The brunette says something to me. I have no fucking clue what it is, but she leaves in a huff.
I zip up and crank the ignition, but then realize the storm in my head and the alcohol in my bloodstream make driving impossible. I cut the engine and tip my head back into the rest. It’s the better part of forever later that my head starts to clear. I shoulder out my door and take a lap through the parking lot to test my sobriety. Getting picked up on DUI right now sure as fuck wouldn’t help my cause or my family.
I’m passing the back of the bar when I hear a high-pitched whining from near the Dumpster. Next to it is a cardboard box. I peer inside and see the source of the whining—two gray puppies huddle in the corner of the box, shaking against the cool night air.
I drag a hand down my face. “Christ.”
I stick my hand in. One of them sniffs it, hoping it’s food, no doubt. The other one backs deeper into the corner. I stroke my finger down the nose of the one checking me out. “Who the hell left you here?”
He whines, licks my finger.
I scoop up the box, carry it back to my car, set it in the passenger seat, and know I’m going to regret this in the morning.
* * *
“What the hell are you thinking, Rob? They could carry some disease, or have fleas,” Lee says as I overflow the cereal bowl on the floor with dog food.
I’m thinking we’re never going to get our life back. I’m thinking if they’re taking out the few guys who were loyal to me, they’re coming after us next. Which means I’m thinking we’re screwed seven ways to Sunday. We can’t go back and it’s only a matter of time before everything goes sideways here.
My head pounds. I’m still in the clothes I was wearing yesterday. More than anything, I want to shower the bar stench off me, but everyone was asleep when I came in last night. I sat on the kitchen floor with the puppies trying to keep them quiet until they finally fell asleep. And when I dozed against the cabinets, what came to me was the memory of the last time I brought home a stray dog.
It was the fall after Mom died. I thought Pop might be mad, but he told me we could use a guard dog if I could train it—make it obedient. It was aggressive and used to living on the streets, so Lee wouldn’t let it in the house for fear it might hurt Sherm. But I was determined to gain its trust. I bought it toys and fed it from my hand, getting bitten in the process more than once. But little by little it became less feral. Over the next few months, I taught it to sit and roll, to fetch and shake. I loved that dog.
Until the day Pop came home and saw it in the backyard, chewing on the rawhide bone I’d given it as a reward for learning a new trick.
“That’s your idea of a guard dog?” he sneered, the vein down the center of his forehead swelling as his face reddened.
“He’ll chase off strangers,” I said, even though it was a lie.
Pop pulled his piece, pointed it at me. The dog sat up with the bone in its mouth and tipped its head curiously. Pop cocked the gun, held it to my forehead. I tried through sheer force of will to make that dog bare its teeth at the threat and growl. Instead, it padded over and dropped the bone at my shaking feet, its tongue lolling out, waiting for a pat on the head.
What it got instead was a hole in the head when Pop jerked the gun downward and shot it.
“I told you to train it and instead, you broke it,” Pop said as I stood there staring at my dead dog and swallowing pain that I couldn’t show him. He tucked his piece away and started for the house. “Love makes you vulnerable,” he said without looking back. “Never forget that.”
That’s where my mind was when Lee kicked me awake when she came down to make coffee a few minutes ago.
It turns out the thing I regret about last night isn’t the puppies, despite Lee’s look of consternation. It’s the fuzzy recollection of a brunette in my car that