Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,54
you to hurt them. And stop them from doing what they’re doing.”
Atlanta feels hot and cold at the same time. Like she’s strapping into a roller coaster that once it gets started she won’t be able to escape. “You don’t know what you’re asking. Let the police handle it.”
“The police didn’t care when I called them before. They won’t care now.”
She’s right. They won’t. That’s another thing Atlanta learned about when Googling all this horrible stuff. The cops don’t much care about dog fighting. Sure, the laws on the books are stiff. Dog fighting’s a felony in most states. But for the most part it goes underreported and poorly-enforced. The laws are pretty clear: its only punishable when caught in the act. And infiltrating dog-fighting rings is like infiltrating the Mafia. Or Al Qaeda.
“Jenny, I don’t know—“
“I’ll pay.”
“I…”
“Another thousand. On top of the first. And I’ll pay half up front.”
Two grand. That money. The foreclosure. Their house. Atlanta feels the roller coaster starting. The click of the wheels on the tracks. The breeze turning to wind, her hair starting to blow.
“Okay,” she says, the word coming unbidden. “I’ll help you.”
“Good.”
Then Jenny hangs up.
Part Two: The Farm
It’s later that evening. Atlanta’s sitting on the couch with the TV on and the remote in her hand but she’s not really watching TV—though the news is on to her right now it’s just a flashy blitzkrieg of meaningless light, color and noise. All serving as background to her troubled thoughts. Thoughts of bad people.
Thoughts of making those bad people pay.
Too many bad people. So little time.
In her ear, Chris’ voice, tiny and giggly: “What about me?”
She shakes it off. Wonders suddenly where her mother is.
The woman’s been gone all day. No idea where or why, but Atlanta finds out soon enough: she hears the Cutlass Ciera outside with its busted muffler, and it isn’t long before Mama Arlene is coming through the side-door and throwing her purse down on the little table at which they eat, storming past with her hair a mess, her bosoms heaving. Atlanta catches a whiff of something—the smell of fryer grease. Suddenly she wants a hamburger real bad.
“They can’t do that to me,” Arlene says. She stands behind the couch with her arms cross. She paces. Then stops. Then paces again. “They can’t treat me like that.”
“Mama, what the crap are you going on about?”
Arlene thrusts a finger in her daughter’s face. “They wanted me to clean bathrooms.”
“Who? What?”
“Arby’s! The Arby’s. Down by the highway? Off the exit.” She must mistake Atlanta’s face for something else because she continues to give directions: “You go down Broward, south out of town—it’s the damn Arby’s sitting there next to the Conoco gas, the one with the—“
“I know where it is. Why were you at an Arby’s? And what happened with the… pyramid scheme food thing?”
Arlene rolls her eyes. “I didn’t think the Wonderfully Delicious ‘thing’ was a good fit.” Atlanta at first wonders if her mother actually took her advice, but then figures it’s something far simpler: they probably don’t have the cash necessary to buy in. “As for Arby’s, well, I was looking for a job.”
“And they gave you one?”
“They did. But they wanted me to push a broom! They already got a young retarded girl—or maybe she’s older, I dunno, they always seem kinda young even when they’re not on account of their lack of worldliness—and I told the manager, I said to him, I have more skills than a retarded person—“
Atlanta regrets it soon as she says it but there it goes, falling out of her mouth: “Do you?”
“What?”
“I’m just saying, retarded people do jobs all the time. But you mostly sit home and… don’t. They probably have plenty of skills you don’t have. I mean, not the really super-retarded ones, maybe, but—you know, I don’t even think we’re supposed to say that word anymore, ‘retarded?’”
“Who cares about the damn word? My own daughter is being cruel to me!”
“I’m not being cruel, Mama, I just—I’m just saying you can’t go talking to the manager like that. Why can’t you just push a dang broom?”
“Because I’m better than that!” Arlene yells. Face suddenly red and eyes suddenly glassy with tears that threaten to fall but do not. She pushes that bubble of sudden rage down and lowers her voice. “Normally I’d have a man around the house, but ever since… well.” Arlene looks away and Atlanta feels a sudden stab of shame and anger all her own—one of