Chapter 5 – The Urgency to Train…
Harmon wrestled through shallow sleep. Pain flared in his forearm no matter how he positioned himself, and he could find no dream of contentment, or security, in the short intervals when he did slip into slumber. The agitated dogs in the kennel behind Harmon’s home barked during much of the night, and Harmon would strain his ears when that pack stopped whimpering long enough to create an interval of silence. Harmon feared he heard the footfalls of strangers outside his bedroom window, though he couldn’t determine if those sounds echoed inside or outside of his dreams.
“Damn dogs,” growled Harmon as he sat up in bed. “What’s got them so anxious?”
Harmon fell into a pair of sandals and shuffled through his home, leaving out the back, kitchen door to make his way to the kennels. He needed some peace as the eastern horizon started to fill with daybreak’s light. He needed to focus his mind, for his imagination had delivered him troubles all night. He hoped to escape his concerns by concentrating on the kennel chores each morning demanded – feeding the animals, mopping through another round of cleaning, shampooing the dogs due to be picked up that day by their returning owners. The kennel owned no shortage of demands, and Harmon was confident he would find some outlet for his anxious energy. It would be good to reward John with a break following his son’s recent successes with Horus on the training field.
The kennel erupted into a new din the moment Harmon opened the kennel door and stepped inside. Harmon sighed. The dogs should’ve recognized his scent. They should’ve known he was no stranger or intruder. Yet the ebony dogs of his pack barked still louder when Harmon turned on the lights, which made all the dogs Harmon kept for the community whimper with fear. Harmon peeked towards Tonka’s empty crate. For a moment, he expected that dog to reassert his dominion over the pack, and to silence the others with the short, deep bellow unique to that dog. In the early morning, fresh out of bed, Harmon’s mind had forgotten for a second what the wild had forced him to do to his Tonka.
The ebony dogs continued to howl. “Hush! It’s me! Hush, before you wake up the entire town!”
The dogs slowly calmed as Harmon prepared their morning meal. The kennel became quiet once more as Harmon began his mopping, and Harmon was disappointed to discover that too much silence spiked his anxiety, when he had hoped to find such silence soothing. So he fidgeted with that old, transistor radio John kept on a windowsill. Its speaker cracked while Harmon slowly twisted its dial, skipping over old country music and contemporary pop. He was too old for synthetic beats, in no mood to listen to the twang of love-lost drinkers. He needed that radio to speak directly to him. He needed that radio to calm him. He needed that radio to assure him that he wasn’t the only man who remembered how much greater it had all once been, needed to hear he still might find friends who would fight with him against all those troubles that bothered him through the night.
And that little, plastic box was filled with just those voices Harmon required.
“Let me tell you, patriots, they’re not sending their best and their brightest across our border. They’re sending the poor and the ignorant. They’re sending their handicapped and their insane. They’re sending their pushers and their addicts, their murderers and their rapists. Patriots, it’s long since time we encircled our nation with the sharpest barbwire money can buy. It’s time we turn them all back.”
Harmon winked back at the radio. “It’s about time someone says the truth. It’s about time someone stood for what’s right and decent. It’s about time we start sending them all back where they came from.”
Harmon knew better than all the overeducated fools living atop all those weak, ivory towers - those fools who thought they were so much smarter than he was. He hated how all those overeducated fools flaunted their paper diplomas and bragged about all their subversive books. Those fools didn’t understand a thing about the threat seeping across the border. Harmon knew. Harmon once ran dope across the border in the back of his humming, old sports car. Harmon dealt with those foreign dope suppliers when he owned his own city street, and Harmon learned how to grow eyes in the back of his head so that he could defend himself when those foreign suppliers attempted to push their knifes into his back. On the streets, Harmon carried a sawed-off shotgun to protect the women he pimped from those foreigners who tried to infringe upon his turf by assaulting his girls and using their blades to scar those women’s faces. On the streets, Harmon learned how those foreigners couldn’t be trusted, and how they owned no honor. Harmon learned how the foreigner had no qualms in the selling of tainted dope, no matter if such junk diminished Harmon’s pool of customers. Harmon knew those foreigners were terrible animals. He knew that they were all criminals. He’d seen the results of the foreigner’s limitless violence first-hand, and Harmon knew those foreigners peddled decayed. And yet all those liberal fools mocked those like Harmon who attempted to raise the alarm.
“Patriots, the time’s is coming when we’re going to have to stand up and answer the call, just as so many generations of our kind have done before. Patriots, the time’s getting close when we’re going to have to take up arms.”
“What are you listening to?” His son’s voice surprised him and Harmon flinched.
“Don’t you worry about what I’m listening to, boy.”
John sighed. “That guy on the radio only wants to upset you to help his advertisers sell razor blades and penis pills.”
Harmon scowled. “Watch yourself. You’re not so big that I can’t knock that swollen head off your shoulders.”
“But you know how upset you get. You know how it gets your heart racing.”
“I’m not going to warn you again about your mouth,” Harmon glared at John, and several of the ebony dogs growled in their crates. “It should upset you too, boy! It should get your heart racing plenty! This is your country you’re going to inherit. I’m an old man, but you’re still young, and you better be ready to fight for it!”
Harmon once more peered into his son’s eyes to measure that boy’s fight, but John looked away before his father could get much of a reading. John was born with his mother’s supple mind, a mind gifted with books and numbers. But he also possessed his mother’s soft heart. That boy would never achieve until he hardened that heart, and Harmon feared others would exploit him as they so often exploited his mother.
The ebony dogs snarled within their crates. Harmon flexed his hand, and his stitches remained tight beneath his arm’s bandages. His arm pained him, but Harmon needed to work his dogs and train his son against all the dangers Harmon’s bones sensed lurking in the world.
“Get the pack ready. I want all the dogs on the field by the time the sun’s done rising, and I want the bite sleeve and the baton waiting for me.”
John hesitated. “But you’re not ready for the bite sleeve. The stitches are still in your arm.”
Harmon was no longer young, but his age hadn’t so numbed his instinct to turn him slow. The muscle memory, trained during so many fights within the boxing ring and on the streets, fired his nerves, and Harmon moved so quickly that John didn’t have time to flinch or raise a hand in defense before Harmon slapped the back of his hand across his son’s jaw. John staggered. Harmon saw his boy ball his hands into fists, and for a moment, Harmon thought that he might’ve, finally, sparked some dormant instinct for combat previously buried in John’s heart. Yet John still averted his gaze down upon his shoes.
“I warned you. Get the dogs, and ready the gear.”
John obediently did as he was told and hurried to gather the equipment. Harmon shook his head. He feared his son would never rise to the top of any pack. He feared his son had none of the fortitude an alpha dog required. A single dog continued to snarl within his crate while the rest of the pack silenced, and Harmon recognized that dog’s identity thanks to the growl. Horus barked within his crate when Harmon looked in his direction. Harmon nodded at the animal. Perhaps Horus would succeed where he had failed. Perhaps
Horus would lift the man out of John.
Harmon believed he needed to train his dogs more than ever.
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