THE FIFTY-SIXTH DAY . . .
(Thursday, August 6, morning)
MACK:
The test was
yesterday. I know she crushed it. A month or so from now, she’ll be
okay. She’ll be busy with a new school, new friends. A new man.
Good.
They gave me a
message paper, hand-scripted. Takes me a bit and some to make it
out. Says Tony Vaccuccia will try to call Mack Morse next Sunday
8:00 p.m.
Takes me even longer
to scratch out that I hope Tony’s doing good, that I’m sorry for
everything, and he can’t call me anymore. I have no idea if I
spelled one word right. I can’t send it, because I don’t have a
stamp. Maybe they give you one. I don’t know. I never tried to send
a letter from being locked up before. I don’t have Tony’s address
either. How do I get it without asking Céce for it?
Wash has a pal in the
K-9 training center. I pet the dogs and memorize their faces, close
my eyes, let the being of each dog into me. The sun’s warm through
their hair. We play chase while Wash and the trainer hash. Wash
nods with his lips bunched. “Mack, come here a
second.”
I jog over.
“’Sup?”
Trainer says, “Can
you write? I’m talking numbers, one to ten. That’s all you have to
know.”
“Yeah, I can write
one to ten. Can you?”
“I’m wondering if you
would like to evaluate these dogs for me,” he says.
“Say
again?”
“You take the dogs to
that isolation cage over there, one at a time, okay? You say ‘sit,’
and then ‘up.’ If the dog don’t do it, I need you to note
it.”
“I can train them to
sit, if you want.”
The man gets an
attitude with me. “No, no, no. They
already been schooled. We just need to monitor them to see how much
that learning is sticking. ‘Sit’ and ‘up’ them ten times in a row.
Mark down how they do.”
“All right,
then.”
“Good.” Dude hands me
his clipboard and a pencil wrapped fat with orange glow tape.
“Dogs’ names are on their collars. Thanks, little brother. You just
made my lunch break an hour longer. They have that Judge Judy running back to back now most
afternoons. I am addicted to it. You all excuse me, I’m gonna get
back to the hutch before the next trial starts.”
“Wash?”
“Yup?”
“I remember what I
wanted to say. That time by the bleachers there.”
“All
right?”
“Thanks.”
Wash shrugs, looks
away to the guard tower, spits through a V-gap in his teeth. He’s a
real good spitter.
(The next morning, Friday, August 7, the fifty-seventh day
. . .)
Twenty German
shepherds. Yesterday, they averaged a little better than fifty
percent retention on the obedience training. But today they’re
worse. I chuck the clipboard and go to hands and knees. I show the
dogs by example what sit and
up mean.
Corner of my eye is
Wash. He studies me acting like a dog. I teach them sit by lifting their chin and pressing down on
their backside. I feed them snuck breakfast bread bits for rewards.
End of the second session, the sheps are up to eighty
percent.
“You German?” Wash
says.
(The next morning, Saturday, August 8, the fifty-eighth
day . . .)
End of the third
session, every dog is a hundred percent solid on sit and up.
Guard comes over.
“Morse, you got a phone call.”
I eye Wash. He’s
squinting at me.
“Who is it?” I
say.
“Didn’t say,” the
other guard says.
“I know who it is
anyhow,” I say.
“Then why’d you ask?”
guard says.
Wash walks me to a
phone bank. I have to make myself do this. “’Lo?”
“Mack?”
“Please, don’t call
anymore, okay?”
“Please, baby, I just wanted
to tell you—”
“Céce, I can’t do
this, okay? You can’t come anymore either. I’m begging you. I gotta
go.” I hang up.
Wash walks me back to
my solitary hitch. He doesn’t ask me about my business. I want to
tell him about her, but what’s the point of spreading the
pain?
I almost asked how
she did on the test. Almost told her I’ve been so worried about
her, that I was sorry. I almost told her a lot of
things.
“Wash, you mind I
call somebody? The detective offered me three free calls after I
got arrested.”
“And you didn’t use
them?”
“Not a
one.”
Wash frowns. “I would
have to listen in on the call.”
“That’d be fine. Not
planning any break. Just want to drop a quick hi on Boston is
all.”
Wash nods. “You know
how it is, though. Folks are different when they get
out.”
“Not
Boston.”
“Got to know him
pretty good, did you? You only spent a few days with him, though,
right?”
“Sometimes that’s all
you need.” I hand him the paper scrap of Boston’s number from my
pocket. I’d nearly sweated the numbers to a fadeout. Wash hands me
the receiver and picks up another to listen in.
Lady picks up.
“Bueno?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’d like
to speak with Boston?”
“Who?”
“Rafael, I mean.
Sorry. Me and Bos, Rafael know each—”
She yells off, and
the phone thunks like it got dropped, and then there’s,
“Yo?”
“Boston?”
“Yeah?”
“Mack.”
“What?”
“It’s Mack. Mack
Morse?”
There’s a little
quiet, and then, “Oh, yeah.
Hey.”
“Yo Boston, how you
doing, brother?”
“Good.”
“Yeah, huh? I’m doing
real good too. Yeah, man. You ain’t gonna believe this, but I got
me a job training dogs, yo. Ain’t that
crazy?”
“Cool-cool, listen, my moms don’t like me on the
phone.”
“Sure-sure, I
understand. I call you when she ain’t around then.”
“Mack? Like, good luck, you know?”
“Yeah. You too. Yo
Boston, maybe I’ll—”
Click.
I cradle the
receiver. Wash cradles his.
“Moms don’t like him
on the phone.”
“I
heard.”
“I’ll try him another
time, maybe.”
“I expect we could
work that out,” Wash says.
“I’m real excited to
see what your pal in K-9 thinks of the dogs now.”
The K-9 trainer dude
studies my chart. “They came a long way, huh? Aw, now, wait. You
didn’t train them did you?”
“Well.”
“Son, please, do
not train these dogs. Serious. This is
a very specific program. I told you not to do that.”
“Yeah, I know,” I
say. “I’m real sorry. I am.”
Trainer flips through
the evaluations. “Well, the paperwork don’t lie. If these dogs are
at a hundred percent obedience, I have to promote them to bomb
detection drills and get them one step closer to the street.” He
leads the dogs away.
One dog turns back.
She runs to me, rolls over at my feet, and whimpers for a belly
scratch.
“Heya, come !” the trainer says.
“Wash,” I say, “you
know these dogs are being trained for the bomb hop?”
“I was thinking
narcotics seizure. That’s what they used to train them for. With
the wars on, I suppose the bomb sniffing should have occurred to
me.”
“I heard they have
robots to bomb sniff now, and I heard they do it better,” I
say.
“I think I heard that
too.”
I spit, because
sometimes I just spit when I don’t know what else to do. “You got a
dog at home?”
“Two,” he says. “You
got some spit on your shirt there.”
“Thanks. What kind,
pits or rotties?”
“Mutts.”
“The
best.”
“Yep,” Wash says, and
I say yep too. We watch the last dog hustle toward the
kennels.
This other dude in
solitary, I haven’t seen his face, because they take us out at
different times. He’s a screamer. He was a pounder too, head on the
door, till they put him in the burrito bag. They had to, because he
kept yelling he was going to cut himself. Everybody used to tell
him shut the fuck up, they were gonna kill him, but that just made
him scream louder. He’s screaming now. I can’t tell where we are
between sunset and sunrise. I sleep with my hands cupped over my
ears. My dreams are staying vivid. She asked me once, all quiet and sweet and even a little hesitant . .
.
“Do you want me to teach you words?”
I throw a chewed tennis ball deep, toward the fence. We’re
on the west side of the reservoir, where nobody goes. Pits aren’t
real great at fetch. They get the ball and then they want you to
chase them.
It’s just dawn and muggy. Me and Boo have been picking her
up for morning walks. She’s always waiting out on her stoop. She
comes running as soon as she sees us.
“Words, huh? Not real sure I need to know fancy
words.”
“You don’t.” She has her study book with her. “Most of the
ones in here are junk, but there are a few really good ones. Might
be good to know them. For when you’re in
school.”
I shrug. “I guess that’d be fine. If you teach me the good
ones. Hit me.”
“Execute,” she says.
“Yeah, uh, I already know that one.”
“Not like that. Anthony executed the mission and was ready
for the next one.”
“Execute means
complete. Cool.” It’s nice, not feeling stupid
for a minute. I throw the ball. Boo jets after it. “Yeah, that’s a
good one.”
“I’m gonna kill
myself,” the kid in the burrito bag wails.
“Then do it
already!”
(The next night, Sunday, August 9, the fifty-ninth day . .
.)
At 8:00 p.m. Tony
calls. I want to hear his voice, to hear he’s good, to tell him
about the dogs. But we won’t talk like that. He’ll just yell at me.
How he trusted me, and what did I go and do but break his sister’s
heart?
I’d rather pretend
we’re still friends. Better I remember him the last time I saw him,
at the airport, that grin—
“Do you want to take
the call or not?” guard says.
“Not.”
(The next morning, Monday, August 10, the sixtieth day . .
.)
The next batch of
dogs are sharp. Hundred percent memory retention.
I untrain them, again
by example, teach them to run when they hear “Sit.”
Wash frowns. “Don’t
think I don’t know what you’re doing.”
By lunch the dogs are
rolling around, digging holes in the training field. The K-9
trainer smiles as he thumbs through the dogs’ evaluations, every
one a failure. “These were A-list dogs, my friend.”
“Paperwork don’t
lie.”
“What you in here
for?”
“Murder in the
two.”
“Me too,” he says. “I
had you figured for one of those wily types. The way you have the
dogs fawning and falling all over you? I think you might do real
well for yourself when you get out.”
“The world will blow
herself up before I get out of here.”
“How old are
you?”
I tell him, and he
pats my shoulder and tells me in Spanish to take it easy, and I say
him too, and he chuckles on his way back to the kennel
building.
“Doesn’t even seem
mad,” I say.
“He’s a good man,”
Wash says. “I don’t suppose he wants to be sending those dogs out
into the world any more than you do. Tell you one thing,
though.”
“Tell
it.”
“That old man right
there is a longtime inside lifer. He worked hard to become a
trusty. If he loses this gig, he’s back working in the shop, maybe
the laundry. He has a little autonomy out here in the kennel runs.
A little self-respect. Whether he’s here or not, somebody is going
to do this work. He has got to make sure these dogs perform.” Wash
eyes me. “You just geniused yourself out of a job.”