“Look. I’m not gay, and I’m not smoking pot. Are we done here?”
Joe held the squinty-eyed stare for a long moment, then broke it off with a skeptical smirk and something like a merry twinkle in his eye. Like nothing had happened. “I had to ask. Just because I love you. Don’t get pissed, I’m just trying to make sure you’re on track.”
Will just wanted to be away. He felt vaguely violated. “Uh huh,” he might have said, but was distracted by a movement at the corner of his eye. One of their Rottweilers was running full-tilt toward the barbed wire fencing at the north edge of the property. Joe noticed Will’s focus shift and turned to look.
“Oh shit. BRUNO!!” Joe called after his dog, without effect. A neighbor’s pitbull had wandered onto the property and was pissing.
Joe bolted for a nearby ATV.
Bruno was all cruise missile, mach vectors toward the target. The pitbull, whose owner was watching from the other side of the fence, saw Bruno. The pitbull scampered back onto its own property and continued to flee away from Bruno.
Bruno shot under the barbed wire and continued pursuit.
Joe opened the throttle on the ATV and raced toward Bruno.
A gunshot rang out. Bruno fell over. His front paws and right rear leg worked against the ground, his left hind leg useless. He was just lifting himself from the ground when the neighbor walked up to him and executed him with a gunshot to the head. Bruno went still. Bruno was a good dog.
Joe neared the fence on the ATV and locked the wheels to a skidding stop. Joe hopped off the ATV and strode toward the property line, bowed up and elbows out like extra-wide pickup truck side mirrors. Male dominance incarnate.
Will jogged over to witness the confrontation.
The neighbor, Will recalled his surname was Molter, spoke. “Your dog came on my property and threatened my life, *******.” Will remembered that Molter and his dad had some minor beef going back years but couldn’t recall what it was about.
Molter still held the handgun by his side. Molter had come out here in his pickup truck, parked close by.
Joe continued to advance toward the fence. In a voice laden with the promise of grave bodily harm, he threatened Molter: “You need to put that fvcking gun away right now before you make a mistake you can’t recover from, n1ggerkvnt.”
Molter was white, but that didn’t matter to Joe, also white. Joe, Will knew, grew up street fighting in rough neighborhoods. The trick, as far as Will could infer from seeing his dad do this on at least one other occasion, was creating fear and incapacitating the opponent’s will to fight by convincing the other of one’s willingness to defy convention and rules. Joe’s tone of voice was the back-of-the-throat lowing of an alley cat, an unmistakable warning of violence.
Joe continued. “I’m coming across this fence and I’m going to take that gun and buttfvck you with it, pissfvck.” Joe kept a steady momentum of implacable violence. Each detail of speech was honed to perfection, the fricatives and affricates sharpened and sculpted to points and hurled with audible effect. Joe used his voice as a sort of musical instrument of violence, and the dynamics of that voice promised mayhem and invoked despair. There was, Will admitted, a certain creative genius to this intimidation.
Molter halfway raised the handgun as Joe slipped across the barbed wire, but couldn’t raise it further than that. A urine patch bloomed at Molter’s crotch. Molter must have been drunk to instigate this confrontation, and how Molter realized his foolishness. “Oh shit, I’m sorry,” Molter said.
Joe walked all the way up to him, streaming more of the crippling obscenity and firing shocking gestures of impending violence. He arrived at Molter, who was by now already defeated. Joe popped Molter in the face with a sudden fist, somehow unexpected and disguised despite the obvious foreshadowing. Molter dropped. “Get up, bitch,” Joe said.
Molter rose, showing complete submission.
Joe equivocated, apparently torn between a need to fully punish Molter and other considerations that Will didn’t know. Joe took the handgun from Molter and put it behind his waist. He grabbed Molter by the lapels.
“Here’s what we are going to do, Molter. You go get that dog of yours, and you put him down. Do it now.” Molter’s pitbull had fled toward Molter’s house, several hundred yards away.
“That ain’t right! A man doesn’t just kill his own dog like that!”
“I don’t give a shit. You killed my dog and we need justice. This might not be perfect, but it will do. Let’s go get him.”
Joe’s cell phone rang. Joe began to ignore it, but then he thought better. “Yeah?” Joe said into the phone. Molter began to get in his truck but Joe grabbed him. To the other end of the phone, Joe said “Can this wait? I’ve got a situation I need to deal with…Fine. Bye.”
Joe released Molter. “We’ll finish this later, fvckhead.” Joe dismissively pushed Molter into his truck, but with a keen awareness of Molter’s balance, so that Molter tripped and fell awkwardly. Joe squatted down and picked up Bruno, the dead dog’s blood ruining Joe’s expensive silk shirt.
“Ah, fvck.” Joe lamented, about Bruno, the shirt did not concern him. Will couldn’t be certain, but it looked like his dad was crying, or was stifling the urge to do so. “Will, come give me a hand,” Joe called, his voice slightly hitching. “fvck! Fvck that Molter.”
Joe put Bruno in the cargo bin in the back of the ATV and rode back to the house. He would bury Bruno near the garden, or maybe he would have Will dig the hole. A call that could interrupt that confrontation had to be urgent. Will had to guess that it was military-related.
Will walked back toward the house.