Drunk Dog

Drunk Dog

         If you hurl your heart far enough, you can trick yourself into thinking you don’t have one. Al swallows his blood and pulls back for a haymaker on one of the Johnson triplets. Pain clarifies truth.
         The driver speaks with a thick African accent and wears a middle-aged white man’s toupee. He asks Al about the fight, if he won or not. Al says fighting is what distinguishes life forms from non-life forms. You know, organic compounds from inorganic compounds, plants and animals from glass, plastic, iron, and steel.
          “But did you win?”
         “They’re still cleaning him up.”
          The driver opens the windows and they hear snippets of drunken arguments, karaoke music, and club ambience like they’re flipping through television channels. A woman in an oversized flannel stares through a darkened storefront.
         His apartment is nearly empty. He washes his ripped knuckles, microwaves a miniature pizza, and sits down on a wooden chair. The crust tastes like wet rubber, the cheese like solidified milk. He dabs at the red sauce accumulating at the corners of his mouth with an old tank top he uses as a rag. Behind him hangs a wooden cross crafted by the man who concussed him on Christmas Eve.
         Al’s not much into stories or beliefs, but he gets the cross. He gets it like he gets loose toenails in his sock after running too far. Gets it like he gets a hangover.
         Billy picks him up in his girlfriend’s car. She has two fuzzy miniature Saturns slung around her rearview mirror and energy drink cans littering the floor. Billy hardly says a word throughout the drive. There’s the Billy that Al befriended—the one that rolls a die to decide which woman to approach at the bar, tells false histories to barbers, and always has a long-winded joke on hand. Then there’s the Billy currently turning the wheel. He’s like a once bustling city now devoid of electricity.
          They drive straight into the a.m. The night envelops them. It has a way of comforting those who give it company in these hours.
         “Thirty-nine. Single mother of two. Laundry-mat owner. Found in a garbage bin behind a local burger joint. Filthy, drenched in garbage juice. They haven’t found the head. Hey,” says Billy, turning to Al. A thin line of blood runs down from Al’s bandaged knuckles. “Don’t bleed in my car.”
         “Jess’s car.”
         “My car.”
         The radio is broken, and they listen to nothing for seven hours.
         The sun rises. Light dapples the sere expanse. Creatures dash across the prairie, diving for cover or bathing in the dawn. He’d committed to this, casually but wittingly and honestly. Commitments are conditionals involving death. That’s why he brawls until his body fails. That’s why he didn’t marry her.
         They stop for breakfast burritos on the edge of town. He stands by a table and stuffs his mouth with eggs, sausage, and salsa verde. Hoary retirees in baseball caps lounge around in booths and speculate on the weather. He watches the cars zoom down the highway, wonders if they feel risk in their body. If it’s not abstract. Billy spends the entire time in the restroom, and when he comes out, he says he’s not hungry.
         They decide to nap in a nearby supermarket parking lot. Within seconds, Billy’s out. Al reclines the passenger seat and watches the clouds float by through the sunroof. None of them look like anything.
         He awakes to his throbbing jaw. Billy’s scanning his pocket sketchbook filled with chicken scratch and diagrams.
         “Our man’s not much of a man. Current name, Gene Williams. At least four other aliases in the past five years. Works in this warehouse,” he says, pointing to the supermarket. “Works the dayshift, then frequents a local bar. A boozer. Dead bodies in his wake, followed by moving, new name. Nothing’s certain. But a coincidence? Had relations with the woman. Photos of the two together online. Solid alibi offered to police. Witnesses. Guys from work claim he was at a party.”
         Al picks at a bit of sausage wedged between his teeth. “So, we talk to them.”
         “No.”
         They stroll down the aisles of the supermarket. Al peruses the dairy, observes a woman thoughtfully glancing between two cartons. There are people who go to work in a suit and tie for ten hours a day for forty years and suffer from chronic stress that leads to heart disease and divorce and dull-mindedness and alienation all in service of the exploratory drive to milk what had not yet been milked. These people got the cross.
         He finds Billy looking at women’s lotion. Billy picks up each individual container from a row and inspects the fine print.
         “How are you and Jess fairing?”
          “She’s done with me.”
          “Done. Since when?”
         “Since she said so.”
         “But the car.”
          “Car’s mine.”
         “Thought it was hers?”
         “Car’s mine.”
         Billy turns a bottle of lotion over in his hands. Something Cinnamon for a woman’s face.
         “So what’s with the lotion?”
          “I don’t know.”
         The warehouse is in the back. Their man could be unloading a pallet of canned goods after his lunch break. Could be running his mouth to a coworker or going about his job quietly. He could be innocent. What he could be didn’t matter.
         Milton lives in a sleepy residential area on the other side of town. He nudges open the screen door and waves them in while holding back a Dobermann. Milton’s a seven-fingered Korean private investigator with a bad leg and a mythological history. Spying in North Korea, involvement in Area 51, run-ins with the Irish mob. You don’t know what’s true, but you know by looking at the guy and hearing him talk that some of it has to be.
         They sit on his back porch and chat. Milton shares his concerns over an election with Billy while Al tosses a tennis ball for the dog to fetch. The Dobermann drops the slobber-lathered ball into his hands and looks up. It occurs to him his knuckles look like muffin tops.
         Milton goes into the house and comes back with a ziplock baggie containing a gun and a suppressor. Billy moves to grab it, but Milton pulls it back.
          “Tell me,” says Milton. “Did the Buddha make good decisions?”
         “What are you talking about.”
         “Was he aware of his self-interest? Did he recognize potential gain and loss, and did he act accordingly?”
         “You know I’m no Buddhist.”
         They sit in the dark car down the road from the bar. Billy fiddles with the suppressor until it’s secure on the muzzle. Their man pulls up in a sedan and enters the bar. Billy places the weapon in the glove department and exits the car while Al sets a stopwatch for ten minutes.
         He stretches his neck. He rolls the seat back and jabs the air. He closes his eyes, breathes slowly, says “We’re all just monkeys playing games, we’re all just monkeys playing games…”
         Ten minutes pass. Al sits at the opposite end of the counter from where Billy talks to Gene and orders a shot of bourbon. A regular, a master who’s put in his 10,000 hours of mingling with strangers with a glass of alcohol in hand, proposes he share a toast with Al. “To the end of the war,” he says. Al doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He doesn’t even know if he’s celebrating the end of a war or if he’s hoping for it. The man’s got some sort of eastern European accent and a tattoo of a flag Al’s never seen before above his clavicle.
         “To the end of the war,” says Al.
         The conversation at the other end of the counter continues on in hushed tones. Their man, Gene, laughs at one point. Laughs liberally, laughs naively. Al imagines Billy telling him the story of the Harvard butcher. He laughs and laughs and calls the bartender over for another drink.
         You befriend some people because they’re funny or exciting or make you feel good about yourself or have connections. You befriend others because of their physical prowess and doglike loyalty. Because bodyguards are expensive and brutality has its place in the lives of amateur detectives who gamble with their flesh.
         At half-past midnight, Gene and Billy gather up their belongings. Billy knocks on the counter four times, then tips the bartender. Four times. Al sets his watch for two minutes.
         If you hurl your heart far enough. He’d heard a preacher say something similar—that you ought to treasure heaven since anything on Earth could be robbed. The preacher with the toothpick in his mouth and a cigar in his hand. The preacher they say stared into the sun to demonstrate that there’s a cost to everything, the same preacher who threw what little he had into dubious investments to show that an aspect of the divinity was a randomized f-you, the same preacher who’d ram his cane in Al’s chest and exclaim “He’s here!” Hatred forms, not love. Al knows it like sculptures know scalpels.
         He finds the two chatting in the alley. Al clears his throat and their man turns around to receive a swift blow to the head. Out cold. They prop him up and drag him along, so he’d look like a stumbling drunk to any onlookers. They put him in the back. Billy retrieves the gun and shoots their man through the skull.
         Blood is splattered all over the backseat and the window. Membranes cover a paper takeout bag, seep down onto a deflated soccer ball. Al searches for his mantra.
         Billy holds out the gun.
         “Shoot me.”
         “What?”
         “Shoot. Me.”
         Al steps out and wanders around the lot. There are two other cars, a stray cat, a crescent moon. His head hurts from Johnson’s opening swing. Did he win?
         Billy calls him back to the car.
         “There’s nothing here on you. Do it, then walk away.”
         Al scrambles for alternatives. He searches for perspective.
         “This is a quiet place. Shoot and go.”
         Al straps on the second pair of latex gloves and receives the gun.
          “Right here,” says Billy, pointing to his forehead.
         Al slowly raises the gun. He pauses.
         “Where’s Jess?”
         Billy sighs.
         “Where’s Jess.”
         Billy shakes his head and chuckles. His face reddens. A neck vein pops.
         “Billy.”
         “I didn’t hide the fucking body! You think I'd fucking hide the fucking body?”
         Jess used to offer Al coffee whenever he’d come over. She had blue eyes and a neck rash that never went away.
         Al shoots.
         He exits the vehicle, surveys for witnesses, and walks down the sidewalk. His hands shake in his attempt to call for a ride. They’re our here picking up drunks. He’s a drunk and he needs a ride and they pick up drunks all the time for a little extra cash to pay for their kids’ Cheerios. He’s just a drunk.