Darrell Schweitzer - Full MoonCity

“ Tabasco,” I say, “if you can understand me, I think I have the solution to your problem. I do not know quite how you can answer me. Clearly you do not howl on cue, and telling you to lift your leg once or twice will clearly put you in dutch with Joey Chicago. Maybe you could paw the ground once if you understand me and twice if you don’t?”

Tabasco stares at me and remains motionless.

“Is that a yes or a no?” asks Benny.

“Maybe you should make it multiple choice,” suggests Gently Gently.

“ Tabasco,” says Joey Chicago, “if you will stop being a wolf for the next ten minutes, you can have an Old Peculiar on the house.”

“I call that damned sporting of you,” says Tabasco, who is a man again so fast that I do not even see him change.

“How do you do that?” asks Benny.

“And how come your clothes vanish when you are a wolf and come back when you are a man?” asks Gently Gently.

“You will have to ask Big-Hearted Milton or Soothsayer Solly,” replies Tabasco. “I do not seem to have any control over it-or over anything else, for that matter.”

“Do you remember what I say to you while you are being Kazan of the North?” I ask as he downs his Old Peculiar.

“Yes, and I am very grateful.”

“Then why did you not respond?” I say.

“When I am a wolf, I think wolfish thoughts, and I am concerned with wolfish things. I hear you say that you have solved my problem, but as a wolf I am much more interested if you had tell me where all the rabbits or the lady wolves were hiding.” He pauses for a moment, then continues: “But I am interested now.”

“I see that the Southminster dog show is coming up, and that first prize is six large, which means five for me and one for you. All we have to do is win it.”

“Win against the best-bred, best-conditioned dogs in the world?” says Tabasco doubtfully. “I haven’t got a chance.”

“Where would America be if Alexander Hamilton had had that attitude?” says Gently Gently reproachfully.

“Pretty much where it is today,” answered Tabasco. “And so, come to think of it, is Alexander Hamilton.”

“I don’t know, Harry,” says Benny. “I know what he did in an eight-dog field, but Southminster has thousands of dogs. How many can he kill and eat before someone gets wise?”

“Or before he gets full?” says Gently Gently.

“ Tabasco,” I say, “are you willing to try, or do I pass the word that you will not make good your marker?”

“I will try,” he says. “I cannot have you spreading it all over town that I am a deadbeat.”

“Or that he is only occasionally a human being,” adds Gently Gently.

So the next morning I buy a leash and collar, making a note to add it to what Tabasco owes me, and then I go to the Madison Square Garden, where they are holding this canine beauty contest that night, and ask to see the condition book, figuring I will enter Tabasco in a field for nonwinners of two, and they explain to me that this does not work like Belmont or Aqueduct, and I have to enter him in the proper breed, so I request the entry form for timberwolves, and they laugh and ask me what I really want.

“I do not much care,” I reply, “so long as he competes after dark.”

“That is a most unusual request,” says the steward.

“He burns easily,” I say.

“Here is a list of the breeds that will show at night,” says the steward, handing me a sheet of paper. “Is he on it?”

I look, and I do not see timberwolf or even werewolf listed, but one of the breeds is greyhound, and I figure, well, he has won a race as a greyhound so he might as well remain consistent and win Southminster as a greyhound.

I go back to Joey Chicago’s and kill some time there before we are due in the ring, and then, about an hour before post time-at Southminster they call it ring time-Benny and Gently Gently and Tabasco and I all go over to the Garden.

It is a very unusual sport, this dog-show game, because they do not even have a tote board on the infield, and in fact they do not have an infield at all. There are dogs everywhere, and Benny hunts up the ring we are to appear in, and I turn to Tabasco.

“It is time to turn into a wolf again,” I say, “and it would not hurt things a bit if this particular wolf happens to look just like a greyhound.”

He closes his eyes and grunts.

“I am trying,” he says. “But nothing is happening.”

“Try harder,” I tell him.

He tenses and grunts again, but when he opens his eyes he is still Tabasco Sanchez.

“This is most embarrassing,” he says.

“I do not wish to be the bearer of bad tidings,” says Benny, “but you are due in the ring in three minutes.”

“I am sorry, Harry,” says Tabasco. “It does not seem to be working tonight.”

“I pay a twenty-five-dollar entry fee,” I tell him, “and I am going to get my money’s worth.” I put the collar around his neck and attach it to the leash. “Let us go.”

“This is humiliating!” he says as I start dragging him toward the ring.

“Give me my five large and I will cease and desist this instant,” I say.

He does not reply, and I look back at him, and he has become a wolf again.

We enter the ring with six sleek greyhounds. Tabasco looks at them and growls. It is a loud, ominous, hungry growl. Two of the greyhounds begin dragging their owners to the far side of the ring, three start shaking, and one just lays right where he has fainted.

The judge comes over and stares at Tabasco.

“I believe you are in the wrong ring, sir,” he says at last.

“I am in the right ring,” I answer.

“This is not a greyhound,” he says.

“He is from the Mexican branch of the family,” I say.

“He is not a greyhound,” repeats the judge. “I am going to have to disqualify him.”

“He is a greyhound,” I insist. “He has just been out in the sun too long, and has acquired a tan.”

“Get out of my ring!” says the judge, pointing to the exit.

For a minute I think Tabasco is going to bite the judge’s finger off, but I jerk on the leash, and suddenly all the fight goes out of him as he realizes that we have failed and he still is penniless, and he docilely follows me out of the ring.

We are on our way to the exit when we pass a ring where they are judging these little silken-haired dogs, and suddenly Tabasco stops and digs in his heels, which is a lot of heels to dig in all at once, and I can tell he is taken with one feminine little dog.

I ask a ringsider what this kind of dog is called, and he says, “Shih tzu,” and I say, “Gesundheit!” and he says, “No, that is the name of the breed.”

I pull on Tabasco’s leash again, and he pulls back, and before long most of the ringsiders are no longer watching the Gesundheit dogs but are laying bets on who will win our tug-of-war, and at the moment Tabasco is a seven-to-five favorite, and then suddenly there is a cheer, and Tabasco and I both stop pulling for a minute to see what the cheering is about, and it seems that the little dog he has been watching has won.

On the way out of the ring she makes a beeline for Tabasco, and then they touch noses, and then she is led away and I start to walk to the exit again, and Tabasco bites his leash in half and runs to the big ring in the center of the building, and I have no choice but to follow him since he is five thousand dollars on the hoof, or on the claw as the case may be, and I am not letting him out of my sight until I collect.

I am not sure what is going on, but dogs keep coming and going into the big ring, and finally there is an enormous cheer, and all that is left in the ring is the little Gesundheit dog and thirty-seven photographers. Finally the crowd starts dispersing, and as it thins out I spot Tabasco on the far side of the ring, and I race around it to reach him before he can run off, and when I get there he has forgotten to be a wolf and is just plain old Tabasco Sanchez again, still attached to a leash and collar.