It Feels So Good When I Stop by Joe Pernice

Author:Joe Pernice
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Divorced people, Literary, Man-woman relationships, Humorous, American First Novelists, General, Fiction - General, Popular American Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9781594484698
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Published: 2010-09-14T07:00:00+00:00

“ I T ’S SAD WHEN anyone dies, Roy.” I pushed the stroller along our usual route. One of the small, bone-jarring wheels was seized up. “Even bad people.” Opal Cove Road was a dead-end street. Number 97 was the last house on the left. It was a weather-beaten ranch identical to my sister’s. It didn’t appear to be in worse shape than any of the other houses left unattended for seven of the year’s harshest months. All of the window shades were drawn. The front lawn was sand and twigs. There was a wet case of empty Bud Light cans at the end of the driveway. I looked around, then scooped it up. I jammed the case into the stroller’s mesh undercompartment. I had never returned cans that were not of my own—or my party’s own—emptying. But twenty-four cans was a buck twenty. Smokes were two-fifty a pack. I’d come a long way, baby.

A few days later, when I took care of Roy again, there was another case of empties and a beat-up Subaru wagon in the driveway of 97 Opal Cove Road.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here, kid.”

I heard the unmistakable sound of a dog’s collar jangling at charging speed. A muscular Doberman rounded the corner of the house and stopped at a safe sizing-up distance. He growled like a wood chipper. Raw egg white saliva swung from his fangs. I moved slightly, and so did he. Roy and I were pinned.

“Go home!” I ordered. “Go home!” The dog did not obey.

“Tinker, no! ” someone screamed. “Tinker, no! ”

I located the source of the voice. Marie was standing on the back porch of 97 Opal Cove Road. She started banging a large metal watering jug with a gardening shovel. “Is this your fucking dog? ” I yelled.

“No, Tinker! No, Tinker! ”

Roy started to freak. He tried desperately to squirm his restrained body higher up the stroller’s seat. The Doberman lunged at his feet and clamped onto his pant leg. I wrested Roy free. Tinker pulled back empty-mouthed. He was not fucking around. If I didn’t do something, he was going to eat Roy.

“Tinker! ” Marie screamed.

“It’s okay, Roy,” I lied. “Go home! ” I screamed at Tinker. I lifted Roy—stroller and all—onto the hood of the Subaru.

Tinker attacked me before I could follow Roy to relative safety. The savage was locked onto my left desert boot at the Achilles tendon. He started whipping his head back and forth like a well-hooked tarpon. I sledgeham mered my fist wildly at his mouth. I was pounding the piss out of my own foot in the process. Tinker was trying to snap my ankle’s neck. I didn’t feel any of it. Roy was screaming.

“Off, Tinker! ” Marie ordered. I heard a series of low-pitched, hollow gonks as she beat the dog’s upholstered rib cage with the watering can. She brought it down so hard on his head my boot came off. Tinker yelped and retreated through the hedges that separated two yards.

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