Dog Days
by Richard Stimac
That morning Jimmie carried his new puppy to the tracks.
The puppy was small. Fat. Brown. With a short-haired coat soft like velvet. It could barely stand, let alone walk. Probably taken too soon from its mother. It never cried but held a constant look of existential desperation in its eyes, as if it knew, for certain, that it understood nothing of its life except that it was alive.
Jimmie’s dad always bought presents for Jimmie and his mom. A new TV. A dinner at Ponderosa. Jimmie’s mom even got a Ford Mustang that time she came back from the hospital with her arm in a cast. One time, Jimmie got two new pairs of Adidas. We were envious of the shoes and frightened for Jimmie. Both. At the same time.
They were the type of family that went through dogs. A black lab that growled at everyone. Then was gone the next month. A Pit that cowered in its dog house and low crawled across the yard. They even had a pedigreed French Bulldog that lasted the longest, a few years, but suffocated to death one night in its crate. Jimmie’s dad said those breeds do that.
After Jimmie biked to my house that morning, the dog hung over the handlebars, we rolled over to Benjie’s and picked him up. Benjie loved dogs. He was in the special class at school. The three of us pedaled to Hobo Jungle, a set of trails between the tracks and the back of K-Mart.
There was a small dugout, really a hole, that we romanticized as the foundation of a hobo shack from before the strip mall and subdivisions began suburbanizing the fields of thistle and kudzu-covered stunted trees. Jimmie set the puppy in the middle of the dugout and the poor animal collapsed like a sack. Benjie tried to get the dog to come to him but only its head bobbled. It barely had the strength to hold itself up. Finally, it slumped and closed its eyes. I followed suit.
Summer mornings like this were Edenic. I could just lean back against the dirt and breath in the moist, hot air that filled the canopy. I let my eyes half close as I drifted into a twilight where things became hazy. I wasn’t sure what was real and what was dream.
What you gonna name it? Benjie said.
Nothing, Jimmie said.
You gotta name it something. Benjie began to softly stroke the smooth-coated back of the small creature asleep before us three boys.
Don’t go touchin’ my dog.
It’s scared. I can tell. Benjie reached to pick the puppy up.
I said, don’t touch my dog.
He’s just tryin’ to make it feel safe, I said.
It don’t need to feel safe.
You got to give it a name, Benjie said.
Everything’s got to have a name, I said.
It don’t need no name.
If somethin’ doesn’t have a name, it’s like it doesn’t exist, I said.
I’m gonna call it Milk Chocolate because it’s brown, like milk chocolate. Benjie was proud of himself.
You ain’t gonna call my dog nothin’ like that.
Benjie cradled the dog and began to hum a soft, maternal lullaby.
Jimmie took a pocket knife from his jeans and cut a thin branch from a tree above him.
I’m gonna give it a name only me and Milk Chocolate knows. Benjie whispered into the dog’s ear.
If no one else knows the name, then it’s not really a name, I said.
I know the name, Benjie said.
Retard, Jimmie said. He began to sharpen the end of the stick. That worried me, but I let my eyes shutter against the dim light.
I’m not retarded, Benjie said. He held the dog as if it were suckling at his breast.
The rails began to hum, then the low, melodic sound of the engine. It was an Amtrak. The freight diesels growl but the Amtraks purr. The earth began rock in a soothing and primal rhythm.
At the sound of scuffling, I opened my eyes, Jimmie and Benjie were nearly pulling the dog apart, like the two women with the baby before Solomon.
You’re gonna break the dog’s leg, I said.
Jimmie stabbed at Benjie with the sharpened stick. I reached for Jimmie and he tossed dirt in my eyes. Benjie dropped the puppy. Jimmie grabbed the animal and bounded over the berm that acted as the entrance to the pit. Benjie ran after him. I followed Benjie.
The engine just passed, then the passenger cars, then the baggage cars. Jimmie had the animal by its feet. He reared back on his heels and readied himself. When Jimmie pulled his arms full back, Benjie tackled him. The puppy rolled, unemotionally, into a thicket of thistle and dandelion.
Benjie straddled Jimmie and beat him with open fists about the head.
God damn you, Benjie said. Damn you to hell.
Jimmie turned his head towards me. His eyes were blank, as if he understood nothing of what was happening.
Richard Stimac has a forthcoming full-length book of poetry Bricolage (Spartan Press), a forth-coming poetry chapbook Of Water and of Stone (Moonstone) and published over thirty poems in Burningword, Clackamas, december, The Examined Life Journal, Faultline, Havik (Third Place 2021 Poetry Contest), Michigan Quarterly Review, Mikrokosmos (Second Place 2022 Poetry Contest; A.E. Stallings, judge), New Plains Review, NOVUS, Penumbra, Salmon Creek Journal, Talon Review, Wraparound South. He published flash fiction in BarBar, Flash Fiction Magazine, New Feathers, Paperbark, Prometheus Dreaming, Proud to Be (SEMO Press), Scribble, Talon Review, The Typescript, and The Wild Word. He has also had an informal readings of plays by the St. Louis Writers’ Group and Gulf Coast: Playwright’s Circle, plays published by Fresh Words and The AutoEthnographer, and an essay in The Midwest Quarterly. A screenplay of his is in pre-production. He is a reader for Ariel Publishing.