Free Shape of the Final Dog and Other Stories (9781101600665) by Hampton Fancher Page A

actual avatar who deserves a proper name.
Blacky . . . Black magic . . . Merlin . . . King Arthur
 . . . and there it is. He whispers, Arthur! and falls asleep.
    Three minutes later, Jack opens his eyes, looks over the edge of the bed and through the doorway. Arthur is gone. He jumps down, steps into the dining room in time to see the snake sliding into the broom closet. No time for deliberation. Jack catches Arthur just before he disappears and pulls him out by the tail.
    This time, the snake is in no mood for it, coils so fast Jack hardly has time to jump back before it strikes. Stunned, Jack backs away into the bedroom. Arthur slithers after him. Jack jumps up onto his elevated bed. Arthur is coiled and buzzing on the floor, hammerhead stretched high and cocked. Come on! shouts Jack. It’s me, calm down!
    But Arthur’s head is almost two feet off the floor now, weaving like a thing in heat, the terrible little gun holes of his eyes fastened on Jack crouching on the mattress. There is no way Arthur can get up to him, but Jack, infected with panic, looks around for something to bash him with. He considers the phone. Probably it would break. He would be phoneless again. Then he spots the horn hanging just above him on the wall. A German hunting horn, a legacy from his father. He lifts it off the nail. But this precious coiled horn is not for throwing. Kneeled on his berth, Jack puts it to his lips, aims it down at Arthur, and blows. The blast fills the room.
    The serpent, of course, is earless, reads the oscillations with its tongue. Arthur is stunned; the shrill abruption in the air afflicts him, and fearing for his life, he hurries back into the dining room and slips through the barely opened door into the broom closet.
    Horn in hand, Jack slides off the bed, peers into the dining room, watchfully crosses it. Slowly he opens the broom closet door. Just a broom and dustpan, a can of paint, and the rat hole Arthur squeezed through to a safer world.
    Jack knows the consequence of love is loss. Loss is the figment that stalks the land, the sea, and the night; blood and hope, sex and sky, loss is the big bang itself. Jack returns to his bedroom, climbs up on the bunk, and hangs his horn back on its nail.



O n our way to the lake I meant to stop at Jack Master’s bait shop to obtain some night crawlers when the right rear tire blew out. The spare in the trunk turned out to be flat, which was good with me; I didn’t feel like changing a tire. Fishing was gonna have to wait.
    It would have been about a five-mile walk either way, but it was too hot for that, so best thing was hang around till a Good Samaritan came along. That was not out of the question in this neck of the woods, and sure enough, in about twenty minutes, here comes Plaz Camel. I hadn’t seen him or given him a thought in probably five years, and there he was, showed up exactly when I needed such a person.
    What I was doing with a Negro covered in tar didn’t seem to concern him. Probably he’d already heard something on that score, so we decided to go to his house because he said the gas station was closed but he had something in the automotive department I might like to have a look at.
    I’d never been to Plaz’s house before; it was a place like something a little old lady might own, except there was a ’54 Chevy pickup parked in the front room. He tried not to show his pride in it, but it was clear that’s how come he brought us over. I ask him how he got it inside. Took it apart out front, he said, hauled the chassis in sideways, then put it all back together. Took him three years, just an idea he got so went ahead and did it, he says. You could go in the Guinness Book of World Records, I tell him. He said he didn’t like publicity, didn’t wanna be famous. I understood that.
    There was no room to sit anywhere except in the truck, which was the idea, I guess. Even though