When Dogs Bark...
The Short Story
by
Charles W. Harvey
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
When Dogs Bark...
The Short Story
Copyright © 2012 by Charles W. Harvey
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, organizations, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Author’s Website www.charlesharveyauthor.com
Table of Contents
When Dogs Bark
About the Author
Poetry Excerpts
****
When Dogs Bark
New York’s got two bad bad habits—she’ll trip your ass up and she’s one long stinking fart. I’ve been here three days and this place never stops belching and farting--buses, sirens, taxis, trucks, subways, jack hammers, mouths yelling “fuck yoooou!” New York sounds like it’s been eating beans all its life.
I’m here with Eartha Pearl visiting one of her relatives, the cousin with the buckteeth. She wants to be an actress. But between me, you, and the woods I think she’s only cut out for beaver movies. I mean that girl can stand toe to toe with any beaver who decides some damn forest is in its way.
Eartha and this cousin get on my nerves after a few days of sitting in this tiny apartment--they doing that girl talk about men and me in particular--dishing up men’s short¬comings. Stuff like, “I don’t know which is uglier, a naked man or a baboon turned inside out.”
Eartha Pearl: Some days I think I married a baboon
Cousin: One man can outstink a whole herd of goats.
Eartha Pearl: I know one who can outstink two herds
Cousin: And honey, not a brain in their heads.
Eartha Pearl: Lord, the biggest muscle some folks
got is in their heads.
I growl softly at Eartha. She looks at me and hushes. Her cousin keeps jabbering away--those big teeth sawing the air as if it’s wood. I began barking.
“Oh Diane, I picked up a cute Butterick pattern for a Pantsuit. It’s virgin leather or something. I wish I could sew,” says Eartha Pearl to change the subject. Eartha’s cousin looks at me like I’m queer.
“It’s just his nerves when he gets cross,” Eartha says smiling as if she’s explaining a puppy’s bad habit. I get up and put on my shoes to go out. Eartha Pearl tries to establish her ownership rights to me.
“Who you know here? Where are you going?”
I say, “I got eight million friends here and ain’t a damn one in this room!” I slam the door behind me.
Now by the time I get from the eleventh floor to the first, my mind kicks in. It must have been the blood on the wall on the fifth floor. My mind says, “Now Jethro, this is a crazy city. All of these eight million people ain’t your friend. One of them will kill you if you let him. Go Back!”
Naw. I ain’t going back. Eartha Pearl and her cousin will just laugh at me. And I’d have to kill them to prove I was a man. I peep out the door and it looks innocent enough outside. Men and women passing by. Trash blowing in a circle. The sky looking like faded blue drawers. So I venture out and sit on the stoop. I look east and I look west. Then I look west and I look east.
I say, “Now wait a minute, Jethro, you ain’t gonna have no cultural experiences stuck scared here on this stoop. Suppose Columbus had just sat on a stoop all his life. Just suppose. Shit. A man must take action!” While I sit debating, this big white dude in chains and leather walks toward me. Now these chains ain’t dainty little things you get from Spiegel’s catalog. These chains come from the Navy yard. I mean these chains can lift submarines. He wears three around his neck, five on each wrist, and two on each ankle. Now the chains do not bother me. The fact that he has on funky raw uncured leather does not bother me. Even the glass eye--I hope it’s glass--dangling from his left ear lobe on a chain does not bother me. What bothers me is when he turns in my direction, and grabs his grapefruit sized crotch and smiles—that’s what bothers ol’ Jethro here. I say, “Uh oh Jethro, somebody wants you to swing a certain way. And I don’t swing that way.” I wonder why he pick on me? So what if I do have on these black hightop sneakers, shorts with Texas bluebonnets all over them, and a pink tee-shirt that says, “I BRAKE FOR MOONERS--that don’t mean I’m gay. Shit. I’m just a colorful dude. Well okay if you want to count that time when I was in the eighth grade and me and Johnny Scardino grabbed each other’s rods behind the gym bleachers. I wouldn’t have gone back there with him, but he told me he had two and he would show me if I showed him mine. Okay it tickled and I got a hard-on when he grabbed me and I grabbed him out of reflexes, but I haven’t seen Johnny since the eighth grade. I dreamed about him once, since I been married to Eartha Pearl. But I woke up and made love to Eartha real quick.
So anyway I hang my head and growl softly at the man in leather. He must think I’m calling him to dinner ‘cause he moves a little closer. When I see him step, I bark louder. And not yap yap like a poodle either. I’m Doberman and Great Dane combined. I rattle nearby windows. New York people stare at me as they walk by. And they tell me you’re doing something when you can get a New Yorker to stare at you eye-level on the street. The dude slinks away like he’s carrying a tail between his legs.
I say to myself, damn Jethro, my barking stuff is right on time. Damn if I’ll ever let a head doctor take it from me. Fuck Eartha Pearl’s suggestion. I get off the stoop and walk down the street barking my ass off. Nobody messes with me. Not even that gang on the corner with bones sewed to their leather jackets want a piece of me. I’m free as a pigeon. Do I stand up on the subway? Hell no! Sometimes I have a whole car of seats to myself.
****
Eartha Pearl and her man-hating cousin never want to go nowhere. When it’s daytime, they say it’s too hot. When it’s evening, they say they don’t want to get caught out at night. And when it’s night Eartha and her cousin share the bed and give me a rug on the floor with my feet in the bathroom and my head in the kitchen. So I spend most of my time riding the subways and checking out the humanity that rides with me: Brothers singing opera or preaching Malcolm X; cripples on crutches hustling dollars--throw a dime right back at your ass; folks changing clothes--stripping down to their Swiss cheese drawers and looking indignant at you for looking at them.
All Eartha Pearl experienced was that suicide that jumped out the window of her cousin’s building. Of course that was something to see. We hear this screaming in broad open daylight and look out the window. There’s something spread out like a bloody chicken on a car’s roof. Downstairs in the middle of a circle of people, a young white boy lies naked on the roof of a black Cadillac with cow horns on the hood. His legs are spread as if he’s relaxing on a bed instead of frying in his own hot blood. The car’s owner stands with his arms folded across his chest. Every now and then he kicks a tire or fender and yells “Goddamn!” In a window above us, an old woman waves and screams like a hawk.
“Goddamn! What she want me to do? Throw him back up to her? Who’s gonna pay for my car?” The car’s owner asks as he kicks a fender.
Eartha Pearl has to have two Valiums and a bottle of beer to make her eyes stop bugging out and her hands stop shaking. So maybe that’s enough excitement for her. But I have to have something else. Something to make the blood rush through my heart like fire.
One day I’m sitting on the subway barking softly, but loud enough for people ten feet away to hear. I look up and see this sweet w
hite chick in a pink leather mini skirt so high up her thighs she has to cross her muscular legs three times to keep out any drafts. So I stop barking and growl softly at her. I had heard that all you have to do to get a New York girl is to say, “Hello, I’m straight and AIDS free.” I growl at her again. She looks at me. I see her glance down at my legs and look off, slightly cutting her eyes at me. She plays with a lock of blond hair that’s curled behind her ear. I look down at my legs and have to admire them myself. I mean I’m no freak who stands in the mirror looking at my buck naked self and saying, “Oh daddy-o what a sweet daddy you are.” But these legs always catch women. (They caught Eartha Pearl who when she isn’t mad at me, and when we’re in the bed, runs her hand up and down my smooth brown thighs calling me “doll legs.”) I ask the chick what time was it. “Tony,” she says in a husky voice.
“Tony,” I ask?
“T o n i,” she spells out slowly.
“Well hey, forget about the time. All I got is time. I’m Jethro from Houston.”
“Soho?”
“So? Baby, Houston is the baddest ass city in Texas.”
“I went to Texas once. Nothing was happening. Everything was flat and brown as a mud cake.”
“Well you see, you hadn’t met me.
“I’ve met every man, Mister Dogman.”
My brain searches for something clever to say, but my eyes stay on her smooth white legs twisted around each other--two long loaves of sweetness. I can see my legs twisted with hers--locked like a pair of brown and white fingers, soft warm and sensual. “What part of Texas was a chick like you roosting?” I ask her.
“Dalhart.”
“Dalhart? Where in the hell is that?”
“You’re from Texas. You ought to know, Mister Dogman.” She flutters her lashes.
“What were you doing in Dalhart?”
“I was stationed there in the army.”
“Baby, you don’t look like any kind of Army girl I ever seen.”
“I’m not.” Her answer is sour as a lemon. Something tells me I have parted my lips before I listened to my brain. Damn Jethro be yourself cool, man. You don’t want the pussy to turn cold before you even get to the front door. What would C.C. say? Shit he even gave you some of his glow in the dark rubbers that he uses for special occasions like birthdays and Christmas’s. Can’t let C.C. down.
“You look like a nice man.” Toni’s voice brings our eyes together. There’s a flutter in her lashes as if she’s lying or has specks in her eyes. Her teeth are too big and her chin is too square for a woman’s, I think.
“Ohh, so this is what’s going down. You can dig this, Jethro,” a voice says to me. “Don’t look a gift horse in his big mouth. Guy or girl, a mouth is a mouth.” “Close your eyes and you’ll like it better,” Johnny Scardino told me once as he tugged my pants down in his warm oily garage.
“Well, I think I am. I mean I am nice. God knows I’m nice,” I say. The sweat of my thighs glues me to the subway seat.
A young woman the color of ebony sitting in front of us glares at me. She has been reading a book, but the nervousness in my voice makes her look up. Her gold earrings shaped like Africa tremble. She looks at Toni and goes back to her reading. Suddenly she slams her book shut and folds her arms across her chest. When she gets off the train I see her look into the window at us and shake her head like we are to be pitied. She then makes an ugly sign at me with her forefinger. Before I can make one back at her the crowd swallows her.
***
“Don’t you scare off my cat, Mister Dogman,” Toni says as she opens the door to her apartment. She led me to her place--inviting me to smoke some herb and have a little drink.
I step into a pink zoo. Pink stuffed animals are all over the couch and chairs--elephants, turtles, bears, and lions. Two pink alligators perch on her bed, mouths open waiting to bite my buck naked ass when I get down to business, I think.
“You sure have lots of animals, Baby,” I say stroking her for real white cat with pink ears.
“I like all kinds of animals.”
“I see,” I say looking at myself in the huge gold-framed mirror on the ceiling above the bed.
“Pull your shoes off and relax. I’ll get us a little smoke.”
“I’m cool as a cat,” I say clearing my throat. For a moment I think I see Eartha Pearl staring at me from the ceiling. I bend over to pull off my shoes and my eyes fall on a small photograph in a gold frame. A square-faced white boy in an army suit smiles a toothy grin at me. My head starts to spin. I’m shaking all over as if an ice storm just blew into Toni’s window. I stand up, but my feet are stuck to the floor.
Toni comes back and hands me a bubble-shaped glass of amber liquid.
“Sit, Mister Dogman,” Toni says calmly. “Nobody’s going to take you on a trip that you haven’t made a reservation for.” She sits a flattened beetle ashtray on the table and lights the twisted end of a cigarette. She puffs, holds her breath, and hands the cigarette to me. While I’m hitting it, she gets up and puts a Jimmy Smith record on the stereo. “This baby knows what’s happening,” I think. A white girl in Houston had tried to entice C.C. with some country music guy singing “Them ol’ High Alabamy Trees.” C.C. said he couldn’t make nothing happen.
Toni takes a hit from the cigarette. She smiles and asks me to dance. I take her hand and put my other one around her waist. Her back feels tight and muscled. It isn’t fleshy like Eartha’s. We rock back and forth like a pair of old people. Jimmy Smith’s “Midnight Special” and Toni’s intoxicating weed soon puts me in a traveling mood. We start to glide all over the room. The organ’s rhythm pulsates through me and moves down my thighs. Toni puts her face next to my cheek and cries softly.
“My whole family is gone away. I’m all alone, Jethro. I’m all alone. What can a nice man like you do for a lonely one like me? Can you hold me? Can you squeeze the loneliness out of me?”
“Yes baby, I can hold you,” I say quietly.
We sit down and she sits on my lap. She feels heavy. Her wrists are thick, not thin and feathery like a woman’s. Her lips are rough as work gloves. The whiskey and the weed soon lighten and smooth all of Toni’s rough edges. Her skirt and legs have the same velvety tickle. She brushes my hand away from her crotch. I pull down Toni’s bra and caress her small breasts.
“I’m so lonely. Are you a nice man?”
“Yes, baby, Yes. Let me show you how nice I am. I’ll take you to Kilimanjaro and we’ll smoothly ride down the Nile. Just let me get on the train, Baby. Just let me ride.” That Nile and Kilimanjaro works with Eartha Pearl, unless she’s in her hurry-up-and-get-it-over-mood.
Toni reaches up and pulls a cord. The lights go out. “Can you put on a condom in the dark,” she asks.
“Baby, better than the queen can put on her gloves. I got my own.” In the dark, my rod glows like a bright yellow banana. Toni’s deep laughter fills the room. I curse C.C. under my breath. The cat’s bright green eyes move side to side as he follows my swaying rod. Toni and I bray like mules. Then I smother Toni’s laughter with kisses. I take another hit off the weed and the wheels of the train start to turn. I become Casey Jones. I can hear myself make train noises in Toni s ear. She throws her arms around my neck and kisses me. “Just drive your train, Daddy. Just drive it, Daddy. Ooh Daddy, just drive. Lord have mercy. Drive me, sweet Daddy,” Toni screams in my ear.
***
When I wake up, Toni stands over me with a bunch of cherries taped above each of his nipples. The cherries dangle juicy and red from their stems. He straddles my body. I pucker my lips around one of the cherries and pull it. Toni giggles like a young girl.
“Oh you’re so much fun, Baby. You’re so much fun.” I pull another cherry off Toni and eat it. I spit the pit toward the ceiling. It clatters to the floor.
“Ooh you animal,” Toni softly scolds me. I pull a handful of cherries from Toni and stuff them in my mouth. “Ooh you big bad baby,” Toni croons to me. “Give me th
e pits.” Toni holds his hand under my mouth. I grab his fingers and put them in my mouth. Toni squeals and I pull him down next to me. We kiss.
****
“What do you want to eat?” Toni asks slipping into his short silk kimono.
“Pancakes and eggs,” I answer.
“Again?”
“I like the way you lick the syrup off my chest.”
“I like the way you like me to.” Toni giggles and bounces off to the kitchen.
I look up at the ceiling at me staring at myself in the mirror. You don’t look like no punk, I say to myself. You don’t wear lipstick and false eyelashes like Eartha’s “Aunt Don.” That fat sissy with his big feet jammed in pink high heeled slippers. I spread my legs and look at the outline of my sex under the covers. Shit I’m a man, am a man, am a man! I fuck. I like the Celtics. I work my ass off. I made a baby once. So what if Eartha lost it in an aisle of plastic flowers in the middle of Woolworth’s? I still made it. She the one who couldn’t keep him. Toni Toni Boboni! Why didn’t I knock the hell out of you? Got a rod bigger than mine. Fooling me up here. And I can’t leave. Why can’t I leave? I’m not a punk. I don’t walk funny. Johnny Scardino walked funny. Johnny Scardino kissed my thigh after he blew me. I just stood there. Just stood there like a statue. I’m not a punk. Lots of men take a side trip now and then. I can leave. Just get up and toss Toni a dollar or two and say later alligator.
“Sweet, Sweet Honeydew,” Toni sings from the kitchen. “I can’t get over this page-boy haircut you gave me. Are you sure you’re not a hairdresser? The girls at the ball tonight are gonna flip when they see me dressed like a man.”
“I don’t know about that bullshit,” I answer.
“Are you still sore about the leash? I told you it wasn’t racial.”
“Always a nigguh got to have a chain around his neck,” I answer.
“I wasn’t thinking anything racial at all. I was thinking of your barking dog routine. We could really work those girl’s nerves!”
“Well you’re not putting a chain around my neck. You don’t have to remind me I’m a nigguh.”