The dog lets go of his arm for a moment, and the pain is instantly eased, and then the dog is snapping at his face and biting at his shoulder, climbing all over him as he rolls over the green floor of the forest, staining the grass and the weeds with blood. The butt of the Walther is in his hand now, his left hand, he says under his breath, “Here, you son of a bitch!” and shoves his hand and the gun into the dog’s open mouth as the dog comes at him again. The dog smells of horror and of death, the dog smells of hair and shit. He squeezes the trigger inside the dog’s mouth just as the jaws clamp shut on his wrist. The explosion takes off the back of the dog’s head, fur and bone and blood flying into the air, sunlight glistening on them. It is like the back of the cop’s head. He watches in fascination. He is afraid the dog will bite his left hand off at the wrist, but there is almost no head left to the dog now, the nine-millimeter slug has taken away half of that fuckin triangular head and the jaws have gone lax and Colley pulls back his hand as the dog slides in slow motion to the forest floor. Colley fires at him again, and then again. He keeps firing. Something warns him that he is wasting ammunition, the cartridges for the Walther and the .32 are still back there in the glove compartment of the Pinto. But he keeps firing into the lifeless body of the beast nonetheless, watching patches of fur and gristle and blood fly into the air. The gun clicks empty. He throws the gun at the dog. He has never even been able to throw a ball straight with his right hand, and this is his left hand and he is throwing a gun, not a ball, and of course he misses. He kicks out at the dog, his foot colliding with the snot-running black snout, the back of the dog’s head gone, he wants to kick out all the dog’s fuckin teeth. He keeps kicking at the head.
Then he collapses to the ground, and rolls over onto his back and tries to catch his breath. He is afraid he will choke to death if he does not start breathing normally soon. His left wrist isn’t bleeding at all, the dog barely had his teeth on it before the Walther went off inside his mouth. But his right arm is bleeding very badly. His right arm looks like a piece of meat in a butcher shop, his right arm looks as raw as Jocko’s throat did when Colley looked into it earlier tonight. The dog’s teeth were easily as sharp as the knife Jeanine used, and Colley is certain he will die the way Jocko died, leaking blood from the hundreds of teeth slashes on his arm. He knows he has to stop the blood, and he decides he should take off his shirt and wrap it around his arm. But he is trembling so hard and fighting so painfully to catch his breath that all he can do is lie on his back on the trampled weeds, his eyes closed, the sunlight flickering on his lids.
The sun goes out.
He thinks he is dead.
He thinks his heart has stopped beating, his heart actually does stop beating in that instant when the blackness closes on his lids. He opens his eyes at once. The man standing there against the sun, blocking the sun, is wearing dirt-stained bib overalls, no shirt under them. His arms are long and thin and covered with hair. He is holding a shotgun in his hands, the barrel cradled on the palm of his left hand, the stock in the crook of his right arm, his right index finger inside the trigger guard and curled around the trigger. Colley looks first at the shotgun and then up at the man’s face.
It is thin and gaunt, the cheeks are sunken, there is a four-day beard bristle on the man’s jaw, the man looks like the fuckin rednecks Colley has seen in the movies — but this is New Jersey, what is a redneck doing this far north? The man’s eyes are a pale blue. Looking up into his eyes, Colley can hardly see any whites at all, the blue seems to consume the eyeballs, Colley is sure it is a trick of the light in the forest. But as the man continues to stare down at him, his mouth unmoving, his eyes unflickering, Colley begins to think this is not a man at all but is instead Death, the same Death ticking in the unseen clock in Jocko’s apartment, the same Death that’s been hounding him since nine o’clock last night when he shot and killed a fuckin police officer in a liquor store in the Bronx.
He does not know what Death wants of him, except his life.
The man suddenly reverses the shotgun, grasping the barrel in both hands. “You son of a bitch,” he says softly, and swings the stock at Colley’s head.
There is a clock ticking.
The side of Colley’s face is throbbing where the shotgun stock collided with his cheekbone. The Smith & Wesson has been taken from his side pocket, he is aware at once of the absence of its bulk. The other gun, the Walther, is probably still in the woods. He feels suddenly naked. He is lying on the floor in one corner of a wooden shack. His arm is crusted with dried and drying blood. No one has cleaned it, no one has dressed it. A woman is sitting beside him and above him in a straight-backed wooden chair. She is in her late fifties, her eyes are blue, her hair is gray. She is wearing only a soiled slip. She smiles when he opens his eyes. The clock is on a shelf behind her head. The time is ten minutes past three. He knows it is P.M. and not A.M. because there is sunshine outside the window to the left of the shelf.
“He’s out burying the dog,” the woman says. She is still smiling. There is a gold tooth in the lower left-hand corner of her mouth. She has long thin arms like the man’s and her knuckles are raw and red. The shotgun is leaning against the seat of the chair, the barrel not six inches from her right hand. “Shouldn’ta killed that dog,” she says. “He loved that dog like his own son. Why’d you kill the dog?”
“He attacked me,” Colley says.
“You had no right in them woods,” the woman says.
Colley’s arm aches. The bleeding has stopped, but he is worried about gangrene or blood poisoning or whatever — things he has only heard about and has no real knowledge of, except that he knows they can result from gunshot wounds and probably from dog bites as well — Jesus, does he have to worry about rabies, too?
“What were you doin in the woods?” the woman says.
“Taking a walk.”
“That’s posted property. Didn’t you see the posted signs?”
“No. Listen, have you got something I can put on my arm here? I’m afraid it might get infected.”
The woman shakes her head. “Shouldn’ta killed that dog,” she says, ignoring his request. “You’re gonna be in for it, he gets back.”
He wonders if he should make a play for the shotgun now, before the man gets back. He does not think the man will kill him, because if he was going to do that, he’d have done it in the woods. But he can feel the throbbing bruise on the side of his face where the stock connected with his cheekbone, and he does not want to suffer a beating when the man returns. It has been his experience that bad situations only get worse. If you do not make your move when something is just starting, then everything gets out of hand later on and it is impossible to make a move that will change the picture. The woman is sitting there smiling, she seems frail enough, he decides he will make his move now, try for the gun, blow her brains out if she gives him any trouble. The woman anticipates him. She has seen something in his eyes, she has looked into his head and seen the wheels turning. She lifts the shotgun and points it at him and says only, “Don’t.”
“Relax,” he says.
“Oh, I’m relaxed,” she says, and smiles. “It’s you better relax, mister.”