Free The Fish and the Not Fish by Peter Markus Page B

the trees that we know are out there. We can’t see the moon or the stars that we know are out there up there too. We can’t see where we set our feet when we walk like this out in this at night dark.
    Out here, in this dark, Dead Dog is just a sound whose mouth can’t, by us, be found.
    Us boys, we reach through the dark.
    Dead Dog, we hiss. Hush up.
    You know what you’re in for, we warn this dog not dead, if you wake Man up from his sleep.
    Man is the kind of man who does not think twice when he lifts up his foot to kick a dog in its face.
    Once, how could Dead Dog not think of this, Man took up a rock as big as a dog’s head and he brought it back down on the top of this dog’s head.
    When we saw this rock, when we saw this rock come back down to hit this dog on top of its dog head, the both of us boys thought that Dead Dog was sure to be dead.
    We knew it was not in us boys to get a man like Man to stop this.
    We stood back and tried not to watch.
    But how could we not see when we heard what we heard?
    We heard Dead Dog make a sound with his mouth that made it sound like Dead Dog was dead.
    We flinched and winced and made sounds with our mouths that did our best to tell Man to stop.
    When Man put down this rock, this rock, it was a dark dark red against the light dust brown of the dirt.
    But through all of this, Dead Dog was a dog that lived.
    Dead Dog lived through a rock to his dog head.
    It’s true that Dead Dog limped to where we could not see him to that space where the ground and the house make like a cave down there where snakes like to go and lay their eggs and on hot hot days they like to go down there to get out from the sun.
    Dead Dog did not come out for three straight days from where he limped to where it is a like a cave down in there where the house sits up on blocks up above the dirt of the ground.
    When on the third day Dead Dog crawled forth from out of that dark place and barked at the stars in the night’s sky to say that Dead Dog was a dog that was back for good, that no man with a rock in his hand can keep a dog like Dead Dog down for long, us boys, we gave Dead Dog our hands to smell and lick to see that we were good.
    Dead Dog’s eyes were shot with blood and the lump on his head was like a rock that had grown roots in his brain, but for the most part Dead Dog looked to us like he was glad to be back.
    And the bark that was Dead Dog’s, it did not stop.
    At night, when Dead Dog thinks he hears what he hears, he barks like he wants us to know what sound it is that his dog ears can hear that us boys do not turn our heads to.
    Out here in this night, the dark, we think, is like a thing we can grab hold of, but when we try, us boys, we look like, we think, if we could see us, like Man looks when he is drunk.
    There is nothing for us to grab hold of but the hands of each of us.
    But us boys, we do not hold hands.
    We both just stick out both of our hands to see and feel the dark.
    We are like this with our hands stuck out in this dark when we hear Dead Dog bark twice.
    When Dead Dog barks, Dead Dog’s mouth snaps back down hard like a trap used to kill mice.
    When we hear Dead Dog bark out like this, we pull back our boy hands.
    But one of our hands does not come back when we tell it to come back.
    That hand is in the grip of this dog’s mouth.
    When we do pull that hand back free from this dog’s mouth, it is now a hand that has no thumb.
    This we can feel.
    But it is too dark for us to see where the thumb is. All we do know is that it is not where the thumb used to be.
    We drop down on our hands and knees to see if we can find it but our hands come up with rocks and twigs and dirt.
    The one of us boys whose thumbs are both where they are meant to be says let’s look for it when it is light out.
    The one of us boys whose thumb is not where it used to be says but I can’t go to bed with no thumb.
    What, this boy says, will I suck to get me to