Callan Wink: Dog Run Moon

Montana Bob’s voice came up to him, reverberating off the rock.

“You got the dog and I think that is a damn stupid reason to go through all this trouble. I got Charlie Chaplin here with me. He too thinks this is a lot of stupidness just for a damn dog. Also, he has a big goddamn pistol. I bet your feet hurt something fierce. You’re bleeding like a stuck hog all over this lizard rock and me an’ Charlie Chaplin are going to drive right up on you before long. We will. Also, you were a big damn fool to run out the back door like that. Charlie saw your naked ass. We were just coming for the dog. You can’t argue my right to it. You have that what belongs to me. You catch up that dog and bring it down to me. Also, hell. You know what? We’ll even give you a ride back down into town. We will.”

Sid started out again, moving up and away from the voices and lights. He found a long piece of slickrock that stretched out farther than he could see into the darkness and he ran. He could hear the rough whisper of the dog’s pads on the rock, the click of its nails. The dog’s coat shone in the moonlight; what was black in sunlight became purple-blue, what was normally white now glowed like mother-of-pearl.

Would Montana Bob do as he said? Let Sid go if he came down with the dog? Sid was unsure but he thought not. The small oblong little organ of fear under Sid’s sternum pulsed each time his feet slapped the rock. He kept going. The moon overhead was a lopsided and misshapen orb that at any moment might lose its tenuous position and break upon the rocks. That might be a good thing. A landscape of blackness into which he could melt.

—

The dog had been his for a week when Montana Bob found him out. Sid was in the Mint having a happy-hour beer before heading home, and he’d left the dog in the truck. He had his back to the door and as soon as the two men came in he had a bad feeling. The bar was pretty much empty but they sat right next to him, one on each side. Plenty of stools all up and down the bar but they came and crowded in on him. The big one wore a sweat-stained summer Stetson with a ragged rooster pheasant tail feather sticking out of the hatband. His hair was shaggy and flared out from the hat brim. He wore a leather vest with nothing underneath it save a mangy pelt of thick blue-black hair. His companion was considerably smaller and extremely fair skinned, nearly bald except for a few blond strands grown long on one side and then combed over. He wore a button-up Oxford shirt and corduroy pants. Sperry Top-Siders. On his belt he had a large knife in a sheath, its handle made of a pale-yellow plastic that was supposed to look like bone. They ordered beers, and when the beers arrived the big man in the hat drank deeply, and then leaned toward Sid, a pale scum of suds covering his upper lip.

“I don’t believe in beating the bush.”

Sid picked at a loose corner on the label of his bottle of beer. He thought about bolting, just getting up like he was going to make his way to the bathroom and then sliding right out the back.

“I don’t beat the bush so I’m going to get right down to the tacks. I believe I recognize a familiar dog in that blue Chevy out front and also since you’re about the only one in here I figure that’s your vehicle so I figure that I’ll need to ask you where you happened to come across that dog.”

The man pushed his hat back on his head and swiveled on his stool to face Sid. He smiled.

“Also, I’m Montana Bob.” He extended his hand — which Sid shook, not knowing what else to do — and nodded toward his companion seated on Sid’s other side.

“And that’s Charlie Chaplin. Shake his hand.”

Sid turned and shook Charlie Chaplin’s pale proffered hand.

“I’m a local businessman and Charlie Chaplin is my accountant. Also, he provides counsel to me in matters of legal concern.”

Sid considered Charlie Chaplin and when their eyes met he felt something skittering and cold move down his spine. Montana Bob was the bigger man, menacing even, with large bare arms and small pieces of pointed silver at the tips of his boots, but it was this one, small and waxen and pale, who made Sid shift uncomfortably.

Sid found himself speaking, too quickly, his voice high.

“I picked up that dog at the shelter. Bought and paid for. Got him his shots, rabies, distemper, all that. I got the paperwork in the truck. They said at the shelter that he was a canine of misfortunate past. Meaning his old owner used to stomp him. Kind of a mutt but he seems loyal. Likes to fetch the tennis ball. My kids are crazy about him.”

Montana Bob nodded as Sid spoke. Charlie Chaplin nodded too. Montana Bob motioned the bartender down to them and ordered another beer for himself and Charlie Chaplin.

“Two more. Also, a large pitcher of ice water. No ice.”

The bartender went away and Montana Bob spoke to Sid’s reflection in the mirrored bar back.

“Likes to fetch the tennis ball does he? Well, I’ll be. Did you know that that dog was given to me by a Frenchman? The dog is a French Brittany spaniel and he comes from France. Born in France of royal French Brittany stock. Also, that dog was a gift from a French count. Guy St. Vrain made me a present of that dog when it was just a pup in payment for services rendered by yours truly. You don’t know Guy St. Vrain but that doesn’t matter. That’s how he likes it. He’s in the movie business. Also, he’s in the dog business.”

The bartender came with the pitcher of water, and Montana Bob took off his hat and set it on the bar top. He poured half the pitcher into the hat and then replaced it on his head, the water streaming down his face and neck, matting the thick shiny hair on his chest.

“You stole my fucking dog.” He was still looking at Sid through his reflection in the bar mirror. “Also, I had a hot and dusty day out on the trail and I come here for a drink only to find my possession in someone else’s egg basket.”

In the mirror Sid saw his hands go up, saw his shoulders shrug.

“The shelter. I don’t know anything about any of this.”

He slid from the stool and caught the bartender’s eye.

“I’ll take one more. Be right back. Gotta take a leak.”

In the bathroom he ran the water and splashed some on his face. He had his keys in his hand when he hit the door and then he was out in the last evening rays of sun, firing the truck, the dog standing anxiously with its front paws on the dash. Sid drove without looking back. He drove all the way down the river road and let the dog out. He walked a path through the thickets of tamarisk and Russian olive and when he stopped, the dog perched delicately at the water’s edge, standing on a rock, lapping up the muddy red water. Before Sid had burst through the bar doors to start his truck he’d glimpsed the bar room — Montana Bob sitting astride his stool like a swayback steed. Charlie Chaplin up standing in front of the jukebox. He was flipping the discs as if looking for a particular track, a song whose name he couldn’t remember or one whose tune existed solely in his head.

—

Sid had no clear idea where he was heading. It was a strange mode of navigation, more like divination, taking the smoothest path through a shattered nightscape of jumbled rock — watching for the wicked gleam of prickly pear and jagged cones from the piñon pines. If he turned he could still see the shafts of light from his pursuer’s ATV, and he thought about circling around back toward town. The problem was the dog. Sid would have to cut a wide path around to keep the dog from straying close to the lights and if the dog was captured then what was the point? Another thought, might the dog return to its former owner willingly? Sid was unsure. He kept running. The dog spooked a small herd of mule deer out of a dry creek bed and they bounded past him, covering great lengths of ground in each leap, their forms backlit against the sky now lightening in the east. Sid had never seen the desert deer move this close before. At the apex of each jump they seemed to hang, suspended, vaguely avian, a group of prehistoric nearbirds not quite suited to life on land, not quite comfortable with their wings’ ability to keep them aloft. Just then he had the thought that if he could keep going until the sun came up he might be okay.