DoG (2 page)

“I bet you made quite an impression.”

“I suppose I did. So, anyway, we were talking, and I was drunk. I was a lot more gregarious than usual. I was asking her questions, like what teachers didn’t she like, and then I was agreeing with her when she told me. These were the kinds of things a teacher shouldn’t be saying. And she was delighted because kids rarely get to hear adults speak so freely around them.”

At this point in the narrative, Alphonse let out a putrid fart. Frank shoved him away with his foot, but there was no escaping the smell in the tiny shack.

“He’s your dog all right, Frank,” Culann said with a cough.

“We can’t all be refined little pederasts like you.”

10

“I’m going to buy you a dictionary, you dumb hick. A pederast is into young boys, not sixteen-year-old girls. Although I’m not into sixteen-year-old girls either.”

“Okay, Noah Fucking Webster. What kind of perversion do you got?”

“I don’t have any kind of perversion.”

“So what do you call a guy with a hard-on for sixteen-year-old girls?”

“An ephebophile.”

“I knew you’d know it. So then what happened?”

“Well, we were really having a good time. I was telling tales outside of school, as they say—this teacher was arrested for drunk driving, that teacher cheats on her husband, this teacher is gay. And she was laughing and saying ‘I didn’t know you were so funny, Mr. Riordan.’ And then she started touching my arm when she was talking, and I realized we were getting into dangerous territory. Her dad was behind the bar, and he had to have seen this. So, discretion being the better part of valor and all that, I decided to take my leave.

“I just stood up and put my coat on. I played it cool. And then Kat said, ‘It was really nice talking to you, Mr. Riordan.’ And she gave me a hug. She was just the right height that the top of her head came up to my chin, and I wasn’t thinking or anything, I just gave grazed my lips across her hair. It was like an autonomic reaction, but there was nothing dirty about it. It was just a little peck on the top of the head.”

“If it was nothing, what are you doing in my living room?” Frank asked.

“Her dad saw it and went berserk. He came tearing out from behind the bar, and I didn’t have to think about it. I just pushed Kat away from me and ran. I banged into a table and bruised my thigh. It was at that point that Vic caught up with me and started punching me in the side of the head. He’s an older guy, but defending his daughter’s virtue gave him strength. I was saying, ‘Take it easy, Vic,’ and trying to push him away while heading for the door. I finally broke away from him, and he said he was going to get his gun, so I ran as fast as I could. I just left my car parked out front. As far as I know, it’s still there.”

This was more or less how it had all happened.

“That’s just precious, Culann. You give a girl a little smooch on the head and now you’re a wanted sex offender. You might as well have bent her over the bar for all the trouble you’re in.”

“That’s life. You get in as much trouble for almost doing something as when you actually do it. Let that be a lesson to you.”

“Hell, almost doing something has never been my problem.”

They both got good and drunk that night. Culann planned to dry out the next day.

Alphonse started to warm to him, or at least was no longer staring by morning, but Culann still didn’t dare pet him. He knew animals to be exceptional judges of character.

11

Diary of Culann Riordan, Day 2

None of this would have been possible without Worner’s cannonball. He thought
it was his good luck charm – the good luck charm that got him killed.

The
Orthrus
men were a superstitious bunch, which isn’t surprising given their
collective lack of education. More importantly, though, they work the kind of job where
one piece of bad luck spells death. I don’t blame them for trying to tip the scales of luck
in their favor.

Worner had the cannonball his grandfather had given him.

Frank had a lucky rabbit’s foot, which was nothing like the fake rabbit’s feet I
used to buy at the novelty shop. No, this was the foot of a real-life rabbit Frank had found
in a badger trap out in the woods. The rabbit had evidently gotten caught in the trap, and
then some other creature came by and ate the rabbit, leaving just its trapped paw behind.

Why Frank would consider this lucky was never explained to my satisfaction.

McGillicuddy, in a surprisingly-romantic gesture, kept a lock of his wife’s hair
tied with a strip of lace from her wedding dress. He showed it to me once and told me
he’d tear out my “pink little nuts” if I told anyone. I don’t think this diary counts as a
breach of that promise, but he can’t carry through on his threat at this point anyway.

I didn’t carry any good luck charm with me. Maybe I should have…

12

3

The cousins toured the island in Frank’s antique pick-up truck, which he’d driven across the frozen sea in winter. It seemed to Culann like a needless risk, since the entire island could be circled on foot in under an hour. Every other shack had its own truck rusting contentedly out front; they had all presumably gotten out here the same way as Frank’s. Most had long-expired or completely missing plates. The dashboard clock said it was seven-thirty in the morning, but the sky maintained the same hazy, twilit glow Culann had seen when he fell asleep. Northern Alaska in June really disrupts the circadian rhythms. As they drove, Frank explained who lived where and whether the resident was “a good dude” or “a guy you don’t fuck with.” Everyone, it seemed, fell into one category or the other.

The island was heavily wooded and swarming with mosquitoes. The windshield was encrusted with squashed bloodsuckers, and the cousins kept the windows rolled up to keep the bugs out. The inhabitants of Pyrite lived in haphazardly-spaced dwellings along the island’s eastern edge, which faced the mainland across a mile of calm, black water.

The western edge of the island was rockier and subject to the year-round tantrums of the Bering Sea. The eastern half of the island was bisected by Pyrite Avenue, the gravel road they now drove upon, with a few dirt side streets. “Downtown” Pyrite, which was about a quarter-mile from the ferry dock, consisted of a general store called
Wal-Mart Jr.
and a saloon with no sign. The latter was their final destination. So much for drying out today.

“C’mon,” Frank said, “you can buy me breakfast.”

Half of the men in town were there already. They were all large men. The shorter ones were stocky, while the skinnier ones were tall. Most were stocky and tall. They all wore dirty denim and scuffed boots. The youngest man couldn’t have been much over eighteen, with ruddy cheeks and a sparse goatee, yet the hand he extended to Culann was encased in about four decades worth of calluses. The oldest man was easily seventy, yet his shining, black eyes and erect shoulders suggested a spry youthfulness. Culann didn’t think he could compete physically with any man in this bar, although he realized that he would have to once they were all at sea together.

The tavern was little more than a smoke-filled shack with a bar along one wall and a long table down the middle. Culann tried to stifle a cough – he couldn’t remember the last time he’d encountered cigarettes indoors. Frank and Culann plopped down at the table next to a wiry, white-haired man.

“Hey, Frank. This your perverted schoolteacher?”

Culann glared at Frank, who pretended not to notice. Culann had wanted to make a new start out here, but Frank had evidently already soiled his reputation.

“Gus, meet my cousin, Culann.”

Gus nodded. The barman limped over on a bad right leg. He had a shaved head with a thick hunk of muscle at the base of his skull. Frank introduced Culann to the barman, Alistair, who also happened to be the mayor of Pyrite. Frank asked for two orders of “the special”—a plate of burnt scrambled eggs served with a draft beer and a shot of Canadian Club.

13

“Gus is the first mate of the
Orthrus
,” Frank explained. “He’s gonna bust your balls good.”

At this, Culann took a closer look at Gus. He was the smallest man in the bar and nearly the oldest. He was also nothing but muscle and bone, all sharp edges, and he sipped his whiskey with the calm contentment of a man who knew his business. Though Culann outweighed him by easily thirty pounds, he had no illusions about which of them were the strongest.

“You work hard,” Gus said, “and you’ll be fine. I don’t begrudge a man his perversions as long as he pulls his own weight.”

“Hear that, Culann? He don’t begrudge a man his perversions.”

“Well, I appreciate that. I don’t actually have any perversions, though.”

“We all got our problems, or we wouldn’t be here.”

“Amen, Gus. Why don’t you tell Culann why you’re here?”

“Stabbed an Indian back in Utah.”

“See, Culann, your little attempted statutory rape is not that big a deal.”

“Leave him alone, Frank. Why don’t you tell us what you’re doing up here?”

“Yeah, Frank,” Culann chimed in. “What are you doing up here?”

“I wanted to go some place with no women.”

“I always knew you were queer,” Gus said with a snort.

“Hell, I’m not queer. I been married three times.”

“Three?” Culann asked. “I only knew about Cathleen and Alison. You got

married again?”

“Yeah, my mom doesn’t even know about it. I married this crazy girl in Memphis.

Lasted a month. At that point I realized I’m just too love-stupid to take any more chances.

So I’m up here hiding from women, living like a monk.”

Alistair hobbled over with their breakfast and another round of drinks.

“How about you, Alistair?” Frank asked.

“How about me what?”

“What’re you doing up here?”

“I don’t know how civilization’s gonna end,” he answered after a reflective pause,

“but I know it’s coming soon. Maybe nuclear war, race war, some new super-virus, hell might even be some kind of computer virus. All I know is, Pyrite, Alaska, has got to be the last place on Earth that would be affected by that kind of thing. I figure this is the safest place for my wife and boy to be.”

“That’s bat-shit crazy,” Frank said. “Julia goes along with this?”

“Of course she does,” Alistair said. “She’s from Toronto. She’s seen societal decay up close. She knows I’m right.”

14

“Toronto?” Culann said with a giggle.

“God sees you laughing, boy,” Alistair snapped. “When it happens, He’ll come for you first.”

After this declaration, Alistair spun around and stomped away. Culann made a mental note to apologize later.

“He’s got a kid out here?” Culann asked.

“Yeah, little Marty,” Frank said. “He’s about six, I think. Cute little guy.”

“Is there a school out here?”

“No, but you heard the man,” Frank said with a smile. “The world’s coming to an end, so school’s not going to do the kid any good anyway.”

A tall, rangy man of about thirty-five in overalls with bushy red hair and a neatly-trimmed red goatee walked over.

“What’s up, Frank? Is this the pedophile?”

“Nah,” Frank replied, “he’s a hebe-a-phile.”

“What’s that?” the man asked Culann. “You like little Jews or something?”

“The word is
ephebophile
,” Culann said. “It’s someone with a predilection for teenage girls. But I’m not an ephebophile.”

“Predilection?” the man said to Frank. “Is this guy like a dictionary or

something?”

“Yeah, that’s why I call him Noah Fucking Webster.”

“Who’s Noah Fucking Webster?” the man asked.

“He’s the guy who invented the dictionary or something. Isn’t that right Culann?”

“He wrote a dictionary,” he replied. “It’s called
Webster’s Dictionary
.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen one of those,” the man said with smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Webster—hey, just like that little black kid, remember that show?—Anyway, I’m Moses McGillicuddy.”

The big man extended his hand. His skin felt like the surface of a baseball bat.

McGillicuddy didn’t squeeze too hard, giving Culann the impression that he was holding back, careful to avoid crushing his delicate fingers. Culann squeezed a little harder to let McGillicuddy know he wasn’t that soft, or maybe just to convince himself. McGillicuddy didn’t seem to notice.

“So, McGillicuddy,” Frank said, “we’re swapping life stories here. Care to contribute?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Tell my cousin what brings you up here.”

“Money,” McGillicuddy replied. “I used to be a machinist down in Flint,

Michigan. Worked for GM. Then the plant shut down, and I was out on my ass. One day 15

I was shooting pool with this guy who tells me any dumb motherfucker with some balls can make good money hauling nets up here. And I said, ‘Hey, I’m a dumb motherfucker with some balls.’ So I dragged Margie up here, and here we are.”

Alistair came over with another round of drinks. Culann started to apologize for laughing earlier, but Frank put a hand on his arm and shook his head.

“Don’t rile him up any more,” Frank said after Alistair left. “Crazy asshole’s bound to piss in our beers.”

“What’d you do to old Alistair?” McGillicuddy asked.

“I laughed when he said Toronto was an example of societal decay.”

“Hah,” McGillicuddy laughed. “Guy hates to be thought of as a rube. Which he is, by the way. Societal decay my ass. You ever been to Flint? You can’t kick a can down the sidewalk without hitting some three-toothed, black hooker just begging to suck your dick for five dollars. Worth every penny, too.”

McGillicuddy guffawed and pounded the table. Culann had seldom felt more

different from another human being than he felt from this man, but he liked him immediately. Culann wondered if perhaps his time in Alaska would transform him into one of the wild characters who surrounded him. He didn’t think, with a belly full of whiskey at least, that such a transformation would be all that bad.