Harmon rubbed his hands before the wooden stove kept perpetually burning in his kennel. It was late October, and a chill hung on the wind. Harmon stretched his fingers and prayed that the warmth might massage better movement from his swollen and arthritic knuckles. He never acclimated to the rural land’s swift changes in temperature since fleeing the coast of his youth. Harmon hated looking backwards because memory reminded him of all he had lost after waking one morning to discover that he’d become an old man. If he focused on the day, Harmon could feel thankful that he still had his pack of ebony dogs, and a son that still slept beneath the roof of his home. As long as he didn’t look back, Harmon could appreciate how what he still gripped was more than many a man ever knew.
“Listen to me, John. Make sure you rinse the soap out of all the kennels. I don’t want any of the dogs we’re keeping breaking out in rashes. You remember the hell Mr. Simmons raised when his cocker spaniel was scratching when he picked that dog up after his vacation.”
Johnny’s shaggy head of dark hair appeared around a corner. “I’m being real careful. Do you think we’ll have time to work our dogs after I finish here?”
Harmon smiled. His youngest boy John never tired of working the ebony dogs of Harmon’s pack. Harmon’s other sons never shared their father’s passion for the dogs, and so those boys left Harmon’s home to stay with their separate mothers. Harmon knew he wasn’t an easy father, and he knew he was an even harder husband. He hustled for random dimes, and he expected everyone who ever slept beneath his roof to hustle as hard as himself for the goals he decided his family should pursue. He owned no patience for dissent, even less for idleness. All three wives left him for easier roads, and two older sons left him for freedom. Harmon thought they had lost more than he had, for he believed none of his wives or sons would ever realize their potential without his guidance.
But his youngest boy John remained with him, and that son grew tall and strong, so that Harmon hoped that boy would make him proud. Harmon realized that it wasn’t love that kept John within his influence. Harmon knew that John’s love for those ebony dogs kept him in his father’s home.
Harmon shook his head. “I’m sorry, John. But I don’t feel up to working the dogs today.”
“Is your arm hurting you so much?”
Harmon growled at that question. “It’s not your place to worry about my pain, boy. I’ve suffered worse.”
“I know. I know. You felt a lot worse when a street fight knife carved that scar down your face and ruined your left eye. You felt worse when they had to pick the buckshot out of your back the time you were shot while working as a repo man. I know you hurt a lot worse after the guard jacked you during that stint you served in prison when you refused to give any names. And I know your hands hurt from all times you broke them in the boxing ring.”
“Then you should know better than to ask me if my arm hurts any more than I can handle.”
“Why don’t you take what the doctor gave you to help with the pain? Tonka tore your arm pretty ragged. It’s not good for your heart to go through such hurt.”
Something flashed in Harmon’s good eye. “I’m not on my deathbed yet, boy. What the doctors peddle for pain’s a whole hell of a lot worse than anything I ever hustled. I’m not going to turn into another junkie for the doctors. Go ahead and take your best shot though, if you think my pain’s so bad that you can whip your old man.”
“I don’t think that at all.”
“Then shut your mouth and clean the kennels,” barked Harmon. “Give the pack another day to settle.”
John pleased his father by retuning to his duties without further argument. Harmon thought his son was a good boy, but Harmon worried John was tardy in his transformation into a man. He pushed his stool a bit closer to the stove and strained to his ears to recognize the sounds coming from the ebony dogs kept in their separate kennel area. He could tell more about a dog in the way that animal barked or paced than anyone he ever met. He had always had a way with dogs, had always owned an uncanny connection to the canine kind. So Harmon was able to concentrate on the sounds of his ebony dogs when so many other dogs barked and whined within the kennel. His dogs remained agitated following Tonka’s death. Listening was enough to let Harmon understand that training would yield scant results until his pack calmed. It was just as well that his arm hurt him so. He was losing nothing by rubbing his old hands a while longer before the stove.
“Dad, can I ask you for a favor?”
Harmon’s eyes narrowed upon John. “Boy, do I train my dogs by giving them a treat every time they do what I ask of them?”
“Well, no.”
“Then I don’t see why you think I should give you anything for cleaning the crates like I ask of you.”
“I know,” and John took a breath, “but I was wondering if you’d let me listen to the football game on the radio.”
Harmon’s lips curled into a sneer. The pain in his arm flared as he squeezed his left hand into a fist.
“You’re better than all of them,” Harmon hissed.
“They’re my friends. I still want them to do well. I still hope they win.”
“After the way they treated you?”
“It wasn’t their fault. They couldn’t do anything to help.”
“The hell if they couldn’t,” snapped Harmon. “They could’ve refused to step across the sideline until the school let you suit up, like you’ve every right to do. Real friends watch your back. Real friends don’t ask any questions before they go to hell and back with you. I would never have survived long enough to sire you if I had friends like yours when I was your age.”
Harmon watched John’s shoulders slump, and he wondered if he might’ve been too hard on his boy. Perhaps it was the pain in his throbbing, left arm, or the ache of the arthritis settling in his joints, but Harmon never second-guessed himself like he had throughout that morning. He never hesitated to leap into action as a young man. Doubt must’ve been still one more symptom of a mind turning brittle in old age. Harmon acted boldly as a young man, and didn’t let his conscious linger over the consequences of all his choices. He rose up from his timid mother’s broken family and controlled a city street before he turned twenty, pimping the girls and managing all the percentages the dope trade peddled on his block of concrete. He wouldn’t have survived very long if he’d been in the habit of questioning his instincts. He would never have tasted all the women and wine. He would never have felt the rush of so many cars, or the luxury of so many furs.
John was a good boy, but he had so far to go before he might become a strong man. Harmon pitied John. He feared John was a sad loner. How many women had Harmon conquered by the time he was John’s age? Sadly, Harmon feared John hadn’t clumsily loved a single, teenage girl. He never saw John talk to any member of the finer sex. He never saw John make any effort to hunt a girl’s interest. He hadn’t seen any impulse in John to get into a sliver of the kind of trouble that used to supply Harmon with so many thrills. All of Harmon’s friends might’ve been dead for years – dead in seedy hotel rooms with dirty needles sticking from their arms, dead from the hepatitis, dead from exploding hearts, dead from the street purges that always followed when one street boss replaced another - but those friends had stood at Harmon’s side in those days when they had all learned how blood could surge through the veins and make young men excited and wild. It hurt Harmon’s heart to know that John would never know such friends of his own.
“Go ahead. Put the game on the radio.” Harmon relented. “Just know you’re better than any of them.”
Harmon forgot no slights, and he suffered a terrible one when the school district denied John his right to participate on the football team. John played alongside with that team through all the levels of community little league. John blocked and tackled through the thick of it. Harmon’s boy never hesitated to crash helmets with faster and larger players. John played, and even practiced
, with a focus and intensity Harmon believed his son had cultivated during all those afternoons working with those ebony dogs. Yet that school board and that school administration dared to tell Harmon that John had no right to participate because Harmon chose to home-school his child. The gall of that claim still enraged Harmon. He paid property taxes just like his neighbors. The school was punishing him through John, punishing him because he chose to teach John in the home, to protect his boy from the liberal propaganda pushed in the classroom. Harmon doubted any student within that district read as many books as John. Harmon doubted any of those public school students could add and multiply their fractions half as quickly as could Harmon. The school resented John for reminding them of the public classroom’s failure, and so that school board and that school administration made an example of John by denying him a place on that football team.
Harmon frowned while he listened to the radio told how John’s old teammates drove the ball down their opponents’ half of the field. John would have to learn, or else the world would take everything from him.
“You’re better than them all, John! You’re better than any of those bastards!”
That area of the kennel that kept Harmon’s ebony dogs suddenly erupted in howls and growls that made the kennel customers’ smaller dogs whimper and cry. Those ebony dogs were Harmon’s alarm. They smelled company far before Harmon might hear any car rolling up the rocky drive leading to his kennel.
“Stay in the kennel and finish with the crates!” Harmon shouted to John. “And if you get done with that, make another attempt to scrub what’s left of Tonka’s blood off the concrete!”
Harmon winced as his arthritic knees forced him to use his stitched arm to push himself out of his chair. The pain echoed around in his skull. It made him squint his good eye. Harmon swallowed before proudly lifting his chin as he opened his kennel’s door and waited to discover who rolled up his lane. He doubted he would have to display it. He certainly doubted he would have to wield it. But Harmon grabbed his old straight-blade all the same, because he hated facing any guest without at least some kind of a weapon.