Love and Other Wounds Read Online Free PDF Page B

carry Lucy out into the parking lot and put her down. She sniffs the ground weakly. Her paws shake with the effort. She looks up at me with pleading eyes. She knows what I want ofher. But she is so very tired. She falls into the gravel. Some of her wounds open up again. Blood drips, but no piss.
    I’m talking to her. I don’t know when I started. I don’t know exactly what I tell her, but I know that it is true. The world fades out around us until we are the only two things left in it. I make her a promise. I know that I mean it. I will not let her die.
    Lucy squats. My heart sits too large in my chest. It kicks and kicks. Lucy yelps. She squirts hot amber piss onto the parking lot. A flood of it.
    Tough little bitch. Proud little warrior.
    When she is done Lucy limps over to my side and leans against me, confused by the noises I can’t help making. I stand in the hotel parking lot and cry over a puddle of dog piss.
    I made her a promise. I will keep it. Lucy will not fight again. She’s fought enough. Me? I’m just getting started. If Jesse has a problem with that, he better be ready to scratch.

I WISH THEY NEVER NAMED HIM MAD DOG
    Some people will tell you that a person’s name has power and meaning. But it’s not so. A name’s just a name is all. It don’t have the power to affect your fate. Maybe you think it’s because I’m named Geat myself that I have this opinion. Here’s what being named Geat means: it means that my daddy was one hardcore Aryan son of a bitch is what it means. But just because I’m named after a bunch of white barbarians don’t make me a natural-born Super White Man. Here in the Ozarks, people here being mostly white as an albino’s scalp, you go around hating the niggers and Jews, you might as well get a hate-on for the Martians. There’s plenty of pale-ass bastards around here to hate anyway. Of course, if you can’t keep yourself out of prison like my old man, you might run into a few more of the brothers.That’s why my name is Geat Mashburn and also why I always had two birthday parties when I was a kid—one in the Leavenworth visiting room. See, the things that happen, the choices folk make, those are the things that shape you, not a name. But nicknames are different. A nickname stuck to you at the right time can twist your life around forever. Most people who you’d ask about Mad Dog McClure, they’d tell you he was so cussed mean and crazy that God himself had that name written down for him in the Book of Life. But most of those people don’t know what I do. See, I was there.
    I was there at Jackie Blue’s the night Joe got the name Mad Dog. When the night started, he was just Joe McClure, a good old boy with a job sticking rebar in concrete. The guy was a metalhead with shaggy hair, usually wearing some black T-shirt with a name like Morbid Angel or Cannibal Corpse on it, but that’s not that strange in these parts. He was a big fellow, almost as tall as me, but in a way you wouldn’t notice. No jailhouse tats, nothing in the world that would have made you think that this fellow was going to become one of the most feared men in the hills.
    To tell the truth, the only guy with a rep that night at Jackie Blue’s—except old Jackie himself—was me. See, I’m a watchdog. Around here we don’t have no Mafia or big crime families to keep the peace between operators, or to police ’em when they try to run games on each other. So if you want to make sure your deal goes down without a hitch, you call on me, and I’ll come along to watchdog the deal. People see me coming their way and all their thoughts of double-crossing and dirty deals just dribble out their ears like creek water.
    The night in question I was drinking double Crown and Cokes and talking to Jackie about what Mike Lewis had donelast weekend in the parking lot of the bar. See, the weekend before old Mike