Excerpt from Triggers – A Young Adult Novel by David Floody – Sequel to The Colour of Pride
DETROIT SKYLINE AS SEEN FROM WINDSOR SHORES OF DETROIT RIVER
INSECT YOUTH
CHAPTER ONE
Windsor, Ontario – 1970
The night was perfect for drowning a dog—a rare velvet evening in May along the shores of the Detroit River under the arching shadows of the Ambassador Bridge. But parked in his aging Mustang, Bernie Michaels was too drunk, too angry and too intent on his mission to really notice. “A bitch for a bitch,” he announced. How hard could it be?
Sharp points of light picked out the graceful spans of bridge, then blurred and merged with the bright shoals of Detroit’s skyline a mile distant. Transport trucks moved fitfully toward the customs booths in both directions, the noise of engines and releasing brakes undiminished by height and humidity.
“Bottoms up!” Slouched behind the wheel, Bernie drained the last ounces of liquor from the mickey of Walker’s Special Old Whiskey. The taste was acrid and sweet. With ritual disdain, he poured the brown dregs onto his neglected pile of grade ten history assignments on the floor of the convertible, blotting out the student’s name on top. “Screw you, Frank D. Phelan!”
Bernie had parked the convertible in the far corner of the riverfront passion park known locally as ‘Hep’s’ just after 9:00 p. m. on the last Friday of the month. He dropped the empty bottle on the school papers and sat seething behind the wheel. The plastic Lazare’s Fine Furs bag was ready on the seat next to him. Behind, on the back seat, the small dog whined uncertainly inside the silver-wrapped box, still tied with its red Christmas bow. It seemed fitting that he do the mutt here, in the place where a part of Bernie had so recently died—been killed really.
Even in his irrational state, what little logic remained told him the dog was not at fault. The dog was as innocent as he himself. The way Bernie saw it, they were both victims. “Damn straight!”
Both had been cruelly betrayed and deserted by the person they loved and trusted most; the person they thought loved and trusted them right back. “’Til death do us part, right, doggie?”
Well the parting had come, brutal and irrevocable, and Bernie wished he were dead. But he’d looked at the black river water and knew he couldn’t do it, then or now. The implacable will that allowed him to control even the most unruly class of adolescents deserted him here. Yet he had to do something! Doris, his deceitful bitch of a wife, was beyond his reach, so innocent or not, he would make her damn dog dead. “Death by proxy,” he giggled at his cleverness and pounded the steering wheel.
The dog in the box whimpered in alarm.
Bernie imagined it was Doris. Imagined grabbing his two-timing wife by the neck with both hands and choking the life and lies right out of her. Right here, right now, where she told him, where it all came to an end, just a few short months ago. “Dump her in the river! Let her float on down to Lake Erie!” he muttered.
Out on the water, a tall shape moved under the bridge in front of him, its huge advance eating up the million city lights, devouring Detroit with steady appetite. The horn of the lake freighter erupted in two solid blasts of sound that jarred Bernie to the marrow. “Jesus!”
The box in the back let out a series of panicked yelps, rising higher and higher, until Bernie turned around, lashed at it with both fists. “Shut-u-up!” He pounded the box into silence—almost.
Bernie heard a rattling sound, followed by a faint odour. The little dog urinated in fear. The pungent smell permeated the closed interior of the convertible, and Bernie was beside himself with anger and disgust.
He yelled something incoherent, wrenched open his door, reached back and grabbed up the box and hurled it to the ground. It gave out a few feeble whimpers and then went quiet. Bernie panted heavily, the alcohol and strain beginning to drain him. “ ’At’s better.”
Detroit’s lights winked back on as the freighter continued down-river, riding low in the water, but churning up a large wake with its powerful screw, ghostly efflorescent in the moonlight. Bernie thought of the giant propeller grinding away beneath the surface. He thought of Doris’s lifeless body sucked into that huge wake and ground into little bloody bits. “Little. Bloody. Bits.” He liked the sound of that.
Bernie shook his head to try and clear it, but was overcome with the sudden need to relieve his bursting bladder. In his haste, he pissed against the front tire of his own car. The zipper snagged, but he finally got himself straight. “Ok, show-time, doggie.” The box lay silent at his feet.
Bernie looked furtively around the graveled lot, located off Riverside Drive and across from Atkinson Park and its little league ball field. The night-lights of the field were on and Bernie just caught the noise of the fans, too far away to matter.
The lot he’d chosen had no official name but took its title from the flashing red letters of a sign, low on the waterline of the Detroit side opposite: ‘HEPPINSTALL’S.’ No one seemed to know what product or service Heppinstall’s provided, but to young drivers with a license to love, it was the place to park. Clouds of hormones mixed with cigarette haze and the sweet smell of marijuana hung over the backseats of the shiny Fords and Chevys like exhaust smoke. Who knew? Students like Phelan were sixteen, maybe driving daddy’s car and parking here to tear off a piece. The sudden image of Frank Phelan doped up and sex-locked with the delectable Evelyn Flowers made him kick out at the box, drawing a whine and more sounds of urination. “Screw you, Phelan!”
This early on a Friday night the lot was less than a quarter full. No one paid him any notice. The Chevelle parked nearest Bernie, a half-dozen slots away, had the windows up and the radio playing low. Bernie thought he recognized the faint strains of Save The Last Dance For Me, from one of the Motown stations across the river all the kids seemed to favour. The music was popular with his Doris too, especially that Smooth Daddy Groove show she was always dancing to in the kitchen, shaking her butt and showing too much leg. Now the music seemed to mock him. “Goddamned coonshit!”
Bernie retrieved the Lazare’s bag, stuffed it under his belt and picked up the box. He swore as he realized he’d grabbed the urine-soaked side. The dog whined, but Bernie held on, determined to get it over with.
“Alright doggie, time for a paddle.” He sniggered and moved unsteadily toward the lip of the steep embankment, weaving between two of the big cement safety barriers. Half-way down, Bernie lost his footing in the loose gravel and accelerated into a stumbling run. He tripped over something and fell hard, face forward, his arms out-stretched—and empty.
The box tumbled the rest of the way in front of him, full of high-pitched cries, and banged into the base of a dimly lit sign-post that warned:
SWIMMING PROHIBITED
Deep Water
Dangerous Undertow
But the only thing that mattered when Bernie pushed himself to his feet and finally got there was the dog, standing free in the faint light, looking back at him with her stupid white ball in her mouth.
‘Angel’ said the faint letters on the ball in black magic marker.
The small dog was a Jack Russell Terrier, short and stocky, a smooth white with black markings on her face and back. She stood stiffly facing him, alert, but fearful and uncertain. Bernie watched the dog shake, ready to bolt. The Russell made small sounds in her throat and darted glances left and right, but always came back to Bernie. Her front feet shifted from paw to paw and her tail twitched. Shivers rippled along her sides.
“Shit!”
Bernie forced himself to shut up and think. After a few moments, he thought he had it. He made his movements slow and sank down on one knee, keeping a careful distance. One misstep and it would all go to Hell. How could he have been so stupid? It was just a goddamned dog!
Bernie smiled reassuringly and held out his right hand with the palm open toward the dog. He began to croon. “Ok, puppy. Daddy’s here. No need to be afraid. Come on, puppy. Time to go home. Come to daddy . . . .”
The pup looked at him quizzically, still shivering with anxiety. Undecided, the dog finally sat, just the way Doris had trained her. If sitting, why not staying? he reasoned.
Bernie inched closer, talking all the time. “Good puppy. Sit! That’s a girl. Now stay! Stay, puppy.”
The dog cocked her head to one side, unsure. Her small whimpers stopped, and she looked to be obeying.
“Ok, puppy. Treat! Treat! Come on. Shake a paw! Shake a paw!” Bernie raised his right hand, held it above the dog’s head, fingers and thumb together, in the way his wife had done.
The dog twitched and her demeanor changed to one of hopeful anticipation. Tentatively at first, then with familiar enthusiasm, she dropped her ball, raised her right paw and took her eyes off Bernie to stare expectantly at the hand holding her treat.
“Gotcha, ya’ little bitch!” Bernie, crowing in triumph, jerked the dog off her feet by the paw. He shook her savagely. The dog yelped again and again in betrayed panic. Bernie soon had her tightly by the collar, twisting and choking. “You’re fish-food now!”
He acted quickly, no longer caring who might notice. The pup continued to squirm and gave out strangled cries, but weakly, her strength and will almost gone, yet even now, did not bite a hand that had fed her.
Bernie pulled the plastic bag free of his belt and shook it open. The sharp stones were painful when he dropped to his knees and wedged the limp dog between his thighs. He slipped her into the bag then shoved the white ball in after.
“Ye-s-s-s!” Bernie leaned back and declared to the night.
He lined up the heavy plastic snaps and pinched them closed with solid snicks, sealing the bag’s top and the dog’s fate. Back on his feet, he tottered toward the dark water, the bag held by the convenient handle.
Bernie’s feet found the muddy water before his mind registered the fact. The sudden chill froze him for a moment. Low waves rolling in whitely from the freighter’s passing broke over his ankles. “Well, shit!”
Instead of stepping back, Bernie let out a cathartic whoop and did a manic river dance that splashed his pants to the waist. He held up the bag to the moon. “For you, Doris. Wish you were here, bitch!”
This was the bag that had carried home his Christmas peace offering to his wife, his marriage-saver, placed lovingly in the foil box and tied with a wide red ribbon. The box, like his marriage, lay empty in ruins behind him. The expensive silver-fox stole from Lazare’s Fine Furs had almost bankrupted him on his junior high school teacher’s salary. The bitch had taken the fur too—and left him with the loan payments! “Merry goddamned Christmas, Doris.”
Bernie swung the bag back and forth, holding the handle with both hands like a hammer-thrower at a highland game, increasing the arc each time. With a final effort, he spun completely around on one foot and let the bag fly. “Ugh!” He’d aimed for the wide space beyond two stands of cable-wrapped pilings at a point some twenty feet off shore.
But Bernie was not a highland hammer-thrower. He was drunk and pathetic and sat in a foot of mud and cold water where his heroic attempt and his loss of balance had left him. “God-DAMN it!”
The bag hit the water with a muffled splash a bare ten feet away. He watched in dismay as the current caught it and floated it downstream. The possibilities of a small dog, in a large bag, filled with trapped air had eluded him.
Bernie scrambled to his feet and thrashed along after it through sucking shoreline mud. “Aw shit!” he swore again. The bag swirled eastward, straight for another stand of pilings. Sure enough, the bag hit the pilings and snagged on the rusty rounds of steel cable.
The plastic leapt to life, sharply bulging and giving out eerie howls.
“No! No! No-o-o!” Bernie reached the shore opposite and plunged into the water. He had to get to the bag. Hold the little dog under. Strangle her if he had to. “Goddamn you, bitch! Goddamn you straight to Hell!”
Bernie didn’t know if he meant the dog or Doris.
It soon didn’t matter. Bernie howled in his own panic when the bottom fell abruptly away under his feet. His mouth filled with rank water and bubbles of sound. The undertow wrapped him in octopus arms and spun him over and over beneath the surface.
Bernie stopped thinking of dying and wanted desperately to live. He popped up again and dog-paddled frantically to stay on top. He tried to shout for help.
The water was deadly cold. In front of him, the shoreline and Heppinstall’s flowed by. Bernie thought of the big freighter, its huge screw and powerful wake. Now who was heading for little bloody bits?
It just wasn’t fair. He added jags of crying to the shouts and paddling. They were all too feeble, all too late. In the end, he was only crying. The cold turned warm and restful. Bernie went limp, closed his eyes and let the black arms take him.
He was six feet below the surface in a languid drift toward the main freighter channel. Doris’s face floated in front of his. Her pink-frosted mouth smiled that same soul-sucking smile she’d worn when she announced she was carrying another man’s bastard in her belly¾the child Bernie couldn’t give her.
They had parked not two hundred feet away from where Bernie now hung. It was Boxing Day the night after he’d given her the silver-fox stole in its shiny box and red ribbon. “So Bernie, it’s over between us. The drinking, the other thing, I’m leaving you.” Bernie had felt his mind fragment like a slow grenade; his thoughts cut like shrapnel inside his skull.
Even now, the front of Bernie’s head exploded with pain. He moved wooden arms to protect it. They hugged something big and round and solid. Neurons fired in the deep regions of Bernie’s brain. His arms and legs began a slow, reptilian crawl upward. Doris drifted away below him, her expression solemn, accusing. Bernie’s body evolved. Liquid drained from his nose and mouth. He opened iguana eyes, filmy in the moonlight, sampled the air and found it good.
There, opposite the far end of Hep’s, he clung to the pilings and his pitiful life.
“Help. Help me-e!” Bernie raised his right arm and willed it to wave. “Help.”
Twin shocks of light struck his eyes like blooming suns and alien voices shouted at him in a language he struggled to understand.
Six feet away, on the far side of the pilings, the Lazare’s Fine Furs bag burst open in a frenzy of activity and began to sink. A small white shape broke free and swam up-river toward the shore of the Penn Central railway valley, short legs beating the water.
Blinded by the headlights, Bernie’s brain let the faint image go.
*** Read an excerpt from “Insect Youth” ***
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dublaj
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David Floody
Thanks, Tasia! I always enjoy feedback to keep my site inviting with relevant material. Hope to see you again. I have an rss button at the bottom for new posts if interested. Best, David
turkce
So glad you enjoyed it Gisele and the addition of the kale sounds great! I will try that next time I make it Loralee Arman Blakeley
turkce
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David Floody
Wow! Thanks guys! Many of my posts and novels are based on personal experience, and helps me enjoy the good and deal with some of bad. Best, David.
David Floody
Thanks, Miss Donna! This was based on an early girlfriend’s tragic experience that left me very upset and wanting justice for her. The novel helps me deal with it. Be well, David.
turkce
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