See the doggie. Do he bite?
Now and then, for no good reason, life will haul off and knock a man flat. I wrote a zombie short story for no good reason last year, and it just got published by Tales of World War Z. Check it out, and please leave a comment on their site! Sharp-eyed readers will get how I was inspired by the old Old Yeller movie, um, pretty quickly.
OLD PENDEJO
by R. Narvaez
It doesn’t seem so long ago I hated that dog with all my heart.
I was just back from the war, about two months, still feeling like I was cleaning sand out of my private parts, if you know what I mean. I also had the bum ear and the bum leg from the war. So all in all I was feeling pretty useless to my family. We were in a tight spot, with Dad long gone, my brother Jorge deep into the meth, my sisters married off and living back in Mexico, and with a tiny sheep ranch that pretty much had no sheep. Well, there we had the two left. Ma tried to hold our family together. She kept saying the Sun always had to shine again sometime. But I could see in her eyes that things looked bad even to her.
The dog just showed up one day, probably looking for scraps. I saw my brother out front, playing tug-of-war with it with an old rope.
I told him, “Jorge, get that pinche dog outta here before it gives you rabies.”
“It’s a great dog,” he said, but I could see it was nothing but a curly-haired mutt, big empty patches of skin on it. Maybe it’s great grandma was a border collie, maybe, but the apple had fallen pretty far from the tree.
“It’s a mangy dog,” I said.
“Could be a great sheep dog,” he said.
“We ain’t got but two sheep, brainless,” I said, but he ignored me. I figured the dog would figure soon enough there wasn’t much chow for him here and then move along . . . .
I just read Old Pendejo and thought it was very good. The characters felt very true to life. Good work.
Thanks, Scott! I enjoyed writing that one.