John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

"I bet that's all she's waiting for," said Barbara Fazzone. "And she's such a friendly girl.".

When they were ten weeks old the. Doberman puppies had their ears cropped. Mr. Pettit did it himself, examining each dog's head and then cutting a pair of cardboard patterns for each.

"You got to have an artistic sense," he told them. "You don't fit the right ears to the right dog they look like hell."

Brian held the puppies while Lovell gave them a shot of Nembutal in the abdomen. They wobbled around for ten or fifteen minutes, bumping into each other, while Brian prepared a strychnine solution as an antidote in case any didn't come up from the dose. When they fell out Mr. Pettit started cutting. He'd lay the cardboard pattern next to a floppy ear and clamp it on so the major blood vessels were shut off. He used a pair of serrated scissors for the cropping, drawing surprisingly little blood, and Lovell followed him up sewing the tips with catgut and a curved needle. Then Brian would take the clamps off and rig the ears up with tape and cardboard so they were held erect. Mr. Pettit had him do the cutting on the last one.

"What you got to be is definite," said Mr. Pettit. "You don't want to worry the blades through and leave the tip all mangled. Just straight and clean and definite. Snip-snip, same as with anything else."

If the clamp hadn't slipped on the left one it would have gone fine.

Brian had the phone cord twisted around his free hand till the knuckles throbbed white.

"So anyways," he said, "I don't think we should see each other anymore."

She didn't live far away but the connection was lousy. Brian had to unwrap his hand and plug a finger in his ear to hear her.

"I don't understand," she said.

"It wouldn't be fair."

"What wouldn't be fair? Is something wrong?"

"I uhm — I'm going to be spending so much time with basketball, it wouldn't be fair to you."

"That doesn't bother me. Is that all?"

"I'd feel — uhm — I'd feel like I was losing you."

"What? I can't hear, there's something wrong with the phone — "

"I'd just be using you."

"I don't understand."

"I need more privacy."

"I won't call you up anymore if that's what you mean."

"Look, I really can't explain it, I just don't think we should see each other anymore."

"I don't understand."

"I'm sorry. It's my fault."

"Why? What's wrong, Brian?"

"It's just how I am. You know."

"I don't know. I never know what you're thinking."

It was as bad as he thought it would be. It was true though, he really didn't want to see her anymore. He didn't feel guilty either, which surprised him.

He spoke to her then in a firm, controlled voice, a voice that left no doubts or questions. And she did what she wanted, she said good-bye and hung up.

Lately he had noticed it — one of those things you overlook time after time, but the minute you see it you can't see anything else. Like the picture of Christ Russ Palumbo had that if you looked at it a certain way what you saw was a naked girl. Once you saw the girl it was hard to make out Christ in the picture again. Serena was mousy.

She was so small and skinny and she had mouse-brown hair and even her face reminded him a little of a mouse. And she burrowed. Whenever he looked at her undressing under the blankets in the watch shack he thought of a mouse burrowing. She was so timid with other people, so quiet and squeaky. He wondered why he hadn't noticed before they got together.

And she really didn't understand much of anything.

Brian was amazed at how easily it was to talk with Ditty Stack. It seemed like all you had to do was listen.

"Are you going to the dance after the game?" she'd say, and he would know she'd say yes if he asked her.

"I hate coming to school alone in the morning," she'd say, and he'd ask her where she lived, then offer to walk with her.

"I think that math homework is going to kill me," she would say, and he would suggest she copy his at lunch hour. He copied Barry Feingold's during first period, careful always to make a few mistakes.

"Where'd you get so smooth with girls?" she'd say, and he didn't know if he should laugh or not.

At times he had a hard time believing he was with her. He'd look over at her, sometimes touch her hair if she was in the mood where she wanted or would let him touch her in public. He liked to walk her past the huge trophy case by the gym, liked to see himself next to her in the reflection off the glass. Even then, at times, he would look and wonder, "What's she doing with him?"

"Hear you traded in for a new model," said Lovell at work. "You gettin the hang of it, McNeil. Got to change the menu if you gonna keep an appetite. Like m'man Thor."

Mr. Pettit made the dates but Lovell was in total control of Thor's mating. Once or twice a week he'd work over somebody's brood bitch to prepare her, checking for fleas and lice, checking that her discharge was clear enough and her parts soft enough to make it all worthwhile.

"M'man Thor is got the life," he would say. "Eat an fuck, eat an fuck, even got his own personal nigger waitin on him."

Lovell put together two extrarich meals a day for Thor, supplementing them with wheat germ oil for vitamin E, and egg whites "to give his spritz a little body."

Lovell didn't think much of the stock that was offered to Thor, but Mr. Pettit wanted the cash. When another cowhocked, fish-mouthed, pig-eyed bitch would be brought in Lovell would sigh and drag Brian over to look at what they'd sunk to.

"What kind of litter you spect him to pump through that?" he would say, and dig out his favorite passage in the breeding book Mr. Pettit had given him.

"'It is difficult enough, with all one's skill,"' he would read, " 'to breed superior puppies from even a first-rate bitch. But to clutter the world with inferior animals out of just any old bitch is inexcusable.' " He would look to Pettit's office and call, knowing he couldn't hear, "In-ex-cusable."

The mating was painful to watch, but Lovell insisted that Brian join him when Thor was getting it on. The nipping and yelping and nervous tension of the dogs was bad enough, but more often than not they'd end in a lock, turning this way and that till Thor was facing one direction and the bitch the opposite, joined at the organs, whimpering.

"First she snarl to keep him away, then she won't let go," Lovell would say. "That's bitches all over."

The day before he was shot Lovell posed in the advertising picture Mr. Pettit arranged. Mr. Pettit stood in the center in his leisure suit and white shoes, hands folded awkwardly be fore him, flanked by Lovell and Brian on one knee, each holding a dog. Lovell was with Loki and Brian was with Wotan, holding him so his good eye was to the camera. The ad was in the paper the next day, on the same page where it said how Lovell had been shot by a Mr. Carter E. Green of Seventh Street. The article failed to mention Mrs. Cleo Green of the same address running into the street wrapped in a bedsheet, or the anatomical location of Lovell's wound. Mr. Pettit scraped dogshit from his work shoes and muttered that it was a typical nigger stunt to pull. Brian thought of visiting Lovell in the hospital but never got around to it.

Ditty Stack ran Brian ragged. She reminded him of Mr. Ricci, the JV coach. Mr. Ricci didn't believe in stopping to catch a breath between drills.

"You get your rest in bed," he would say. "Basketball is movement, basketball is action, you got to make it happen. You stand on your heels and they'll blow right over you."

Ditty lived like there was something chasing her, no sooner finishing one thing than she was thinking about the next. If Brian took her to the movies it was like a meal to her, down the hatch and forget about it. Sometimes she couldn't remember what they'd seen, couldn't tell you anything about it but maybe who the lead actress was. Ditty made plans for what they'd do, they did it, and she'd forget about it immediately. When Brian asked things about her before they'd started going together she said it was too far back to remember and not important anyways. Brian told her about himself and Serena one night, including personal things he hadn't meant to say. It made him feel funny. When he finished she told him she knew someone who could get tickets to see the Dead.