blue ‘Cubs’ home field cap and ran my enraged fingers through my hair. On the television, the San Diego Padres were celebrating on the grassy confines of the infield diamond. They wore the ugliest uniforms I had ever seen: White, with tan and brown trim. Many of the patrons in the restaurant/bar were cheering, although I could not imagine that there were that many Padre fans in San Antonio. The Cubs had managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and fumble away the 84 National League Pennant. I put my hands underneath my chin as the patrons continued jeering.

“Why are you so stuck on her man?” He asked out of nowhere. “I mean, with all the s*** she lays on ya?” He had this look of disgust on his face, like a kid who had just bitten into a radish. I ran a breadstick through some type of clear sauce. The way I bit into passed for a shrug with such perfection that I didn’t even have to answer. (Pedaling, Pedaling)

“What about that other little one man?” He pressed. “I heard she has a crush on ya.” I took a long sip of ‘Corona’ and said nothing. He stared at me for five lengthy seconds. Why I did not suspect his treachery then I cannot say. When he finally stopped leering he quipped: “Ho ho ho, you are screwed my friend.”

A chain link fence? I hadn’t ever remembered seeing a chain link fence, not anywhere along here. Certainly not adjacent to the deuce lane. I looked to my right, trying to decipher if there might be a way around. Then back to the left. But the Sun had dipped out of sight, and minus the rivalry of its brightness, the fog had triumphed over the fields. “Shit!” I murmured roughly. Why had I abandoned the florescent reflectors of the deuce lane? I felt as if I’d been hiking for at least ten or twelve minutes. My pace was as brisk and driven as the rising rain. I should have made some real progress by now. I didn’t know how I could have gotten off course. It was only possible to walk about a mile or so in any direction before encountering some sort of recognizable structure. What- A - Burger was at my back to the east. The mall, which was where I veered off the deuce lane, should have been off to the north or at about four o clock from where my shoulders were squared. Which would place the Spanish neighborhood down to the south or southwest. Assuming that the compass inside my battered, bitter, brain was still functioning, my apartment should be straight ahead or due West. I began walking along the fence line to my right, hoping to chance onto something familiar. Total darkness had settled onto the fields like a black lung disease. I began to host the irrepressible impression that my destination was on the opposite side of the barricade. It was time to climb.

I took a deep breath of the acid drizzle and made my hands into bird claws to clutch the sopping spokes. My boots were having a difficult time finding a foothold as I attempted to shimmy to the top. The fence was unusually high for one of that type and I was in no mood for calisthenics. As I approached the difficult pinnacle, where the sharp, sawed off links waited, I hunched a shoulder over the highest bar and tried to take a break. But pangs of nail sharp pain molested my arm pits, and chemicals of rage leaked sideways across the breakers of my thoughts. Like a trash pump sucking out the septic, cellar sludge from my memory banks. And a night reverie came to the forefront of my forehead:

Soon, my favorite couple would be dropping off the rest of the guys and dolls, leaving just themselves. Her deceitful head nestled onto his shoulder like a cheerleader snuggling up to the star quarterback. They would find a tight parking space behind Saint Thomas’ church, where the holy windows would watch with sunless, peccant eyes, as they climbed over into the back seat. She would hold her skirt up off of her ankles, as if there were any nob or lever on the planet which would dare snag the fabric. His gunrunner bangs bobbing as he folds the front buckets onto the dash. There, they would press against each other, as cozy as if they were sitting in front of a Christmas fire inside a ski lodge. Her garnet eyes smitten with permission, like a groupie who gets to go backstage with the rock star. His hand sliding along her thigh, chased by tiny electric fibers. I could almost feel that paw, as hot and repulsive as it would be molesting my own leg, working its way up, to the baseball sized fistfuls inside her bra. Her eyes again, as cold as an imprisoned shadow to my advances, glowing with submission. Then they would kiss with the static of a key, like they were sucking all the air out from a sugary bottle. Their hot breath painting the clear glass windows of the truck’s cab. Then he would take his...

I swung my legs onto the top bar of the fence. The spikes jabbing at my feet right through the boots. When I thought that I was clear, I jumped. I felt a rough tug underneath my armpits, coupled with a ripping sound. My body twisted clumsily, and I landed awkwardly below. Escaping injury, I looked back up at the top of the fence. A strip of my black polo was waving at me through the tiny kiss of the foggy breeze. I glanced back down at my sleeve, and pulled up the portion of my shirt which had been covering my left shoulder blade. A gaping mouth had been torn in the cloth, exposing my Winter white skin. I opened my lips for what I thought was going to be a peevish laugh, but a long chilling sob introduced itself to the night instead. I dropped to the seat of my pants and hugged my legs. Rain and sadness rolled down my face. The tears stinging my eyes like mercurachrome does in a cut.

After about a minute of this misery, I stood up. As I did this, something in the pocket of my tight, wet jeans jabbed into my thigh. I realized that it was the keys to my truck, They jingled as I took them out, rearranging their direction so they would ride more comfortably on my hip. After I returned them to that snug pouch however, the jingling noise continued. Until I realized that my keys had not been the only source of the sound. I checked my sobs down to a sucked in silence and scanned the plains. But I could see nothing accept for the freakish, dirty gray fog.

“Hello?!?”

I called out. Not really expecting an answer and not surprised when I didn’t receive one. Then, after a few seconds, the jingle again, and this time I recognized the sound. It was a cleave of chain being dragged across the ground. I continued to squint at the ground clouds, twirling slowly and warily. My sadness had suddenly been curtailed by a feeling of freeze dried fear. I felt like a puling child, distracted to stillness after seeing something frightening on TV.

There was a dog in the fog.

I heard the sound again, this time, a little farther off. And I began to hope that maybe I would get lucky and whatever kind of dog it was would just run away. Maybe I had veered way off course, and mistakenly breeched the back yard of some Mexican’s hacienda, disturbing a tied up watchdog or a put out pet. But if that was the case, why was the terrain still choppy and uneven? Why wasn’t it mowed and manicured like the rest of the back yards in the Spanish area? I thought that I could remember that those homes had stucco walls around the back, rather than the chain link. And why couldn’t I see any windows, or even a light from the houses? Where were the Christmas decorations that the Spanish always left up until at least Easter? And why wou...”

“GGGGRRRRRHHHH!!!”

Suddenly, a low pitched growl scissored through my panicked thoughts. It sounded pretty close, no more then twenty feet away, so I put my hands down flat against my fat thighs and stood straight up, with my heart beating like a war drum. Still, no animal came into my admittedly limited view, and no other sounds invaded my pricked ears. Where was the screaming, soaked slash of the cars from the deuce lane?

Then the same dragging noise came from a different direction. Killing any allusion that the dog might be chained up in a back yard. I thought about climbing back up the fence I had just jumped down off of. But during my fearful search for the source of the noises, I must have gotten turned around somehow. For when I looked back to the direction of the rampart, it was gone.

The cold leaked through my saturated clothes, until they felt like freezing rags. Offering my person all the protection of a wet paper towel. (Rasta girls in lightening beige, tangerine orange, sun red and cheese yellow, wet, blonde hair cascading onto their colorful dresses like a golden waterfall.) And now I could hear the cadence of soft padded paws, jogging around the prey, which was unfortunately myself, in a measured circle and slowly closing. My blood raced in a tingling rush to the finish line which was located in the balls of my numb feet. Then, the animal stopped as it came into view. And although I could not make out its features in the ever present gloom, I could see the unmistakable outline, the body of a Pit Bull canine.

Proceed to part 3...