Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [108]
“Why are you so tensed up?”
“Just so I can get you to do this. Don’t stop.”
Ruby pummeled his shoulder with her fist. Outside, a dog barked. “That man you bought the dogs from looked so funny,” she said. “I thought he was going to cry. He must have loved those dogs.”
“He was just scared.”
“How come?”
“He didn’t want to get in trouble.” Buddy raised up on an elbow and looked at her. “He was afraid I was going to use those dogs in a dogfight, and he didn’t want to be traced.”
“I thought they were hunting dogs.”
“No. He trained them to fight.” He grasped her hand and guided it to a spot on his back. “Right there. Work that place out for me.” As Ruby rubbed in a hard circle with her knuckles, he said, “They’re good friendly dogs if they’re treated right.”
Buddy punched off the TV button and smoked a cigarette in the dark, lying with one arm under her shoulders. “You know what I’d like?” he said suddenly. “I’d like to build me a log cabin somewhere—off in the mountains maybe. Just a place for me and some dogs.”
“Just you? I’d come with you if you went to the Rocky Mountains.”
“How good are you at survival techniques?” he said. “Can you fish? Can you chop wood? Could you live without a purse?”
“I might could.” Ruby smiled to herself at the thought.
“Women always have to have a lot of baggage along—placemats and teapots and stuff.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You’re funny.”
“Not as funny as you.” Ruby shifted her position. His hand under her was hurting her ribs.
“I’ll tell you a story. Listen.” He sounded suddenly confessional. He sat up and flicked sparks at the ashtray. He said, “My daddy died last year, and this old lady he married was just out to get what he had. He heired her two thousand dollars, and my sister and me were to get the homeplace—the house, the barn, and thirty acres of bottomland. But before he was cold in the ground, she had stripped the place and sold every stick of furniture. Everything that was loose, she took.”
“That’s terrible.”
“My sister sells Tupperware, and she was in somebody’s house, and she recognized the bedroom suit. She said, ‘Don’t I know that?’ and this person said, ‘Why, yes, I believe that was your daddy’s. I bought it at such-and-such auction.’ ”
“What an awful thing to do to your daddy!” Ruby said.
“He taught me everything I know about training dogs. I learned it from him and he picked it up from his daddy.” Buddy jabbed his cigarette in the ashtray. “He knew everything there was to know about field dogs.”
“I bet you don’t have much to do with your stepmother now.”
“She really showed her butt,” he said with a bitter laugh. “But really it’s my sister who’s hurt. She wanted all those keepsakes. There was a lot of Mama’s stuff. Listen, I see that kind of sorrow every day in my line of work—all those stupid, homeless dishes people trade. People buy all that stuff and decorate with it and think it means something.”
“I don’t do that,” Ruby said.
“I don’t keep anything. I don’t want anything to remind me of anything.”
Ruby sat up and tried to see him in the dark, but he was a shadowy form, like the strange little mountains she had seen outside at twilight. The new dogs were noisy—bawling and groaning fitfully. Ruby said, “Hey, you’re not going to get them dogs to fight, are you?”
“Nope. But I’m not responsible for what anybody else wants to do. I’m just the middleman.”
Buddy turned on the light to find his cigarettes. With relief, Ruby saw how familiar he was—his tanned, chunky arms, and the mustache under his nose like the brush on her vacuum cleaner. He was tame and gentle, like his best dogs. “They make good watchdogs,” he said. “Listen at ’em!” He laughed like a man watching a funny movie.
“They must see the moon,” Ruby said. She turned out the light and tiptoed across the scratchy carpet. Through a crack in the curtains she could see the dark humps of the hills against the pale sky, but it was cloudy and she could not see the moon.
—
Everything is round and full now, like the moon. Linda’s belly. Bowling balls. On TV, Steve Martin does a comedy routine,