Number 9, March 1999 IN THIS ISSUE... Dawn over Boggy Creek Road by Patricia Akhimie Ladies of the Road by John Lindenbaum Highway 9, 26 West by Richard Johnston Dogs by Tristan Snell

DOGS (cont.) back       The camera turned again as the anchor searched for another eyewitness to interview. Her next find was younger, apparently college-age, with a dirty white baseball cap and a faded blue t-shirt streaked with white and beige paint.       "So what did you see?"       "Well, y'know, I was painting the house next door before it was raining, and, like, this guy comes running past with these big dogs chasin' him, and then, next, well, the dogs were like attacking him and stuff, biting, had him down on the ground, so I went down the ladder and found the lady who lived there, and, um, she was the one who called 911."       "What happened then?"       "It was the kids, they ran out and their mom was screamin', and I tried to stop them but I couldn't. They ran over here, I guess they were curious, and they stopped maybe fifteen feet away, and the little one screamed, and, like, I just remember seein' one of them dogs turn from the man and growl, the loudest, meanest growl I ever heard. They screamed again and I scooped 'em up, the kids, and ran to get a paintcan to, like, knock 'em out, the dogs, or somethin', but it was too late."             His entire body felt like it had been opened up and drowned in a sea of cold, slow water. He felt himself swoon in an anemic sucking of blood from the brain, but it seemed to brace his muscles and keep him standing. The scream he loosed unconsciously shook the deep, deep green leaves swirling in sea patterns over his head, as jaws clamped down above his ankle and wrist, opening and closing again, getting a better grip on the limb. His muscles, taut with fear, pulled against the force of the animals, tearing at opposite directions-he had pulled like this before, to extract a toy, a frisbee, and now his hand, his foot.       The left leg was still good, unwounded, able to pivot and bend to keep balance. The dogs, too, worked to stay upright, shuffling paws backwards and giving ground forwards, growls and guttural snarls timed with the tugs, shifting the dust and gravel and the fresh clippings of grass, still wet from the cutting, and now blood from his foot, streaming down almost purple against the white of running shoes not yet broken in, streaked in smeary footprints on the dusty-colored sidewalk.             "Sir, ma'am, you said you live across the street. What did you see?"       The couple in question were in their 30s and looked as if they had just walked out of a movie theater into the blinding light outside.       "We came a bit late, to tell the truth. I believe we had just been enjoying the day out back in our Florida room."       "...and then we heard the screaming, and thought that, well, maybe we ought to see what it was. A man was having trouble with his dogs, and..."       "...we always keep a gun inside the house, and so I was going to run inside and get it, but the officer got here and said it wouldn't be necessary."             Now he adjusted to the pain, shooting sparks so frequent that they constituted a dull roar. His eyes rolled around in his head, his voice sought an ear to grasp, a grip on some rock to stop him from falling, he could see another jogger, a neighbor in a yellow shirt whom he recognized, the couple across the street standing on their lawn, then a car that pulled in front of him, maybe only twenty feet, black shiny marble reflecting lush and metallic light, now a door opening and a man. He tore his voice out of his chest and threw it, jagged and shrill in the wind, not a man's scream but the wail of an animal in agony. The man in the car darted out several steps towards him and stopped-why wasn't he coming? Another cry. Why was he backing towards the car? The couple, why were they standing there? The man, opening the trunk-maybe to get something, yes, a bag of golf clubs, he'd run with a club to beat the dogs off of him.             "Ma'am, we understand that you were the one who called the police."       The woman's children were beside her, sheet-white and wide-eyed, staring at the carcasses that lay to the side, where no one was standing. Their mother had always told them that people on the news were sleeping, and they were trying to decide whether the man was. They had seen the dogs, though, and their mother had said that it was ok, that they were bad dogs.       "Yes, yes I did."       "Can you tell us what you saw?"       "I didn't really see much of anything. Brian, the boy who's painting our house... he knocked on the door and told me that someone was getting attacked by dogs and to call 911 and then I don't know we came out afterwards and waited for people to come I..."             He watched the man, made eye-contact with him and then the couple, then the jogger, the man dropping the golf bag on the ground and recoiling. Why, he tore the word out, why can't you help? The man in the button-down shirt, as if he'd been blown back by the very wind of the words, stumbled backwards as one of the dogs yanked his neighbor's arm with a final tug and sent him down onto the curb.       On the ground he attempted to crawl away on all fours, realizing that his dangling left hand was numb with the nerves shorn away. He was startled by the color of the bone, a pale yellow-gray, like the skin of a dead man. A child screamed. From his right side he saw a dog lunging towards his neck and struck it with his elbow, but the other jaw came in strong and full, a full mouth of teeth slicing and shearing into his left shoulder, and he fell hard onto his side. Rolling over he saw their snouts, and the child screamed again.       First was the weight as one of them stepped up onto his chest with its two front legs, but what filled his mind was the smell, the smell of mud and saliva, and blood, a sweet breath of bitter iron, warm and palpable on his cheeks. Then he could only feel the sticky wet of the pavement of the curb as the neck muscles were severed, dropping the right cheek to the ground, into the scarlet pool fed pulse by pulse by the mangled flesh where the carotid and jugular had been a second before. He could make out swirls of sunshine and shadow, and shoes and legs, sunk like tree trunks into the street, and as the shadows swallowed the light, he could hear nothing but their breathing.             "Cut--Did we get all that? Good. Let's go-"       "Wait!" A voice piped up from the crowd of maybe twenty people. "Will we be on TV tonight?"       "What? Well, yes, of course. Channel 6. Six o'clock news. Probably the top story-someone was killed."       Her announcement broke the awkward silence and sent people strolling back to their homes, careful to avert their eyes from the curb. --Tristan Snell