The old pit-bull keeper paced in his stall and watched the river from his kitchenette. His window was dirty and so was the river. The old pit-bull keeper stared at the banks of the river, white and distant, his vision blurred from decades of doing what he was doing just now – sitting in his stall, waiting for the dogs to go by.
   Many hours passed. The old pit-bull keeper paced and stared. The stall was hot and damp. There was an atmosphere of mildew. The old pit-bull keeper’s expression never changed: not sunny, not sour, just a nothing sort of expression somewhere in-between.
   Suddenly, in a slow sort of way, the pit-bulls cascaded across the distant landscape. The pit-bull keeper watched them intently, not blinking, his expression not changing. He was not excited in a visual way, but not too far inside him, the old pit-bull keeper was uncontrollably leaping with joy, scraping his head against the walls and screaming with so much pleasure that it felt like wonderful, wonderful pain. This was what the pit-bull keeper lived for: that one delicious half-moment a day when the dogs came out and ran across the plain.
   The old pit-bull keeper took out his pit-bull ledger and wrote the following:

March 14th, ‘32
4 pit-bulls, moderate walking speed,
but rhythmic, brisk.
Total time: 49 seconds

   The old pit-bull keeper took out a long, black cigar from his green shoulder-satchel. He lit it on the stove and began to smoke it. He stroked his tender, white beard and shed a few tears. He put down the cigar, half-smoked, removed his suspenders, and lie on the floor, staring at the ceiling with a sad sort of satisfaction.
   Today went well, he wrote in the ledger. I liked the pit-bulls I saw today.
   The old pit-bull keeper looked at his clock on the wall. It was shaped like a barnyard hen. The barnyard hen’s tail pointed to the time, which was four-thirty PM. It was time for the old pit-bull keeper to close his stall’s window-shade, draw back the blinds, write down the day’s final thoughts in the pit-bull ledger, and sit in the darkness and drink sassafras honey-stick lemonade out of a mug he won at the World’s Fair when Mother was young.
   The old pit-bull keeper slowly, satisfyingly moved his crow-quill across the March 14th page of the pit-bull ledger:

Overall satisfied with today’s pit-bull
walk. I am hoping for a run
to-morrow, but I will not be
disappointed if the pit-bulls
choose to walk again.
After all—
A pit-bull must do what he must!

   The old pit-bull keeper fixed himself a supper of beans and saltine crackers, mixed together in a yellow bowl. The old pit-bull keeper ate his supper slowly, and happily counted his blessings, over and over in his mind:
   I am alive, I am alive, the dogs are out, I am alive, the dogs are out, I am alive.
   The old pit-bull keeper knew he was rolling in rich security.
  
   It wasn’t long before the darkness came out, and with the darkness, a faint moon, the color of honey straight from the honey tree. This was just the color the old pit-bull keeper liked the moon to be.
   The old pit-bull keeper sat in his stall and felt the presence of the moon. His stall’s window-shade was closed and the blinds were drawn back, but all he needed to know that the moon was out was to close his eyes and feel it. The old pit-bull keeper had been in the moon’s presence so many times in his life that seeing it would be redundant. He had been a pit-bull keeper since he was fourteen years old, and he had had his stall since he was seventeen. The countryside hadn’t changed and his heart hadn’t, either. Things were things and that was that.
   The moon was the moon and that was that.
   Sleep always came easy to the old pit-bull keeper. As he slept, he always knew the clouds were where they needed to be, the trees were as tall as they needed to be, the river was doing what it needed to do, and – most important of all – the old pit-bull keeper knew that, tomorrow, the pit-bulls would return.
   And their behavior would be marked in the ledger.
   The night’s sleep began. And with it came a wonderful dream:

   Nine dogs, pit-bulls, lined up, ready to go, ready to walk, ready to run; nine pit-bulls, ready for the day, ready for walking, ready for new dawnings, ready for scraping and scrapping and trying to survive, but ready to appreciate things a little, too; there was time for stopping by the river bank and having a snack of honeycombs, for instance, or rolling in the dirt and getting wet and howling at the moon when it least expects it, and licking up the dew on the ground and being thankful that tomorrow is tomorrow and yesterday was yesterday, too.

   A long sequence of dogs walking, various sights and sounds. Dream goes on for many hours.

   This dream was written down in the old pit-bull watcher’s pit-bull ledger the next day. The old pit-bull keeper carefully made a drawing of a paw next to it.

   Morning was nice. The sun was good. The old pit-bull keeper fixed himself a breakfast of beans and saltine crackers, mixed together in a yellow bowl.
   When he finished eating, the old pit-bull keeper opened the shade and drew up the blinds, and sang this song:

Oh, some men like to be quickie men, and I find that just fine.
But me, I’m not a quickie man, for slowness is divine.
Hussle-ing and bussle-ing is good for them, but me—
I like to sit and the watch the dogs and be a man who’s free.
Mother said to me, in 1853,
“Some of the men are quickie-men,
But you are not a quickie-man,
And that’s just fine, you see.”

   The old pit-bull keeper was sobbing as he was singing this, but it was a silent sort of sobbing.
  
   The old pit-bull keeper’s stall was aged, but sturdy. It was metallic and red. Many decades’ worth of filth had encrusted itself on the outside of the stall, but the filth only added to the stall’s beauty. The filth shimmered in the afternoon sun, and looked quite pretty.
   The stall was built by the old pit-bull keeper’s father, when the old pit-bull keeper had been at his job for a few years and Daddy knew he was serious. Daddy had a way about him that was stern and inaccessible, but he could always sense if someone truly loved something, and he did his best to let that something be loved as much as it possibly could be.
   So, on went the plywood, on went the plaster, and nails, and carbon, and cinnamon-colored wax siding. The old pit-bull keeper’s father took out his brick-laying machine and made the stall even and aesthetically pleasing. There was not a single warped shingle on the stall’s entire base.
   The old pit-bull keeper was thankful that his father understood what he loved best, and he thanked his father by buying him a nice berry wine and toasting it to his father, the man who understood.
   Every time the old pit-bull keeper sat and watched the dogs, in the back of his mind was Daddy, the person who made it all possible, the person who had a certain dignified purity about him, hidden beneath the confused rage.
   Thank you, Daddy, for blessing the dogs!

   Now it is time to learn something:
   When the dust sits on the valley and the sun is in just the right spot, there is a feeling in the air that pierces a young man in two. It makes him question things a little. The calmness of a strawberry field at noon makes a young man go into fits. When the dust hits the strawberries in just the right way, that is when the young man begins to pierce. He is pierced halfway down the middle and experiences no pain.
   A young man must lift his pick-axe and cause it to come in contact with the dirt. It must hit the dirt in just the right manner. The young man must feel the pick-axe grinding into the dirt and the young man must feel the pick-axe touching the berry roots in just the right way. There is only one way to perform this action and a young man must do it right. He has his whole life to perfect the task, and it is important that it be perfected. A young man does not have many duties but this sure is one of them.
   That is when the piercing comes in. If a young man isn’t finding himself pierced, he is doing everything all wrong. If a young man is not going into fits, he has made a mistake. If he is not panting in the dirt and his mouth is not frothing and spilling all over the strawberry seed, there is something amiss and it sure better be corrected before things get far worse. If the townhouse chairman makes his rounds and sees a young man not having fits, there will be problems for the young man and the entire community. A young man does not step out of line and a young man stays pure.
   A young man must examine his place in the world. Sun in the sky, clouds in the sky, air sitting just right, day turning into night. Check, check, check, check.
   Chains cause pain to the skin of a young man, but that pain does not feel like the pain of failure, the pain of a duty-shirk. If a young man refuses to successfully carry out his task, he will feel a pain that starts in the heart and ends in the testicles, and peaks somewhere around the throat and mouth. A young man will feel a tremor in his teeth like a rabbit tenderly tearing carrot flesh while hawks circle. Failure is the worst thing a young man can do to his country.
   The chains linked to a young man’s skin will scratch and scrape and cause pain, but it will mean nothing. The young man cannot move, but he does not need to. He does not need his day in the sun.
   The pit-bull keeper’s father leaned on his axe and looked out at the setting sun. He was young and flexible. The year was 1811 – a fresh time for young men of all shapes. He knew what he was meant for. He didn’t like oil or sweating but that was okay.

   The old pit-bull keeper had been nestled in his chair for some hours now. It was prime dog hour. He had been sitting and watching for some time. It was slightly later than the time the dogs usually appeared. He deeply anticipated their arrival.
   More time passed. An hour passed, then another.
   Perhaps the pit-bulls stopped and had a snack, the old pit-bull keeper thought.
   Another hour passed.
   Another.
   Another.
   Four-thirty PM. Closing time.
   The dogs had not appeared.
   The old pit-bull keeper stared into the nothingness of the night, his heart filled with disbelief. His mind was blank and betrayed.
   The old pit-bull keeper slowly got out of his chair and walked away from the window. He walked slowly, emotionlessly, not quite stumbling but not having a brisk walking session, either. It took him many minutes to make his way from the chair, past the kitchenette, past the gunny-sack and basin, to the stall door.
   The old pit-bull keeper put his hand on the Daddy-crafted stall doorknob and began to twist.
   He had not left the stall in forty-three years.
   The intensity of the night blinded the old pit-bull keeper. Everything was completely still, but to a man who had not been outside in four decades, it felt like everything was constantly in motion in a horrible, endless carnival ride circuit. Things were popping out of the darkness and spinning and attacking. Owls hooting, river rushing, trees growing. It was a rich and meaningful nightmare. The old pit-bull keeper felt it in his spine and it hurt.
   And the moon would not stop laughing!
   The old pit-bull keeper had not felt this way in his entire life. He wandered around the property outside of the stall, moving quickly and aimlessly, fearfully. He felt his way around the space with his hands, for his fear had made him blind. He could not look at the terrors of the outside.
   Everything felt thick and salty, and it was so, so hard to move. The old pit-bull keeper felt his way about. He collapsed in the dust and rolled about, praying and swearing.
   The old pit-bull keeper grabbed a hold of a rhubarb tree, and refused to let go until morning came. He twitched in the wind and repeatedly said:
   “They didn’t come, they didn’t come, they didn’t come.”

12:08 am  •  5 June 2011  •  14 notes