Different Seasons(130)
Scary violin music started to play in my head. I kept putting one foot in front of the other, trying to look casual, trying to look as if I belonged here with a paper grocery sack poking out of my shirt, heading for the fence between the dump and the railroad tracks.
I was about fifty feet from the fence and just beginning to think that everything was going to be all right after all when I heard Milo shout: “Hey! Hey, you! Kid! Get away f’n that fence! Get outta here!”
The smart thing to have done would have been to just agree with the guy and go around, but by then I was so keyed that instead of doing the smart thing I just broke for the fence with a wild yell, my sneakers kicking up dirt. Vem, Teddy, and Chris came out of the underbrush on the other side of the fence and stared anxiously through the chain-link.
“You come back here!” Milo bawled. “Come back here or I’ll sic my dawg on you, goddammit!”
I did not exactly find that to be the voice of sanity and conciliation, and I ran even faster for the fence, my arms pumping, the brown grocery bag crackling against my skin. Teddy started to laugh his idiotic chortling laugh, eee-eee-eeee into the air like some reed instrument being played by a lunatic.
“Go, Gordie! Go!” Vern screamed.
And Milo yelled: “Sic ‘im, Chopper! Go get ’im, boy!”
I threw the bag over the fence and Vem elbowed Teddy out of the way to catch it. Behind me I could hear Chopper coming, shaking the earth, blurting fire out of one distended nostril and ice out of the other, dripping sulphur from his champing jaws. I threw myself halfway up the fence with one leap, screaming. I made it to the top in no more than three seconds and simply leaped—I never thought about it, never even looked down to see what I might land on. What I almost landed on was Teddy, who was doubled over and laughing like crazy. His glasses had fallen off and tears were streaming out of his eyes. I missed him by inches and hit the clay-gravel embankment just to his left. At the same instant, Chopper hit the chain-link fence behind me and let out a howl of mingled pain and disappointment. I turned around, holding one skinned knee, and got my first look at the famous Chopper—and my first lesson in the vast difference between myth and reality.
Instead of some huge hellhound with red, savage eyes and teeth jutting out of his mouth like straight-pipes from a hotrod, I was looking at a medium-sized mongrel dog that was a perfectly common black and white. He was yapping and jumping fruitlessly, going up on his back legs to paw the fence.
Teddy was now strutting up and down in front of the fence, twiddling his glasses in one hand, and inciting Chopper to ever greater rage.
“Kiss my ass, Choppie!” Teddy invited, spittle flying from his lips. “Kiss my ass! Bite shit!”
He bumped his fanny against the chain-link fence and Chopper did his level best to take Teddy up on his invitation. He got nothing for his pains but a good healthy nose-bump. He began to bark crazily, foam flying from his snout. Teddy kept bumping his rump against the fence and Chopper kept lunging at it, always missing, doing nothing but racking out his nose, which was now bleeding. Teddy kept exhorting him, calling him by the somehow grisly diminutive “Choppie,” and Chris and Vern were lying weakly on the embankment, laughing so hard that they could now do little more than wheeze.
And here came Milo Pressman, dressed in sweat-stained fatigues and a New York Giants baseball cap, his mouth drawn down in distracted anger.
“Here, here!” he was yelling. “You boys stop a-teasing that dawg! You hear me? Stop it right now!”
“Bite it, Choppie!” Teddy yelled, strutting up and down on our side of the fence like a mad Prussian reviewing his troops. “Come on and sic me! Sic me!”
Chopper went nuts. I mean it sincerely. He ran around in a big circle, yelping and barking and foaming, rear feet spewing up tough little dry clods. He went around about three times, getting his courage up, I guess, and then he launched himself straight at the security fence. He must have been going thirty miles an hour when he hit it, I kid you not—his doggy lips were stretched back from his teeth and his ears were flying in the slipstream. The whole fence made a low, musical sound as the chain-link was not just driven back against the posts but sort of stretched back. It was like a zither note—yimmmmmmmm. A strangled yawp came out of Chopper’s mouth, both eyes came up blank and he did a totally amazing reverse snap-roll, landing on his back with a solid thump that sent dust puffing up around him. He just lay there for a moment and then he crawled off with his tongue hanging crookedly from the left side of his mouth.
At this, Milo himself went almost berserk with rage. His complexion darkened to a scary plum color—even his scalp was purple under the short hedgehog bristles of his flattop haircut. Sitting stunned in the dirt, both knees of my jeans torn out, my heart still thudding from the nearness of my escape, I thought that Milo looked like a human version of Chopper.
“I know you!” Milo raved. “You’re Teddy Duchamp! I know all of you! Sonny, I’ll beat your ass, teasing my dawg like that!”
“Like to see you try!” Teddy raved right back. “Let’s see you climb over this fence and get me, fatass!”
“WHAT? WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?”
“FATASS!” Teddy screamed happily. “LARD-BUCKET! TUBBAGUTS! COME ON! COME ON!” He was jumping up and down, fists clenched, sweat flying from his hair. “TEACH YOU TO SIC YOUR STUPID DOG ON PEOPLE! COME ON! LIKE TO SEE YOU TRY!”