The Devil Is a Black Dog (2 page)

W
e were lying among the trees in the yard. The sweet smell of fruit was everywhere. Bees and wasps buzzed above our heads. The sun shone through the leaves and warmed us through our clothing; it was a good feeling. We liked being there, in the garden behind the house, where nobody had a word to say to us. It was just my little brother and I on that early afternoon.

We lay there silently plucking the fallen sour cherries from the grass, eating the soft flesh and making a game of shooting the wet pits from between our fingers. It was then that my brother noticed the bird. He poked me in the shoulder and pointed to a cherry tree. I followed the line indicated by his finger to the lowest branch, where the crow was perched. It was a big one, the branch dipping under its weight.

Until then we had seen its kind only in the plowed fields around our village; they never came so close as to venture into the trees on our property. We had tried to see one from up close before, but unlike smaller birds, these were too intelligent and cunning to let us near.

I felt my pulse quicken, and I reached over to grab our gun, a Slovak-made air rifle. Its black oily barrel flashed in the sunlight as I pulled it close. Dad had tricked it out with a tighter spring, so that we could hunt with it. We were so proud of that rifle—a firearm of our own. We didn’t mind sharing it; we shared everything else.

I sat up and cracked the barrel. I dug some ammo from my pocket, trying to make sure none of the excess rounds fell out. We had only 923 pellets for the entire summer, as many as came in one box. Dad said he wouldn’t buy us more, so we would have to take care of how we used them. We had done the math and figured we could shoot no more than ten rounds a day, but after Father stopped supervising us, the ration was soon forgotten.

I loaded the gun. With my thumb, I gently pushed in the lead pellet and cracked the barrel back in place. I momentarily worried that the sound had startled the crow. I froze, sitting dead still. But the bird wasn’t concerned with us. It was much more interested in the fruit dangling off the tree’s outer branches. It preened itself, and lazily plucked the nearby cherries with its beak.

I carefully rested the rifle against my shoulder, looked into the sight, and tried to control my breath. My brother began to squirm beside me.

“Sure you can hit it from here?” he whispered.

“Yep.”

“We already used one pellet today.”

“Well, this guy is worth at least two notches.”

With a pocketknife we had been carving notches into the gun after every kill, just like the American Indians had done in our books about them. We had sworn that by summer’s end there would be fifty notches cut into in the gun’s stock. Though a month and a half had already passed, we had only accumulated eighteen. My brother didn’t think we would make it; for
his part, he was too small to properly hold the gun, and this resulted in lots of misfires. As for me, I wasn’t too worried about it: from the moment I picked up that rifle I was a professional killer.

When he gave us the weapon, our father instructed us to make only clean kills. Figuring that sooner or later we would realize that rifles weren’t invented for mere target practice, he reasoned that it would be better if he told us all we had to know.

We were standing in the yard, and the smell of potatoes stewed in paprika sauce wafted through the air. Then, right before our eyes, our father shot a sparrow from its perch on the branch of a walnut tree. “One shot, one kill,” he said. One shot: that’s what he meant by “clean.” He went on to explain that if we killed something (as he was sure we would), we shouldn’t play with the dead body afterward. If we kill, we should do it quickly and precisely. Anything that has a heart must be shown respect.

In the first few weeks, we actually weren’t able to shoot a thing, but not long afterward we got the hang of it. We soon became drunk on the power, knowing we could have this impact; where before there was this living, moving creature, now there was nothing but carrion on the ground. We had killed ants and other bugs before, but this sort of daring was a new and seductive feeling. We’d proudly pick up the shot sparrows by their feet, and bring them to the graves we had already dug for them. He who had made the kill completed the ritual: carving our mark into the stock of the rifle.

“I’m hungry,” my brother said, sitting up.

“Eat some cherries,” I replied, without turning to look at him.

“I’m sick of cherries.”

“We’ll eat after this shot. Dad’s coming home soon.”

I flattened myself on the ground. I didn’t want to startle the bird. I looked at my watch. Dad was indeed a bit late for lunch, and I was also hungry.

Our mother had been in the hospital since the beginning of the summer. Dad was almost certainly with her now. Since it had become apparent that there was something wrong with her womb, that she had to be admitted to the hospital, Dad didn’t do much but shuttle between my mother’s bedside, work, and home. My brother and I didn’t know exactly what Mom was sick with, as they had taken care to talk about it only after they put us to bed.

I remember that on the day before she went to the hospital, I found Dad crying in the kitchen. He said everything would be alright. Then they left for the hospital and he didn’t return for days. For two months he spent all his time there. It became normal for my brother and I to cry ourselves to sleep, though we eventually gave this up, as we became distracted by the impending summer.

Dad wouldn’t let us come with him on visits. He said that we were still too young for this. We communicated with Mom by drawing her pictures and writing her letters. I was in second grade and could already write well. I composed serious letters to her, filled with sentences like, “Today we hunted in the woods.” My brother mainly sent crayon-drawn pictures of volcanoes, tanks, or whatever happened to be on his mind that day.

Since our mother’s disappearance, there were lots of changes at home. For instance, Dad didn’t play with us anymore. He became irritable, lost a lot of weight, and took up smoking again.

“Can I try?” asked my brother.

“No.”

“But you got the last turn.”

“That’s because you still can’t shoot so well,” I said, lowering the gun.

“It’s not fair that you always get to shoot.”

“You still can’t load it properly without my help.”

“But it’s still not fair that you always get to shoot!”

“You can go next, OK?”

I whispered that last sentence because I noticed the crow begin to stir. Then, with languid flaps of its wings, it flew from the cherry tree to the top branch of a pine that stood by the house. We jumped up and raced in that direction, keeping an eye out to find the best position to fire from. We didn’t bicker anymore after that.

I took a place by our green, rusty fence, and again raised the rifle to my shoulder. I shifted my aim a few centimeters left and calculated the path of the bullet. I felt a slight breeze against my face. Though it wouldn’t be strong enough to push the bullet off its path, I still wanted to be sure, so I concentrated on guessing the exact trajectory. I pressed the rifle butt into my shoulder and left it there, allowing my grip to become more relaxed so I could release the pellet more easily, just like Dad had taught me.

The shooter needs to fire after exhaling, because when you breathe in, your shoulders move. With the sight, I found the crow, and aimed at its neck. I waited for the right moment, when I could no longer feel the weight of the rifle in my hands.

The lead pellet’s report echoed through the air. The bird fell from the tree as I, with a triumphant smile, lowered the rifle from my shoulder. We rushed over to where the crow had fallen. It was still alive, though my shot had hit it in the neck. It flapped spasmodically about on the path in front of us, trying to take flight. We watched it in its death throes from a few steps away. We had never seen anything like it.

I reloaded the gun, took aim at the bird’s breast, and fired. Feathers flew from its body where the pellet entered. It tried to
stand, but was unable. Blood from its wounds spread across the cement sidewalk.

“Die already!” my brother shouted. I searched my pocket for another pellet and loaded the rifle again.

This time I found the crow’s wing, the force of the shot propelling the bird onto its feet. Now standing, it ceased beating its wings. After a moment it noticed us and began to hobble our way, dragging its limp wings behind it, the wound in its neck dripping blood down the feathers of its breast. I reloaded, and shot.

I hit it in its chest, but that didn’t stop it. I began to retreat, because I was afraid its blood would get on me. The crow was perhaps a yard from me when it lifted its head and looked right at me, its eyes black as buttons.

It began to caw, unbearably loud, and without pause. I shot it again, but it was as if the crow didn’t even notice.

“It doesn’t want to die!” my brother cried, in hysterics now. “You can’t kill it,” he shrieked, and ran away.

The crow continued to come for me; I tried to reload, but after I had emptied my pocket, I was left with an empty gun.

When it was right in front of me, it stopped and again resumed its piercing cry. It was so close I could see its tongue moving in its beak. The gun fell from my hands and clattered on the ground. Blood pounded in my temple and my sweat turned cold. With nowhere else to go, I pressed my entire body against the fence, so hard that the chain links would leave their impression on my back. I couldn’t kill the bird. Our eyes locked, and we stared each other down. As I gazed into the bird’s black eyes, my tears began to flow.

“What in God’s name are you doing?”

It was Dad. He stood by the fence, cigarette in hand.

In one swift motion he was beside me. He gave the bird a swift kick, and I heard the crow’s bones break. The kick sent the
bird flying into the air, black feathers falling in its wake. It met with the wall of the house, leaving a bloody stain where it hit.

Still, it wasn’t dead. It cried pitifully and bled on the ground, again trying to stand. My father picked up the air rifle, stepped over to the bird, and with all his strength, smashed the crow’s head with the butt of the gun. He had to hit it several times until he finally cracked open its skull. I couldn’t move; I just stood there and watched as fluff from the animal’s feathers flew into the air. It was all over in a few seconds, after which he used some grass to wipe the blood from the rifle.

That night, I came down with a fever. I tossed and turned in my bed and kicked the blanket from my body. If I closed my eyes, the crow appeared, coming for me, a wholly unkillable beast coming for me. I whimpered loud enough to bring Dad into my room. It was already late at night, but he was still in his street clothes. He sat on the side of my bed and stroked my forehead, then stuck a thermometer under my arm. I could smell cigarettes and beer on his breath.

“I don’t know how I messed up,” I said to him, my voice trembling. “I did everything you taught me, but I couldn’t kill the thing the right way.”

“You didn’t do anything bad. Not even God can make a clean kill all the time,” he said. He patted me on my head, then tucked me in again before going back to his room and turning up the music.

I
was in Abéché, Chad. I was supposed to fly to N’Djamena, but two days before my departure the Haboob descended. It came savagely from above Darfur, and under the orders of the UN all flights were cancelled for safety reasons. The locals knew it was coming; their camels wouldn’t drink, instead they just stamped their hooves restlessly and shook themselves loose from their ropes. One camel kicked a boy in the chest who had dared to get too close, breaking four ribs. Within moments, the streets were empty of people.

I was at the airport, ready to go, when the news was broadcast. “Don’t be too distressed,” said the pilot, who was standing next to me. He informed me that within spitting distance was a Legion base, and that its commanding officer was quite an affable guy. I could probably pass the night there while the storm calmed, and I might even get something to drink in the canteen. With nothing else to do, I gathered myself and started walking toward the base, which was perhaps two kilometers from the airport. As I went, the sky covered over, and the wind began to blow with
terrifying strength. Soon the clouds were so full of dust it seemed like it was night, though it was still early afternoon.

Then came the sand. It burned when it hit, and there was no keeping it from getting in my boots and under my clothing, where it scoured my skin into blood-red scrapes. It took a concerted effort just to make my way down the short road, as I continually had to stop and wipe grains from my eyes and clean them from my ears. By the time I arrived at the Legion’s double-gated, modern fortress, I was virtually blind. The man on guard pointed his gun at me and began shouting. He left his post to better see who I was. It wasn’t an easy job, because the storm was raging ever stronger, and every exposed part of me was painted by sand: I could have been anybody. When he realized I wasn’t a local, he let me in, directing me toward the building marked by the words “Nihil Obstat.” There I would find the canteen, and in it I would find the commander of the base. And so I went.

In the canteen sat a man dressed in typical combat fatigues, gaping at the storm through the window. He greeted me, and I introduced myself and explained my predicament. He was indeed a nice person, and French; Jules Lacroix was his name. He was the commander, and the highest ranking of the four hundred or so legionnaires stationed there. Without asking, he put food in front of me and brought a bowl of water, so I could wash the sand from my face and hands. He immediately proposed that I stay in the camp for as long as the Haboob held us in its grips. He would arrange everything, on the condition that I attend an evening poker party with the officers. I saw no reason why not, and we laughed and shook hands on the deal. He then invited me to his quarters, where he offered me whisky and beer. We drank four beers each, and only then did I begin to relax. Outside the storm wailed with full force.