Dennis Lehane - Boston Noir (Akashic Noir)

B ob found the dog in the trash.

It was just after Thanksgiving, the neighborhood gone quiet, hungover. After bartending at Cousin Marvs, Bob sometimes walked the streets. He was big and lumpy and hair had been growing in unlikely places all over his body since his teens. In his twenties, hed fought against the hair, carrying small clippers in his coat pocket and shaving twice a day. Hed also fought the weight, but during all those years of fighting, no girl who wasnt being paid for it ever showed any interest in him. After a time, he gave up the fight. He lived alone in the house he grew up in, and when it seemed likely to swallow him with its smells and memories and dark couches, the attempts hed made to escape itthrough church socials, lodge picnics, and one horrific mixer thrown by a dating servicehad only opened the wound further, left him patching it back up for weeks, cursing himself for hoping.

So he took these walks of his and, if he was lucky, sometimes he forgot people lived any other way. That night, he paused on the sidewalk, feeling the ink sky above him and the cold in his fingers, and he closed his eyes against the evening.

He was used to it. He was used to it. It was okay.

You could make a friend of it, as long as you didnt fight it.

With his eyes closed, he heard ita worn-out keening accompanied by distant scratching and a sharper, metallic rattling. He opened his eyes. Fifteen feet down the sidewalk, a large metal barrel with a heavy lid shook slightly under the yellow glare of the streetlight, its bottom scraping the sidewalk. He stood over it and heard that keening again, the sound of a creature that was one breath away from deciding it was too hard to take the next, and he pulled off the lid.

He had to remove some things to get to ita toaster and five thick Yellow Pages, the oldest dating back to 2000. The dogeither a very small one or else a puppywas down at the bottom, and it scrunched its head into its midsection when the light hit it. It exhaled a soft chug of a whimper and tightened its body even more, its eyes closed to slits. A scrawny thing. Bob could see its ribs. He could see a big crust of dried blood by its ear. No collar. It was brown with a white snout and paws that seemed far too big for its body.

It let out a sharper whimper when Bob reached down, sank his fingers into the nape of its neck, and lifted it out of its own excrement. Bob didnt know dogs too well, but there was no mistaking this one for anything but a boxer. And definitely a puppy, the wide brown eyes opening and looking into his as he held it up before him.

Somewhere, he was sure, two people made love. A man and a woman. Entwined. Behind one of those shades, oranged with light, that looked down on the street. Bob could feel them in there, naked and blessed. And he stood out here in the cold with a near-dead dog staring back at him. The icy sidewalk glinted like new marble, and the wind was dark and gray as slush.

What do you got there?

Bob turned, looked up and down the sidewalk.

Im up here. And youre in my trash.

She stood on the front porch of the three-decker nearest him. Shed turned the porch light on and stood there shivering, her feet bare. She reached into the pocket of her hoodie and came back with a pack of cigarettes. She watched him as she got one going.

I found a dog. Bob held it up.

A what?

A dog. A puppy. A boxer, I think.

She coughed out some smoke. Who puts a dog in a barrel?

Right? he said. Its bleeding. He took a step toward her stairs and she backed up.

Who do you know that I would know? A city girl, not about to just drop her guard around a stranger.

I dont know, Bob said. How about Francie Hedges?

She shook her head. You know the Sullivans?

That wouldnt narrow it down. Not around here. You shook a tree, a Sullivan fell out. Followed by a six-pack most times. I know a bunch.

This was going nowhere, the puppy looking at him, shaking worse than the girl.

Hey, she said, you live in this parish?

Next one over. St. Theresas.

Go to church?

Most Sundays.

So you know Father Pete?

Pete Regan, he said, sure.

She produced a cell phone. Whats your name?

Bob, he said. Bob Saginowski.

Bob waited as she stepped back from the light, phone to one ear, finger pressed into the other. He stared at the puppy. The puppy stared back, like, How did I get here? Bob touched its nose with his index finger. The puppy blinked its huge eyes. For a moment, Bob couldnt recall his sins.

Nadia, the girl said and stepped back into the light. Bring him up here, Bob. Pete says hi.

They washed it in Nadias sink, dried it off, and brought it to her kitchen table.

Nadia was small. A bumpy red rope of a scar ran across the base of her throat like the smile of a drunk circus clown. She had a tiny moon of a face, savaged by pockmarks, and small, heart-pendant eyes. Shoulders that didnt cut so much as dissolve at the arms. Elbows like flattened beer cans. A yellow bob of hair curled on either side of her face. Its not a boxer. Her eyes glanced off Bobs face before dropping the puppy back onto her kitchen table. Its an American Staffordshire terrier.

Bob knew he was supposed to understand something in her tone, but he didnt know what that thing was so he remained silent.

She glanced back up at him after the quiet lasted too long. A pit bull.

Thats a pit bull?

She nodded and swabbed the puppys head wound again. Someone had pummeled it, she told Bob. Probably knocked it unconscious, assumed it was dead, and dumped it.

Why? Bob said.

She looked at him, her round eyes getting rounder, wider. Just because. She shrugged, went back to examining the dog. I worked at Animal Rescue once. You know the place on Shawmut? As a vet tech. Before I decided it wasnt my thing. Theyre so hard, this breed

What?

To adopt out, she said. Its very hard to find them a home.

I dont know about dogs. I never had a dog. I live alone. I was just walking by the barrel. Bob found himself beset by a desperate need to explain himself, explain his life. Im just not He could hear the wind outside, black and rattling. Rain or bits of hail spit against the windows.

Nadia lifted the puppys back left pawthe other three paws were brown, but this one was white with peach spots. Then she dropped the paw as if it were contagious. She went back to the head wound, took a closer look at the right ear, a piece missing from the tip that Bob hadnt noticed until now.

Well, she said, hell live. Youre gonna need a crate and food and all sorts of stuff.

No, Bob said. You dont understand.

She cocked her head, gave him a look that said she understood perfectly.

I cant. I just found him. I was gonna give him back.

To whoever beat him, left him for dead?

No, no, like, the authorities.

That would be Animal Rescue, she said. After they give the owner seven days to reclaim him, theyll

The guy who beat him? He gets a second chance?

She gave him a half-frown and a nod. If he doesnt take it, she lifted the puppys ear, peered in, chances are this little fellall be put up for adoption. But its hard. To find them a home. Pit bulls. More often than not? She looked at Bob. More often than not, theyre put down.

Bob felt a wave of sadness roll out from her that immediately shamed him. He didnt know how, but hed caused pain. Hed put some out into the world. Hed let this girl down. I he started. Its just

She glanced up at him. Im sorry?

Bob looked at the puppy. Its eyes were droopy from a long day in the barrel and whoever gave it that wound. It had stopped shivering, though.

You can take it, Bob said. You used to work there, like you said. You

She shook her head. My father lives with me. He gets home Sunday night from Foxwoods. He finds a dog in his house? An animal hes allergic to? She jerked her thumb. Puppy goes back in the barrel.