Pound for Pound (27 page)

The dog dropped his snout into Dan’s hand, but was unable to drink. Dan spoke to the collapsed animal, but it didn’t respond. He cradled the dog against himself, then drizzled water down its throat. The dog coughed a few times, then learned to open his throat to allow the water to trickle into him. Dan got close to a full bottle into the dog, then fed him more bread and cheese and lunch meat. The dog licked Dan’s hand.

Dan said, “No, no, none of that licky business with me. Your ass is going to the vet, and then you’re on your own. What the hell happened to your feet?”

At the truck stop, the cashier told him that the nearest vet was in the pink stucco office complex on the right about three miles down the road. The dog was already looking better, but was clearly helpless. Dan couldn’t stop himself. He petted the dog, scabs and all. He wished he had adrenaline for its oozing feet. The hair around the dog’s neck was worn and matted where there had once been a wide collar. Scars in the loose skin, only partially healed, looked like bite marks.

“How does somebody lose a giant fookin dog?”

The dog blinked.

The pink office complex was off the frontage road and up a short, cobbled driveway. Several trees had been planted among various cactus plants, but the trees hadn’t grown much. The vet’s office was in the second building on the left, and had a redbrick sidewalk and steps. Over the entrance was a small sign in black and white.

GONZALEZ PET & VET HOSPITAL
Emergencies 24-7
Meows to Cows

The dog continued to melt into the paper towels and sheepskin. Dan tried to lift him, but the dog’s loose skin stretched like bubble gum, and
his legs hung at odd angles. When Dan was able to get his arms up under him, he hugged him to his chest. He lugged the dog toward the vet’s office, and felt the animal’s complete surrender. He carried it inside and placed it on the cool red-tile floor next to a heavy Mexican colonial chair made of dark wood and thick leather. The dog began to shiver. At the desk, a young Latina receptionist gave Dan an information form to fill out. He wanted to hold on to his cash, so gave her his driver’s license and a credit card to run. Given the way he looked, he figured she might check to see if the credit card was stolen. Besides, he would be dead anyway, and no one would connect the dog with the burned-out old car. He couldn’t supply much on the dog, and left most of the questions unanswered. The receptionist saw the blanks.

“Dog’s name?”

“Unknown.”

“Age?”

“I don’t know. Maybe six, eight? He looks like he’s got a lot of miles on him.”

Dan explained his connection to the dog. She began to enter his data directly into a computer. She printed out an info sheet for the doctor, rang a small metal bell, and placed Dan’s paperwork in a basket marked “Emergency.” There was an outburst of animal sounds. The dog tried to crawl into a corner. Cats in cages paced or slept. As if in a bored long-distance conversation, several dogs from cubicles down the hall barked back and forth with dogs at the rear of the building. An unseen animal howled mournfully.

Dan waited. A well-groomed white woman with a dead cat wrapped in a Gucci silk scarf hurried out. “It’s not fair, it is not fair,” she sobbed.

A big parrot rocked in his cage. Between whistles and caws, it sang of Mexico’s beauty.
“¡México lindo! ¡México lindo!”
It occasionally flapped its wings and in a deep voice croaked orders
“¡Ven acá! ¡Ven acá!
Come here! Come here!”

The dog looked up, its good ear cocked. Dan patted him, rubbed his half ear. Dan sensed someone standing behind him. He turned to see
a woman in a white smock removing the dog’s paperwork from the basket.

She said, “Hi, I’m Doc Sally.”

Dan wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly and figured her for a nurse. “Is Dr. González in?”

“I’m Dr. González. How can I help?”

She spoke with a touch of border in her talk, and her shortish blond hair was perfectly styled for her face. She clearly had a larger ratio of European blood than Indian, as evidenced by her Texas blue eyes. Dan reckoned she was in her late forties. She was tall and still shapely, and she dressed in jeans and a red-and-white-checkered cowboy shirt under the smock. She wore polished black boots, and on her right wrist was a stainless-steel-and-gold Rolex. Dan figured her for a southpaw. He also saw that she noticed his bum eye.

“Is that your dog?”

Dan said, “No, I’m just the dummy who stopped to help.” He explained the situation.

“Never save nothin what eats.”

“Huh?”

“It tells the world you’re easy.”

Dan said, “I don’t know about that, but I couldn’t let him get squashed.”

Dan helped Doc Sally get the dog on a gurney and they wheeled him into one of the cubicles. She checked the dog’s paws and pasterns, and the mark the collar had made. She spoke kindly to the animal as she examined him. He didn’t respond. She checked his ears and teeth and throat. She used a stethoscope to check his chest cavity and the arteries down his hind legs. She felt for broken bones, tugged on the dry, hairless skin, examined the dog’s eyes.

“Why are his feet bloody?” Dan asked.

“He’s been running nonstop on pavement of one kind or another for days, maybe weeks. The pads have worn through in his search for his master.”

“First thing I noticed was his lost-dog look.” The second and third things he noticed were the outline of Doc Sally’s full lips and the clean line of her perfect ears.

“He’ll need to be sedated so he can be fed and hydrated intravenously, and so he won’t lick off the medication for his paws and hide. He has to be bathed and have the ticks removed. He probably has worms. A dog with less heart would have been dead a long time ago.” She spoke directly to the dog.
“Oye, tú. ¿Cómo te llamas?”
Listen up. What’s your name?

The dog wagged his tail halfway.
“Gnuff,”
he replied weakly.

Dan said, “Sounds like he’s got a harelip.”

“Your dog, Mr. Cooley, has had his vocal chords surgically removed.”

“He’s not my dog.”

“I should also mention that he speaks Spanish, and doesn’t understand a word you say.”

“He’s Mexican, too?”

Doc Sally smiled wryly. “It’s not so bad, I assure you.”

“Maybe not for you, you speak the lingo.”

“Does that mean you’re keeping him?”

Dan ducked the question. “How could someone lose a dog this big?”

Doc Sally said, “He may have been dumped. See the scars on him? Somebody’s fought him, looks like. He may have been stolen and given to pit bulls to practice on. He might have been trained to fight, too. Fighting dogs are treated cruelly by their masters during periods of conditioning, as in endless hours chained on a treadmill, but they love their masters blindly. For many, their world is a treadmill and the pit, and they are so starved for love that they adore anyone who shows them the slightest kindness.”

“Does that mean he’d be vicious to others?”

“Not likely. But I wouldn’t want to mess with someone he loved, if he was around.”

“What about the cut vocal chords?”

“People will sometimes do that if they use a dog for home security.
By the time an intruder is aware of a dog like this, he’s already got teeth in his ass.”

Dan liked the way Doc Sally talked. He nodded to the prostrate dog. “Will he survive?”

“Good chance. He’s much younger than he looks, four, maybe five. And he’s a fighter.”

Fighter.
The one word that could still break Dan’s heart. Dan said, “So what’s the tab gonna be?”

“Not as much as where you hail from, but enough. That is, if that’s what you want.”

“What I want?”

“Well, with the proper treatment, to include medication, food, vitamins, and twenty-four-hour supervision, we’re talking roughly a hundred dollars a day.”

“How many days?”

“A minimum of three days, and that’s only because dogs heal faster than we do. He would still need a safe place to recuperate for some time after that. But in all truth, he’ll probably need to stay here five or six days anyway, maybe a week.”

“Damn.”

“Or, I can put him out of his misery and out of your life for a fast thirty-five dollars. Make it a twenty, and I’ll do it right now.”

“See, I can’t wait around.”

Doc Sally said, “Like I say.”

“Won’t the pound take him?”

“They’ll put him down on day one, but not as nicely as I,” she told him.

“Ain’t this a bitch?” He looked at the dog again. The dog looked back. “Hit me for a three-day pop to start with. You got my card number.”

Doc Sally promised, “If he doesn’t make it, I’ll only bill you for the time he lasts.”

“You mean he might not?”

“All I can say is, look how weak he is. He must have lost thirty-five pounds or better.”

“What if I don’t come back in three days?” Dan asked.

The vet shrugged and said, “I suggest you come in at least once a day every day, for the dog’s sake.”

“And if I disappear into the hills?”

“I won’t bother with the pound,” Doc Sally told him. “I’ll just put him down.”

“Well, you got three hundred, anyway.”

“Will you not return, Mr. Cooley? If not, we’re only adding to the dog’s suffering.”

Dan touched his eye. “Look, Doc, I can’t say right now, okay? But if I don’t make it back in three days, do what you gotta do and add it to my tab.” He rubbed the dog’s neck. The dog flattened out even more. “You do what the doc says, hear?”

“He only understands Spanish, remember?”

It was getting late as Dan returned to his car, the sun dropping quickly and the light going pink and flat. He checked the Texas map in his atlas. Eighty-ninety miles up ahead was the small town of Van Horn. Head south from there on the 90, driving between the Van Horn and the Wylie Mountains, and he’d be into the higher Davis range. A couple of left turns past Valentine, and he’d be on the dirt roads and trails up around Mount Livermore, which peaked at almost
8,400
feet—no-man’s-land, where death was all part of growing up.

“High and bone dry.”

He pulled in at the Yippee Saloon again, this time for some bourbon. Thought he might change his luck if he switched back to whisky, hoped for a different alchemy. He knew better, but the idea of being lit on Kentucky Straight instead of grain vodka sounded good to his sagging insides. Four shots later, he was back in fighting trim. He got in his green car. “Promises to keep,” he thought, “and miles to go before I sleep.” The long, big sleep.

Dan arrived in Van Horn, a Texas town where folks said “tar” for tire. He bought a six-pack of Pearl longnecks, and a gallon of orange juice in a convenience store. He used a phony name and address to check into the Horn of Plenty Motel and BBQ Shack. He paid cash in advance for three days, though he’d probably need only two. Once in his room, he drank three beers with one of the thawed frozen meat-loaf dinners he’d bought back at the truck stop. At midnight, he had to drink the other three beers to get to sleep. He had more on his mind than he thought he’d have—Earl, the dog, finding the right spot for his version of the Molotov cocktail. What if it fizzled? He took more Xanax.

Fortified with a breakfast of vodka and OJ and beef jerky at ten o’clock the following morning, he took Highway 90 south and headed forty-three miles down to Valentine, passing through Lobo on the way. He needed calories, and found a diner. He sat at the counter and had to use both hands to drink his coffee. He then ordered biscuits and gravy, fried potatoes, tortillas, grits, Polish sausage, and buttermilk. He poured on the house’s blistering homemade fresh salsa.

The Mexican waitress was also the cook and she wore a white outfit, and a high white hat that covered her gray hair. She wrote swiftly. “You wan’ no egg?”

“Too high in cholesterol.”

Dan ate less than half of his food, but drank the buttermilk to coat his stomach. Some ten miles past town, he turned onto the narrow
505.
It wound its way up toward the spiky dark crags and dry washes near the base of Mount Livermore. White clouds raced across the peak. Three circling buzzards worked something dead beyond a far ridge. After another ten miles on the 505, Dan swung onto the
166.
He took the first dirt road, hardly more than a fire trail, and followed it up even farther into the bleak landscape. He parked the car and scouted, the trail allowing him to later drive even deeper into the desolation. He sat awhile and
drank and felt comfortable. No one would see, no property but his own would be destroyed. Win-win.

He listened to a kicker station for two hours, would have waited until night and torched himself right there, but having thought that it might take a few days to find the right spot, he’d left personal items in the motel room that could ID him if he didn’t toast himself just right.

“Mañana.”

The wind came up and Dan dumped what was left of the OJ. He filled the white plastic bottle with dirt so it wouldn’t blow away, then set it against some rocks as the beacon he’d aim for the next day.

In Valentine, he bought another gallon of OJ and more beef jerky. Back in Van Horn, he packed all his stuff, except for his toothpaste and toothbrush, and set it on a small table next to the door. He felt both queasy and hungry, knew he had to eat something. He stopped by his car, then returned to his room with the second defrosted meat-loaf dinner. It smelled a little off, but he ate it anyway, scooping the meat and gravy and mashed potatoes into his mouth with his fingers. His sweet tooth got loud, so he had a piece of berry pie with ice cream at the BBQ Shack, but halfway through it, he remembered Tim Pat eating berry pie and ice cream back in San Pedro. Dan left the rest of the pie, along with a full cup of coffee, on the counter, paid on the way out. He wasn’t sure how he got back to his room.

He woke up with puke in his mouth from food poisoning. He stumbled to the bathroom and threw up until he thought he was empty. He tried to get back to bed, but was then convulsed with dry heaves. In the middle of clutching the john, his ass went loose with diarrhea. Each time he got back to bed, he’d start up with the pukes or the squirts. Sometimes they both hit him at the same time. He passed out on the messed tile of the bathroom floor.