NAVAJO
I had the front seat to myself, windows down, hot air exploding in loud gusts propelling little tornados of paper and dirt around me. The landscape was hot as hell and repeated itself over and over and over.
She was sleeping — taking the back seat on one hip, jet-black hair blasting in the wind, swirling around her head, all over her face. She was so tired she couldn’t feel a thing. With her Navajo eyes closed, she looked Japanese, beautiful as all get out.
The car I was driving was exactly the kind I had always hoped to drive — a real gas-guzzler, with a broken headlight, oversize tires in the rear, and a mass of tangled wires hanging under the dashboard, rumbling along the absolutely abandoned highway. Nothing worked except the gas gauge, and it read empty.
Her dog was thirsty. I twisted over the back seat and felt around with my free hand until I was scratching behind the dog’s long, pointed ear. We approached a Texaco station with a faded Pegasus heading forty-five degrees skyward on a round tin shield.
The car growled as I downshifted. The gravel from the roadside rose in a dusty cloud. I drove past the station, slowed down to around sixty and spun a bootlegger turn back into my own dust cloud, filling the windows with brown grit. The girl rocked against the back seat, still sound asleep. The dog tried to get his footing and thumped into the front seat twice. I idled the car into the station’s garage and parked it in the empty shade. The dust cloud blew slowly down the road outside. I sat there in the dark, adjusting my eyes and feeling the cool air, thinking of the sun, blinding hot outside of the tin shack, and my wife.
I opened the car door and kissed the air loudly a couple of times until the dizzy dog pressed unsteady front paws on the greasy concrete. The dog followed me around until I found a bucket and filled it with water. The dog drank in sloppy loud slaps.
I went around the corner of the shack and took a long piss. The car door latch opened and slammed shut. Her voice was cooing to her dog. I began to make out her words. “Where’d he go? Huh? Where’d he go?”
I shook off the last drops and buttoned my pants. She wound around the corner, pulling her waist-length black hair off the side of her face. She rubbed one eye with a small silver-ringed fist, breathed in and out deeply, put her hands in the back of her jeans and settled her weight on one leg, getting her balance in her rough-out boots.
“Where are we?” she demanded with a smile.
I shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Good. The less you know the better.”
“That’s what they tell me.” Her teeth gleamed behind dry lips.
We stood awhile looking out across four hundred miles of glaring desert, ending in heat-wave-rippling, reddish mountains.
“We’re lost, then,” she finally muttered. I knew that was a way of referring to how we felt about each other. I knew not to respond. A minute or two passed.
“Almost lost. We’re heading south. We’ll cross a main road before too long. We can be in those hills tonight, or in some beach parking lot by tomorrow morning.” My words sounded like a speech and I felt embarrassed. I hoped she wouldn’t put me down.
She nodded and said, “Let’s go to the beach.”
She picked up a stone and dented a fresh beer can lying about forty yards away. I didn’t move. She did it again, same beer can. I wiped my nose and covered my smile, in a self-conscious movie-cowboy kind of way.
She leaned under my face and looked up into my eyes, saying in a mocking tone, “I’m magic.”
I told her I knew that already, with the same tone I would use later to ask the ancient man behind the motel office desk if he had a room.
She tossed a stick and the dog chased after it. He brought it back wagging his tail with pride.
She looked at me and said, “Just like you.”
“True love,” I said, sniffing the air.
DOG PARTY
Well a long time ago, when I was young, the other kids and I were pretty much left to ourselves — not much supervision or anything. We were all pretending we were happy, watching Leave It To Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet but feeling this gnawing loneliness. And this anger. Like it wasn’t supposed to be like this, like we were getting tricked. We were always fighting and our fathers always talked about the war. Until we began to feel like targets or something.
There was a boy living on our street. He had this thing with dogs, ya know? (Pause.) He had an inordinate attraction to them. None of us knew why. We knew he loved them, but still. . . . He was a strange boy with a strange laugh, a fourth grader with bleeding bite marks and scratches all over his arms. We’d see him following an old lady’s cocker spaniel or feeding somebody’s mutt through a fence. Calling and crooning — anybody’s dog. He’d devote his whole weekend to one dog. We’d need another kid to play outfield, or we’d be alone and want to play catch. Nope. He’s got no time. (Girl leaves the stage.) He’d be waiting for Fido. He’d just wait. He was inexhaustible. The dogs knew what was on his mind. They’d hide. The kid knew they knew, and that made it better for him. He’d wait for hours until they made their false move. They’d get hungry and take the bait, or they’d finally give in to the hope against hope that the boy wouldn’t really do it. They were wrong. He was quick. He’d grab them and he’d say, “You fool — I’m going to drown you, Fido.” He called every dog Fido, don’t ask me why.
For a couple of months he did it in secret. But by then we knew he had an odd devotion to dogs. He had witnessed their desperation, he’d watch their losing cause. He weighed each dog’s pain threshold. He knew what they could take, he was impressed. He’d stroke them, hold them in his arms as they shook with fear. He’d whisper to them. Then he’d take them to a big fifty-five-gallon drum that his father brought home from the Army base, and drown them. Normally we used the drums for trash cans. I remember he was always so happy on Wednesdays. The trash trucks emptied the cans on Wednesday. (Sound of trash trucks stops.) He called it “Anything Can Happen Day.”
He’d drag the garden hose to the black drums, greasy pieces of who-the-hell-knows-what floating with lettuce and tomato skins. He’d be talking real softly to these desperate, writhing, wimpering dogs. Somehow he’d get one into the spinning water. You don’t know how long it takes for a Labrador to drown. You don’t measure it in minutes. Eternity is more like it. Eternal moments. They fight like hell. They fight to stay out of hell, swimming that pathetic pointless upright paddle, nose bleeding from the broom handle he used to push them under, pinning them to the bottom. Panic. Wildest eyes you’ll ever see. Then, just when they were on the other side, as soon as their bodies stopped struggling and only twitched, he’d rescue them. He’d pull them out of the barrel. He’d hold them upside down. Pink water draining out of their mouth and nose. Then it looked like a little light would go on behind their eyes. He’d look relieved and he’d start to cry, saying, “See? There it is!” He’d be smiling at them as they began to figure out where they were. He’d lie down beside them on the ground. They’d be too weak to move. He’d pet them and put his arms around them.
The dogs would think that the boy had saved them, although they would always have a fear of the green garden hose and the barrel. And on Wednesdays after that summer, the whole street would howl when the trash trucks turned the corner. You could see that the dogs sensed something else. Belief, I guess.
The dogs wanted to believe that the boy had saved them. It was easier than facing what the boy had really done. So they let their memory start from the moment they saw his smiling face. The dogs loved him. Really. They followed him everywhere. If you ever saw him, he’d be with a couple of dogs. All by himself,