Short fiction: Coming in gray

Photo credit: Mark Pearson/Unsplash

I loved them, even if I raised money by killing them. One nearly killed me, too—not the quiet kind of love. 

Jättehund: the name means large hound. The scientific name, Propithecus maximus, implies lemur,  though females are larger than gorillas.  My stepfather was an expert handler from his years of zookeeping.  He kept them as pets, but only one at a time. 

A jättehund has no predators, not even a revolver will stop it.  Because a bull hund fears so little it has the most beautiful song, even prettier than birdsong.

Our first was named Ramses but my favorite, the one I remember, the one we took to Brunswick, was Celery.  I used to sleep in his warm white coat.  He purred in a low rumble that sounded like an 8-cylinder.  He smelled like exercise and wind.  

*    *    *

I was there when mother asked her sister, clear as day, ‘Can we bring Celery?’  My aunt said she heard Shelley, though none of us answered to that.

Celery rode in the front seat and saw the house before we did.  He made a wave-shape with his back, turned stiff, barked as loud as a plane.  My aunt owned a hund, a young male, twenty pounds heavier.  It was too late to turn around and there was nothing we could do.  Celery would have torn the door off if we did not open it.  He was rocking the car, throwing his claws around, cinder blocks with knives built in.  He did not mean any harm but one of us would lose a throat soon.  

Luther, my aunt’s pet, would have chased us if we tried to leave. 

‘Let him out, all we can do.’

‘No, daddy, please.’  I called him daddy when it mattered.

He had told me over and again, males do not spar for females, dominance. They fight like brothers, and those were exactly his words: ‘You can’t tie them up, they’ll snap the chain or tear brick out of the wall.  They fight like brothers.  It’s no stopping them, you can only watch them go.’

I remember it as the bottom of a cliff, maybe 15 stories, but that is impossible, nowhere is the Brunswick coast that high.  Celery was out, my stepfather kept us back, and there was a gash on his head.  It bled irregularly so I wondered if he would wipe it clean.  We were only yards from the sea, or maybe my shoes were wet, I don’t remember. 

Luther only needed one terrible leap, clearing the distance without a step, claws out.  Celery howled back, less than a moment to brace himself. Luther fell on him and they tumbled back like a demolition crane, with everyone shrieking.  

If jättehund fur tears off it comes back gray. You can always tell a brawler by his gray marks, the gray puncture wounds, the lines, pinpoints and rectangles of gray.  Already there was blood on Celery’s throat, and I was sobbing.  Luther had a gash on his mouth, but all I could think was of them healing again with slate-colored scars all over.

My aunt led us to the kitchen and pointed at the beer, orange juice.  ‘They’ll be fine, dear.  Both of them.’

‘The hell they will.’ It may have been my first time to curse.

She and stepfather went out to look and they were gone for an hour.

*    *    *

Handling, over the years, became another word for euthanasia.  They were gentle pets, lovely, and that long tenor cry made your mouth taste of wine. But every time a male spotted another it was like armies facing off.

My last college summer I was out of money, had to work with the old man again.  We mostly drove around, telling jokes, chasing strays at times.  We caught a few jättehunds, and there was a persistent one on the east side, on the industrial streets. I called him New Luther out of spite.  We took dispatcher calls for weeks: New Luther knocked the wall from a house, ruined a car, killed dogs, injured people, all in the name of sport-fighting.  When we found him, my stepfather aimed a rifle.  I opened the mounted gate and the beast’s shoulders dropped as much as a foot.  You knew he knew. 

He caged himself without a noise. If he had only sung it would have changed things.

New Luther was unblemished white, save for the claws, which were silver all the way to the wrist.  An unmarked heavyweight with broken hands.  Not a single defeat until now.

When the old man taught me about the sedative I said, ‘It must take a gallon to kill one.’  I was horsing around, but this time it was nearly a gallon.  

My bonus was lavish that week, half of the fall tuition.  I took a lover, too.  He was fat, an only child with a London name.  He tended to snore, and the hair on his chest was already turning to down. I wondered if that was the idea.

fin/fn