John Dies at the End

“Woof!”

“Shut up!”

“WOOF!”

“Hey! I said shut up! Get your feet off my car!”

“WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!”

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut! Up!”

This went on for longer than I care to admit, and it ended with me getting out and leaning my seat forward so Molly could jump into the back. Yes, the entire spiraling trajectory my life took since that night was because I lost a debate with a dog.

She sniffed around John and then barked at me, the sound deafening in the enclosed space. Still, John didn’t stir.

“What do you want?”

That seemed like a perfectly reasonable question at that moment. The dog clearly had intentions, somehow, and wasn’t going to leave me alone until I acted on them.

“What? Do you think I’m your master? Did little Timmy fall down the fucking well? What do you—”

I stopped, my eye drawn to her jingling collar, and the little metal tag there.I’m Molly.Please return me to . . .

She stopped barking.

THE PLACE WAS way the hell out of town, out near the big drain cleaner factory.

At one point I took a right turn and Molly went into a barking fit. I did a U-turn and she immediately calmed down.

I saw a big, run-down Victorian house standing off by itself at the end of the block, and realized the dog had just directed me to the right address. I didn’t know if dogs really did that but at that moment I was sure this dog could do it—

“Oh, shit.”

I actually said that out loud, in the car. Something had clicked so hard in my mind my whole body twitched.

I knew this place. I flashed back to the party, a huge kid with red hair, his back to me, standing with Robert the fake Jamaican.

That was Big Jim Sullivan.

This is his house.

Big Jim was a year ahead of me in school, six inches taller and twice my weight. He got famous around town after a carjacking attempt, which ended with Jim tearing the gun out of the assailant’s hand (ripping the skin off the guy’s trigger finger in the process) and then beating the man over the head with his own gun. Afterward Jim visited the guy in the hospital and spent several hours reading Bible verses to him. He once won a fight with Zach Goldstein by chucking him bodily over a guardrail.

I had lived in constant fear of the man, and even now I had the urge to flip the dog out of the car window and speed away.

You see, Jim had a sister.

We called her “Cucumber,” but I couldn’t remember her real name. She was in Special Ed, a couple of years younger than me. People think she got that nickname because of some sexual thing, but it was a reference to sea cucumbers. They have this defense mechanism where they puke up their guts when faced with a predator, hoping the predator will go for their guts rather than eating them. I should know, I made up the nickname.

You see, Jim’s sister used to throw up a lot, and I mean a lot. Like, twice a week at school she’d wind up vomiting somewhere or on somebody. I don’t know what exactly caused it. She had a lot of things wrong with her but at least she got one of the more clever nicknames out of the deal.

My last year in school, after I had gotten sent off and put into the Behavior Disorder program, Big Jim heard me using that nickname and I lived the rest of my school days afraid he would break me into little pieces in the parking lot. The worst part would have been that as I was bleeding and feeling teeth breaking off in my mouth, I would’ve spent every second of the pummeling knowing I deserved it.

So Big Jim was at the party. With Robert? What did that mean? And why was his dog there? Did he bring his dog to every party? Had he gone blind, and was Molly his Seeing Eye dog? Was it the dog’s birthday?

I felt like an idiot. Here I was toting the animal all over town, putting myself at grave risk in the process, when I could have just left her at the party where her owner was.

I scrambled to think of how I would approach him with all this, the soy sauce and Robert and his unnaturally smart dog.

Wait. Driveway’s empty.

So? Jim probably tied on a good drunk and was now sleeping it off at a girlfriend’s house.

Bullshit. Big Jim doesn’t drink, and wouldn’t leave his kid sister at home alone all night.

I got out of the car and motioned for the dog to follow. She didn’t. I called to her and patted my thigh, which I’ve seen other people do with dogs so I figured it must work. Nothing. I did this for several minutes, the dog not even looking at me now, sniffing around John again. I realized no amount of thigh slapping, not even an all-out blues hambone, would move this animal. I leaned into the car and started tugging at her collar. She backed off, growling, looking at me with a disdain I didn’t think canines were capable of.

“Come on, dammit! You made me drive here!”

Through all of this, John still didn’t stir. I think that was what freaked me out most of all. He was laying there in the uncomfortable bucket seat, twisted and slumped like a crash-test dummy. More passed out than asleep. I reached in and grabbed roughly at Molly’s collar.

I’m going to skip past the next ten minutes and just say that I wound up carrying Molly up to the house. The plan was to tie her up around back and slip away unnoticed, but as I passed by the front door, it opened.

Not all the way, just the few inches allowed by the security chain. I was hit by that jittery caught-in-the-act feeling. I turned, huge dog in my arms, to see the pale, freckled, utterly confused face of Jim’s sister. No sign she even recognized me, or maybe she just didn’t want to acknowledge where she recognized me from.

Hey! Weren’t you in my Special Ed class?

I quickly propped my chin over the dog’s back and spoke. “Um, hey there. I, uh, have your dog.”

The door closed. I stood there for an awkward moment, feeling the odd urge to drop the animal and run. I heard Cucumber’s voice from inside, shouting, “Jim! The guy that stole Molly is here!”

I sat the dog down and grabbed hold of her collar before she could bolt. The door snapped open again and I half expected Big Jim to show himself, his Irish copper-topped head appearing a foot and a half above where the girl’s had been. But it was the sister again, saying, “He’s coming. You better bring me the dog now. Or you can have it if you want it.”

“What?”

“The dog. You can have it. That one is worth a hundred and twenty-five dollars but you can have it free because it’s used.”

“Oh, no. I don’t need a . . . I mean, uh, it’s yours, right?”

“Jim’s. But he doesn’t like it, either. He’s coming.”

“What, is there something wrong with it?”

Her eyes flicked quickly from me, to the dog, and back. Is that fear? Something make her nervous about this dog?

You and me both, honey.

“No,” she said, looking at her shoes.

“Then why’d you pay a hundred twenty-five dollars for it?”

“Have you ever seen a golden retriever puppy?”

“Your brother isn’t here, is he?”

She didn’t answer.