“We leave inna middle of the night, for Christ sake,” Russell said. “I said to him: Tor Christ sake, Kenny, we’re gonna have to drive inna daytime sooner or later, there’s no way we’re stoppin’ anywhere with what we’re gonna have in there. So why the fuck’re we leaving when we oughta be in bed?’
“ ‘Well,’ he tells me, ‘see, we gotta do it this way. I wanna get the hell at least onna Jersey Pike before it gets light. Too many fuckin’ cops around here, heard about fuckin’ dogs missing. See a couple guys, earful of dogs, they’re maybe gonna get around to stopping us, see what we got to say.’ But cops other places, they didn’t hear nothing about dogs, nobody told them anything. ‘And besides,’ he says, ‘I did this before. First part of the trip’s really something. So, we start inna dark.’
“Then he shows up,” Russell said. “See, I couldn’t sleep. He told me: ‘Get yourself six, seven hours in the afternoon, you can. We got about sixteen hundred miles in front of us. Last time, took me almost three days. So it’d really help, you get some sleep, all them dogs inna car and everything.’
“Okay,” Russell said, “I try it. I get up. I eat. I sit around. I let my fuckin’ dogs out. I let my fuckin’ dogs in. I feed my fuckin’ dogs. That’s another thing he tells me. ‘When’ve you been feeding them dogs? At night, probably.’ I tell him, yeah, just before I go out, the horsemeat and the fuckin’ meal. Keeps them nice and quiet. ‘Tomorrow,’ he says, ‘feed them, lunch instead. Dogs don’t know the difference. I want them dogs have a good shit for themselves, before we get them inna car. Also, now, I want you to give them something, all right?’
“I thought he means the phenobarb,” Russell said. “Christ, I got myself so much phenobarb I could nod off half the town without doing nothing else. No. Because, see, you dope them just before you load them up, inna car, they all start off with a nice nap. He’s got mineral oil. Four fuckin’ gallons of mineral oil.
“ ‘Dump this in their fuckin’ food,’ he says. ‘Give ’em fuckin’ all of it. Got any tomato soup? Get about twenny cans tomato soup, mix that up and heat it, right? Just like you’re gonna eat it yourself.’ I tell him, I can’t eat it, it hasn’t got rice in it. ‘Always tomato rice inna slammer, Kenny,’ I say. ‘I gotta put rice in it?’ He doesn’t know anything. The guy’s got absolutely no sense of humor and he never did time. He don’t know anything.”
“He should’ve,” Frankie said.
“There’s very few guys,” Russell said, “shouldn’t’ve. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘heat it up and dump the oil in. Then pour it in their food and they’ll woof it down like champs. Otherwise, they won’t. Then, I guarantee it, you make sure them fuckin’ dogs can get out, fast, because that stuff’s gonna come out of them like they’re waxed.’
“Them dogs,” Russell said, “all I could think of was when guys got dysentery the first time, you know? And they didn’t, they never had nothing like you get there, before that, and they didn’t know what was gonna happen to them. So them dogs, I put that food down, they practically trample each other, get at it, and I let them out and pretty soon they’re all wrinkled up, their faces’re all wrinkled and they’re squatting and squatting. Christ, you could smell that fuckin’ backyard in goddamned Springfield, steam’s coming out of the grass like it’s on fire or something. My mother comes home, she’s about a block away and she starts in on me. ‘Where’re you getting them dogs from? They’ll have the Board of Health down.’ I said: ‘Yeah, Ma. You know what you did? You hurt my feelings. You shouldn’t’ve come down here, you should’ve stayed where you are.’ My only son, he’s in jail, she’s got to come down here so she can be around and visit me. Know how many times she visits me? Three times. Three times in almost three years. Brought me a fuckin’ cake, once. They wouldn’t let her bring it in. ‘Shouldn’t’ve put the file in it, Ma,’ I said, ‘I meant to tell you, Ma, they got the metal detector, there. They can spot the file.’ She tells me: ‘There was nothing in that cake.’ Fine mother she is, I tell her. Shit. I said: ‘Ma, you hurt my feelings. Just for that, I’m gonna take my dogs out of here. I’m gonna take ’em out tonight. But just for that, I’m not cleaning up. I was you, taking the garbage out, I think I’d wanna be careful where I was stepping.’ She looks at me. ‘Figures,’ she says, ‘fits right in with everything else I got from you. Do me a favor, willya? Don’t come back.’ I told her: ‘I take after my old man. I won’t.’
“Now the next thing I got to do,” Russell said, “I got to get that phenobarb into them dogs. ‘This’s kind of tricky,’ he tells me. ‘You got to take the water away from them by five o’clock, because them dogs, after the oil goes through them they’ll drink it all, and then we’ll fuckin’ drown in dogpiss. The trouble is, the last time I did this we give them the phenobarb about five, before we take the water away from them, and we really gave them a lot, because the time before that we didn’t give them enough and they got inna car and they all hadda nice nap and then it’s a fuckin’ madhouse. So the last time we give them too much and they’re all woozy, we get them to the guy, and we didn’t get nothing for them, the dogs’re sick and all the rest of it. I don’t want no more of that shit. I don’t want them dogs raising hell all the way down and I don’t want them bumping into things, we get down there, either. Give the little ones, half a grain. A grain if they’re lively. The big ones a couple grains, and if they’re, if there’s any of them that’re still jumping round, hit ’em again. With the water. Then take the water back. Take some bread and make it in little balls and stick another half a grain in that and give them it around eleven or so, and that oughta do it.’
“I said to him,” Russell said, “I said: ‘Kenny, I thought I was supposed to sleep all day. How’m I gonna sleep, I’m doing all them things?’ And he tells me. ‘Take a little dog dope.’ So I ask him, he’s gettin’ dough offa these dogs, how come I got to do all the work? ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I got to do something.’
“He’s worse’n fuckin’ Squirrel for making out off guys,” Russell said. “He shows up, right around midnight, he’s got three more dogs. I’m busting my ass all day, getting dogs ready, Kenny’s out gettin’ more dogs. I said: ‘For Christ sake, Kenny, that’s’—we already sold some of the dogs to this guy down the North End? Poodles. We had three poodles and he give us a buck and a half apiece on them. Which isn’t bad—‘that’s sixteen dogs we got, mine and yours.’ He’s got this Caddy limo. Took the back seat out and he had a lot of old blankets all the way back in there, in the trunk. ‘Can’t put sixteen dogs in there. They’ll kill each other.’
“These dogs, he tells me, ‘These’re little ones.’ He’s got a couple spaniels and a wire-haired. Tit right in, no sweat.’ So, we load them up. My dogs’re all dopey. He takes the front legs, I take back legs. My mother’s looking out of the window. Finally get all them dogs in. Stack them right up. I’m getting in the car, she opens the window. ‘That all of them?’ Yeah. ‘Good. Remember what I said.’ Right, and now I understand the old man a lot better, too. She shuts the window, bang.”
“You’re still better off’n I was,” Frankie said. “My mother, she used to come every week. Every single fuckin’ week, I’d, I used to sit on Sunday, and the first thing I hadda do was, I hadda go to Mass. Fuckin’ guy, every single fuckin’ week he talks about Dismas. Oh for Christ sake. Well, no. Some weeks he talks about beating off. Funny, didn’t have nothing to say about blow jobs and like that. And then, the good meal, you know? The one that was just as shitty as the rest of them, except it was supposed to be good. Seen a turnip? I see another turnip, I throw the fuckin’ thing at somebody. And then my poor old gray-haired mother, her and her fuckin’ coat that’s all beat to shit, comes in looking like somebody that just got hit on the head. And I got to sit through that. ‘I pray for you, Frankie.’ ‘I made a novena for you, Frankie.’ ‘I hope you get parole, Frankie.’ ‘I know in my heart you’re a good boy, Frankie.’ ‘Frankie, you’ve got to change your ways.’ And she’s gonna stay, boy, she’s not comin’ all the way up there, she’s gonna leave in five minutes. No, sir. One week she’s sick. Sandy comes for a change. ‘Anything I can do for you, Frankie?’ You bet your ass there is. Chain Ma the bed, for Christ sake. ‘She don’t mean anything,’ Sandy says. ‘She feels guilty. She told me, she dunno what she didn’t do.’ I told her: ‘She didn’t tell me about assholes like the Doctor, that’s what it is,’ ” Frankie said. “ ‘Tell her, the next kid, teach him to plan a job right, he doesn’t get some fatmouth bastard in there, fuck things up.’ She looks at me. ‘You want me to tell her, you don’t want her coming no more?’ Of course I do. So she does, and the next week Ma comes up, you should’ve seen her. Looked like somebody took her out and kicked the shit out of her. ‘Frankie,’ she says, ‘Sandy said, you don’t want your mother coming up here no more.’ And then she starts crying, and there’s guys looking at me, and half of them’re bulls and they’re all gonna tell the parole, ‘He’s mean to his mother, she comes up to see him and he don’t appreciate it.’ Oh, Jesus, it was awful. So, what could I do? I told her, come back, Ma, I was just talking. And she did. Novenas, the stations, the rosary, she’s going down to Mission Church there and everything for me. Christ. ‘I ain’t crippled, Ma,’ I tell her. ‘In your soul you are,’ she says. Jesus. I’m lucky I didn’t get at her through the screen.”