“They’re coming for all the fuckin’ dogs man.”
“They aren’t coming for all the
dogs, Ed. Just the shepherds.”
“Ya man, yesterday it was the
pits. Then the Dobes. Tomorrow the labs. She gonna be next bro.”
“Why don’t you smoke another bowl
Ed. Fuck outta here with that shit. I’m tired of it.”
He leant over the edge of the
sofa and scratched Maribel between her ears. Oblivious, the little tracker mutt
groaned in satisfaction, and promptly slumped back into her nap. Across the
street, the spectacle that his narcotically inclined cousin was on about had
just about wrapped.
They said that there was no pain,
after an animal was apprehended. Of course not, didn’t want to be inhumane. Just a little injection and it
drifted off to sleep forever. But there was a lot of pain in the Souweids’
driveway right now, in the father holding back his crying child whose best
friend was being dragged into the back of a van to be killed for no real
reason.
And the noose did keep tightening. They’d let the
bullies go after that video of the Stevenson kid went viral – kind of hard to
deny – but no one thought it would go any further, at first. Some trumped up
video of a black shepherd managed to get both the Dobes and the GSDs banned. Everyone knew that was bullshit, though the
sheps did have the worst and most bites. Some shit-for-brains who probably
pulled the wrong dog’s tail as a kid ramrodded that amendment through. Rotties
had escaped because they had been gradually swapped in for the GSDs over the
years in law enforcement anyway – but those who owned one were still nervous.
“What comes next bro?”
Caleb knew what he was getting
at. He peered at Maribel between his feet, her paws shuffling in a sleep run. “I
don’t know Ed.”
“Dinner,” came a soft call from
the kitchen. Carrie was quiet as she set the pot down in the centre of the
table. Her parents had agreed to keep her 8 year old shepherd when she’d moved
here for school. It wouldn’t be long now.
It was getting harder and harder
not to talk about, too. Almost no one owned a pit bull. That was one thing.
Very few had Dobes; they were expensive.
Everyone had a shepherd.
The vans seemed
to swarm the blocks – the occupants looked swollen with their bite-proof armor.
One would carry a weapon or two against the humans who fought back. Caleb had
never seen a dog bite the abductors. He’d seen plenty of humans swing fists and
bats though.
Shouldn’t that be enough? If
someone was willing to risk their life to protect an animal, maybe let the
animal live? At least long enough for a real discussion.
“The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through
your fingers,” Princess Leia had said. He thought of that line every time
he saw an abductor choke slam a dog, or push an old lady back into her house as
she pleaded her age and infirmity. The demographics had certainly swung against
dog owners as immigration persisted, but a loud and angry mob was still a
political problem.
It was tearing apart families and
neighbourhoods.
All three of them had given up
meat years ago, but after the bully ban, he and Carrie went off dairy, too. The
images of four legged family members being wrenched away from the only life
they’d ever known paralleled uncomfortably closely with the same things
happening on dairy farms every day. Calves
never suck from their mother, the tour guide had said like it was a brag.
The spoons clinked as they
slurped the stew.
“So we just gonna not say nothin’
then?”
Caleb took a drink instead of
smashing him in the face. He swished the water in his mouth and exhaled for a
long time. “That’s correct Ed. We’ll say nothing.”
“Ugh, the fuck man?” Blessedly though, he didn’t persist in his grievance.
The hardest part of dealing with
Eddie was that he was completely correct about all of it. He’d predicted
everything up to this point with an alarming accuracy. But he had no solutions,
no comforts, just a lot of gripes and a big mouth.
***
“Aw
come the fuck on!” The coffee cup hit the screen, leaving streaks across the
unwitting news anchor’s face. “Such fucking bullshit.”
Caleb
sat quietly eating his lunch. It was easier to talk on the midnight shift - not
so much supervision. There was little overlap with the daytime crew. Still, he
didn’t need anyone else to know, if they didn’t already.
“Fuck
do you care? They took my King and you didn’t say shit.”
“Your
King was dangerous, Manning. Dobes are savage. They’re going to take both of my dogs!”
“My
King never hurt a soul.”
“Well
neither did my labs. I don’t understand this.”
“See
how bullshit that is? Now you got opinions. Now you got a spine. Now you got
politics. Now that it affects you. Man fuck you,” said Manning. “What a selfish
piece of shit you are.”
Too much talk he thought, looking at the
other quiet guy in the room. His eyes were trained down at his plate, only
glancing up occasionally, but it sure looked like a listening posture.
“I
guess that’s it then. Millennia of animal companionship done and over with cuz
we let in these fuckin rag heads and let them overrun our democracy.”
Another
chair screeched back against the tiles and golden bronze hands pounded the
table. “You wanna come again with that? I didn’t take your dogs, Peterson. I
didn’t vote for it. Watch your mouth.”
“Or
what, Sam? Or should I say Wassim? You gonna have your buddies come
for me too? Just collect my whole household at once?”
“Guys,
come on,” said Caleb, quietly but firmly.
“Fuck
you care Conway? Do you even like dogs?”
Caleb
exchanged a silent look with Manning and ever so slightly nodded his thanks. “I’m
not much an animal person, Peterson. Don’t mean I think this is right. Now sit
down and eat. We got ten more minutes.”
***
The door opened to reveal a
dashingly handsome man in the puffed-up body armour of an abductor.
“Caleb Conway? Hello, I’m Officer
Daniels from animal acquisition. Please take a moment to say your goodbyes.”
“Caleb’s not home, white boy. No
dogs here either.”
“Our registration shows one - ”
he checked his paper – “Maribel? Thirty five pounds, grey, wire haired?”
“Never heard of it.”
“Mr. Conway several of your
neighbours have confirmed this information.”
“I guess several of my neighbours
need to ease off the ganj, eh?” he tried to joke, turning sideways in the
doorway.
The officer stepped his lean body
into Eddie’s globular one and, icily, said, “Move.”
Firmly, Eddie replied. “No.”
The tension in the air was
traveling like smoke, and it was at that moment the little dummy with a heart
and bark bigger than her stature wrenched out of Caleb’s arms and bolted downstairs
and started snarling, something she’d never done in her life. Eddie swore under
his breath.
“Mixed breed ratter? Terrible
things could happen to a baby with an animal like that around,” the officer
said. “Aggressive behaviour, too.”
“No man, she’s just a tracker.
Truffles and such. Doesn’t even eat meat, the poor thing.” He leaned his ample
frame across the doorway.”
“Please step out of the way sir.”
“How about you go fuck yourself
with a sideways fork you fucking pendejo?”
Daniels sighed a pretty sigh and
flicked his pretty hair back. “Jacks,” he said, and beckoned with a wag of his
head.
“Eddie, stop!” Caleb stepped
around the corner and closed his legs in front of Maribel. “They’ll arrest you.”
“Who? This puto? He’d probably love to take me in.”
By now the other officer had stepped
up behind Daniels like a bodyguard, weapon crackling with threatening lightning
arcs.
And then it all happened. The
bigger officer stepped forward, Caleb recoiled reflexively. “Ed stop, you’re
going to get yourself-”
“Go, C,” said Eddie, stone cold,
and he went, scooping up Maribel and out the back door to the alley where
Carrie was already waiting in a running sedan. He paused, just long enough to look
through the back window and see Eddie’s fat body position itself to block the
abductor’s view.
“Sir that was an error of judgement
that, to amend, will require both your immediate displacement and the
revelation of where that man and that dog are headed.”
“Tu puta madre.”
“Go!” Caleb told Carrie as the
smell of burning flesh drifted through the alley.
When they felt confident no one
was pursuing them, Carrie broke the long silence.
“Cale…I need to know where to go…”
“I don’t know,” said Caleb as the
flashing lights turned on behind them. “Just drive.”
She pressed the accelerator
harder, and they made the red light. They didn’t wait to see if the van did.