outside are the dogs
My dad is on the landline talking to the subdivision security manager. There’s a dead dog on our front lawn. A stray with dark brown fur. I found it this morning when I left the house to walk my dog, Horse. The carcass was stiff and frozen in what looked like the height of pain: tail extended straight up, jaws locked in a teeth-baring growl, eyes wide and foreseeing. It had been poisoned. Horse, curious and ignorant, moved towards the dead dog’s mouth. I yanked her leash and tied her a distance away.
Inching closer to the dead dog, I recognized it as part of the pack that ranges the streets by the subdivision gate. They have a reputation for biting pedestrians at random and leaving their young to sleep in the street to become roadkill the next day. In the first year after moving here, I saw one of them make it inside. A guard picked up a plank of wood from a construction site and hit it savagely on the back. It let out a suffering whine and sprinted towards the exit. Though I sensed it was monomaniacal with the need to leave, I tensed as it ran past me, waiting to be the victim of its retaliatory attack. Only when it was safely out the gate did I scold the guard.
My dad is still on the landline when the gardener makes his way to our lawn with a black plastic bag. I tell my dad that someone’s come to take the dog, and we both go outside. Neighbors who have been watching from their windows start to come out but only as far as the edges of their lawns. We’ve lived together for years, but there is no familiarity – no neighborliness. A gusty wind blows past us, carrying with it industrial dust from the city. Grime gets into my eyes and for a brief instant the world is all mud, and I see the faces of a backwater people relieved of their guilt by the death of a sin-eater, their ritual made complete by the disposal of the body.
***
Whenever I find myself agitated by the familiarity of home, I take it upon myself to travel. I go South to visit an indigenous tribe that is famous among soul seekers. The village is remote and the journey can only be done by walking. I’m following a guide I found on Facebook, a lean man in his 40s with dark, brown skin that is perpetually glazed in sweat; he’s taken advantage of the upsurge in tourism and throughout our hike he shares colorful stories of his past guided tours.
At dusk, he grows quiet, only speaking to say we need to prepare food. I say I have some canned goods. He says he’s craving dog meat. I make a noncommittal hum because I don’t know what to say. I ask him where we can get dog meat. He says there’s a small village ahead, and we can ask around for anyone willing to sell their dog. At the village, we’re told there are no dogs left, but as we leave I spot one: white with black and brown spots, eyes swallowed by cataract. It looks like a stray, but one of the villagers insists that it’s theirs. I offer to pay.
The guide says we’ll have to kill the dog ourselves. I tell him I’ll prepare my own food. At night we eat by fire. The guide is chatty again, and he tells me that, although he now has the money to buy other meat, he misses the taste of dog – the taste of his childhood in poverty. He offers me a piece, says it doesn’t hurt to try. I take it and I chew. I wait for shame or disgust but there’s nothing; it just tastes like meat. Maybe tomorrow I will come across another dog, and its finer senses can detect the tasteless flavor of repulsion still lingering in my mouth.
***
Horse is a light brown, black, and white female Shih Tzu. She was a gift from my father, given a year after my mother died. She likes bananas and pees like a boy, one hind leg raised, a habit she adopted from the overwhelmingly male population of the village dogs. When I’m tired, I place her on my lap, hug her tight, and kiss the soft landing of her skull. There are watchful dogs who guard, clever dogs who do tricks, and angry dogs who fight, but Horse comes from a long lineage of dogs whose only duty is love and companionship. Her most distant ancestors were revered lion dogs prized by Chinese royalty until the Cultural Revolution massacred them for being emblems of wealth and aristocracy. All Shih Tzus alive today are descended from the 14 survivors who were smuggled out of the country. Horse is good for love, an emblem of loss and upheaval.
***
I’ve never lived alone before, so I appreciate it when my dad calls. Our conversations on the phone are much calmer than the ones we have at home where our secret troubles and close proximity explode into sudden arguments. Still, neither of us talk about our lives beyond the necessities. In one year of conversation, my dad shared only two events from our neighborhood; both of them unrelated and happening at separate times. The first: an elderly woman, probably suffering from dementia, was seen through the CCTV cameras running naked late into the night. The guards, raised by superstitious mothers, hesitated to take action, but one of the brave ones got hold of her and brought her home. A week later she was transferred to a hospice. The second: someone’s pet died a few hours after visiting the village dog park – a small lot of untended grass too overgrown to see the ground. At this last one, I expected my dad to share his thoughts, if he even had one. But he didn't say anything, so I kept mine to myself.
***
My constant need for air means that Horse gets to walk with me outside the usual strolling hours when everyone is eating or the maids are too busy to let the pets out. There is another dog out at the same time as us: a German Shepherd, known to be violent, so the owners deliberately walk it at a time and along a route separate from all the others. This time, the German Shepherd, the leash still on it, has escaped its owner and is wandering around on its own.
Before I can rush back to save Horse the German Shepherd notices us, straightens, then springs into a run. A few meters more and it would have reached us but, all of a sudden, a black SUV swerves and hits it.
I recognize the car as my next-door neighbor's and from the window I can see that it’s the dad driving. He stops for a moment, and I expect him to come out, but he drives away at full speed. The German Shepherd, so terrorizing a moment ago, is made pitiful. Its right forelimb is raised and crooked, its flank bloody and bruised. The owner must have heard the crash and followed the yelps of pain because he found him quickly and carried him home.
I look down at Horse and in her black eyes, wide with a permanent look of pleading. I see the terrors of what might have happened, and I bend down to hug her. My arm trembles when I meet her soft fur, and I’m unsure which of us is shaking.
On our way home, I meet my next-door neighbor, smoking by his car while his son, a moody seven-year-old, is playing on the road. I tell him that the German Shepherd almost attacked Horse, and he saved her. This is the first time I’ve ever spoken to him. We have never even exchanged greetings before because one of us would always feign ignorance of the other’s presence. He says he knows, he sped up to hit the German Shepherd before anything bad could happen. He said it heroically, and I know I should be grateful, but I only felt complicit in a terrible act. The little boy goes over to Horse, and when she makes a move to meet him, he springs back, frightened. I tell him it’s ok, she’s gentle and likes people, but it does nothing to give him courage.
He looks at his father as if waiting for encouragement and must find none because he goes back to playing by himself. The kids here are always playing by themselves.
***
A puddle forms in a deep pothole next to the sewer grate which is overflowing from the morning rain. Car wheels dip in and splash brown water like an intermittent fountain – a small event that’s kept me entertained for the past hour.
When I want to walk elsewhere, I reliably find another puddle and pothole for a car to splash through. Horse and I survey the monsoon afterglow, both of us walking slowly as we take in the new air. I enjoy not having to rush Horse because I imagine that these walks are an expedition to her, an opportunity to discover new worlds she can dream about when I have to leave her at home alone. Horse suddenly tugs at her leash, and I allow myself to be dragged. I notice she’s carrying something in her mouth, and I realize she’s rushing home to have a safe spot to chew it. I pull her towards me and reach my hand to take it, but she knows what I’m about to do. Quickly and decisively, she swallows before I can even inspect her prize. When we get home, I don’t remove my muddy shoes as I grab the car keys.
***
The veterinarian suspects Horse ate a neurotoxin compound. I tell her someone has been putting dog poison around our neighborhood and whoever it is has been doing it for a long time. The veterinarian looks at me as if puzzling out how to explain a difficult concept. Eventually, she tells me that dog poisoning cases are common and usually accidental. I think about picking a fight, but I go home with Horse instead.
Horse is still good for love and companionship but she's forgotten how to play our games. She's lost her overflowing energy and affection – a permanent decline that will last until her life, shortened, passes. Because of her weakened state, Horse refuses to go out with me, so I take walks alone. I worry that my absence distresses her, but she remains impassive to anything I do or to anything happening around her. She’s so absent, even in my guilt, I forget to feed her, and when I do remember, I struggle to see the point.
Maybe all we need is a change of scenery. I bring her outside the neighborhood to one of the city’s dog parks. The trip exhausts her already worn-out spirit, but maybe this is delusion, there’s a brighter look to her eye.
The park is clean and well-kept. I drag her to the flowerbeds, but she makes no move to smell them. Thinking that she needs more aggressive stimulus, I run around her, clap my hands by her ears, and call her name in various tones as I goad her to chase me. Here and there, she tilts her head and perks her ears, and at each of these tiny movements, I feel our souls saved.
But, after a while of this, she fades again and falls asleep. It’s a bright, summer afternoon, and the park is empty. All the doors in the city are closed, each of us unbidden guests to one another.
Kamille Bascar is unemployed and lives in Cebu City, Philippines. She can be found in your bathroom mirror if you say her name three times. Bother her on instagram at @kamkaesque.