The Dogs

I don’t know why it started, but all of a sudden they were fighting.

I was barely awake at this hour, standing barefoot in the kitchen, trying to think of how to make coffee. Of course I know how to make coffee – it’s just hard in the mornings to get my brain going. I stand there and stare at things.

Sometimes things stare back.

The dogs. I let them out.

There is approximately half of a teaspoon of coffee left in the can, and I am really pissed off about it. Wouldn’t you be? If you use the coffee up, it is your obligation to open another can. What if your fucking wife would like a cup? Duhh.  Like that’s’ never happened.

That’s just common sense, which is something I sure as shit can’t expect out of Hank. So now I’ve got a situation where I have to find a can opener and do it by myself. The dogs are making a racket outside and I am just about to get a headache. I yell for them to shut up and they do, for about half a second. I need a cigarette bad. Just as soon as I get my coffee.

Something changes in the air. The dogs are at it. There’s a saying among pit lovers, “Never trust a pit bull not to fight.” No matter how sweet and loving they may be to you, they’ve still got that aggressiveness bred into them. I hear Basher yelp and I kinda think ‘Kick his ass Bebe’. I’m just joking to myself, you know, just because Basher is Hank’s dog, and my dog is tougher. I still love Basher.

I’ve just gotten the coffee open when I hear the sound. This is real. It sounds like the dinosaurs in one of those old fifties movies. I drop the can from my hands and it fans out in brown waves across the linoleum.

Basher is hurt bad, he’s bleeding and snapping wildly at the air, trying to get a piece of Bebe but failing. Jesus. Bebe is killing him. I can’t let this happen. This is Hank’s dog. Bebe has sunk her teeth into Bashers chest and has ripped a red gash into him. Red meat.

I don’t know what to do, I grab the broom and begin to hit Bebe, yelling for her to let go, stop it,  but she doesn’t even look at me. I just keep hitting her and she doesn’t even notice, she is shaking Basher, and he is looking dazed and wild, and blood is spurting from his chest, and I don’t know what to do and I don’t know what I’m doing and I get one of Hank’s guns, the pistol from the top of the refrigerator, and I don’t know anything about guns, just enough to release the safety. I run back outside, and my feet are covered in mud and coffee. I think I may be too late, but what can I do? I have to do something. This is Hank's dog. So I aim and close my eyes and fire and when I open them again Bebe is looking at me but not looking at me, and I am freaking because I have blown off half of her right rear paw, and amazingly she turns back to Basher and continues to slaughter him.

I am vaguely aware that Gwendolyn has wandered outside, and she is leaning against the screen door, watching with her mouth agape as I move closer, and this time with eyes wide open put a bullet into the back of Bebe’s head.

And I swear unto Jesus Christ, before she died, she looked up at me with those big orange eyes and sent me love.

                                                     March 2003