Dog Eat Dog Read Online Free Page A

all.”
    I waited on the porch while he retrieved the dog, a brown shepherd-Doberman monstrosity. It strained at the leash, wheezing in the choke chain as it pulled harder and harder, strangling itself. I hopped up and walked backward down the stairs, as I was the thing it was trying to reach.
    They were perfect for each other, and the beast calmed right down when Terry addressed it. “Ain’t he beautiful?” he said sincerely, making goo-goo eyes at the dog, bending down to kiss him on the mouth. It was the closest I’d ever seen Terry come to something like love.
    “No,” I said, because the animal was not beautiful. He was big, in a clumsy, retarded way, and still growing. He looked strong and dangerous and about to fall over all at the same time. Some of his hair was short and some of it was long, like a mange pattern, and all of it was orange, like Terry’s. He had a very pointy face.
    “Gotta get y’self a dog, Mick. Gotta.”
    “Don’t gotta,” I said, in his stupid voice.
    He shook his head at me, waved me to start walking. “You don’t understand nothin’, man, dogs is where it’s at today. A guy’s dog is who he is. Dog can be you, y’know? Like, let’s face it, mosta your white guys, they can’t fight no more, life’s been too good to them, what with bein’ lucky enough ta be born white and all. So they’re soft. Like you. Niggers are stronger, spics are faster, and even the gooks and the heebs—people ya used ta be able ta count on—now even they’ll stick ya in a damn heartbeat. You get a blade, they get a machete. You get a nine millimeter, they get a Uzi. It just don’t pay.”
    “No, it don’t.”
    “You’re gettin’ wise wit me, boy, but you still don’t get it. This is, like, the wave of the future, where the dogs do the fightin’. Your dog is special. You train him, you raise him, maybe you even breed him perfect, till your dog is like a dog version of yourself. Cunnin’. Mean. Smarter than all the other dogs. Then he does all your killin’ for ya, and you don’t gotta get your head knocked at all, ’cause now it’s the best dog- man, the sharpest, that winds up on top and everybody else can just kiss my ass.”
    I was stunned. I could not recall Terry ever before stringing together three sentences on one subject without forgetting what he started to say. He had clearly been working on this.
    “What do you get out of all this, Terry?”
    He slapped his dog on the back of the head, out of anger at me. “You’re so stupid, Mick. You’re so ignorant. It puts things back the way they belong. It puts us back in position , y’know. The future of warfare. It’s high fuckin’ tech.”
    Terry’s snapping at me got his dog agitated. He started straining again to get at me.
    “No, Mickey,” Terry yelled, yanking the chain, letting it go slack, then snapping it tight again.
    “Let him smell your hand,” Terry said, talking to me the same way he talked to the dog. “No, no, no, turn it palm up . You want it to be a stump?”
    I let the dog smell me. His lip curled in a snarl as he did. I froze.
    Three or four long whiffs later, Mickey decided. His ears, which had been lying back flat on his head, stood up. The hair on his long curved horse neck smoothed out too. He stood at attention beside Terry, which seemed for him to be a relaxed state.
    Terry smiled. “See? He likes ya. ’Cause ya smell like me. He can smell that, your insides, that they smell like mine. Dogs know the real stuff.”
    I didn’t take the bait. “Where are we going?” I asked calmly.
    “Are you just bein’ stupid on purpose, or have you been gone that long?”
    When we strolled into Bloody Sundays, we were showered with whoo-whoo-whoos as if Terry had the world’s finest woman on his arm. “Looky look,” Danny said as I took a stool beside Terry. No one even seemed to notice the dog. The bartender slapped two pints of Guinness in front of us, laughing. “You can take the boyo out of the