“He’ll get sent to the YMCA,” he said, “and when nobody adopts him, which they won’t because of his history, he’ll be put to sleep.”
“Is that what they do at the YMCA?”
“Is that what I said? I meant the SPCA.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“The animal shelter, whatever you want to call it. She lived alone, so there’s nobody else to take the dog.”
“In the paper,” Dot said, “it says they found him standing over her body, crying plaintively. But I don’t suppose you stuck around to watch that part.”
“No, I went straight home,” he said. “And this time nobody followed me.”
The following Thursday afternoon, the phone was ringing when he got back to his apartment. “Stay,” he said. “Good boy.” And he went and picked up the phone.
“There you are,” Dot said. “I tried you earlier but I guess you were out.”
“I was.”
“But now you’re back,” she said. “Keller, is everything all right? You seemed a little out of it when you left here the other day.”
“No, I’m okay.”
“That’s really all I called to ask, because I just... Keller, what’s that sound?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s a dog.”
“Well,” he said.
“This whole dog business, it made you miss Nelson, so you went out and got yourself a dog. Right?”
“Not exactly.”
“ ‘Not exactly.’ What’s that supposed to mean? Oh, no. Keller, tell me it’s not what I think it is.”
“Well.”
“You went out and adopted that goddam killing machine. Didn’t you? You decided putting him to sleep would be a crime against nature, and you just couldn’t bear for that to happen, softhearted creature that you are, and now you’ve saddled yourself with a crazed, bloodthirsty beast that’s going to make your life a living hell. Does that pretty much sum it up, Keller?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” he said. “Dot, they sent the dog to a shelter, just the way I said they would.”
“Well, there’s a big surprise. I thought for sure they’d run him for the Senate on the Republican ticket.”
“But it wasn’t the SPCA.”
“Or the YMCA either, I’ll bet.”
“They sent him to IBARF.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The Inter-Boro Animal Rescue Foundation, IBARF for short.”
“Whatever you say.”
“And the thing about IBARF,” he said, “is they never euthanize an animal. If it’s not adoptable, they just keep it there and keep feeding it until it dies of old age.”
“How old is Fluffy?”
“Not that old. And, you know, it’s not like a maximum-security institution there. Sooner or later somebody would leave a cage open, and Fluffy would get a chance to kill a dog or two.”
“I think I see where this is going.”
“Well, what choice did I have, Dot?”
“That’s the thing with you these days, Keller. You never seem to have any choice, and you wind up doing the damnedest things. I’m surprised they let you adopt him.”
“They didn’t want to. I explained how I needed a vicious dog to guard a used-car lot after hours.”
“One that would keep other dogs from breaking in and driving off in a late-model Honda. I hope you gave them a decent donation.”
“I gave them a hundred dollars.”
“Well, that’ll pay for fifty Good Humors, won’t it? How does it feel, having a born killer in your apartment?”
“He’s very sweet and gentle,” he said. “Jumps up on me, licks my face.”
“Oh, God.”
“Don’t worry, Dot. I know what I have to do.”
“What you have to do,” she said, “is go straight to the SPCA, or even the YMCA, as long as it’s not some chicken-hearted outfit like IBARF. Some organization that you can count on to put Fluffy down in a humane manner, and to do it as soon as possible. Right?”
“Well,” he said, “not exactly.”
“What a nice dog,” the young woman said.
The animal, Keller had come to realize, was an absolute babe magnet. In the mile or so he’d walked from his apartment to the park, this was the third woman to make a fuss over Fluffy. This one said the same thing the others had said: that the dog certainly looked tough and capable, but that he really was just a big baby, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?
Keller wanted to urge her to get down on all fours and bark. Then she’d find out just what kind of a big old softie Fluffy was.
He’d waited until twilight, hoping to avoid as many dogs and dogwalkers as possible, but there were still some to be found, and Fluffy was remarkably good at spotting them. Whenever he caught sight of one, or caught the scent, his ears perked up and he strained at the leash. But Keller kept a good tight hold on it, and kept leading the dog to the park’s less-traveled paths.
It would have been easy to follow Dot’s advice, to pay another hundred dollars and palm the dog off on the SPCA or some similar institution. But suppose they got their signals crossed and let someone adopt Fluffy? Suppose, one way or another, something went wrong and he got a chance to kill more dogs?
This wasn’t something to delegate. This was something he had to do for himself. That was the only way to be sure it got done, and got done properly. Besides, it was something he’d hired on to do long ago. He’d been paid, and it was time to do the work.
He thought about Nelson. It was impossible, walking in the park with a dog on a leash, not to think about Nelson. But Nelson was gone. In all the time since Nelson’s departure, it had never seriously occurred to him to get another dog. And, if it ever did, this wasn’t the dog he’d get.
He patted his pocket. There was a small-caliber gun in it, an automatic, unregistered, and never fired since it came into his possession several years ago. He’d kept it, because you never knew when you might need a gun, and now he had a use for it.
“This way, Fluffy,” he said. “That’s a good boy.”
© 2008 by Lawrence Block. First published in a different form in Hit Parade, © 2006 HarperCollins.
Mother Dear
by Robert Barnard
In 2003 Robert Barnard received the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for Lifetime Achievement. The many other awards he’s received over the course of his career as a novelist and short story writer are too numerous to mention, though it’s worth noting that his two most recent honors were nominations for the Agatha and Macavity awards for his 2006 EQMM story “Provenance.”
Our mother bore six children at a time when large families were rare, and in a small town where they were commented on with pursed lips, or accompanied by a salacious leer. I say “my mother bore” not because we arrived from her womb (though, unlikely as that seemed to us, we did) but because our father played no part in our early lives that we can easily recalclass="underline" He was always “at work” or “down the allotment,” whence came shrivelled greens and carrots, gnarled turnips, and potatoes scarred by spade marks. Our mother was our life, and I suppose that, just as a dog on a lead has his owner on a lead as well, we were hers.
She was not, I emphasize, a motherly person: Nor, I imagine, did she participate joyfully in the process by which our existences were set in train. She was dour and hard, the sergeant-major of the house. I never remember her embracing me or kissing me, or any of the other five, for she had no favourites. We were her life because she organised us: As soon as we were capable of doing anything around the house we were taught it and then kept at it. Kept at it, in fact, all the hours we were home from school. Teaching these home duties was done by slaps or worse on the bare legs, or cuffs around the head. Threats kept us at our tasks, and the threats were always carried out if our efforts fell short of her expectations in any way. Our hours at school were our times of pleasure. During our hours at home we were worked as hard as any mill child or young chimney-sweep in the nineteenth century.