John McManus - Born on a Train - 13 Stories

Isaac examined it and said, Is it not real?

I’d as soon get nothin as a damn dollar.

That doesn’t make sense, Isaac said. He wished his father would be more logical. Jearold’s eyes were red and bleary when a pickup’s headlights shone at them, and Isaac didn’t know if Jearold was drunk or tired. He hadn’t seen Jearold drink since three o’clock, but he wasn’t sure how long a drink could make you drunk for; sometimes Jearold acted drunk for eight days straight. Isaac wanted to get drunk too so he could figure it out, but he was scared to try, and anyway that wasn’t what Christians did.

You sound like a three-legged dog, said Jearold when the cold made Isaac shiver, but he gave Isaac the dollar anyway, just to be nice.

Isaac tried to sit still. He wished his dog had a heated place to rest. Christians were nice to each other; they were even nice to animals. When he got home, he decided, he’d go out back and rub his hands across its fur to warm it up, but then he fell asleep against the window. They crossed the Appalachian spine; Isaac dreamt they swerved along the slopes like boulders in an avalanche, their car suffused with amniotic fluid so he drowned in it but lived to wake again, to tremble across the hoarfrost to his bedroom where he dreamt his mother dealt out hands of rummy in a circle around the dog but it was dead, and she was living, and that was wrong. The dog was barely grown; it was still a puppy. Isaac’s mother sat upon the hulk of its carcass and displaced hordes of flies; she cackled at their flight and with the dog’s limp tail she bludgeoned flies and laughed, her head thrown back; she snatched them with her six-inch tongue and screamed them out her mouth. Isaac cried when he saw her cheeks contoured by starlight, living. When he awoke, his mother and the dog were dead together. He carried a candlestick into the yard at home and cupped its flame from the breeze he made by walking. It blackened the terrain so his only light was flickers galloping across his palm like leprosy. The moon and stars were clouded, deeply black. Isaac stumbled across a gully and burned his middle finger with the flame. The dog was dead at his wet feet.

Rocks, he cried. Rocks. Rocks.

Name it Rocks, said Jearold behind him with a horseshoe in his hand, that’s just what it’s gonna be, and the horseshoe mashed the flame out.

But—

But nuthen, Jearold said.

Isaac’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he balled his fist up. He hated his father’s voice sometimes. He wished it would freeze so his throat would stick forever between the same two words.

It was a pansy dog, said Jearold. It was weak.

It wasn’t weak.

Jearold laughed and said, It’s dead, is what weak is.

We didn’t feed it enough, said Isaac.

We fed it plenty, Jearold said.

What if it didn’t have water? Isaac said.

How could it not of had water? There’s water everywhere.

No there’s not, said Isaac.

There’s water in the goddamn dirt, said Jearold.

But you can’t drink dirt.

Jearold took a moment to think about it. It sure don’t matter now, he said. It’s dead.

Isaac didn’t want to cry. He wasn’t sad, he told himself; he just felt sorry for the dog. It hadn’t been much fun to play with lately, only showing its teeth. Isaac didn’t even like dogs; they were loud and ugly, and they smelled bad. The dog smelled worse and worse as time passed. It stayed tied up to its tree, prostrate two days on the ground, and the nighttime gave its skin to bugs and ants and blended it with mud. Isaac wanted to bury it, but he didn’t know where to find a spade. He didn’t want to touch its flesh and catch a disease. He stayed at home alone because school was out for Christmas break, and Jearold got called in to work all hours of the day and night. Be there fast as I can drive, he said into his cell phone, and, I don’t give a shit what the hell the durn red nigger said, and other people too, and Isaac hoped his father didn’t get himself in trouble; he didn’t want foster parents. In a textbook at his school he’d seen a story where the orphans had to wear their shirts tucked in and eat brussels sprouts and broccoli, but Jearold never bought vegetables or any groceries from the store at all. The first full day the dog was dead was french fries, milk shakes. The second day was double-decker Moon Pies. Thank you, Isaac said.

Chocolate or banana? his father said.

Chocolate.

The stale cake crumbled to bits when Isaac ate it. He sat outside in the dark in his hunter orange coat and wondered if a Moon Pie had the vitamins his mother had said he needed. He wished he’d said banana. He wondered if he’d join her too from lack of vitamins and if the dog had died that way; it scared him. Jearold might live; he might have been eating healthy things while he delivered bags. Isaac didn’t trust him anymore. His beard had grown out crooked. He drank each night with Diesel, and they smoked pot from a plastic bag sometimes, and Diesel charged into the driveway while half of Isaac’s food was still uneaten; he parked his car and ruffled Isaac’s hair and grabbed the Moon Pie from his hand and ate a bite and slobbered on the rest. He held a brown-bagged fifth of Captain Morgan’s rum and barked to Isaac, Say.

Say what? said Isaac.

Say.

Isaac didn’t know what to say. He looked away. Diesel was picking his nose when he saw the dog’s corpse. Shit, he said and scratched his septum open with his fingernail so blood trickled out. It looked like it was painful. What the hell happened? Diesel said.

Died, said Jearold, who had stepped out of the trailer onto the gravel patio.

No shit, said Diesel.

Yeah shit, said Jearold.

Things like dogs, said Diesel, you gotta feed em, or look what happens.

Fed that thing like it was my mama, Jearold said, and Diesel walked into the yard and kicked the puppy’s stomach with his snakeskin boot. A fly buzzed up from underneath, and Diesel jumped as if the dog had barked itself. Its coat was caked with the mud in which it lay. Its eyes were being eaten by gnats.

Did you poison it? said Diesel.

Jearold shook his head.

Did you give it chocolate? You know you can’t give a dog no chocolate.

I didn’t give it chocolate, said Jearold. It just died. That’s just the way it was.

You got to bury it, said Diesel.

You bury it, said Jearold.

Ain’t my dog.

I ain’t a buryen no goddamn dog, said Jearold. You sound just like my boy. He coughed abruptly, propelling spit to his red chin. Might as well just shoot the sonofabitch.

It’s already dead, you dumbass, Diesel said. What good would it do?

That ain’t what I meant, said Jearold after pausing.

It’s what you said, said Diesel.

Jearold stood up from his chair. Don’t make fun of my intelligence, he said.

What intelligence? said Diesel, who laughed and tried to pass the rum, but Jearold knocked the bottle to the ground. It landed upright on the dog’s gut.

Don’t push me, said Jearold. I’m at the end of my rope.

Go ahead and hang yourself then, said Diesel.

He stooped to retrieve the bottle and wiped its mud on his coat. Isaac wondered if suicide was really what his father meant about the rope. The Bible said men who killed themselves were rooted to the ground in hell like trees, and Jearold wouldn’t like that, Isaac thought. A fly perched on the dog where the rum had lain before, and Isaac watched it run its feelers across the ripe flesh. His heart beat fast to know whether the fly would choose to suck dog-blood. Or was there blood at all. Or was it frozen? he wondered, staring until the corpse’s straight-up legs became its arms, the blurry firs and birch trees so the whole world was a dead dog.

I might have to do some driving tonight, said Jearold.