“They don’t know,” Russell said. “None of them know. They just think, you’re in there, you can’t get out. That’s all they know. They don’t know.”
“I wished they did,” Frankie said. “Putting up with them’s something awful. I wished I knew what it was, a guy goes in and they think it isn’t bad enough, they got to make it worse. I go in again, boy, I’m making sure nobody knows. I dunno if I can do time again, but I sure can’t take the visiting. Shit.”
“I’m not going in again,” Russell said. “That’s what I’m not gonna do.”
“You decided, huh?” Frankie said.
“I’m doing everything I can,” Russell said.
“And that’s what’s gonna put you in again,” Frankie said.
“Nah,” Russell said.
“Sure,” Frankie said, “you’re going back for stealing dogs.”
“Not so far,” Russell said, “and never again, either. You know something? The next dog I see, I’m gonna do a wheelie on him, is what I’m gonna do. Dogs, dogs’re stupid. You beat the living shit out of a dog, hit him with the pills and he goes to sleep, he wakes up the next day and he’s staggering around and all, but he’s hungry. All you got to do with a dog, you can do anything you want to a dog, then just wait till he gets hungry and feed him and he thinks you’re fuckin’ God or something. Except that black fucker.”
“Shepherd grab you?” Frankie said.
“That dog,” Russell said, “he’s the only dog I ever saw, remembers. First time he wakes up, sees me, rrrr, way down in his throat. So, I give him another day. Gets hungry enough, he’ll come around. I starved that fucker four days. His bones showed, for Christ sake. Know what I get when I go out? Rrrrr. I thought I was gonna have to give him some more of the stick. But he don’t come after me, see? Which proves it, that black bastard isn’t dumb. He remembers that stick. He’s not gonna tackle me. He’s just gonna make my life as hard’s he possibly can. So, I hadda feed him. I can’t sell hairy bones, for Christ sake.
“Now,” Russell said, “now he’s got me, and he knows it. I try and get him out, he holds back. I practically got to throw him out of the garage. Then he won’t, I can’t get him in. And he growls at me all the time, still. That bastard, all the way to Florida, we’re in this fuckin’ rainstorm in Maryland, they had a barge hit the bridge and we either hadda go around or we use the tunnel. Which everybody else is using. So Kenny say, ‘We’re going around.’ I thought I seen rain when I was with my Uncle. Christ. And them dogs’re all pissing and farting and shitting and everything in there and we can’t leave the windows down, we don’t wanna suffocate, and we also don’t want to drown. It was awful. I thought dogs was an easy way to make money. It’s not dangerous. I was right about that. I was half right. You know what I get for that black fucker, I thought I was probably gonna get twenty million dollars or something? Seventy-five bucks I got for that dog, and I was lucky to get that. The guy we’re selling them to, he just buys them, right? He just, he only takes care of them. One of those guys with no meat on him. He doesn’t talk. We’re there, he’s got this kind of beaten-to-shit old farm down outside Cocoa Beach. We’re there about half an hour, we’re finally breathing again, we been on the road about ten years with them dogs, all of a sudden I notice, his wife does all the talking. ‘This one here looks like he’s been run over,’ she says. She never stops talking and he never starts. ‘He sick or something? We don’t want no sick dogs here, Mister. I can’t let you have more’n twenty dollars for this one.’
“So I say to her,” Russell said, “she said she’s gonna give me fifty bucks for the black one. ‘Look, he’s got papers, he’s a valuable dog. He’s the real thing. He’s a great dog. Fifty’s not enough.’
“ ‘He hasn’t got no papers today, Mister,’ she says to me,” Russell said. “ ‘He’s just another dog now that I got to think about selling to somebody and that means I got to keep him and feed him and look after him the whole time I’m trying to sell him to somebody, and that’s going to be a long time. I don’t want this dog. I don’t want him at all. You want to take him back with you? Because that’s exactly what you can do, if you don’t like the price. I’ll have trouble, selling that dog to somebody. He looks vicious to me and he’ll look vicious to somebody else.’
“The guy still doesn’t say anything,” Russell said. “Now, she’s got me, of course. I’m not taking that dog no place with me ever again. What I want to say to that dog is ‘Good-bye,’ and I hope I never see him again. All the way to Florida that bastard’s watching the back of my neck, he’s gonna eat me if he gets half a chance. She’s right. He is vicious. But, he’s not being vicious then. The guy’s got him sitting down and the dog’s giving him his paw and the guy’s rubbing his ears and that dog is fuckin’ grinning at him. He thinks he’s home again with the stupid bastard that bought him to protect the medals. Then the dog, the guy stands up and the dog stands up too, puts his feet on the guy’s shoulders and starts lapping his face. ‘Look, Lady,’ I say, ‘that’s a vicious dog? You think somebody’s gonna think that’s a vicious dog? Let ’em see him like that.’
“ ‘Mister,’ she says, ‘that’s the way he is. That’s the way they all are with him. Every dog that comes in here’s like that. That’s why he keeps the dogs and I do the business. Fifty.’
“The guy wakes up or something,” Russell said. “He looks at us. The shepherd’s frenching him, for Christ sake. Guy finally gets the dog’s tongue out of his mouth. ‘Give him seventy-five, Imelda,’ he says.
“ ‘Seventy-five,’ she says,” Russell said. “ ‘Now,’ she says, takes her about three hours to say anything, ‘am I setting the prices here, or are you gonna argue with me every time he decides he likes another dog? Because if you are, you can leave right now and take the rest of those animals with you.’ The only thing I wish,” Russell said, “I wish that woman could’ve met my mother. They’d get along fuckin’ great.”