Free Dog by Bruce McAllister

 
    I.
    The god of death, Xolotl, made the Sacred Dog, Itzcuintli, from a sliver of the Bone of Life, from which The People were also made. Upon their death, human beings are led to the afterlife across a great lake by Itzcuintli. Should they hesitate in accepting Death, the Sacred Dog helps them on their way.
    â€” Encyclopedia Archaea
    We were very young when we went to Mexico, my wife and I. We’d been married only a year, were just out of college, were both teachers, and had the liberal fervor of youth. We did not yet know that to romanticize a country, to sentimentalize its people and places and the creatures of it, not only is an affront to them—to the struggle between darkness and light which gives any human beings their meaning on this earth—but can end very badly.
    We would not have romanticized our own country, but, again, we were young and the children of a privileged society. Even without being conscious of it, we assumed intentions of a generous heart were enough to protect us from evil in the world. We had not grown up with evil; it had never been our companion. Jennifer was teaching in a federal program for the children of the underprivileged—to give them a leg up in school—and I was teaching remedial English at three community colleges within driving distance of where we lived, only two hours from the border.
    A good friend, Tony—whose parents were from Mexico, but who’d grown up in Los Angeles—was pushing thirty and enjoying a career in journalism. He said: “Watch the dogs when you’re down there, David.”
    â€œWhy?”
    We were eating at our apartment not far from the Pacific, and I’d just told him we’d be going to the state of Morelos, to Cuauhnáhuac, a language institute there, because we wanted to learn Spanish—because so many of our students, pre-schoolers and adult learners alike, knew Spanish and we did not, and what a wonderful thing it would be if we did, wouldn’t it? It would not only make communication better, but also give us the kind of empathy and bond—not just through language, but through an appreciation of culture—that a teacher should have of any student of any age. “Am I right, Tony?”
    I must have sounded like an idiot. Tony was older and had seen much more of the world as a foreign correspondent for both US and Latin American newspapers. (We’d met when he was a stringer for the region’s biggest paper, and I was an intern trying to decide what to do with whatever writing skills I had.) But he was a friend and was not going to make fun of me. More than once he’d said, “You need to travel more, David, but don’t do it stupidly. Know the laws and don’t walk the Andes with $1500 in your pocket, alone, singing at the top of your lungs, like that kid last year. Be compassionate, but not stupid.”
    â€œThey’re not like the dogs here,” he answered. “They’re like the people in those northern states. They have to scrabble harder.…”
    â€œ Está listo ,” he said as he left, and then—with the cheerfulness that made him such a good interviewer in the midst of war and famine—added, “And bring me back a souvenir, David. Surprise me!”
    *   *   *
    We lived in a colonia —a middle-class neighborhood with gated houses elbow to elbow, doing their best to keep the chaos of the streets, the poor, the wild things, out. We’d been placed by the institute with a local family, so we’d be hearing the language constantly. The woman spoke Spanish slowly for us, and she spoke some English, too—which helped at first. She was gracious and generous, cooking us meals of karo syrup and pancakes at 8 or 9 at night when we got back from school. But she was not very happy. Her husband, a trophy-winning body-builder, had left her with their five kids, and she complained about her youngest, her negrito,