Sharp Teeth Read online

  and stares into Peabody’s eyes

  with an absolute directness.

  Peabody slows the car even further,

  pulling over to the curb

  stepping out slowly, leaving the motor

  running. No sudden moves but then

  bam, the dog is off and running

  tearing across the twilight green lawn

  and leaping nimbly over a low fence.

  “Fuck.” Peabody jumping into a run,

  chasing a damned dog, trespassing

  and digging up turf with every step

  sure that some irate citizen is looking out

  and calling 911 right now.

  He vaults the fence with less grace than the dog

  and races between the dry stucco walls of houses

  pushing through colored sheets of clotheslines

  and rushing out onto the next street

  just in time to

  meet the full speed

  of an oncoming car.

  Barely conscious, Peabody lies splayed on the pavement.

  The dog sits beside him.

  The driver of the car gets out, the passenger too,

  they carefully lift him into the back of the station wagon.

  The driver whistles, the dog licks the driver’s face twice and

  jumps in the back.

  Off they go.

  When Peabody opens his eyes it is night and

  they are driving up the interstate.

  To his tumbled mind

  it seems the stars have spilled out of the sky

  to roll across the highway.

  Waking again, he first sees the girl

  leaning in through the open hatch of the wagon.

  “Don’t get up, you’ve been hurt.”

  He begins to move but a sharp

  searing pain reminds him she’s right.

  “Where am I?” he asks.

  “Zuma Beach. We just wanted to get some waves in.”

  “Why didn’t you take me to a hospital?”

  “Oh silly.” She leans over and kisses his cheek.

  Her breath smells sweet and honeyed.

  She leaps up, pulls a board from the roof of the car

  and runs across the darkened beach.

  Peabody sits up to watch her slip into the sleek waters

  and makes out, glinting across the surface,

  two other figures sliding between the waves and the night.

  Then he leans back, closes his eyes,

  sucks in all his curiosity

  and rests.

  When he wakes up again he is in the small room of a cabin,

  where a woodstove is kicking out heat.

  In front of him sits a glass of water and

  across from him a one-eyed Hispanic man.

  “You looking for Emilio Ruiz?” the man says.

  Peabody doesn’t even register the name at first.

  “Who?” he asks.

  “Emilio Ruiz? Annie says you’re looking for me.”

  “Oh yeah.” He sips the water and tries to clear his thoughts.

  “Who sent you to look for me?” The man’s bright eye gleams.

  “I don’t know. A lead,” says Peabody.

  “A lead? What is this? What bullshit are you talking man.

  I’m busy, I haven’t got time for this shit. Hey!” Ruiz bangs the wall with a stick.

  “Hey, get this guy outta here!”

  “Relax, relax.” Peabody tries his best to do the same. “I’m looking

  into some things down at the pound.”

  “The dog pound?” Ruiz’s good eye has a strange glint to it.

  “Look,” says Peabody, as the pain shoots across his spine

  and down his leg, “I think I need a doctor.”

  “Shit,” mumbles Ruiz, banging on the wall. “He needs a doctor!”

  No response.

  “You know a guy who sounds like a princess?” Peabody asks.

  The one-eyed man says nothing,

  stares at the wall he’s been beating.

  “You know anyone down at the pound?” Peabody asks.

  “Nope. But I bought some dogs from the pound once.”

  “Really? Do you remember who you bought them from?”

  The man smiles ruefully to himself. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

  I bought the dogs and the dogs became my redemption.”

  This man is talking crazy, thinks Peabody,

  which sparks a question.

  “How do I know you’re Ruiz?”

  Ruiz stares at him. “You really a cop?” he asks.

  “Yes,” says Peabody, finishing the water.

  “Then why don’t you just ask for some fucking ID,” says Ruiz,

  throwing a wallet across to him. With that motion disclosing

  the fact that he has only one arm.

  The license is legit, with a younger and brighter Ruiz

  staring into the DMV’s camera. Even then though

  he looked like a man daring the world

  to tear into him.

  Apparently he got his wish.

  Peabody throws the wallet back, asking

  “Why haven’t you been home?”

  Ruiz counts the three dollars in the billfold before

  putting it away. “I’ve been traveling,

  working with some other dogs.”

  “Someone said you raise them to fight.”

  Ruiz looks up quickly. “Oh no, no.” He shakes his head.

  “No, I used to, I used to, fought ’em into the dirt,

  but the last fight dogs I bought were those ones

  I got from the pound. I’ll tell you,

  those guys sold me some beasts.”

  Ruiz studies the ground before going on.

  “So now, I just take care of the dogs.

  Any dogs that come here, I baby.”

  He pounds on the wall again, yelling

  “I Baby Them!”

  Peabody is tired of being stuck in this muddle of riddles.

  He’s having trouble with his eyesight to boot.

  And, it seems,

  his mouth and his mind

  have stopped working together.

  “Who are the girl?” he asks,

  trying to shake off the fogginess. Thinking,

  has he been drugged or was it the accident?

  “Who is the girl?” Ruiz corrects, looking at the fading cop.

  “Yes, who is the girl?” The room keeps shifting and

  changing angles on Peabody. He squints to focus.

  “Oh, Annie,” says Ruiz, smiling,

  happy to keep feeding him puzzle pieces as he falls.

  “She used to work for me

  but now I work for her.”

  Every star explodes bright in Peabody’s brain

  before the darkness returns.

  When he wakes

  he’s looking at an albino nurse

  in the city hospital.

  There’s a blue uniformed cop standing next to her.

  The two of them look to Peabody

  like the earth and the sky

  in a snapshot.

  “Your friends dropped you off, Peabody.”

  “What friends?”

  “ER said it was a girl and two of her buddies.”

  “How long have I been out for?”

  “Three days. But you were missing before that.”

  “How long was I missing for?”

  “Two days.”

  “Jesus. Where’s my wife?”

  “She just went to get some coffee and a snack for your boy.

  Don’t worry, she’ll be back soon.”

  There is a pause, the nurse adjusts the pillow,

  the cop struggles to keep eye contact with Peabody.

  But Peabody’s head is spinning again,

  seems like the gyroscope won’t ever wind down.

  “What can you tell me about your friends?” asks
the cop.

  Peabody looks at the man, tight in his uniform

  Peabody thinks about the girl on the beach.

  He thinks about odd Ruiz in that locked room,

  handicapped and cocky with an almost wild pride.

  And the surfers riding waves in the night.

  Back to the lisping man on the phone.

  Back to Calley eating the gun.

  Back to the dog on the road.

  “Friends,” the cop had said.

  The word reminds Peabody of the times when

  he’s trying to make up the guest bed for visiting friends

  staying late after dinner and too drunk to drive,

  how he turns the sheets this way and that,

  upward and backward,

  trying to get the ends aligned, searching for the right corners.

  That’s where he is with this case now.

  “They’re not my friends.”

  “Well, what happened, Peabody. Was it a kidnapping?”

  Peabody keeps his mouth shut,

  holding on to the leads and clues

  like a child clutching his marbles.

  He doesn’t know why he holds back.

  Maybe fear of a leak in the office

  finding its way to the lisping man’s ear.

  Maybe because he thinks no one else has the bones

  to work this case but him.

  But, honestly, thinks Peabody, it’s probably

  just pride.

  Talking about it now would only unravel

  this strange ball of string

  while holding on could bring him a good case,

  a case that’s his and his alone.

  If his gut is right, this is something big.

  So maybe he just doesn’t want to share.

  He didn’t think his ego was like that.

  He thought he was honest. The good cop.

  But then again, he thinks,

  even Jesus caught his own reflection

  now and then.

  He tilts his head back, “I don’t know anything.”

  “Really?” The cop cocks his head like some curious rooster.

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. Last thing I remember

  I was sitting in my car eating a bag of Fritos.

  Now could you go find my wife?”

  Peabody exhales, avoids the cop’s unswerving gaze.

  The room’s already empty as far as he’s concerned.

  “Oh yeah…,” says the cop

  somehow still there, still blue, bringing him back

  into the bleak light of the hospital room

  and dosing him full of reality

  with one last piece of news.

  “…thought you should know,

  somebody torched your car.”

  And all Peabody can think is,

  “Okay, what next?”

  IX

  Lark is driving.

  He’s got one day before Bonnie gets back.

  He looks across at his passenger.

  The kid looks like he’s about three weeks past

  being a good kid.

  Lark found him hustling.

  This kid, Jason, has A.D.D. which makes the hypnotic

  drawl Lark has used so effectively in the past

  difficult to say the least.

  “Jason, let me ask you something. Do you

  want a taste of real power?

  The kind of power no man is ever truly prepared for?

  The sort of power that rearranges the whole world just for you?”

  “Yes,” says the kid, “Power, yeah, power, and, um, Starburst.

  You got some Starburst?”

  Trying again, a few blocks later,

  “Have you ever longed for a place that was all your own?

  Have you ever wanted friends who would die for you, Jason?

  Do you know what it’s like to live by your own rules,

  not the rest of the world’s, do you know what that’s like?”

  “Yeah,” says Jason. “And you know what kind of popcorn I like?”

  In the end, the kid seemed both relieved and disbelieving

  when Lark told him he wasn’t paying him for sex.

  “I just want to talk.”

  “Boy, I gotta tell you,

  therapy’s not really my game,” said the kid.

  But he came along just the same, hoping

  for the things we all hope for,

  Snickers, Starburst, M&M’s.

  Lark’s last pack was easier to build

  hanging out near the VA

  watching for young GIs, fresh out,

  unemployed and jonesing for discipline.

  But he can’t go back there

  wherever his old pack is now

  there’s a fine chance they’re

  pulling in their fresh troops

  exactly the same way, assembling a new army,

  watching and waiting

  for Lark to show.

  So Lark’s playing a new game

  working with material like

  Jason, the hustler

  Marco, the recovered addict

  Eric, the failed real estate agent

  Arturo, the evangelist

  and a young man named Bunny

  who seems fit enough

  but is given to dancing beneath streetlights

  to the rhythm of

  burning man flashbacks and smooth entrancing beats.

  Lark and Jason pull up to the house,

  a Silver Lake ramble where

  rooms spill into rooms

  and the slant of the floors

  hint at the unsettled faults below.

  “Come on in, let’s talk.” says Lark.

  “Do you have any orange soda?” the kid asks.

  “Maybe, Jason, let me check the fridge.”

  The others are all sleeping,

  Lark’s been running them through the paces at night

  which leads to sleepy days, only rising for carbs

  and the rigor of more training.

  As they pass by one room

  Jason’s young eyes dart in

  to find Bunny lying next to Maria, the new girl,

  her bare breasts spilling out from beneath the covers.

  Jason forgets about the orange soda for a moment.

  His attention snaps back when Lark says,

  “You want to play a game?”

  Now Jason’s ready, he’s played these games before

  with bankers and movie people and men whose odd tastes

  and sometimes cruel needs

  befuddled even Jason’s simple philosophy.

  Three months on the street and not a single game was fun.

  “Yeah, sure,” he says dejectedly, starts taking off his shoes

  preparing for the pain and worse, the loneliness.

  “No, no, sit down, grab that console,” Lark says sternly.

  Jason, confused, lifts a prehistoric plastic device from the couch

  while Lark turns on an old Panasonic TV.

  “Ever heard of Pong, Jason?”

  The theory is simple.

  Every boy, every man, is really

  a bit of a golden retriever

  or a big chocolate lab.

  Watch any man’s eyes

  at the bounce of a ball.

  His head tilts slightly sideways, just a hair,

  as a primitive focus

  comes to life.

  Follow the ball.

  The basketball, the tennis ball, the baseball,

  the golf ball, the lacrosse ball, or in this case

  the mere symbol of a ball, a plain white dot,

  floating across a dull, black screen.

  And just like that, the pupils sharpen their gaze.

  The game begins.

  Stay with the ball, follow the ball.

  The mind opens there, a psychological soft spot,

  where reason’s stubborn persis
tence fades

  and some underbelly is exposed.

  Just follow the ball, stay with the ball.

  “Jason…,” Lark says carefully,

  sending the electronic dot sliding across

  the electronic net, “…have you ever felt

  like you were somehow

  different?”

  X

  Let’s go back to that bedroom.

  Lying there, naked, sleeping

  resting as fully as a ship sunk in the sand,

  there lies Maria.

  This girl is the third Lark has had

  in a pack of his own.

  There was the first girl, who died in a story

  so sad no one speaks of it.

  Then there is the second girl

  gone now from the pack

  but very alive in their minds.

  Only Lark knows where she can be found,

  at home with the dogcatcher

  sleeping by her side.

  And then there’s the new girl.

  Some people say Maria

  is the most beautiful word in the world.

  That’s what her mother would say

  braiding her hair before church.

  And that’s what her father would say

  as he crawled between her sheets.

  The world, as a result, turned backward

  where blossoms buried themselves while

  roots reached like starving fingers

  to the gray and fruitless sky.

  And love was hate and the touch

  of what she ever wanted poisoned.

  The first time a boy her own age tried to kiss her,

  a boy she adored,

  she scratched and wept and ran.

  Her father had grown bored or felt guilty but in any case

  had stopped but by then it was far too late,

  her body was anger, her blood laced with glass

  shredding at every vein and ventricle as it ran through

  in the years of haunted silence.

  Nobody knew.

  Nobody saw.

  Welcome to Gesso Copy Mart.

  Open 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

  She’s the one laughing just enough,

  she’s the one not giving anything away with her eyes.

  Her every gesture is a perfect cold lie.

  Lark had come in for some leaflets he was putting up

  in church cellars and community halls.

  He saw her face.

  Read her expression.

  So he came back, Xeroxing things he’ll never need.

  Talking. Small questions, launched softly into the air.