The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(4)

“Uh, sir, you okay in there?” Charlie’s voice floated under the porch.

“Never better,” said Peter, keeping his voice low and even. The dog panted, but the eye was staring at Peter’s face.

“So . . .” said Charlie.

“Kid. Give me a minute, okay?”

Peter still held the ends of the stick in his hands. Focused despite the static. He had a few minutes, no more. He worked his hands out to the ropes and slid the knots in close to the dog’s jaws.

The dog began to growl again.

Peter could feel the vibrations in his own chest, that tank engine revving slow. It was like lying on a vibrating bed in a cheap motel, but with teeth.

The eye stared at him, waiting.

Waiting for the man to make a mistake.

With the ropes in his hands, Peter carefully crossed them over the bone-crushing jaws, then wrapped them under, over and under, again and again. Snug but not tight, trapping that stick in there like some kind of hillbilly art project. Then he carefully tied the ends in a series of half hitches, ending in a square knot. Super-duper-double-extra-secure.

The remaining long and short ropes were still tucked into his belt. He tied the long rope around the dog’s neck as a collar and leash. He shifted his weight, turned to the hind end with the short rope, and tied its back legs together.

Without allowing himself to think about it, he rolled off the dog and grabbed the rope at the hind legs, then reversed out of the crawl space, pulling the scrabbling dog behind him.

“Sweet holy Jesus,” said Charlie, dancing backward in his polished shoes as Peter and the snarling hog-tied animal emerged from the crawl space and into the light. “That’s one damn Jesus big goddamn dog.”

Peter felt the open air and high blue sky like a balm.

—

It took a few minutes to get Charlie to put down the baseball bat, but he was fine by the time Peter tied the leash off to a tree, double-checking the knots, then checking them again. Finally he cut the rope from the rear legs and stood away while the dog leaped, trembling, to its feet, ran to the ten-foot limit of the leash, and turned to growl at the humans.

“He sure is ugly,” said Charlie. “And he smells real bad, too.”

Peter had to agree.

It wasn’t a pit bull, actually. Those dogs bred for fighting were beautiful, in their own way. Like cruise missiles were beautiful, or a combat knife, if you didn’t stop to consider what they were made to do.

This dog, on the other hand, was a mix of so many breeds you’d have to go back to the caveman era to sort it out.

The result was an animal of unsurpassed hideousness.

It had the bullet-shaped head of a pit bull, but the lean muscled body and long legs of an animal built for chasing down its prey over long distances. Tall upright ears, a long wolfish muzzle. Its matted fur was mostly a kind of deep orange, with brown polka dots.

And the animal was enormous.

Like a timber wolf run through the wash with a pit bull, a Great Dane, and a fuzzy orange sweatshirt.

Seen out in the open like that, even at a hundred and fifty–plus pounds with murderous teeth, it was hard to take the animal too seriously.

What would you name a dog like that?

Maybe Daisy. Or Cupcake.

The thought made him smile.

He got out his water bottle and walked the growling dog down to the end of its rope. Taking hold of the stick, he poured a little water into that deadly mouth. The dog glared at him, the intelligence vivid in those pale blue eyes. But after a moment, its throat began to work as it swallowed. Peter poured until the bottle was empty.

“Sir, what the heck are you doing?” asked Charlie.

Peter shrugged. “Dog’s thirsty.”

Charlie just looked at him. It was a good look. It said the kid had thought he’d seen all the crazy there was in the world until that very moment, but he had been very, very wrong.

All he said was, “I got to go, sir. I miss first period, Father Lehane says I’m on the bench on Friday.” Then he left.

And with the dog growling behind him, Peter went to the truck to unpack his tools and get to work.





2



The porch was sinking into the ground. The bottoms of the original pine posts were turning to mush, and there were no concrete pilings underneath, just a few bricks stacked in the dirt. Fairly typical back in the day. But now the only thing holding up the structure was habit. The porch was used to being there, so it hadn’t collapsed.

It wasn’t the kind of work Peter had imagined while he was studying econ at Northwestern. Or when he turned down Goldman Sachs for the Marines’ Officer Candidates School. It had seemed like a higher calling then, and it still did. Everything else was entirely too theoretical.

But he liked fixing old houses. He’d done it with his dad in northern Wisconsin since he was eight. The job today was simple, a battle he could win using only his mind, his muscles, and a few basic tools. Nobody was likely to die. He could get lost in the challenge and let the war years fade. And at the end of the day, he could see what he’d accomplished, in wood and concrete, right there in front of him.

He braced up the main beam with some two-by-fours he’d brought, removed the rotted posts, and set about digging holes for new footings. The holes had to be at least forty-two inches deep to get below the frost line, so they wouldn’t move every winter. In that hard Milwaukee clay, forty-two inches seemed deeper than it ought to be. But Peter’s shoulders didn’t mind the effort. He liked the fight, how the wood-handled shovel became an extension of his hands. And the white static faded back to a pale hush.