Three Miles Past (2 page)

The dog column for the weekend had thirty-nine dogs, each identified first by location, then tag, if there was one, then just description:
25-30lbs., black, white tail-tip. Probably Lab, Lab-mix
. The dead, the run over, the already burned in the incinerator.

William smiled, found his hand covering his mouth again, made it go back down.

The girl who opened the door beside the lists stopped, pulled her breath in sharp, had to crane her head back to see all the way up to William’s face.

William opened his mouth, stepped back, holding his hands up to show, to show her—

She was looking to the metal door in the waiting room now, though. Then back up to William. “It was open?” she said, crinkling the corners of her eyes about how that shouldn’t have been the case.

William nodded. She was twenty-three maybe, a rich caramel color, silver chain around her neck, holding a pink stone to the hollow of her throat. Otherwise, she was a nurse: green scrubs, yellow rubber gloves. Hair pulled back. It made her eyes better.

Hands
, William said to himself.

They went back to their pockets, and he could tell from the way the caramel girl’s features softened that this was better. That what his hands in his pockets did to his shoulders, how they were round now, making him look stooped, embarrassed of his height—a lifetime of standing in the back row, a thousand old ladies asking for help with the top shelf—that he wasn’t a scary man in a flannel jacket anymore. Just William. Bill, Bill Pinzer.

The girl nodded to the list with her mouth.

“Any luck?” she said.

William knew to pause before answering, and then not to answer anyway, just shake his head no.

The girl was looking at the door again.

“We close at five, y’know?”

“Sorry,” William said, looking over her shoulder at the wire glass in the door behind her. As if looking for his dog. “ . . . I just—my work. Five. You know.”

The girl looked at him for maybe four seconds, then shrugged.

“Thad was supposed to lock the door,” she said, finally. “Not your fault.”

William nodded.

“You seen him up here?” the girl asked.

“Ted?”

“Thad—don’t worry. Listen. Your pet, sir. When did it—”

“Saturday.”.

The girl turned to the door, zipping her keys out from her belt, towards the lock. William felt his lungs burning with air, made himself breathe, breathe.

“What kind?” she asked, not looking at him.

“Not sure,” William said, shrugging in case she could see his reflection somewhere. “I only got him last week.”

The girl opened the door, turned up to William.

“This is an adult dog?”

“Yeah, yes.”

“Did you check the prior owner?”

William nodded. When the girl gave the door to him, she flipped it a bit so they weren’t quite touching it at the same time. Like it would conduct something between them. Something more than she wanted. William’s lips thinned behind his beard but he closed his eyes, stepped, stepped again, until it became a walk.

“Color, then?”

“Kind of . . . brownish. Black maybe. I’ll know him.”

“Husky, Bull, Lab?”

“I don’t—you want me to call my friend?”

The girl looked back to William, stopped in the hall, as if to go back to the front desk, and then she looked ahead of them too. William could see it in her eyes: it was already past five, right?

“Maybe you’ll see him,” she said, turning around again.

She came up maybe to William’s sternum.

At the first corner she palmed the radio she had on her belt, said into it that she was taking a gentlemen back into “Large Dogs.” William watched her thumb the radio back off, hook it to its plastic clip.

“Thad?” he said.

The girl nodded, shrugged like she was sorry.

William shook his head no, though. “It’s good you do that,” he said.

“We had something happen—it’s nothing. Couple of years ago. Listen. We’re going to go through the forty-pounders first, all right?”

William nodded, took the next corner with her.

Two years, then. It had already been two years.

Every few steps there was a drain, and every forty feet, maybe, a twenty-foot hose coiled on the concrete wall.

The first dog they got to exploded against his chain-link, his saliva going arm over arm down the metal.

The girl held her hand out—this one?

William shook his head no without even looking again, and they went on, run after run, until they came to an obviously pregnant dog. Mastiff, maybe, two generations back.

“That her?” the girl asked.

William hesitated a moment before shaking his head no.

“She’s going to have puppies,” he said.

The girl shook her head no, shrugged like an apology. One with calluses on it.

William looked to her for an explanation.

“We’ll—our doctor . . . ” She was searching for words, falling back on what sounded like a pamphlet: “Any stray we release, we fix, right?”

William nodded, looked to the bitch again. Got it: “So I can’t have her?”

“Not today,” the girl said, looking at the dog too, then away, as if she had to. “After the procedure, though . . . ”

“I should find Lobo first,” William said, remembering.

The girl zipped her keys out, a nervous thing, and they moved on. Lobo was four runs down, a large Rottweiler with scarred eyebrows.

William smiled, wrapped his fingers around the chain link, and dropped to his knees.

The dog crashed into the fence then fell back onto his hind legs. They collapsed under him. Bad hips.

“Nothing to do about that, is there?” he said.

“Acetaminophen for the pain,” the girl said. “You’re sure that’s him, though?”

Because of the snarling, the snapping.

William shrugged, squinched one side of his face up.

“I didn’t—my friend. I shouldn’t even tell you this. He doesn’t know I have him, Lobo.”

“You
stole
him?”

William closed his eyes, as if controlling his voice.

“He kept him chained to a telephone pole all day.” He shrugged. “Not even shade, y’know? The kids after school, I’d see them . . . Doesn’t matter.”

The girl was watching the dog now. Again.

“So Lobo’s not his name?”

“It’s his new name.”

The girl didn’t smile, didn’t nod, just looked to the dog, on one side of the wire door, William on his knees on the other.

“I—I . . .” she started, then pulled the radio back to her mouth, thumbed it open, but finally didn’t say anything.

“What already?” Thad snapped back, in the middle of what sounded like a bad scene with a large cat.

Instead of reporting, the girl smiled over her hand. At William.

William smiled back.

“Nothing,” she said, lowering the radio back to her belt. “This isn’t procedure, you know that, right?” she said.

William shrugged. “Don’t want to get you in trouble,” he said, reaching back, touching his wallet.

The girl shook her head no.

“It has to cost something,” William said.

“Twenty-five,” the girl said, taking down the rainbow leash from its hook by 24B, Lobo’s run. “If there was going to be any paperwork, I mean,” she added. “Twenty-five for shots and neuter.”

William nodded, watching her.

“If there was going to be paperwork,” he repeated.

She nodded with him, watching Lobo.

“Not like I’m on the clock anymore, really,” she said, shrugging, passing the leash over. “Right?”

William worked the clasp on the leash, the skin on the side of his index finger alive where it had brushed her hand.

Behind the chain-link, Lobo was growling now, just a steady rumble.

“Thanks,” William said.

The girl smiled. “For what? I’m not even here, right?”

William didn’t let himself smile, then stood in the door of the run with her when she opened it. Like, if Lobo had anything bad, any violence he’d been saving up for the last thirty-six hours, William was going to be the one to take it here.

He was an old dog with bad hips, though. Used to being the biggest, sure, his head a cinderblock he could clear a room with. But William had been doing this for years, from Florida to Texas. All along I-10.

When the dog slung his head around, William popped his knee to the side, rattling its teeth, then, covering it with his flannel body, he popped the dog once with the heel of his hand, hard, at the base of his spine. Just enough for the back legs to give. Then it was just a matter of leaning down onto the thick neck, working the rainbow leash around, clasping it to itself.

The dog’s—
Lobo’s
—eyes shot red almost immediately with the pressure, the lack of air, and William kept his hand close to the clasp, so he had to walk hunched over.

The girl was on the other side of the hall now, a can of something defensive in her hand.

William smiled.

“Not his fault,” he said, urging the dog along.

“He won’t—he won’t get out again . . . ?”

“The fence—” William said, making more of the struggle than there was, “fixed, yeah . . . don’t worry,” and then left the girl there like that, never even had to use the Pinzer name, or Pinker, or whatever the hell it had been.

~

Two dogs later—a Shepherd-mix and a Golden Retriever, each from the classifieds, families he’d had to make earnest, shuffling promises to—William pulled into a gas station, checked all his doors, and asked the clerk for the bathroom key.

“Have to buy something,” the clerk said, shrugging that it wasn’t his rule, but hey.

William looked down the candy aisle behind him, came back to the clerk.

“I will,” he said.

“
First
,” the clerk added.

He was five-eight, maybe. A smoker.

William stared at him, stared at him, then lifted an air freshener off the revolving display by the register. Ninety-nine cents. He laid down a dollar, counted out one nickel and two pennies.

“Bag?” the clerk asked.

William shook his head no.

The air freshener was an ice cream cone, pink. It smelled like bubble gum. William tucked it into the chest pocket of his flannel jacket and took the key the clerk held across the counter. It was chained to the rusted steel rim of a go-cart, maybe. Or a kid’s old three-wheeler. Nine inches across, four-hole, maybe eight pounds.