Last Days of the Dog-Men Read Online Free PDF

good one, and then when they’d become comfortable with this she switched and looked at them with the false one, which was clear and had the direct hard-bearing frankness of detachment. In her good eye’s peripheral vision she could see the general distress that this caused.
    Despite his years and his sewn-up eye, Bob was as stout and fit as a young dog. He stayed that way naturally, as dogs of his type will, having the metabolism of all small muscular animals. He was tight, compact— much like her late husband, Pops, but just the opposite of Agnes, who was lanky. Officially, he had been Pops’s dog, the son he’d never had, she supposed. In that way Agnes had felt at best like a stepmother, standing just a little apart. Pops and Bob had understood one another, shared a language of some kind that only they’d understood, whereas Agnes could never tell if Bob was listening to her or not.
    Nevertheless, she and Bob had become closer in the year since Pops had died. They had their routine together. Bob ate twice a day, morning and evening. He got to stay outside in the fenced backyard as long as he wanted during the day. At night he slept on Agnes’s bed, down near the footboard. And every evening, once early and once late, she let him out to pee in the yard. A neighbor wandered out back to look at the moon would see the light on her back.porch snap on, the door creak open, see Bob come flying out onto the grass, snarling and grunting the way Boston bulldogs do, dashing around in the dark near the back of the yard. But Agnes hadn’t the patience with him Pops’d had, how Pops would sit at the kitchen table smoking, sipping coffee, waiting till Bob sauntered back up to the door and barked to be let back in. Now, Bob would hardly have time to pee before the door creaked openon its hinges again and Agnes started in on him, saying, “Where are you? What are you doing back there? Go on, now. Go on and do what you’re gonna do. What are you doing? Come on. Come on in here and finish up your supper. I want to go to bed. Come on in this door. Where are you? Please, Bob. I’m tired, boy. What are you doing out there? Come on in here. Come on. Come on.” Then Bob would stop, sniff around, shoot a quick stream into the monkey grass, lob a fading arc to the bark of the popcorn tree, and then leap back into the light of the porch. And she would pull the door shut, turn all three dead bolts, snap off the kitchen light, and feel her way along the hallway to bed.
    E XCEPT FOR THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR ON HER EAST SIDE , where the professor lived with with his wife and two little girls, this seemed to Agnes like a neighborhood of widows. Next door on the west side was Lura Campbell, eighty-four, who insisted on driving every day. She did all right once she got out of her azalea-lined driveway, but she had the worst time trying to back herself out. On this morning, Agnes lay in bed and listened to Lura’s old Impala wheeze to a start, clank into Reverse, back up a little ways, and then screee , into the azaleas. Clank clank, into Drive, pull forward. Clank clank, into Reverse, back up. Screee , into the azaleas. Clank clank, into Drive, pull forward. Clank clank, into Reverse, back up. Screee , into the azaleas. All the way down her driveway. Drove Agnes crazy. She’d said to Lura, I don’t see why you feel like you got to get out and go every morning. Well, I like to go, Lura said. I don’t see any sense in going just to be going, Agnes said. Well, Lura said, I just have to get out and go somewhere, I can’t sit here at the house.
    Agnes did not want to end up like Lura, an aimless, doddering wanderer driving down the middle of the street in her ancient automobile threatening dogs and children. She hoped that something would happen to ease her on out of the world before she got that way, that she would die in her sleep or simply somehow disappear, whisked into thin air by the hand