"Bullet" (Sketch About a Dog)

The gaunt bag of bones wandered timidly into our yard just a few moments before the fire station whistle signaled noon-time to the adobe and stucco houses in the barrio that was my neighborhood. A punishing sun in a cloudless southwest Texas sky warned of yet another rainless summer day to cool the parched and powdered ground that was our back yard. In the late 1960's, this was the poor side of town. And rather than hose down the yard, Mama, "Mrs. Pearl Ellen King Dixon," said buying a few extra cans of tuna or red beans or another gallon of milk made more sense than having a higher water bill.

The mongrel was panting, his tongue falling from his mouth, his floppy ears flat against his head, his tail fearfully tucked between his legs. Somewhat a cross between a beagle and a greyhound, he had a white chest, and flecks of black peppered the dog's short-haired brown coat. Dark bandit-like markings masked his eyes and forehead.

The dog sized up my brother and me from the corner of his eye, clearly ready to bolt if either of us showed any sign that his approach was unwelcome.

All morning, my younger brother David and I had been sitting int he back yard at 202 North Young, just down the street from Pena & Pena grocery store. We had been digging. I had turned 10 on the last day of school in the fourth grade a month before. He would not be nine until near Christmas. We were both shirtless, and dressed only in our Fruit of the Loom drawers that showed above the waist of our Levi blue jean cut-offs. Our sweaty dark brown backs and tight curly black hair were dusty because earlier in the morning Mamma had allowed a rare dirt fight in which we would wrap powdered soil in old rags, and we'd chase each other around the back yard and bomb each other in playful abandon. This combat was only rarely permitted since extra dirt meant extra baths, and we normally only took one on the night before Sunday Church at Bethlehem Baptist Church just north of town a few rural blocks shy of Little Mexico.

We had been digging a hole when the dog came to us. And we were making mud balls, using an old screen to sift out the rocks, glass, and nails. We would catch red ants from the mounds by the clothesline in our backyard, and we would put them in the round mud cakes we made, and let them bake in the sun atop the evaporative cooler that hung from the window facing Young Street, amazed, breaking them open after half a day's cooking to watch the ants scurry away alive, freed from their forced suspended animation in clay.

"Danny," my brother said, "he looks thirsty."

"Yeah," I said, the response extending into two Southwest Texas chocolate drawled syllables. And in friendly tones we began to softly whistle and call, beckoning the creature that inched forward with his head still down and his ears still flat on his head still turned sideways as he eyed us in a mixture of need, almost-unwilling trust, and slowly yielding resignation.

"Look!" I whispered as the dog turned slightly," "somebody's shot him!" And sure enough, the liquidy eye of a bullet hole on the young dog's left hindquarter glared at us. The wound did not seem to bother or hinder the dog's movements. And although it was not bleeding, I considered that the purplish quarter-sized hole would need tending to if it were not already infected or worm-infested.

I began at that moment to think of the tin of sulfur-based balm that my mother kept in the rag drawer in the bathroom, and I was hoping that the dog would let us minister to his wound. I thought of Mr. Big, my earlier pet dog that had been run over by a car after running from our yard to meet me while I was walking home from school one day in the first grade. Then I had promised never to have another dog. But my heart was softening as this one's wound began to worry me. And I was eagerly beginning to figure out a way to make him stay still long enough for us to help him, even if he wouldn't stay. I could tell that he was a smart and thinking dog as he raised his head up and down a few times, looking around and behind him for paths of quick escape if he would need to run. And despite the earlier vow, I was already growing attached to him.

"Do you think he'll let us pet him?"

"Not yet," I said. "Let him drink a little and see that we don't want to hurt him."

"Who do you think shot him? Why would somebody do something like that?"

"I don't know. Maybe he got in somebody's yard chasing a cat," I suggested uncertainly.

"Boys, are you all right out there?" Our whispered tones were a little too quiet. And while we could hear our mother's voice calling from the kitchen window, we could not see her. During the day we saved on the light bill. Since Mama had already made tuna sandwiches and grape Kool-Aid for lunch on this Saturday, absent any problem with the two of us, she would have been settling down for one of her quota of no more than three or four Pal Mall cigarettes for the day, and for her single Coca-Cola. On Saturday, she would have already finished working her San Angelo Standard Times Crossword Puzzle. She would complete it in the evening during the week when she left for work by 8 a.m. working as a maid for Mrs. Yeary. But during the day on Saturdays, following her soft drink, we would expect her to take a 15-20 minute nap, which we were strictly forbidden to disturb. Even so, she always seemed to know that if David and I were quiet, something might be up--good or bad yet to be determined.

During the school year on weekdays the routine would begin shortly after I would have arrived home walking from school near four o'clock. But during the summer when Mama would be picked up to go to work, David and I would walk across Second Street and beyond the lot just west of our front door one block to Miz Hughes' house, where we would paly with her son Boatie and his sister Nancy. The Hugheses, three sets of Dunn families (John and Philip "Keet" [Keith] were brothers), Mr. Simpson who rode with Pancho Villa, and we--the Dixons--were among the few Negro families who lived in town East of Railroad Avenue in 1969. The Hugheses rented a small sheet rock rectangular house, one of a string of cracker box chipped stucco apartments.

Or perhaps we would walk just two dwellings north of our our corner house across Young Street to be kept by Mr. and Mrs. Garcia, a retired couple, and homeowners, in their late sixties.

The dog also averted his attention to the voice coming from the window, but the three of us, hearing no further truly-concerned query, quickly turned our attentions back to each other. The dog, now committed to coming over, extended and bobbed his head up and down, sniffed a few more times, and finally trusted in the tri-unity of the moment and drank, timidly wagging his tail that was now not tucked so far between his haunches.

I extended my hand to pet him, and at first he flinched, not sure of what I had intended. But I could read in his eyes a desire to trust, yet cautious and ready enough, perhaps, to escape a repeat of a once-too-often uncaring former master's slap or kick.

Although obviously mistreated elsewhere--and bearing at least one clear mark of such--this dog was on a mission to find new lodgings. And in none of his aspect was there the wildness that canines wandering the streets of Fort Stockton, Texas sported and that kept our town's dogcatcher occupied. No, this independent and clearly intelligent animal, in his unspoken request for a drink, was proposing a bargain: He knew his worth and would accept us as his humans if we would receive him as our pet. He would stay if we would take him on as our charge.

I think he knew his name. But he let us call him Bullet.

Danny Andre' Dixon