After concluding my meeting with Dusty, I went to the parking lot to find Bruno. The dog was inside the cargo compartment of a dark green van with no windows, with large letters in white on the side that read Dusty Dogwalker in cute, curlicue script, alongside a floppy-eared cartoon dog blinking its eye. Unlike most business vehicles it had no phone number, email address, or website displayed beneath the business name. I found this strange, but not too strange, considering everything else I had just been told at my “orientation.”
When I opened the van door, Bruno pounced from the cargo compartment, then licked my face like he had known me his whole life. I was more of a cat guy, never being particularly fond of canines, whose suck-up nature I found rather contemptible. But when you’re a lonely dog like I was, living away from home at the mercy of a cruel world that doesn’t give a fuck if you live or die, the affection of another lonely dog can warm the coldest heart, even if the love comes from a sloppy slobberer like Bruno.
I stroked Bruno on his warm, fuzzy head. He was a yellowish Golden Retriever whose coat had faded from being walked so much in the sun. He was also on the large and muscular size for the breed, like he had some Saint Bernard or perhaps pit bull in him. A mutt just like me, kindred spirits we were.
After I patted Bruno’s furry noggin for a minute, he eagerly heeled in the empty space where the passenger’s seat was supposed to be, leash dangling from his neck, knowing it was time to get busy. I glanced into the open back compartment and found it empty of everything except a jug of water, a bag of kibbles, a box of small plastic bags, and a couple dog dishes. I thought it cruel to leave him in the van like this during the day, but at least the windows had been left open, and Bruno didn’t seem to give a fuck anyway. No reproach came forth from his snout, he was just chomping at the bit to go to work.
I looked at the map a moment, read the names of a couple of streets there, then instinctively reached for my phone, until remembering Dusty had warned me to leave it behind. I wasn’t exactly sure why, but she seemed like she meant business about this, and I didn’t want to be the one dumbshit who brought down a good thing for everybody.
I powered down my personal phone and looked at the map more closely. As a Gen Z I could swim in any tech gadget you threw at me, but with paper documents I flailed like a helpless three year old thrown in the pool, especially maps. Once, when I had to drive my Uncle somewhere because his car broke down, he scolded me when the first thing I did was type in the address on my phone. “It’s just a couple blocks straight down this way,” he growled. “You kids these days can’t even wipe your ass without a GPS.”
I suppose that old codger was right, and I would have to find my butthole unassisted from now on. I took a closer look at the map, which showed major cross streets and a legend in the upper corner, indicating the four cardinal directions. Did I even know where North or South were? Well, I was vaguely aware the mountains were supposed to be in the West, and I was smart enough to extrapolate North from that. Realizing Gen Z-ers were going to be befuddled making sense of this crude cartographic instrument, Dusty had even drawn a picture of the Rockies on the left side, with little snow-capped peaks.
Unlike a GPS device, which yapped at me constantly to turn here or turn there, the piece of paper in my hand was both deaf and mute, and wouldn’t be given me any directions along the way. So I memorized the route the best my underused brain could, then started the engine.
Meanwhile, Bruno sat there at attention with his tongue wagging, giving me a What the hell took you so long look.
I took Hall Road east, then made a right down Bauer Boulevard. This took me toward Lake Christie, the neighborhood I would be patrolling. From there it was a quick right to the corner of Black Pearl and Ticonderoga, where I parked, feeling pretty proud I had managed to make it here without an electronic cheat. When the grid went down, I was going to be the last of the helpless Gen Z bitches in my maternity ward left standing.
I might have been a little disoriented, but Bruno looked right at home, like he knew the fucking drill and had stalked this neighborhood plenty of times before. He practically yanked the leash out of my hand to get going, then stopped suddenly by the cargo door, sat on his haunches, and gave me that you dumbshit look again.
“What?” I asked, as his wet nose gestured toward the plastic roll laying alongside his dog dishes.
I had forgotten the dog poop bags. This fucking dog was smarter than I was. I would look pretty sketchy walking alongside these well-manicured lawns without something to scoop his crap into. A lot of refined noses would turn down upon me, if they thought I was going to let Bruno leave his fly-buzzing, festering load upon their pristine grass.
All of this was a learning experience for me, but Bruno was clearly an old hand, so I let him lead the way.
Bruno yanked me along down Ticonderoga Street, bounding away in the joy of the stroll. We passed an old lady walking a Pomeranian that Bruno stopped to rub noses with, almost like he was carrying out his job description to the letter.
“Ha ha, who’s walking who?” the old bag said, one of those lame, tired boomer jokes she probably repeated a dozen times a day, to empty courtesy laughs. Normally I would have returned her mirth with an asshole scowl, so she wouldn’t bother me again. But I remembered Dusty’s directive to blend into the neighborhood, so I chuckled and forced a polite smile.
“Ha ha, you got that right,” I said charmingly, and she beamed at me. These old crones were easily amused. I was warming up to this gig.
Bruno had to stop and paw every kid on a scooter we passed, I guess because that’s what big, dopey Golden Retrievers did, and he was playing his role to the tee.
“What’s his name?” some girl on a bike asked, and I had to stop and think for a minute. I’m not a name person. Five minutes after our introduction, I would have already forgotten your name too. My Mom says it’s because I’m a narcissist, that everybody from my generation is a narcissist, and we’re too self-absorbed to notice anybody else around us. She’s probably right. She’s right about a lot of stuff, not like I give a shit.
I wondered if I should give Bruno an alias, since he was up to his flea collar in a life of crime. But Dusty hadn’t provided any instructions on that, and I’m sure she would have, had it been an issue.
“Uh…Bruno,” I said.
“Ahh, he’s cute,” she said, as the dog slobbered all over her.
Bruno seemed to be endearing himself to the neighborhood quickly, but not with everyone.
A big Postal Promaster van rolled past us, moving slowly in the opposite direction. The cantankerous, weathered mailman inside looked down toward Bruno with an annoyed get off my lawn look. Deep furrows of suspicion carved grooves into his face as he directed his scrutiny toward me.
It looked to me like that old fucker had been working this neighborhood since Benjamin Franklin was postmaster, something my Grandpa out in Greeley might say. I only knew Ben Franklin as the dude on the hundred dollar bill, but I got his point. This mailman had probably delivered mail to this block since before I was born. He was well acquainted with all the dogs and homeowners alike. He knew when someone didn’t belong.
My stomach churned. Despite my best efforts not to look sketchy, some people had a hound dog’s nose for sketchiness, and you couldn’t fool them.
Why don’t you just retire already you old fuck, I silently cursed the mailman as he rolled away, but I didn’t look back, knowing that would really set off alarm bells with that fossilized fussbudget. I felt uncertain for a minute but kept walking anyway, believing I was just being paranoid.
Anyway, Bruno didn’t seem to care, so we kept on following his big dripping nose as it stuck itself into every passerby’s business, with no complaints from them.
Up until the nosy mailman’s appearance on the scene, I had been so focused on the mechanics of dog walking I forgot to observe the characteristics of the houses around me, according to Dusty’s secret agenda. But right about then Bruno slowed down and became more business-like, as if he had spent the necessary time establishing his street cred as a big brainless slobber dog, and the moment had come to do the real work.
We turned off of Ticonderoga onto a side street. I really couldn’t tell who had navigated us that way, I or Bruno. Who was walking who? – like that old bat said.
I started looking around for those realtor lock boxes attached to the doors of houses. That seemed like the most surefire way to score the lucrative commission Dusty advertised.
I wasn’t lying to myself that I didn’t know exactly what I was getting involved in here. I was no dummy, I had seen some sketchy shit in my time, and I can’t brag about being a one hundred percent law abiding citizen. I could tell Dusty was running some kind of theft ring right away, I just hadn’t worked out all the particulars of it yet. She was probably using me to scout for houses to rob, but something about it didn’t make sense.
As Bruno panted his way up the block, tugging hard on the leash, I wondered whether the scheme was as simple as all that. I could see them robbing houses of people who weren’t home, and I really didn’t care. The rich bitches in this neighborhood were heavily insured, and probably had a lot of good swag to spare in their palaces. But vacant homes? What the hell could they get out of them? Copper wiring and tubing, maybe? Those were supposed to fetch a good sum on the black market. But it took a hell of an effort to yank wiring out of walls, and thieves could probably pick up larger quantities with less work by hitting construction sites.
As far as I was concerned, people with deep pockets could take their lumps and losses and I wasn’t going to rend my garments over it. But what about the old people Dusty told me to be on the alert for? How did that grab me? Could I really live with myself being part of a plot where masked goons broke in and terrorized a helpless old lady, possibly frightening her to the point of a seizure, stroke or heart attack? How low would I sink?
Lower than I thought, it turns out.
As if to validate the depths of my depravity, after turning down that side street I passed a little old lady in front of her house on a walker. She was one of the helpless types Dusty had described, to the tee. Her withering hair was the approximate color of sooty snow plowed to a corner of a parking lot in January, and she was still wearing a bathrobe at high noon – an unkempt one at that, meaning she probably struggled to change her own clothes.
The unkempt condition of her yard advertised her state of helplessness as clearly as her stooped over, trembling, feeble form. The place had gone to seed, reverting back to a state of nature. Whereas the lawns around hers were neatly coiffed, hers was as overgrown as the zombie apocalypse. Weeds choked out her lawn. Vines which had once twined neatly around tree trunks scrambled unchecked up the walls of the structure, into the rain gutters. The once carefully clipped branches of trees and shrubs were now left to their own devices and ran amok, strangling the walkway to the door and hanging over the surrounding sidewalks, to pose a peril to pedestrians. The place was a mess. Clearly, it had been years since this struggling old woman had taken up a trowel or a pair of hedge clippers.
Watching the poor lady in my peripheral vision from across the street, I could see her stooping and straining to try and pick something up from the sidewalk, but she was hampered by the sprawling boughs of a spruce that had reclaimed the sidewalk for the greater glory of mother nature. With a quick, furtive glance I identified it as a newspaper, which the paper boy had tossed into the bushes instead of on the porch like he was supposed to. I surmised by the scrunched and humorless condition of the miserly old bird’s beak that she had probably stiffed him for a tip at Christmas, and this was probably how he got paybacks. In a way I sympathized with the dude. I had dealt with tight-fisted entitled types before, in the multitude of shitty jobs that littered my resume. These tightwads expected you to jump through hoops to meet their needs, but wouldn’t offer you a glass of cold water on a hot day.
The little old lady must have heard Bruno’s leash jangling, because she looked around in my direction with a beseeching look.
Holy shit, what was I supposed to do now? I could have easily shot across the street to pick up her newspaper, and maybe collected some honors rewards points on my heavenly account, but such acts of kindness seemed contrary to Dusty’s guidelines. I didn’t think she wanted me attracting attention out here, in a good or bad way. And to be honest, I didn’t want to either.
Your earthly criminal history differs from your heavenly record in that it doesn’t record your bad deeds until you get caught. In order to maintain it unblemished (besides that one misdemeanor shoplifting), I didn’t want this old dame to get a good look at my face. Heaven seemed like a distant, abstract idea, whereas getting slapped in cuffs in the here and now was now a realistic possibility. I pretended I didn’t see her, and kept going.
But as soon as I turned the corner onto a perpendicular street, I called Dusty’s burner phone, to report my find. I had driven down the road of depravity, and there were no U-turns there.
“Got it,” Dusty said after I reported the address. I lingered on the line for a moment, maybe expecting a pat on the back, or some other form of reassurance.
“You’re not going to rough her up or anything, are you?” I asked.
I could hear Dusty’s reproach by her silence alone, even before she answered my question.
“We don’t do anything to helpless old people,” she said. “She won’t even know we’re there. Keep walking.”
Dusty hung up before I could wish her a pleasant rest of her day. I got the feeling she didn’t go for such civilities anyway. Meanwhile, Bruno looked up at me with impatient eyes, anxious to be back on the hunt. He didn’t seem particularly impressed with my first score, either. Easy pickings, his drooping furry face seemed to say.
Back in the Dogwalker Van, I gave Bruno a snack and a drink of water, while ruefully reminding myself I hadn’t brought anything for me. After months sitting on my ass in a library or my campus apartment, spinning lies behind a computer screen, I had forgotten physical exertion leads to hunger and thirst.
I thought about taking a drink from Bruno’s bowl, and maybe stealing a kibble or two for sustenance. But would I really stoop so far? Not that Bruno would have been averse to sharing. He seemed to be a dog dedicated to the concept of asceticism, almost monklike in his approach to nourishment. He lapped a lick or two from the water dish, munched a couple crunchies, then looked at me as if to say okay, are you ready to stop feeling sorry for yourself and get back to work, or what the fuck?
I dragged my ass out of that van reluctantly, while Bruno chomped at the bit to get going again. He kept up his brisk pace from where we left off, trotting those shady lanes alongside Lake Christie, where shady had assumed a double meaning and I was the shadiest organism of all, even shadier than the trees, as if I had grown boughs.
Around this point my ears pricked up to the sound of sirens.
I looked over at Bruno, to see if he was going to lose it. I wasn’t an expert on dogs, but I knew police, ambulance and fire alarms produced a cacophony of howls and yips along any given block. But while the neighborhood around me erupted in a chorus of painful canine protests, Bruno kept his nose glued to the sidewalk, uttering not a peep of protest.
What the hell are those sirens about? I wondered, thinking about the old lady stooping down painfully to pick up her newspaper. For the first time in a while my conscience panged me. I knew I had one in there somewhere. How long would I leave it switched off?
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Image by Gemini from author’s prompt