“That’s the dog’s name?” Dodson said. “How do you call him? Here, Dauntless Road Master Castaway?”
“Isn’t Dauntless out of Amy Sullivan’s dog?” Isaiah said.
“Sin City Castaway,” Skip said. “I tried to buy her but Amy wouldn’t sell. Have you seen Amy? She looks exactly like my mom’s Pekingese. I hated that fucking thing.”
“How are the pups looking?”
“Great, really great. Want to take a look? They’re in the barn.”
They followed Skip along the side of the house, a graveyard for the miscellaneous. A scarred surfboard with the fin broken off. A trash bin full of crushed Red Bull cans. Two screen doors, the screens busted out. A mountain bike with a bent fork. A golf club broken in half. Skip’s got a temper, Isaiah thought. An archery target was stapled to a piece of plywood, arrows stuck in it. Some of them all the way through.
“You into archery?” Dodson said.
“Yeah, I’m pretty good too,” Skip said. “I was going to try out for the Olympic team but I got shingles. Ever had those? They’re the worst.”
“You don’t mind my asking, why do you live out here?”
“Taxes are cheap and no neighbors, right? The dogs make a lot of noise. The bad part, there’s nothing to do. Takes me an hour to get to Redlands, two hours to get to LA. What’d it take you? More like three, right? I surf at First Point in Malibu, takes me just as long. Do you guys surf? Oh right, not a lot of surfing in the hood.”
Skip saw the moving cloud of dust when it was over by the diner. He went up to the hayloft, opened the bay door and pulled the beach towel off the Minox 15X56 hunting binoculars. They were set on a tripod and prefocused on the crossroads. A car came to a stop, two black guys in it arguing. This had to be about the rapper. Skip got Goliath out of his kennel and made him lie down in the living room. He would stay there not making a sound until he was whistled for. Skip went to the front window and watched the black guys drive up and get out of the car. It was an Audi, weird for a black guy and a big engine by the sound of it. They didn’t look threatening, out there yawning and stretching and no guns Skip could see. He got the subcompact Beretta out of the wastebasket and stuck it in his back holster. That’s when Bonnie called.
“You used a fucking dog?” Bonnie said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Well, the guy’s pissed at me for referring you.”
“Tell him I’ll get it done. Don’t I always?”
“Look, just shoot the guy,” Bonnie said. “No dogs, cats, blowguns, boomerangs, or any other fucking thing, just shoot him.”
Skip went outside and watched the black guys come up the walkway. “Don’t worry, Bonnie, I got this.”
“When?”
“Sooner than you think.”
The back of Skip’s house was as derelict as the front. The kitchen door was open, the smell of fast food and stale laundry drifting out. Isaiah was grateful Skip hadn’t invited them in. A cement square with weeds in the cracks served as a patio, a rusty hibachi was set on a cinder block. There was no place to sit down except a low beach chair with frayed yellow webbing. The squalor aside, Isaiah was uncomfortable, the feeling of loneliness like an atmosphere, unseen but all-enveloping.
“You train attack dogs?” Dodson said, looking at the heavily padded jumpsuit puddled near the hose.
“For the military,” Skip said. “Yeah, the marines take them all over the place. Europe, Asia, Germany. My dad was in Iraq, did like five or six tours. Got a Purple Heart.”
“Oh yeah? My old man too.”
The patio looked onto an exercise yard. A garbage can with a rake stuck in it was the only survivor on a battlefield of craters, mounds of dug-up dirt, dried-out palm fronds, a couple of old tires, crushed plastic soda bottles, and coils of dogshit. A ten-foot chain link fence went around the perimeter. Two wires threaded through ceramic insulators ran along the top. Worn-out palm trees gave up some shade.
“This way,” Skip said. They went around the yard. Skip didn’t seem to notice the hundreds of shell casings on the ground or the bullet holes in the wheelbarrow, metal storage shed, paint cans, and fence rails. He smiled weakly when they passed some sheets of plywood with people drawn on them, some with big lips and wide-open eyes. “Yeah, my gun club meets here,” Skip said, “they get carried away.”
In the distance, Isaiah saw a bald hill the color of a cardboard box. Small white circles dotted the hill like thumbtacks on a corkboard. “Hold on a minute,” he said, and stooped to tie his shoe.
“Can you make any money in the dog business?” Dodson said.
“Basically, no,” Skip said. “To breed my WindFlyer bitch I had to get her cleared for eyes, cardiac, thyroid, hip dysplasia, and I had to get a progesterone test to target the best conception date. Yeah, no kidding, right? And Road Master’s stud fee was two thousand bucks and get this: the semen had to be fresh-chilled and FedExed in a special box with semen extender and ice.”
“Semen extender?” Dodson said.
“I haven’t made a nickel off the dogs. It’s one of those passion things. God, I hate that word. But wait ’til you see the pups, they’ll blow your mind.”
“Semen extender?”
The barn had a big sliding door and a regular door, Isaiah noticing there was no lock on either. The dogs had sensed the visitors and were barking wildly. Isaiah thought if Dodson wasn’t black he’d be pale.
“Damn,” Dodson said, “how many dogs you got in there?”
Skip opened the regular door a few inches. A slate-gray pit bull with laser-green eyes jammed its head in the opening and snarled at the newcomers. “Oh shit!” Dodson yelled, jumping back. Isaiah was waiting for it. No other reason to have unlocked doors unless there was some other kind of security.
“Can’t you just see somebody trying to break in here?” Skip said, grinning. “Back up, Attila. Sit.”
Attila backed up and sat. Skip swung the door open and a swath of sunlight cut through the cool, dark barn. Isaiah smelled wet cement, wet dog, sawdust, gun oil, cordite, some sort of disinfectant, and the faintest whiff of dogshit. Chain link kennels were lined up against one wall. They’d been recently hosed down. There were sleeping pallets to keep the dogs off the cement and water bowls with clean water in them. Two of the kennels were empty, one of them twice as big as the others. The dogs were all pits, different colors, most of them normal-size. Except for Attila, who hadn’t moved, all the dogs were barking savagely, the volume almost unbearable.
“Okay, shut up,” Skip said like he was talking to his little sister. The quiet was immediate and shocking, the only sound the dogs’ panting. Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.
“Damn, Skip,” Dodson said. “They know who they daddy is, don’t they?”
Dodson had heard dogs could smell fear and if that was the case he was stinking up the barn. He could smell it himself. Like spoiled milk with a little BO mixed in. The dogs were watching him. Only him. Their long tongues hanging over their toothy grins. It reminded Dodson of his first day at Wayside, walking along the cell block carrying his bedding, the inmates making kissing noises, calling him lean meat and asking him if he liked to toss salads.
“Those two look really big,” Isaiah said, pointing with his chin at two black dogs. “What are they, ninety pounds?”
“I like big dogs,” Skip said. “Cool, huh? They freak people out. Go ahead, the litter’s in the back.” Dodson led the way, past neatly stacked bags of kibble and cases of canned dog food. He thought it was strange how Skip took better care of the dogs than he did of himself. Shiny metal food bowls were stacked on shiny metal shelves. Igloo coolers were marked GROOMING, FIRST AID, EARS, EYES. Spiked collars and muzzles that looked like flowerpots hung on nails. What looked like a long two-pronged barbecue fork with a thick yellow handle was hung separately like a clock or scroll.