Yogi

Good dog.

Yogi

Alleys can be spooky places at night, especially if you’re twelve years old with a vivid imagination.

Now, Robert knew the overgrown way between Pace and Hereford by heart, and he knew he wasn’t supposed to be kicking around the weeds and bins in the dark. After all, it was dangerous, immature, and just plain wrong.

Perfect.

Light from carports produced uneven blocks of clarity, but for the most part it was all crawly-shadows cool. A whining behind trash cans got his heart pounding. What was it--a roof rat, a gnarly old possum, a feral cat? Irresistible. He picked up a branch and crept over carefully, every sense perked.

What Robert found behind the cans was so terrible he burst right into tears.

A horribly mangled German Shepherd lay crushed and torn, crusted blood on its muzzle and ears, flies and ants in its eyes and mouth. Pathetic little whining pants shook the pus and foam clinging to its gums and nostrils. The boy froze with the branch clenched in his fist, trembling all over. Finally he leaned in, asking in a hoarse and cracking voice:

“Boy? Boy? Oh...boy, what can I do?”

The caked lids peeled apart. One glazed eye rolled up to meet him. The dog began scraping fitfully. The whining became a gargling rumble, a desperate wheezing.

“Oh no!” Robert cried. “Stay, boy, stay! Don’t move, don’t move--”

Using only a forepaw, the dog forced itself a foot off the ground, emitting little hissing yelps. Its back was broken, the jaw shattered, most of the teeth missing.

“No!” Robert screamed. “No, please!” But the dog kept trying to rise, pushing itself toward the boy. Light came on in a window in the next building. “No!”

And Robert just freaked. He threw up his arms and raced the two blocks home, burst in the back door and huddled trembling by the washer and dryer. His parents were hollering back and forth as usual; his mother coldly demanding, the old man shitfaced drunk. As usual. Robert grabbed a plate and bowl off the sink, a pound of bologna and a pint of bottled water from the refrigerator, and ran back down the alley.

He came up on the trash cans half-praying the dog would be gone. Or dead...or anything other than that gasping, whimpering horror.

The dog must have heard him coming, must have felt his footsteps, for it began hyperventilating. It was trying to stand. Robert set down the plate and bowl, laid on the meat and poured in the water. He shoved the plate and bowl forward an inch at a time, really scared now, but no less heartbroken.

The Shepherd sniffed and bit at the meat, then threw its head side to side in pain. A terrified Robert nevertheless splashed his hand in the water and dribbled some in the dog’s arcing mouth. It yelped and hacked, staring at him with one frosted bloody eye.

“Please,” Robert begged, dangling a slice of bologna. The dog pushed up on its forepaws and, with a savage effort, began heaving itself from behind the cans.

Robert jumped back. “No!” Out of its mind with pain, the snarling Shepherd hauled its smashed hindquarters along even as Robert continued to backpedal. The dog dragged itself a few yards, squealing all the way, and at last made it to all fours.

“Stay!” Robert cried. “Stop!” But it kept coming on, and when the boy broke and ran it fought its way into an awkward leaning gallop, flopping in and out of the shadows, snarling and snapping in agony. It followed him that way, down walks between buildings, in and out of carports, between cars--all the way home, where it collapsed in the backyard with a withering series of little screaming convulsions.

Robert blew in around the rear screen door, slammed the back door hard, and locked it against the night.

Robert’s father kicked over a kitchen chair.

“I don’t give a good holy crap what he says, Junie, there’s no f*****g dog out there!”

There came an abbreviated retort from his mother, a strong woman accustomed to abuse. Then the old man again:

“I looked everywhere with the goddamned flashlight; the whole yard, okay? No. F*****g. Dog!”

“Well, something scared him. He’s terrified. If you can’t find anything I’m calling animal control. I don’t feel safe for him.”

“Ah, Jesus. Robert!”

“Howard, don’t you bring that bottle in there. If you strike that boy again--”

“Let me guess. You’ll pack up and head back to Elsie’s? Robert!”

Hard yellow light cut into the bedroom. Howard nearly fell in, using the swinging door for support.

Robert’s mother cried out, “Don’t you dare bring in that bottle! Don’t you dare close that door!”

Howard thrust his head back out. He smacked the whiskey bottle down on the hallway nightstand. “There! You f*****g happy now? No bottle in the room.” Leaving the door open a crack, Howard carefully goose-stepped to the bedpost, then, walking like a man on the moon, made his way around the bed.

Robert peeked over the raised sheet.

“Hi, son.” The old man’s whiskey breath was nauseating. He plopped down on the mattress. “I’m not mad, and I’m not gonna hit you. I just want to say thanks for the wild goose chase, that’s all.” He sighed. “There’s nothing out there, boy. Nothing at all. No blood, no body, no nothing. Mom says you told her it was bad-injured, and she says too it followed you into the yard. Don’t you think we’d see some sign of it, son? Don’t you think?” The effort wore him down. After a minute he raised his head and forced a functional-father smile. “A boy should have a dog...deserves one...man’s best friend. Maybe he’ll come back when he feels better.” He winked boozily. “What should I call him? Duke? Fido?”

Robert pulled up the sheet, trying to survive those despised fumes.

“Well, he’s got a name, don’t he? What’s his name?”

June’s anxious voice came from right outside: “Is he okay?”

Howard jerked his head back around. “He’s all right!”

“Let me just talk to him for a minute.”

“I said he’s all f*****g right! God damn it, June, there’s stuff only a man can talk about with his boy. Now close the door.”

“No way, Howard. I’ll be waiting right here.”

“I said close the f*****g door!”

“And I said no.”

Howard swung his fright-mask around and got right in the boy’s face, huffing like a straining locomotive. “What’s the dog’s name? What’s the dog’s name!” After a moment he appeared to zone out. The whiskey had made him lose his thread. Howard collected himself, took a deep breath, and tried again. “Let’s see now. How’s about Hondo--you like cowboys, don’t you? Or maybe Frodo; you know, those little puppet people all the kids is so crazy about.” His eyes swam in his skull. “Got to have two syllables. For a dog, I mean. Cats are different. Football...baseball...” A lopsided grin cracked his face. “What about Yogi? You know, that old Yankees catcher. That’s perfect.” He rocked back and sighed. “Yogi it is, then.”

“Howard?”

“Shut the f**k up, woman! You wanna know why I yell? This is exactly why! A man can’t have a private minute with his son.” He swayed to his feet.

“You’ve had your minute! Now it’s my turn.”

Howard staggered around in a half-circle, his fists balled. “Oh, you’ll get your turn, all right!” He threw a series of punches.

“I’m taking this bottle, right now! If you want it back you’ll come out of there.”

“God damn you!” One of those random punches took out Robert’s desk lamp, another shattered a square foot of plasterboard. Howard turned to the bed with hellfire in his eyes. “What’s the f*****g dog’s name?” His son whimpered and pulled the sheet higher. “It’s Yogi, boy! It’s f*****g Yogi. Say it! It’s your dog--say his name. Say f*****g Yogi!” He reached down and yanked him clear out of bed, pressing his knuckles into the boy’s windpipe. “Say it, you ugly dummy b*****d, say it!” Howard hauled back his fist and sent it crashing into Robert’s forehead. The impetus of his own roundhouse threw him stumbling against the door.

June screamed and tried to force her way in, succeeding only in nudging her husband back a foot. She kept at it until Howard howled, “F**k you!” and yanked the door wide. Robert could only glimpse his father lurching out into the hall before the blow to his skull sent him spinning into unconsciousness.

“It’s going to stop,” June whispered. “I promise you, baby, I promise.” The two sported matching black eyes. She kissed him tenderly, then used an ice pack to gently massage the whole area of impact. She kissed him again and sat up straight on the bed. “You’re staying home from school tomorrow; I’m going to...I’ve got to talk to somebody.” June smoothed the boy’s hair. “He’s asleep now. You go to sleep too, Robert.”

But no way could he sleep. His good eye traced shadows on the ceiling, while his other senses tested the world. The night was pleasantly cool. There was a breath of autumn through the open window, and an oddly familiar sound in the garden. Robert crept to the window and leaned over the sill. The avocado’s branches were right in his face, but after a minute he could see something large flopping about in the flower bed. A sickening whining was carried by the night.

Freezing water ran down the boy’s spine. He dropped to one knee and peered over the sill. Now the dog was fully visible, rolling on its broken back, kicking its forepaws. For a long scary moment it stopped, its battered head half-in, half-out of shadow. A bloody eye caught light off the porch.

Robert instinctively yanked the curtains together. The thrashing picked up in the flower bed, punctuated by agonized hisses and snarls. The boy ran on all fours to the door, tore it open, and scrambled out into the hall.

“All right,” Howard sighed. “The doors are locked and the windows closed. Nothin’ can get in or out of this house, not without getting past me. You hear?” He leaned this way and that on the bed, fighting for balance, but his center of gravity inevitably made him weigh on his son, who could only scrunch deeper into the mattress. “So I don’t wanna hear any more crap about some goddamned imaginated dog, either from you or from--” and he spat the word “--that woman.” Howard attempted to scoop up the boy, almost sliding off the bed in the process. “She ain’t my wife no more, y’hear? She’s just your f*****g mother.” He crushed Robert’s face in his chest: stinking BO, drunk-breath, filthy crotch-smelling slob.

Dad.

“I’m sorry I hit you, boy, I really am. And I’m gonna make it up to you.” Howard began to weep softly--selfish tears as cheap as his word. “Whatever you want.” He rocked side to side. “Whatever you need.” A hideous smile half-lit his face, and at that moment Robert didn’t know which was worse: the suffocating breath or the image his father now presented:

“It’ll just be me and you from now on, boy. No more of that b***h, I promise. Me and you’ll take up on our own somewheres--oh, don’t you just know she’ll get the house. It’s what she’s been after all the while.” He sniffed back the tears. “I don’t care if we have to live in a tent in the goddamned woods, I don’t care if we have to live in the f*****g car. Just me and you, boy. Just me and you for ever and ever.” He kissed his son stickily and repeatedly. “I’ll never let you out of my sight, Robert. I promise you, boy. Never!” Howard pulled himself away and wobbled to his feet. “As God is my witness, son, I’ll never let you go.” He snuffled up the snot and tears and staggered to the door. “I’m leaving this open so’s I can hear you if you need me. I’ll always be here for you. Don’t you know I just love you all to pieces, boy.” He drew the door open and clung to the jamb. “Now go to f*****g sleep.”

After that he dreamed.

He dreamt of exploring strange places, with no home to return to, and no parenting to endure. In this private world he picked through abandoned houses and scrambled along jetties, free as a boy can be. But, somewhere in there, an odd feature of dreams took a hazy but relentless hold--he felt, he knew that he had a companion, a faithful dog sharing his adventures just at his heels. But this dog wasn’t sniffing and cavorting; it was dragging itself room to room and rock to rock. Furthermore, it proved unshakable; worse, far worse, it was impossible to turn and confront it--this the dream would never allow. Now it had him by the ankles; a living anchor dragging him down, making excruciatingly painful little gasps and yelps. Those gasps and yelps became frenzied as the dream descended into a silently howling, slow-motion nightmare.

Robert swam out of it to find himself absolutely rigid. Every sense told him to not make a move or sound. The nightmare’s author was right at the foot of his bed, resting between his ankles. Panting whimpers caused the mattress to tremble; he felt the nails of one paw digging into his calf. The whimpering was torn by a terrible, abbreviated cry, followed by more panting. Robert opened his eyes to find the dog staring at him fixedly, its mangled body frightfully bent, its muzzle a mess of dried blood.

“Yogi,” he whispered, his mouth dry. “No, boy, no. You go away now, Yogi. You go away.”

The dog whined from its depths. It began to hyperventilate, and, still staring as though mesmerized, pulled itself forward inch by inch, its nails catching in the boy’s thighs. When Robert couldn’t take it any longer he cried out, and in seconds there was an answering cry from his mother. The door was thrown wide. June began screaming hysterically. Yogi whipped his head around and snarled.

Howard, hard-drunk on the front room couch, yelled groggily, “What the f**k?” and came lurching down the hall. When he entered the room the dog went straight for his throat. Howard backpedaled and reeled down the hall while June dialed 911. The old man kicked open a cabinet and tore out a shotgun and shells, still so drunk that, upon loading, he put one shot through a window and another through the roof.

Robert reached under his little desk and pulled out a hard rubber door wedge, a hush-hush gift from his mother for just such an emergency. He kicked it into place, sobbing all the while, and bundled up Yogi in his arms. The dog, as big and heavy as the boy, gnashed wildly as it was half-carried, half-dragged to the window.

Another shotgun blast rang just outside the door. With his mother’s muffled screams in his ears, Robert forced up his window, pushed Yogi over the sill, and climbed out onto the shingles.

He wept as he fought the convulsing dog onto a main limb. This was his old escape route; he knew every hold and knothole, but the awkward load of the dog, his great fear and hurry, and the abrupt kicking-in of his bedroom door caused him to lose focus and grasp only air. Robert plunged the twenty feet to earth and cement all wrapped up in Yogi.

The shock of impact was all of a missed heartbeat: butt and shoulders, followed by the cracking of his skull. After that he felt nothing. A minute later he was roused by a blast and bellowing. He looked up to see Howard hanging half-out the window, waving the shotgun with his free hand. The boy struggled to his feet. Bent like an arthritic old man, he limped to the avocado, seized the handle of his little red wagon, and dragged it over to Yogi. He had to turn it on its side, and it required a near-impossible effort to push in the howling dog, and to lever the wagon back upright. Sobbing from the exertion, Robert hobbled through the yard and out the back gate, the bouncing dog yelping pathetically at each bump and crash.

They swerved and jerked down the alley against a sporadic stream of scrambling homeowners and running pedestrians, all thrown into a panic by the sudden shriek of sirens, the whipping red lights, and the memory of Howard’s shotgun blasts. Robert, following his instincts, hauled his snarling and howling cargo back to its source. He cried like a baby as he shoved the wagon behind the cans and tenderly laid page after page of yellowing newspaper on the heaving animal.

Down the alley came Howard, cursing the world while repeatedly smacking his shotgun’s butt on a caving pine fence.

The smacking stopped; Howard had knelt and was now inspecting the wagon’s tracks with a flashlight. Robert clamped a hand over Yogi’s thrashing muzzle as the footfalls approached.

Howard grunted. His flashlight’s beam swung erratically, at last falling on his son and the wagon. The old man’s eyes gleamed. He grinned and held the flashlight against his chest with the beam pointing up, so that his face was lit like some kind of psychotic jack o’lantern.

“Out of the way, dummy! I’m putting that ugly m**********r to sleep.”

Howard seized his son by the collar and yanked. There was a squeal beneath them--with a lurch and snarl Yogi sprang half-out of the wagon and clamped his jaws around the old man’s throat. Howard screamed and fought furiously, dragging the dog and boy into a heads-butting embrace.

A siren’s wail approached at one end of the alley, headlights tore in from the other. A spotlight played over the scene and an officer came running up even as a hubbub of neighbors blew down the walk separating buildings.

Unwilling to fire into the tangle, the officer first clubbed Yogi with his baton, then used Howard’s shotgun to repeatedly bludgeon the skull, but the dog would not release its death grip. Robert, rocked with each blow, found his face shoved into Yogi’s muzzle and his father’s face until all three were eye-to-eye in a shower of tungsten and halogen spears.

Now blood spewed from Howard’s mouth and nostrils, his expression grew impossibly contorted, and he gagged one final time. His arms shot out and his eyes rolled back in his skull. The crashing shotgun became a flagging piston, a throbbing spike, a cotton-soft jackhammer. And Yogi’s eye, lens to lens with Robert’s, flickered dully with each concussion, gradually went dim, and so lost its fire to the night.