The dog was green.
Blue had used some of the money Big Bobby’d paid him over the past few weeks to upgrade his target scope. The new scope was huge, twice the width of the rifle barrel, and because the days were getting shorter, it was outfitted with a light-amplification device. Elgin had used similar scopes in the jungle, and he’d never liked them, even when they’d saved his life and those of his platoon, picked up Charlie coming through the dense flora like icy gray ghosts. Night scopes — or LADs as they’d called them over there — were just plain unnatural, and Elgin always felt like he was looking through a telescope from the bottom of a lake. He had no idea where Blue would have gotten one, but hunters in Eden had been showing up with all sorts of weird Marine or army surplus shit these last few years; Elgin had even heard of a hunting party using grenades to scare up fish — blowing ’em up into the boat already half cooked, all you had to do was scale ’em.
The dog was green, the highway was beige, the top of the tree line was yellow, and the trunks were the color of army fatigues.
Blue said, “What you think?”
They were up in the tree house Blue’d built. Nice wood, two lawn chairs, a tarp hanging from the branch overhead, a cooler filled with Cool’s. Blue’d built a railing across the front, perfect for resting your elbows when you took aim. Along the tree trunk, he’d mounted a huge klieg light plugged to a portable generator, because while it was illegal to “shine” deer, nobody’d ever said anything about shining wild dogs. Blue was definitely home.
Elgin shrugged. Just like in the jungle, he wasn’t sure he was meant to see the world this way — faded to the shades and textures of old photographs. The dog, too, seemed to sense that it had stepped out of time somehow, into this seaweed circle punched through the landscape. It sniffed the air with a misshapen snout, but the rest of its body was tensed into one tight muscle, leaning forward as if it smelled prey.
Blue said, “You wanna do it?”
The stock felt hard against Elgin’s shoulder. The trigger, curled under his index finger, was cold and thick, something about it that itched his finger and the back of his head simultaneously, a voice back there with the itch in his head saying, “Fire.”
What you could never talk about down at the bar to people who hadn’t been there, to people who wanted to know, was what it had been like firing on human beings, on those icy gray ghosts in the dark jungle. Elgin had been in fourteen battles over the course of his twelve-month tour, and he couldn’t say with certainty that he’d ever killed anyone. He’d shot some of those shapes, seen them go down, but never the blood, never their eyes when the bullets hit. It had all been a cluster-fuck of swift and sudden noise and color, an explosion of white lights and tracers, green bush, red fire, screams in the night. And afterward, if it was clear, you walked into the jungle and saw the corpses, wondered if you’d hit this body or that one or any at all.
And the only thing you were sure of was that you were too fucking hot and still — this was the terrible thing, but oddly exhilarating too — deeply afraid.
Elgin lowered Blue’s rifle, stared across the interstate, now the color of seashell, at the dark mint tree line. The dog was barely noticeable, a soft dark shape amid other soft dark shapes.
He said, “No, Blue, thanks,” and handed him the rifle.
Blue said, “Suit yourself, buddy.” He reached behind them and pulled the beaded string on the klieg light. As the white light erupted across the highway and the dog froze, blinking in the brightness, Elgin found himself wondering what the fucking point of a LAD scope was when you were just going to shine the animal anyway.
Blue swung the rifle around, leaned into the railing, and put a round in the center of the animal, right by its rib cage. The dog jerked inward, as if someone had whacked it with a bat, and as it teetered on wobbly legs, Blue pulled back on the bolt drove it home again, and shot the dog in the head. The dog flipped over on its side, most of its skull gone, back leg kicking at the road like it was trying to ride a bicycle.
“You think Jewel Lut might, I dunno, like me?” Blue said.
Elgin cleared his throat. “Sure. She’s always liked you.”
“But I mean...” Blue shrugged, seemed embarrassed suddenly. “How about this: You think a girl like that could take to Australia?”
“Australia?”
Blue smiled at Elgin. “Australia.”
“Australia?” he said again.
Blue reached back and shut off the light. “Australia. They got some wild dingoes there, buddy. Could make some real money. Jewel told me the other day how they got real nice beaches. But dingoes too. Big Bobby said people’re starting to bitch about what’s happening here, asking where Rover is and such, and anyway, ain’t too many dogs left dumb enough to come this way anymore. Australia,” he said, “they never run out of dog. Sooner or later, here, I’m gonna run out of dog.”
Elgin nodded. Sooner or later, Blue would run out of dog. He wondered if Big Bobby’d thought that one through, if he had a contingency plan, if he had access to the National Guard.
“The boy’s just, what you call it, zealous,” Big Bobby told Elgin.
They were sitting in Phil’s Barbershop on Main. Phil had gone to lunch, and Big Bobby’d drawn the shades so people’d think he was making some important decision of state.
Elgin said, “He ain’t zealous, Big Bobby. He’s losing it. Thinks he’s in love with Jewel Lut.”
“He’s always thought that.”
“Yeah, but now maybe he’s thinking she might like him a bit too.”
Big Bobby said, “How come you never call me Mayor?”
Elgin sighed.
“All right, all right. Look,” Big Bobby said, picking up one of the hair-tonic bottles on Phil’s counter and sniffing it, “so Blue likes his job a little bit.”
Elgin said, “There’s more to it and you know it.”
Playing with combs now. “I do?”
“Bobby, he’s got a taste for shooting things now.”
“Wait.” He held up a pair of fat, stubby hands. “Blue always liked to shoot things. Everyone knows that. Shit, if he wasn’t so short and didn’t have six or seven million little health problems, he’d a been the first guy in this town to go to The Nam. ’Stead, he had to sit back here while you boys had all the fun.”
Calling it The ’Nam. Like Big Bobby had any idea. Calling it fun. Shit.
“Dingoes,” Elgin said.
“Dingoes?”
“Dingoes. He’s saying he’s going to Australia to shoot dingoes.”
“Do him a world of good too.” Big Bobby sat back down in the barber’s chair beside Elgin. “He can see the sights, that sort of thing.”
“Bobby, he ain’t going to Australia and you know it. Hell, Blue ain’t never stepped over the county line in his life.”
Big Bobby polished his belt buckle with the cuff of his sleeve. “Well, what you want me to do about it?”
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you. Next time you see him, Bobby, you look in his fucking eyes.”
“Yeah. What’ll I see?”
Elgin turned his head, looked at him. “Nothing.”
Bobby said, “He’s your buddy.”
Elgin thought of the small panties curling out of the dust under Blue’s bed. “Yeah, but he’s your problem.”
Big Bobby put his hands behind his head, stretched in the chair. “Well, people getting suspicious about all the dogs disappearing, so I’m going to have to shut this operation down immediately anyway.”