II. DEAD DOG BARKS
At night, Dead Dog barks.
Dead Dog is a dog that barks at things in the night that Dead Dog hears but can’t see.
We think that what Dead Dog thinks he hears at night are skunks and coons and dogs not named Dead Dog who hunt at night and like to paw through the cans out back where we put out our trash.
But the truth of it is, there are no cans out back where we put out our trash.
Our trash, Man digs holes in the dirt out back near the woods and down in there we put our trash and put the dirt back on top the way that Dead Dog does with his bones.
But one night when we hear Dead Dog bark and bark and when we hear that his Dead Dog bark is not the kind of a bark that will stop, us boys, we go out to see what it is that Dead Dog thinks that he sees.
This is what we see.
We see a night that is so pitch black dark that we can’t see the trees that we know are out there. We can’t see the moon or the stars that we know are out there up there too. We can’t see where we set our feet when we walk like this out in this at night dark.
Out here, in this dark, Dead Dog is just a sound whose mouth can’t, by us, be found.
Us boys, we reach through the dark.
Dead Dog, we hiss. Hush up.
You know what you’re in for, we warn this dog not dead, if you wake Man up from his sleep.
Man is the kind of man who does not think twice when he lifts up his foot to kick a dog in its face.
Once, how could Dead Dog not think of this, Man took up a rock as big as a dog’s head and he brought it back down on the top of this dog’s head.
When we saw this rock, when we saw this rock come back down to hit this dog on top of its dog head, the both of us boys thought that Dead Dog was sure to be dead.
We knew it was not in us boys to get a man like Man to stop this.
We stood back and tried not to watch.
But how could we not see when we heard what we heard?
We heard Dead Dog make a sound with his mouth that made it sound like Dead Dog was dead.
We flinched and winced and made sounds with our mouths that did our best to tell Man to stop.
When Man put down this rock, this rock, it was a dark dark red against the light dust brown of the dirt.
But through all of this, Dead Dog was a dog that lived.
Dead Dog lived through a rock to his dog head.
It’s true that Dead Dog limped to where we could not see him to that space where the ground and the house make like a cave down there where snakes like to go and lay their eggs and on hot hot days they like to go down there to get out from the sun.
Dead Dog did not come out for three straight days from where he limped to where it is a like a cave down in there where the house sits up on blocks up above the dirt of the ground.
When on the third day Dead Dog crawled forth from out of that dark place and barked at the stars in the night’s sky to say that Dead Dog was a dog that was back for good, that no man with a rock in his hand can keep a dog like Dead Dog down for long, us boys, we gave Dead Dog our hands to smell and lick to see that we were good.
Dead Dog’s eyes were shot with blood and the lump on his head was like a rock that had grown roots in his brain, but for the most part Dead Dog looked to us like he was glad to be back.
And the bark that was Dead Dog’s, it did not stop.
At night, when Dead Dog thinks he hears what he hears, he barks like he wants us to know what sound it is that his dog ears can hear that us boys do not turn our heads to.
Out here in this night, the dark, we think, is like a thing we can grab hold of, but when we try, us boys, we look like, we think, if we could see us, like Man looks when he is drunk.
There is nothing for us to grab hold of but the hands of each of us.
But us boys, we do not hold hands.
We both just stick out both of our hands to see and feel the dark.
We are like this with our hands stuck out in this dark when we hear Dead Dog bark twice.
When Dead Dog barks, Dead Dog’s mouth snaps back down hard like a trap used to kill mice.
When we hear Dead Dog bark out like this, we pull back our boy hands.
But one of our hands does not come back when we tell it to come back.
That hand is in the grip of this dog’s mouth.
When we do pull that hand back free from this dog’s mouth, it is now a hand that has no thumb.
This we can feel.
But it is too dark for us to see where the thumb is. All we do know is that it is not where the thumb used to be.
We drop down on our hands and knees to see if we can find it but our hands come up with rocks and twigs and dirt.
The one of us boys whose thumbs are both where they are meant to be says let’s look for it when it is light out.
The one of us boys whose thumb is not where it used to be says but I can’t go to bed with no thumb.
What, this boy says, will I suck to get me to go to sleep?
You’ve got two thumbs, don’t you, dumb dumb? A thumb is a thumb is it not?
So the one of us boys whose thumb is not where it used to be, that one of us goes to bed that night with just one thumb to put in his boy mouth to help him to go to sleep.
That boy, that night, he does not sleep.
At dawn, when the sun comes up to light the dirt and the trees and the sky, we go out to look for that thumb.
It does not take us long to find that thumb, or what is left of it.
This thumb is a bone in Dead Dog’s mouth.
This thumb, it has been gnawed down to a nub of what this thumb used to be.
Give us back that thumb, one of us boys says when we see that nub of a thumb, like a tooth it sticks out from the side of Dead Dog’s mouth.
Dead Dog looks up at us and barks and when he does the thumb slips down the back of his dog throat.
We watch Dead Dog’s mouth come to a close to make sure that the bone, it does not get stuck.
Dead Dog licks his lips when he knows that the bone is down to stay.
Who needs two thumbs when all you need is one? the boy of us who has two thumbs says to the boy who has just the one.
Just then Boy walks up to us to see with us what’s up.
Look at Boy.
Boy lives in the woods.
Boys looks like a boy who is made out of dirt.
Boy was born with a full head of hair but with no tongue in his boy mouth.
If Boy can live with no tongue in his mouth, don’t you think that a boy like one of us can live with just one thumb on his hand?
To this, the both of us boys nod our boy heads.
But the next time we see Boy, we ask Boy to hold out his hand.
Us boys, we hold out our hands to show Boy how to hold it.
We hold out our hands so that they are shaped like stars.
Boy does like he is told.
Good, Boy, we tell this boy.
This is when one of us boys goes out back to the back of our house and then comes back with a knife.
This might sting, we say to Boy, and then we take turns with this knife till we cut through the bone that holds Boy’s thumb to his one hand.
Boy does not wince, or flinch with his arm, or make with his boy mouth the sound of a boy who might cry out.
Good, Boy, we say this once more to this boy we call Boy.
We start to take our knife to Boy’s left hand thumb when Man comes out back to take a piss.
What are you boys up to?
Man’s piss makes the dirt turn to mud.
Boy does not grunt or say a word.
Us boys, we tell Man that we are on our way to go to town.
Man turns and tucks his self back in and turns to go back to the house.
So, us boys, we go back to Boy’s hand.
We cut and we cut till this thumb drops from Boy’s hand loose.