Craig Davidson - Cataract City

“The fuckhead’s truck smoked on down the sidewalk. To this day I have no idea if he even knew . Frag was slumped halfway under an ornamental shrub on somebody’s front lawn. His flesh was split right through his coat, man. Can you imagine the pressure?”

My eyes drifted to the house across the street. It’d been vacant a few months. The owners had defaulted on their mortgage — happened a lot, even in low-rent neighbourhoods — and the bank hadn’t resold it. It sagged into itself the way neglected homes tend to, as if, vacant of life, the wood and brick surrender their strength and the whole works sinks slowly like a mammoth into a tar pit. The windows were dark but I could see something moving behind the glass.

“Engine coolant had bled down the street,” Owe said. “I followed it. The truck was parked in an alleyway covered in a blue tarp, the kind you drape over cordwood to keep out the damp. The front headlight hung from its mount. Frag’s collar was meshed with the grille. That’s when I felt it, man. The snap . I’d heard that term around the precinct. The snap is that moment, that sight , that breaks a cop. One guy snapped when he found a baby stuffed into a vacuum cleaner bag by its drugged-out father. He unzipped the bag and saw an ash-grey little face clung with lint and cat hair and … For me, it was a dog collar stuck in the grille of a Dodge pickup.

“So fuckhead’s sitting on a lawn chair in the backyard, smoking a Chesterfield with a freshly cracked beer. Bloodshot eyes, blood down his shirt: he’d busted his nose on the wheel. I showed him my badge. He goes: I’ve got my rights, don’t I? After the evidence crew showed, I wrapped Frag up and carried him home. I laid him on the kitchen table. Where else … where do you put a dead dog? You’d think that’d be the end of it, right?”

He lapsed into silence. I didn’t break it. He rustled around, stood up maybe. Next came the grating scrape of a lighter’s flywheel being flicked.

A trembling flame lit the bay window of the house across the street, illuminating a figure standing in the darkness.

I listened to a ragged inhale, a prolonged hack.

“You smoking?”

“I don’t, as a rule,” Owe said. “Only on stakeouts.”

My heart double-tapped — two solid mule kicks behind my rib cage.

“Big case, uh?”

“Not really, man. Penny-ante, to tell the truth. But guys get themselves shut away for nothing sometimes. But then it’s not my job—”

“To talk people out of being stupid?”

Silence again.

“Fuckhead’s lawyer got him house arrest. Ultimately he got two years for drunk driving. It was only a dead dog, right? He stood before the judge and was all, I have a disease. Look into your heart . Three priors — a pair of DUIs and another for driving with a suspended licence. Your garden-variety fuckhead driven by garden-variety demons. Anyway, here’s the part you need to know. The fuckhead who killed my dog went for a smoke every night. Right before bed. He turned in late — two in the morning. How did I know he smoked, Dunk?”

I didn’t say anything. The answer was obvious: because he’d watched him.

The line was so quiet I could hear the paper of his smoke crackle as it burned.

“Four nights I watched from my car in the alley. At one o’clock on the fifth night I got out with an iron pipe. Fuckhead smoked in the backyard, under the patio’s bare bulb. I crept into his yard, unscrewed the bulb so the contact points weren’t touching. Then … well. Next day Chief calls me into his office. Said nobody would be trying all that hard to find the guy who assaulted fuckhead, shattering his kneecap and crushing his orbital socket … but maybe police work wasn’t my bag.”

The ember brightened in the dark house across the road. Owe’s breath feathered the mouthpiece, gently rasping.

“And I’ll tell you, because why the hell not … there are moments you realize that when you carry through with a given plan of action, you’re gonna come out a changed man. Won’t be noticeable on the outside but you’ll never be the same behind the eyes. Standing in the dark in fuckhead’s yard, waiting, a small part of me kept yammering: this isn’t you . But who are any of us, really? We inhabit different states of being. Some are fleeting and some become permanent. Sometimes what we are, or who, or … it’s just a question of circumstance, y’know? How far would you go? How much does it mean to you? How much do you need it?”

Dolly whined thinly, then heaved herself up and padded into the kitchen. I listened to the dry click of nails on the linoleum, the dry crunch of kibble between her molars.

“Anyway, that’s Frag. I cremated him and scattered his ashes on his favourite walking trail … favourite, I think , because who can tell a dog’s mind? It’s hokey as hell, but whatever. I loved him, uh?”

“I know you did.”

“He was sorta stupid but I love stupid things. Like you, Dunk.”

“Awww, aren’t you a peach.”

“Don’t do it, man.”

I said, “Do what?” but the line was dead.

I sat watching the figure across the road. The figure watched me back.

At some point Ed returned from work.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing, beautiful. The stars.”

The next night I didn’t say goodbye to Ed, just slipped into my boots and left her sleeping. I flagged down a cab at the top of the street and told the driver to hit the casino. It rolled down Clifton Hill, the neon-lit marquees watery behind a curtain of rain. I bought a ticket for the casino shuttle. A couple of old warhorses in Sansabelt slacks stumbled on the bus, moaning about the rigged slots.

At the Rainbow Bridge a bored-looking border guard checked my passport. The shuttle headed east along the river and turned right at the aquarium before heading up Pine Street.

The driver stopped at the Piggly Wiggly. I stepped out, jacket pulled tight around my shoulders. The night seemed colder on this side of the river.

The bell chimed as I stepped inside the store. The clerk was eighteen, zitty, tending to the hot-dog rotisserie. I headed to the dairy case, grabbed a quart of full-fat milk. Moo juice, as my mom called it. The bell chimed. I turned to the pastries, craving something sweet and body-wrecking. A Hostess Choco-Bliss, maybe.

“Dunk?”

Owe stood behind the swinging glass of the soda cooler. He let it fall shut and squared his shoulders. His expression betrayed nothing.

“Hey, Owe.”

“Fancy seeing you here.”

“Yeah, fancy that.”

I picked up a cellophane-wrapped bearclaw and rubbed the serrated edge of the wrapper against my chin.

“What are you doing over here?” he said.

“Meeting somebody.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Don’t figure so. We met after you left town.”

“Where you going?”

I said, “What are you doing here?”

Owe smiled sheepishly. “Pizza and wings at Sammy’s.”

“By yourself?”

“Why — want to come with? I don’t like eating alone.”

“Sorry, but like I said. Plans. Another time.”

A car pulled into the lot. The horn honked.

“You can’t go halfway down the rabbit hole, Diggs,” Owe said before turning away.

I paid for my milk, walked across the lot and got into the grey Ford Taurus. Igor was squashed behind the wheel. He pulled out, driving with the squinty determination of the elderly.

A pit bull sat in the back seat. It was about the same size as Folchik, white with a black stripe across its eyes.

“That’s Bandit,” Igor said. “Don’t pet him.”

“Where’s Drinkwater?”

“Not coming,” Igor said. “Never does.”