THE DUMBEST DOG IN THE WORLD Chuck McKinley It had been one of those unbearable hot Southern California days when carrying a machine gun barrel up and down the rugged Camp Pendleton hills took everything out of a man. The gray dirt of the road beds and fire breaks had been trampled to powder weeks ago, and each football beat it up in little puffs that seeped through our field uniforms and settled on our black, shiny boots and on our bare faces and necks and hands. Our sweat washed it down inside our shirts leaving ridiculous white streaks on our skin. The dry grass, as powdered as the dirt, mixed with the other dust so that a man itched everywhere, and he choked and coughed and cussed for not having joined the Air Force instead of the Marines. We were all bone tired, completely beat, too tired even to be interested in the mail we had picked up after chow. The only thing that interested us was just plain sleep. All of us except Jones. Jones was different. He never seemed to get tired. He lugged his machine gun tripod over those ragged hills like he had been born doing it, and more than once it had been suggested that his mother was a mountain goat and his father a billy. "Hey! It's a picture of Rudolph!" That was Jones, He never talked - he shouted, a fact that bothered no one more than it did me. His bunk was next to mine because he was my assistant gunner. I jerked out of my almost sleep instantly. "What?" You always answered Jones. If you didn't, he would repeat it and repeat it and repeat it until you could scream. What he said might not need an answer, like he might say, "It's hot today," but you always gave him one even if it was no more than a grunt. Any sound you made shut him up. "It's a picture of Rudolph," he repeated. Now that he had my attention his voice had dropped to a loud talk. Feigning interest, I asked, "Who's Rudolph?" Looking at pictures of kid brothers does not turn me on. "Rudolph's the best damned hound in Tennessee, that's who!" He was shouting again. He shoved a snapshot in front of my face so that I had to take it. I looked at it for a minute before I passed it back to him with a grunt. "What's the matter, Mac, don't you like dogs?" he demanded. Indignation dripped from his voice. Maybe I had failed to grunt with enough enthusiasm. "Well, Jonesy, it's like this. Dogs and I have a working agreement. I don't bite them and they don't bite me." "Hell, Mac you'd love Rudolph." "Oh, sure. Don't get me wrong, Jonesy. It's not that I dislike dogs - it's just that I'm not crazy about them. As a matter of fact, when I was a kid back on the farm there was always a dog around. Sometimes there were two or three of them. Of course, they weren't purebreds or anything like that, you know. They were just dogs - Hines fifty-seven. And I guess when you get right down to it, there wasn't one of them that was really worth a damn for anything. "Oh, sure, they'd bark up a storm if anyone ever came around, but to tell you the truth, I doubt if any of them would have known what to do with a burglar if they'd ever seen one. But you know how a kid is with his dog. Well, I was like any other kid - I loved our dogs, every damned one of the worthless muts. "But you know, everytime I think of dogs, I think of Laddy. He was undoubtedly the most worthless, stupidest, awkwardest, dumbest, poorest excuse for a dog that God ever let live. As a matter of fact, Jonesy, I honestly believe he was the dumbest animal I've ever seen -- except for sheep, maybe. "I remember how Eddy, Eddy's my kid brother, and I were always laughing at some crazy thing he did. He was a great big, lumbering New Foundland that our grandpa had picked up somewhere. He was just a pup when we got him, but I swear, the older he got the dumber he got. I remember one time we threw him into the stock tank just to see what he'd do. And would you believe it? That stupid mut swam around in the middle and whined for thirty minutes because he couldn't decide which way to go. Eddy finally had to take off his shoes and wade out after him. "And awkward? God, he was awkward. The stupid mut was always chasing jack rabbits. Of course, he never had a prayer of ever catching one of them. Fact is, I think the rabbits got a real bang out of teasing him. I mean, they'd go loping off across the field about as slow as a rabbit can go, and when he'd get three or four feet behind one of them, it'd turn and go loping off in a new direction. That dumb dog would fan all over himself trying to get turned around. By the time he did, the rabbit would be a hundred yards away, just hopping along like he didn't have a care in the world. Of course, with Laddy chasing him, he didn't. But there'd go Laddy, hell bent for election. "Fact, I remember one tune there were two rabbits. After he'd chase one a while, it'd duck into a bush and the other would dart out, and then after a while the second would come back to the bush, and the first one would take off again. Those crazy rabbits played with that stupid mut for an hour and a half. Well, finally they both popped out of the bush right in front of him. One of them took off north and the other south. And poor Laddy. He just sat there for a minute looking back and forth from one rabbit to the other. After a while he just laid down and Gried. Now I know you probably never saw a dog cry, but I swear to God, Laddy did. He was so broken up that Eddy and I had to carry him back home. And did we ever get mad at that dumb dog sometimes. I remember one time we decided to take him hunting with us. We'd been reading some of those sports magazines about hunting and fishing. I guess that's where we got the idea of taking Laddy with us. I don't know how you hunt cottontails back in Tennessee, but back in Kansas you walk along hedge rows and down into gullies where the farmers dump brush to stop errosion and poke around in bushes where there's no wind and they can hide. Well, Laddy tagged along like he had good sense. He was probably afraid to get out in front of us. Anyway, everything was just fine until we came to this one gully. There was a big pile of brush down at the bottom. Eddy went down to it, and I stayed up on top, and just about the time Eddy stepped on it to scare the rabbits out, Laddy decided to go down, too. Now there was a cow path leading down past that pile of brush, see, so Laddy was waddling down that path when Eddy stepped on the brush. There must have been about a hundred rabbits hiding in there, and when he rattled the brush they shot out in about forty directions. One of them started up that cow path and met that stupid mut right in the middle. They stopped with their noses about an inch apart, and for about a tenth of a second they just stood there, eyeball to eyeball. Then with a yelp Laddy turned and high tailed it back up the path, and that rabbit was back in the brush faster than he came out. "Boy, was Eddy mad! I swear, he'd have shot that dumb dog right on the spot except the big coward was lying on the ground behind my legs - just laying there a shaking and whining. I don't think I ever heard anyone cuss as good as Eddy did that day. Hell, Sergeant Adamson can't hold a candle to the way Eddy sounded off at Laddy." I stopped because there was nothing more to say about Laddy. He was just a great big, lumbering, stupid dog. "What happened after that?" Jones asked breathlessly. I studied the bottom of the bunk above me. It would have been nice to say he'd drowned himself pulling Eddy or me out of the creek, or that he'd been gored by a bull saving one of us. But that wasn't so. Laddy just wasn't that kind of a dog. If Laddy had been the first domesticated dog in the world, he would have spent his nights in the back of a cave - behind the women and children. He was a coward from the first day he opened his eyes. "No, Jonesy, it's just too terrible to talk about," I said. "Aw, come on. What happened to him?" Jones pleaded. I sighed. "Well, actually, I don't know. The last time I saw him was one afternoon the next summer. A kitten, about a month old, came up from the barn while Laddy was eating. He saw the food, and I guess he was hungry. Anyway, he just walked in between Laddy's front feet and started helping himself. Laddy sort of stepped back and whined, and the kitten mewed real friendly like. Well, Laddy just about jumped out of his skin. Then he turned and walked away with his tail dragging in the dust. We never saw him again, but Eddy says he probably got in a fight with a field mouse and lost." I glanced at Jones from the corner of my eye. He was sitting on the edge of his bunk watching me as though trying to decide whether I had been exaggerating or not. Abruptly I swung my legs over the side of my bunk and sat up. "Come on, Jonesy, let's go get a beer." "Okay, Mac," he answered. He jammed his letter and the picture of his hound back into the envelope. A couple of hours later we were walking back to the barracks feeling wise and young and fresh the way only a young man with three or four beers can feel. The gravel path crunched beneath our feet. A cool breeze was blowing in gently from the desert as though to apologize for today's torturous heat and making tomorrow with its make-believe assualt on a make-believe enemy a never-never thing in a never-never time. The stars glittered faintly beyond the glow of lights from the camp buildings. An unfamiliar pany of homesickness rose up from somewhere deep within me. "Mac, you were putting me on, weren't you?" Jones asked suddenly. His twangy voice fit well with my mood, for there was an unfamiliar note of awe in it. "What do you mean?" "About that dog. You were putting me on, weren't you?" "Laddy? No, I wasn't. Every word I said about him was true." "Oh, come on, Mac. No dog's ever like that." I turned my head away from the big, loud man beside me and wiped a drop of moisture from my eye with the back of my hand. "Laddy was." Sacrifice Wrinkled, aged fingers grasp a tarnished blade, a sudden breath. Cold piercing steel severes life, from a weeping trembling figure. Throbbing with heated fury, molten life bursts from a gapeing wound. Flowing to the frozen ground the crimson passion chills then fades away. Blake A. Hill