“I am a dog” Sam barked “I am the Old Man’s Dog”
The crossed Chew Sticks just hung on the wall in the cramped little house. He felt uncomfortable indoors, even taking his meals outside when it wasn’t too wet or cold.
“I’ve lain at the old man’s feet while he has knelt like a bitch and asked for your help,” Sam barked again. In the empty dark building his barks retorted like shots from the old man’s bang stick.
Maybe, he thought, the chew sticks need light. I don’t know how to turn on lights. I don’t know many things. I know I am a dog, a working dog. I herd sheep, I bark at their flanks and they run away from my barks, when they’ve gone too far I bark at the other flank. I steer them where the old man wants; out to pasture, back to the pen.
I know that meat tastes good. I know I am not supposed to eat the chickens that peck in the dirt by the barn. I know sometimes the Old Man drinks the stuff that makes him cry and I must sit there and have my head petted and sleep in the big bed. Mostly I know about sheep. The chew sticks should know about sheep; the chew sticks know everything I know. The sheep outside look like sheep, but they must not be. Sam tried hard to picture the immediate past. He had a hard time with it; it’s not how a dog’s memory works.
The lights hadn’t come on in the big house, Sam knew this was wrong, he didn’t know why, in the immediate past, but knew it was wrong. He barked at the dark house. Behind him he heard hooves lots of them. Sam howled to remember, his memory merged with the immediate present. They were out there, heads turned to the side, looking for an entrance. Hooves behind him and then the bleating, he had turned and growled. They didn’t retreat, but stopped, half circled, holding him at the foot of the dark house steps. The black sheep appeared in the doorway. He was bigger. The black is who Sam herded the most, the others would follow him.
The Black Sheep stood in the threshold and let out a bleat that sounded like a roar. Sam could smell fresh blood it rode the air on the black’s breath. It was man blood, meat like blood, like there was muscle and flesh.
Sam barked sharp and loud and kept barking. It was a warning, it was calling for the man, and, Sam knew, it had an edge he’d only smelled before in sheep and some men who had visited the farm and the man who lived with the crossed chew sticks; fear. The sharper and quicker the barks came the less the hooves retreated. Some of the whites had chicken feathers and other blood on their muzzles. Sam smelled fear everywhere.
He had seen, saw, sees the break in the line and ran, runs, is running for the crossed stick house. He knows a way in that a dog on his belly can go, he knew, knows, is knowing there are no windows except the colored one no one can see through. Sheep can’t crawl on their bellies, he thinks, then, Sheep can’t tear at flesh, can’t eat chickens.
“Help me oh mighty chew sticks,” Sam barked “Like you help the Old men. Please.”
Outside even the crickets and birds had stopped chirping there was only the terrible bleating of the black, bleating orders, and the hooves surrounding the house of Crossed Chew Sticks.
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