Free Joggers by R.E. Donald Page A

Fuckin’ rat! Keep your
fuckin’ rat outa my face, or I’ll fuckin’ fry it up for
lunch!”
    El could see now, the man had been
sleeping on the beach. A sheet of cardboard and a jumble of
newspaper lay beside the rock, held in place by two green garbage
bags, their contents bulging through ragged holes. “Sorry to wake
you,” said El. “Don’t mind Pete.” Juggling her Coke, she scooped up
the dog. It struggled against her hold, barking and
snarling.
    “ Fuck you!” The man
pitched another rock.
    El ducked left, and it hit her right
shoulder. She dropped the Coke. “Hey! You asshole! Cool it!” Pete
snarled and snapped in the man’s direction, fighting to get loose.
El winced at the smell of rotten fish.
    “ Get the fuck outa here,
bitch! I see you here again, I”ll slit your fuckin’ throat.” The
man stood in a crouch, eyeballs popping out and yellow teeth bared
in a face dark from sun and dirt.
    Is he talking to me or to
my dog? El wondered. She rubbed her
shoulder, squeezing the struggling dog against her chest, rubbed to
stall for time, for a few seconds to decide whether to fight back.
She could feel her face burning, she wanted so bad to hurt him. He
wasn’t so big that she couldn’t have stomped him into the sand,
ground his face into the rock, but he might have the strength of a
crazy man. And this was California. You never knew when somebody
might have a knife, maybe a gun.
    “ Okay, okay, asshole. Go
back to sleep.” She began to back away. “Better yet, go get a job.”
Peterbilt was trembling, growling deep in his throat. She scratched
his ears. “Easy, little guy.” The man had started to relax, gone
down on one knee, before she dared to turn her back to him, still
clutching Pete and his perfume of rotten flounder against her
chest. Her stomach rumbled again.
    She found a restaurant where she could
watch the dog through the window while she ate. Pete and her
windbreaker were tied to a bicycle rack. She ordered bacon and eggs
and hash browns, with toast and a side of sausage. El fought the
urge to phone her office. The boys in the warehouse had bet she’d
call, and she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of being right,
but damned if she’d ever let them goad her into taking another
goddamn vacation.
    She saved a sausage for Pete, and
ordered an extra coffee to go. No reason to go back to the motel,
so she continued walking south, past Fisherman’s Wharf, up Cannery
Roy, until the fog lifted and the day turned warm. There were more
tourists out now, and she felt safe walking back along the beach,
letting the dog chase gulls again. The bag man was gone.
    In the late afternoon, she left Pete
snoozing on the big bed after his bath and drove her pickup down to
Fisherman’s Wharf for an early dinner. She was seated outside on a
small deck, next to a couple from Minneapolis. She overheard them
tell the waiter it was their anniversary, and order a bottle of
champagne and a bucket of clams. Her meal was good, seafood pasta
with garlic. She nursed a second glass of wine, listening to the
sea lions bark and watching shifting congregations of pelicans and
gulls. She’d leave early tomorrow, she decided, drive down to Big
Sur, take some pictures she could show the boys in the
warehouse.
    El caught the woman from Minneapolis
looking at her, a pity-the-poor-lonely-fat-woman look that she’d
seen many times before, and it always set her teeth on edge. She
drained her glass of wine and stood up, peering down over the rail
at a seagull commotion on the water below. “Jesus!” she cried.
“Look at that!”
    The woman from Minneapolis
screamed.
     
    A friendly cop with hairy forearms
told El to wait so they could get her statement. She watched them
haul the body from the water, a white middle-aged male, dressed in
an electric blue nylon outfit, jacket and pants. He might have been
a jogger, but his feet were bare. His pale dead toes seemed
indecent, as if he were naked all over. Even from the