Free Tender as Hellfire by Joe Meno

tell me what to do. I’ll cut his throat in his sleep.”
    The red barn door swung open after a few minutes and French and Mr. Deegan stepped out, carrying something between the two of them. They walked up to us and the car, kicking up dust, as the broken light from the stars and the barn flashed across our faces.
    There was the pit bull, all bandaged up and quiet, wrapped in a thin blue blanket, resting in their arms.
    “Don’t say a word,” French mumbled, breathing hard.
    My brother shook his head. His face went all red and tense. “What the hell’s that?”
    “I said, don’t say a word.” French frowned, unlocking the blue hatchback. Mr. Deegan and French gently slid the big white dog inside.
    “You can’t bring that on home,” Pill muttered. “What are you doing?”
    “Keep quiet,” French whispered, slowly closing the hatch-back. French wiped some sweat from his forehead and dug in his back pocket. He pulled out his brown leather wallet, the same wallet me and my older brother had stolen from so many times, and fished out two crisp twenty-dollar bills and planted them in Mr. Deegan’s soft white palm.
    “There you go, Mr. Deegan.” French smiled, shoving his wallet into his back pocket. Mr. Deegan shook his head, folding the cash up. He looked down through the back window at the slumbering animal inside.
    “Now, I can’t guarantee that that animal will live for long,” he said. “He’s on a sedative right now, so he should be all right for the night. But if he gets wild on you or you notice the wounds not healing right, give me a call. You should bring him by the office in the next few days and I’ll change the dressing and give you some more medication.”
    French nodded and shook hands with him.
    My older brother was dumbfounded. I couldn’t help smiling, shaking my head at the crazy thought of it all, grinning as we piled into the blue car.
    “Mom’s never gonna stand for it,” Pill grunted, slamming the car door shut.
    “She will if we tell her we found the dog on the side of the road and we brought it home to keep it from dying all alone out there.”
    “She ain’t ever gonna believe that.” Pill stared straight ahead with a mean, sour look, crossing his arms across his chest. “Who asked you to get that damn dog anyway?”
    “No one. I did it for myself. I need a bird dog for the winter.”
    “Bird dog? That ain’t a bird dog. That dog can’t even see. It’s missing a goddamn eye. I ain’t gonna lie to my mother.”
    “Enough already. You tell your mother what you want, Pill. I ain’t asking you to lie to her. But on account of that poor animal lying back there, you might just wanna keep your mouth shut so as not to ruin our chances here.”
    He sounded like one of us now. He stared at the open black road, gripping the wheel tightly. He checked in the rearview mirror every couple of seconds, watching as the dark blue blanket rose and fell with the dog’s breath.
    Before long, we were home, and Pill shot out of the car and into the trailer before the car’s engine even died.
    “Give me a hand with him, pal?” French asked, unlocking the hatchback. The door rose and squeaked as French leaned over and rubbed the dog’s side.
    “How come you did it, French?” I asked, peering up into his long white face. He rubbed the sweat between his glasses and the bridge of his nose and then let out a sigh.
    “I don’t know, kiddo, I thought it was the right thing to do. Your brother’s been in a kinda mood since we moved here and he seemed pretty upset by that dog getting hurt, and so I thought maybe I could, you know, make him feel better about things, but I guess it didn’t work out so well, huh?”
    “Guess not.”
    “Can’t get rid of the poor thing now, can we?” He seemed to answer himself with a shrug of his shoulders. “You gonna stick to the story?” he asked, leaning over the car. His face was shiny with sweat and his eyes were dark behind his glasses.
    “I guess