Raleigh Review 8.2

Squeezing the pillow in frustration, I watch her go down the hall.

I splash cold water on my face and bury it in a towel. Weeks have passed like this. She’s comforting Curtis down the hall and feeding him formula. I pace the room and linger by the bedroom window, peeking out the curtains. Mike is on his patio and the dogs are lying on their bellies in the grass, chewing bones. Doris slips out of the house.

Ignoring her, Mike cocks his chin and stares out in the yard. I strain to see what they’re doing. Dorisleans in like she wants to put her face up to his. She’s saying something, but he keeps turning away.

“What are you looking at?” Jessica asks, causing me to jump. She’s behind me. “I think Curtis will sleep some more.”

“I’m watching the neighbors,” I tell her, and she comes to the window with me. When Doris tries to grab Mike’s arm, he swats her hand and shoves her backwards. Doris regains her balance and plants her feet apart, shouting. Her face is contorted into an ugly sneer as if she is demeaning him. Mike, patting his fist and stepping forward, swings out to catch her temple with a right hook. It seems a fearsome blow, but then Mike himself is staggering and clutching his chest. He bends over heaving and steadies himself by clasping his knees.

“Call the police,” Jessica tells me. “Call them, now.”

“Wait a minute.”

Doris goes inside and slams the door. Alone on the patio, Mike slowly rights himself to step out into the grass and the dogs have stopped chewing their bones to watch him. When he picks up a ball and throws it across the yard, they get on their feet but don’t fetch.

Instead, they fan out around him.

Mike picks up a switch from the patio and goes after the Rottweiler, swiping at her hind legs and causing her to jump. He displays the switch at the ready and points towards the ball. When the Rottweiler backs up, Mike hits her on the spine and she flinches.

Closing in from behind, the Doberman nips at Mike’s ankles. He rotates on his axis and slices down across the dog’s wet nose with the switch. By then, however, the Rottweiler is ready to sink his teeth into Mike’s fleshy calf.

“Stop them!” Jessica cries out, and I grab and hold her close to me, feeling her shallow and fast breath. “They’re going to kill him.”

“I’ll call the police if he can’t handle them,” I tell her. “They’re his dogs.”

Mike is trying to pull free his leg, but the Rottweiler is snarling through locked jaws, jerking her head from side to side and flaying the pant leg. For a moment Mike hops on one foot, but then he falls back and the Doberman leaps for his outstretched arm, biting right above the elbow.

28 | Raleigh Review