The Dog in the Alley
“But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.”
–Lord Byron
The wind whispered through the alleys. It searched out poor places and poorer people, whispering the edges of secrets to anyone willing to listen. Erik listened, but today the stir in the fetid air was not comforting. The best friend he had in the world lay dying, and whispered secrets wouldn’t help her.
Erik scrubbed his eyes, tears combining with the rough abrasive of the ragged coat he wore to make uneven holes in the filth that covered his face. He looked out at the bright neon sign of the store across from his alley, hoping that it would never turn off. The sky was dark now, and the neon eventually turned off when the darkness got deep enough. Erik didn’t know exactly when, time was hard to think of, but he knew it would be soon. When the lights of the store turned off, no one would come or leave. Erik looked down at the heavy bowl of red-painted metal sitting between his legs, the orphan of some long forgotten piece of machinery. It held pitifully little money. He was out too late, he knew that, but he couldn’t not try. God was disappointed if you didn’t do your best.
The neon winked out, keeping nothing but the ghost of a glow as Erik buried his face in his hands. He crawled backwards into his alley, upsetting countless fleas as he scrubbed his hands through his tangled hair. The money in the bowl wasn’t enough. All he could do was hope that Baby would live another day, live to give him another chance. All he could do was hope... How he hated hoping.
Erik hid the money he’d collected under a dumpster, stashing it with the rest of his paltry savings. It might be enough tomorrow. It would have to be. More tears striped Erik’s face as he turned to the ripped mattress beside the dumpster, gently rubbing the head of its occupant. She cracked an eye wearily and seemed to smile, but sleep reclaimed her at once. Three small puppies wriggled around her worm distended belly, struggling to find purchase on nipples that were dry of milk and hot with fever. A fourth laid still and cold, kicked off the mattress by its more vigorous siblings. Erik picked it up gently, reverently, holding it to his chest. He knew it was dead, but there had been something a man had told him once in a different alley, that God could bring a thing back that had been dead only three days. That had been a long time ago, and the man had long since departed, but Erik liked what he had said. Erik carefully opened a cardboard box beside the mattress, ignoring the carrion stench inside. There were two puppies in the box already, the oldest of which had begun to rot inside. Erik placed the new corpse in the box, careful not disturb the body of the pup that died yesterday. After a moment of hesitation, he also removed the decaying corpse of the older pup. It had been three days. God had not wanted it to live.
Erik briefly pulled himself up into a stooped position, dumping the tiny corpse into the dumpster and dusting the maggots off his hands before he knelt back down beside Baby. Hope was an evil thing. It had been days since he’d been able to stroke his friend’s rough gray coat without it coming out in clumps. The most he could do now was to let her know that he was still there, watching over her. Give her a little hope that he would find a way. The thought made Erik degenerate into sobs of bitter mirth.
He shook off his coat as soon as he recovered, laying it over baby and her still living pups. It wasn’t much, but it was the best that he could do. The only thing he could do. Erik lay down beside the mattress, flattening his spine against the hard concrete. More of his friends would come soon, they liked to bed down together in the cold, but for now he was alone. Erik shivered. He hated being alone, hated it more than he hated hope. He supposed that was why he still let it sink its poisonous threads in.
Morning came, as it ever did, without sunlight. Lighter shadows filled the alley, rubbing across growls and fur as the half-light shifted across the concrete. Erik gently shifted against the friend that had curled up along his side, sitting up and checking under his coat just enough so that he could see if Baby still breathed. She did, though with the shallow pants of pain and sickness. Two of the three pups slept, but the third mewled softly, blind eyes and stubby feet searching his mother’s belly.
Erik’s face twisted into a half-smile, and he ran two knuckles down the back of the vigorous pup. It would survive. He had only hope for the others, but if he could save Baby, he could save this life as well. At the end, that was what mattered: how many lives Erik could save.
Erik pulled himself into a stoop, grabbing the red metal bowl he collected money in and digging through his stash to throw a few pennies and a nickel into the bowl. He knew how to beg. It was all he knew how to do besides hope.
The street outside of his alley was almost empty. Men with dark clothes and faces like winter had told him he couldn't stay on the streets that people frequented. Those men didn’t come out here though, very few did. Cars cruised by occasionally. Sometimes they stopped at the newly bright neon sign and went inside. Erik wasn’t allowed to follow. He had to buy something when inside, otherwise the man within called the men with winter’s face. Erik couldn’t let that happen. Not now, not with Baby like she was.
Erik waited in the soft city-shadows of the morning. Few passed him in the hours he waited, and fewer still gave him the coins he asked for. It was not a good day. Things had been better once, a long time ago. More people had change then, and the faces of winter let him stay in better places. The man from the church had come to talk to him back then, and the man had given him food while he talked about God.
Another hating face crossed street outside the alley, drawing back and cursing when Erik drew near. The face was wrong and twisted, but Erik still wished it was his. Faces like that didn’t have to ask others for money. The face was wrong, but it was the right face for this place.
The shadows lightened as the day past, almost reaching a sort of brightness at midday. Ancient hunger tightened Erik’s stomach, but he would not let himself feel it. He approached the few people who dared to walk on the street, taking their curses and their seldom given coins without hesitation. Noon passed, and the shadows began their descent into darkness once more.
Erik ventured back into his alley, pushing through two of his friends who tussled inside the alley and depositing most of the coins he’d collected with the others under the dumpster. He checked on the dead puppies, then he checked on the living and their mother. She lived, but her fever burned hotter and brighter than before. She woke enough for Erik to mumble comfort through cracked lips and force her to drink the last of his water. She got it down, barely, and closed her eyes to sleep once more. Erik scrubbed his eyes on his coat. He didn’t remember much of his mother besides the echo of a voice telling him not to disappoint God, a message he hadn’t understood until far later, but he had a distant memory of a feeling. He couldn’t remember her face, but he could remember the feeling of her fingers like fire on his wrist as she slept for the last time. Baby hadn’t gone that far, but she was close. She would leave tomorrow if he couldn’t help her tonight. Erik sniffled and whispered prayers through cracked lips, then snatched back his red bowl and headed back out into the street.
Evening slid by and shadows darkened with only a few scattered coins to mark the return of night. Resolve fled and despair grew inside Erik as the shadows settled back over everything, the sun giving up its hopeless attempt to light the city. The neon sign became the brightest light on the street, and Erik sank to his knees. He had failed. There was pitifully little in his bowl, and, even combined with the rest of his stash, it wouldn’t be enough to get the man inside the neon sign to let him stay. The sign would go out soon, and then it would all really be over.
Sobs wracked Erik’s body as he knelt in the street. He had failed his oldest friend. She would die, and it would be because he failed to save her. Hope had betrayed him, as he had always known it would.
Footsteps approached in the darkness, light and quick. Erik raised his head slowly, picking out the form of an approaching stranger in the gloom. Treacherous hope flared up again. The new face was young and female, almost fragile looking. She carried a pair of heavy bags on each hand and she looked scared; her face as out of place as a sunshaft on these streets. She looked like an angel.
Erik remained kneeling on the concrete, paralyzed with amazement. The woman neared his alley, not seeming to see Erik’s bent shape against the greater darkness of the street. One of Erik’s friends gave a snarling bark from the alley, and the woman yelped and jumped, stumbling with the weight of her bags.
“Wait!” Erik tried to shout as he struggled up from the concrete, his voice dry and halting. It had been a long time since he’d spoken to another person with any more words than were required to ask for money.
The woman whipped sideways to look at him, her face a mask of surprise and terror as Erik moved. Her bags twisted farther than she did, overbalancing her and bearing her to the ground. She landed badly, her bags spilling their contents and her legs sprawling beneath her. The woman ripped something out of her back pocket, a small black cylinder the size of Erik’s thumb. She held it out in front of her body protectively, her face white with fear.
“Please wait,” Erik repeated, his parched voice soft and desperate. “My friend didn’ want t’ scare you.” He picked up one of the objects that had fallen out of her bag, a rectangular box that rattled when he moved it, and offered it back to her. “Sorry.”
For a long minute the woman didn’t seem to understand Erik’s faltering speech, then her face reddened and she cautiously lowered the little black cylinder. She stood up slowly, taking the box from Erik’s hands even more carefully. “I thought,” she began, her voice still tight, “I mean…” Her cheeks reddened further when Erik smiled encouragingly through yellow teeth and passed her another of her boxes. “I just got a little spooked.”
Erik nodded. He didn’t know exactly what she meant, or what she’d been about to say, but she was still here, and that was what mattered. “My friends get rude af’er dark, bu’ they don’ mean harm,” he said as he bent down to retrieve the rest of her fallen objects. It was polite. He’d been told that a long time ago.
The young woman ventured a hesitant sort of smile as she accepted another set of parcels from Erik. “Do you live there with… your friends?” She asked, nodding uncertainly to the alley.
Erik nodded, looking at one of the parcels he’d been handing to her for the first time. This one was cold to the touch and said ‘BOB’S BACON BITS’ on the side. It was food, what he’d wanted all this time, and yet it wasn’t his. A little regretfully, Erik passed the package back along to the woman. That was what was right. “Yeah, we live there. Name is Erik.”
The young woman looked grateful to have a simple topic of conversation. “I’m Tina,” she said, accepting the last package and setting all of her bags upright again. “and thank you. I didn’t want to get caught out this late, but you don’t seem to be the worst person to run into.” Tina smiled then, looking at Erik’s tangled filthiness without flinching. She looked again at the alley Erik lived in, and bent down to rifle through a cloth bag at her feet.
Erik’s hands began to shake when she pulled out a wallet.
“I think you can use this better than I can today,” Tina said as she pulled a single bill out of her wallet, proffering it to Erik. “It’s not much, but I don’t think it’ll hurt,” she added.
Tears filled Erik’s eyes as he reached out to take the bill. His eyes could pick out the twenty even in the dim glow of the neon. It was more than he had dreamed of, it was everything he needed. “Thank you… thank you,” he whispered to Tina and God as he reached out to take the bill.
His fingers touched the green paper, and the neon fire died. Hope laughed in mocking derision as despair tore through him. It couldn’t be. He had been able to do it, everything had been right. The tears of awe and joy that Tina’s compassionate act had brought to his eyes flowed now as anguish.
Tina noticed the sudden change in him, and her expression turned wary again. “Are you alright?” she asked, drawing back from him slightly.
Erik didn’t answer. The twenty dollar bill stirred in one of the city’s whispering breezes. The voice of his mother seemed to float on that breeze, her words the same as they had ever been: God will be disappointed if you don’t do your best, don’t disappoint God. But there was nothing else to do.
Tina drew back a little further from Erik’s sudden slack silence. “I’m… going to go now. I just hope I won’t have anymore surprises,” she said with a forced laugh that echoed in the still night.
Hope, he thought, was a treacherous thing. He looked at Tina and the bags she carried, and he understood what he had to do. Tina was one life, Baby and her children were four altogether. God was disappointed when you didn’t do your best. And it didn’t matter that he liked Tina, he had to do what was right. He had to do best he could.
Erik smiled sadly at Tina and folded the twenty into a grimy pocket. Then he knelt, picked up his begging bowl, and transferred the change inside to the same pocket. “Thank you,” he said again.
Tina smiled and nodded, turning to leave.
Erik swung the metal bowl overhand, trying not to feel the shock in his arm as the heavy bowl connected with the young woman’s skull. Tina crumpled soundlessly after the first impact. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, grabbing her under the arms and dragging her into the alley. He brought her bags in after her, and then went to check on Baby. She breathed yet, and there was still enough life left in her to save. He had done the right thing.
A few of Erik’s friends sniffed curiously at Tina’s body, but Erik shooed them away and knelt beside the dead woman. He put her head in his lap and moved a few bloody strands of hair out of the way. She had been a pretty girl, but she just hadn’t belonged here. Her death would save the lives of others, and for that, it was justified. Still, Erik would hope for her, and he would keep her safe for the three days.
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Topic: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___ (Read 314218 times)