BARK

WHEN DOGS BARK

As it appeared in SHADE

Charles W. Harvey

New Yorks got two bad bad habits--she'll trip your ass up and shes one long stinking fart. Ive been here three days and this place never stops belching and farting--buses, sirens, taxis, trucks, subways, jack hammers, mouths yelling "fuck yoooou!" New York sounds like its been eating beans all its life.

Im here with Eartha Pearl visiting one of her relatives, the cousin with the buck teeth. She wants to be an actress. But between me, you, and the woods I think shes only cut out for beaver movies. I mean that girl can stand toe to toe with any beaver who decides some damn forest is in its way.

Eartha and this cousin get on my nerves after a few days of sitting in this tiny apartment---they doing that girl talk about men and me in particular--dishing up mens shortcomings. Stuff like, "I dont know which is uglier, a naked man or a baboon turned inside out."

Eartha Pearl: Some days I think I married a baboon

Cousin: One man can outstink a whole herd of goats.

Eartha Pearl: I know one who can outstink two herds

Cousin: And honey, not a brain in their heads .

Eartha Pearl: Lord, the biggest muscle some folks

got is in their heads .

I growl softly at Eartha. She looks at me and hushes. Her cousin keeps jabbering away--those big teeth sawing the air as if its wood. I began barking.

"Oh Diane, I picked up a cute Butterick pattern for a Pantsuit. Its virgin leather or something. I wish I could sew," says Eartha Pearl to change the subject. Earthas cousin looks at me like Im queer.

"Its just his nerves when he gets cross," Eartha says smiling as if shes explaining a puppys bad habit. I get up and put on my shoes to go out. Eartha Pearl tries to establish her ownership rights to me.

"Who you know here? Where are you going?"

I say, "I got eight million friends here and aint a damn one in this room!" I slam the door behind me.

Now by the time I get from the eleventh floor to the first, my mind kicks in. It must have been the blood on the wall on the fifth floor. My mind says, "Now Jethro, this is a crazy city. All of these eight million people aint your friend. One of them will kill you if you let him. Go Back!"

Naw. I aint going back. Eartha Pearl and her cousin will just laugh at me. And Id have to kill them to prove I was a man. I peep out the door and it looks innocent enough outside. Men and women passing by. Trash blowing in a circle. The sky looking like faded blue drawers. So I venture out and sit on the stoop. I look east and I look west. Then I look west and I look east.

I say, "Now wait a minute, Jethro, you aint gonna have no cultural experiences stuck scared here on this stoop. Suppose Columbus had just sat on a stoop all his life. Just suppose. Shit. A man must take action!" While I sit debating, this big white dude in chains and leather walks toward me. Now these chains aint dainty little things you get from Spiegel's catalog. These chains come from the Navy yard. I mean these chains can lift submarines. He wears three around his neck, five on each wrist, and two on each ankle. Now the chains do not bother me. The fact that he has on funky raw uncured leather does not bother me. Even the glass eye----I hope its glass----dangling from his left ear lobe on a chain does not bother me. What bothers me is when he turns in my direction, and grabs his grapefruit sized crotch and smiles----thats what bothers ol Jethro here. I say, "Uh oh Jethro, somebody wants you to swing a certain way. And I dont swing that way." I wonder why he pick on me? So what if I do have on these black hightop sneakers, shorts with Texas bluebonnets all over them, and a pink t-shirt that says, "I BRAKE FOR MOONERS--that dont mean Im gay. Shit. Im just a colorful dude. Well okay if you want to count that time when I was in the eighth grade and me and Johnny Scardino grabbed each others rods behind the gym bleachers. I wouldnt have gone back there with him, but he told me he had two and he would show me if I showed him mine. Okay it tickled and I got a hard-on when he grabbed me and I grabbed him out of reflexes, but I havent seen Johnny since the eighth grade. I dreamed about him once, since I been married to Eartha Pearl. But I woke up and made love to Eartha real quick.

So anyway I hang my head and growl softly at the man in leather. He must think Im calling him to dinner 'cause he moves a little closer. When I see him step, I bark louder. And not yap yap like a poodle either. Im Doberman and Great Dane combined. I rattle nearby windows. New York people stare at me as they walk by. And they tell me youre doing something when you can get a New Yorker to stare at you eye-level on the street. The dude slinks away like hes carrying a tail between his legs.

I say to myself, damn Jethro, my barking stuff is right on time. Damn if Ill ever let a head doctor take it from me. Fuck Eartha Pearls suggestion. I get off the stoop and walk down the street barking my ass off. Nobody messes with me. Not even that gang on the corner with bones sewed to their leather jackets want a piece of me. Im free as a pigeon. Do I stand up on the subway? Hell no! Sometimes I have a whole car of seats to myself.

Eartha Pearl and her man-hating cousin never want to go nowhere. When its daytime, they say its too hot. When its evening, they say they dont want to get caught out at night. And when its night Eartha and her cousin share the bed and give me a rug on the floor with my feet in the bathroom and my head in the kitchen. So I spend most of my time riding the subways and checking out the humanity that rides with me: Brothers singing opera or preaching Malcolm X; cripples on crutches hustling dollars---throw a dime right back at your ass; folks changing clothes--stripping down to their swiss cheese drawers and looking indignant at you for looking at them.

All Eartha Pearl experienced was that suicide that jumped out the window of her cousins building. Of course that was something to see. We hear this screaming in broad open daylight and look out the window. Theres something spread out like a bloody chicken on a cars roof. Downstairs in the middle of a circle of people, a young white boy lies naked on the roof of a black Cadillac with cow horns on the hood. His legs are spread as if hes relaxing on a bed instead of frying in his own hot blood. The cars owner stands with his arms folded across his chest. Every now and then he kicks a tire or fender and yells "Goddamn!" In a window above us, an old woman waves and screams like a hawk.

"Goddamn! What she want me to do? Throw him back up to her? Whos gonna pay for my car?" The cars owner asks as he kicks a fender. Eartha Pearl has to have two Valiums and a bottle of beer to make her eyes stop bugging out and her hands stop shaking. So maybe thats enough excitement for her. But I have to have something else. Something to make the blood rush through my heart like fire.

One day Im sitting on the subway barking softly, but loud enough for people ten feet away to hear. I look up and see this sweet white chick in a pink leather mini skirt so high up her thighs she has to cross her muscular legs three times to keep out any drafts. So I stop barking and growl softly at her. I had heard that all you have to do to get a New York girl is to say, "Hello, Im straight and AIDS free." I growl at her again. She looks at me. I see her glance down at my legs and look off, slightly cutting her eyes at me. She plays with a lock of blond hair thats curled behind her ear. I look down at my legs and have to admire them myself. I mean Im no freak who stands in the mirror looking at my buck naked self and saying, "Oh daddy-o what a sweet daddy you are." But these legs always catch women. (They caught Eartha Pearl who when she isnt mad at me, and when were in the bed, runs her hand up and down my smooth brown thighs calling me "doll legs.") I ask the chick what time was it. "Tony," she says in a husky voice.

"Tony," I ask?

"T o n i ," she spells out slowly.

"Well hey, forget about the time. All I got is time. Im Jethro from Houston."

"Soho?"

"So? Baby, Houston is the baddest ass city in Texas."

"I went to Texas once. Nothing was happening. Everything was flat and brown as a mud cake."

"Well you see, you hadnt met me .

"Ive met every man, Mister Dogman."

My brain searches for something clever to say, but my eyes stay on her smooth white legs twisted around each

other--two long loaves of sweetness. I can see my legs twisted with hers--locked like a pair of brown and white fingers, soft warm and sensual. "What part of Texas was a chick like you roosting?" I ask her.

"Dalhart."

"Dalhart? Where in the hell is that?"

"Youre from Texas. You ought to know, Mister Dogman." She flutters her lashes.

"What were you doing in Dalhart?"

"I was stationed there in the army."

"Baby, you dont look like any kind of Army girl I ever seen."

"Im not." Her answer is sour as a lemon. Something tells me I have parted my lips before I listened to my brain. Damn Jethro be yourself cool, man. You dont want the pussy to turn cold before you even get to the front door. What would C.C. say? Shit he even gave you some of his glow

in the dark rubbers that he uses for special occasions like birthdays and Christmass. Cant let C.C. down.

"You look like a nice man." Tonis voice brings our eyes together. Theres a flutter in her lashes as if shes lying or has specks in her eyes. Her teeth are too big and her chin is too square for a womans, I think.

"Ohh, so this is what's going down. You can dig this, Jethro," a voice says to me. "Don't look a gift horse in his big mouth. Guy or girl, a mouth is a mouth." "Close your eyes and you'll like it better," Johnny Scardino told me once as he tugged my pants down in his warm oily garage.

"Well, I think I am. I mean I am nice. God knows Im nice," I say. The sweat of my thighs glues me to the subway seat.

A young woman the color of ebony sitting in front of us glares at me. She has been reading a book, but the nervousness in my voice makes her look up. Her gold earrings shaped like Africa tremble. She looks at Toni and goes back to her reading. Suddenly she slams her book shut and folds her arms across her chest. When she gets off the train I see her look into the window at us and shake her head like we are to be pitied. She then makes an ugly sign at me with her forefinger. Before I can make one back at her the crowd swallows her.

"Dont you scare off my cat, Mister Dogman," Toni says as she opens the door to her apartment. She led me to her place--inviting me to smoke some herb and have a little drink.

I step into a pink zoo. Pink stuffed animals are all over the couch and chairs----elephants, turtles, bears, lions. Two pink alligators perch on her bed, mouths open waiting to

bite my buck naked ass when I get down to business, I think.

"You sure have lots of animals, Baby," I say stroking her real white cat with pink ears.

"I like all kinds of animals."

"I see," I say looking at myself in the huge gold-framed mirror on the ceiling above the bed.

"Pull your shoes off and relax. Ill get us a little smoke."

"Im cool as a cat," I say clearing my throat. For a moment I think I see Eartha Pearl staring at me from the ceiling. I bend over to pull off my shoes and my eyes fall on a small photograph in a gold frame. A square-faced white boy in an army suit smiles a toothy grin at me. My head starts to spin. I'm shaking all over as if an ice storm just blew into Toni's window. I stand up, but my feet are stuck to the floor.

Toni comes back and hands me a bubble-shaped glass of amber liquid.

"Sit, Mister Dogman," Toni says calmly. "Nobody's going to take you on a trip that you haven't made a reservation for." She sits a flattened beetle ashtray on the table and lights the twisted end of a cigarette. She puffs, holds her breath, and hands the cigarette to me. While I'm hitting it, she gets up and puts a Jimmy Smith record on the stereo. "This baby knows whats happening," I think. A white girl in Houston had tried to entice C.C. with some country music guy singing "Them ol High Alabamy Trees." C.C. said he couldnt make nothing happen.

Toni takes a hit from the cigarette. She smiles and asks me to dance. I take her hand and put my other one around her waist. Her back feels tight and muscled. It isnt fleshy like Earthas. We rock back and forth like a pair of old people. Jimmy Smiths "Midnight Special" and Tonis intoxicating weed soon puts me in a traveling mood. We start to glide all over the room. The organs rhythm pulsates through me and moves down my thighs. Toni puts her face next to my cheek and cries softly.

"My whole family is gone away. Im all alone, Jethro. Im all alone. What can a nice man like you do for a lonely one like me. Can you hold me? can you squeeze the loneliness out of me?"

"Yes baby, I can hold you," I say quietly.

We sit down and she sits on my lap. She feels heavy. Her wrists are thick, not thin and feathery like a womans. Her lips are rough as work gloves. The whiskey and the weed soon lighten and smooth all of Tonis rough edges. Her skirt and legs have the same velvety tickle. She brushes my hand away from her crotch. I pull down Tonis bra and caress her small breasts.

"Im so lonely. Are you a nice man?"

"Yes, baby, Yes. Let me show you how nice I am. Ill take you to Kilimanjaro and well smoothly ride down the Nile. Just let me get on the train, Baby. Just let me

ride." That Nile and Kilimanjaro works with Eartha Pearl, unless shes in her hurry-up-and-get-it-over-mood.

Toni reaches up and pulls a cord. The lights go out. "Can you put on a condom in the dark," she asks.

"Baby, better than the queen can put on her gloves. I got my own." In the dark, my rod glows like a bright yellow banana. Tonis deep laughter fills the room. I curse C.C. under my breath. The cats bright green eyes move side to side as he follows my swaying rod. Toni and I bray like mules. Then I smother Tonis laughter with kisses. I take another hit off the weed and the wheels of the train start to turn. I become Casey Jones. I can hear myself make train noises in Toni s ear. She throws her arms around my neck and kisses me. "Just drive your train, Daddy. Just drive it, Daddy. Ooh Daddy, just drive. Lord have mercy. Drive me, sweet Daddy," Toni screams in my ear.

4 When I wake up, Toni stands over me with a bunch of cherries taped above each of his nipples. The cherries dangle juicy and red from their stems. He straddles my body. I pucker my lips around one of the cherries and pull it. Toni giggles like a young girl. "Oh youre so much fun, Baby. Youre so much fun." I pull another cherry off Toni and eat it. I spit the pit toward the ceiling. It clatters to the floor. "Ooh you animal," Toni softly scolds me. I pull a handful of cherries from Toni and stuff them in my mouth. "Ooh you big bad baby," Toni croons to me. "Give me the pits." Toni holds his hand under my mouth. I grab his fingers and put them in my mouth. Toni squeals and I pull him down next to me. We kiss. "What do you want to eat?" Toni asks slipping into his short silk kimono. "Pancakes and eggs," I answer. "Again?" "I like the way you lick the syrup off my chest." "I like the way you like me to." Toni giggles and bounces off to the kitchen. I look up at the ceiling at me staring at myself in the mirror. You dont look like no punk, I say to myself. You dont wear lipstick and false eyelashes like Earthas "Aunt Don." That fat sissy with his big feet jammed in pink highheeled slippers. I spread my legs and look at the outline of my sex under the covers. Shit Im a man, am a man, am a man! I fuck. I like the Celtics. I work my ass off. I made a baby once. So what if Eartha lost it in an aisle of plastic flowers in the middle of Woolworth's? I still made it. She the one who couldnt keep him. Toni Toni Boboni! Why didnt I knock the hell out of you? Got a rod bigger than mine. Fooling me up here. And I cant leave. Why cant I leave? Im not a punk. I dont walk funny. Johnny Scardino walked funny. Johnny Scardino kissed my thigh after he blew me. I just stood there. Just stood there like a statue. Im not a punk. Lots of men take a side trip now and then. I can leave. Just get up and toss Toni a dollar or two and say later alligator . "Sweet, Sweet Honeydew," Toni sings from the kitchen. "I cant get over this page-boy haircut you gave me. Are you sure youre not a hairdresser? The girls at the ball tonight are gonna flip when they see me dressed like a man." "I dont know about that bullshit," I answer. "Are you still sore about the leash? I told you it wasn t racial." "Always a nigguh got to have a chain around his neck," I answer. "I wasnt thinking anything racial at all. I was thinking of your barking dog routine. We could really work those girls nerves!" "Well youre not putting a chain around my neck. You dont have to remind me Im a nigguh." "Oh Jethro, for the last time! Thats not what I meant! If you hadnt given me such a hairdo, Id shoot you!" I can see Toni staring at his hair in the reflection of his coffee pot. I look at the nightstand littered with marijuana roaches and condoms. I look at the gray tube of KY Jelly squeezed violently by my own hands. I hate Toni and I want to beat him lifeless. Toni brings the breakfast tray to bed. The fat pancakes are as smooth and brown as Eartha Pearl. "I cant wait to go shopping for our tuxs," he says. "Imagine me buying a tux! Me in pants. Girl, my friends . . ." I spit a mouthful of pancakes at Toni. "I told you not to call me that." I grab Tonis arm and twists his wrist. "Oww, baby! Im sorry. I just forgot." "Just dont forget again." Toni wipes the pancake from his cheek. He tries to kiss me. "Let me eat." ''But youve got syrup all over you. "And youve got shit all over you. So beat it!" Toni burst into tears. "Oh Jethro! Jethro, dont be so mean to me. "Shut up acting like a sissy!" I shout at him. Toni stops crying. A tear rolls down his cheek. He sits with his cat in his lap. They both stare at me as I eat--Toni as if Im a god. The cat looks at me as if Im a piece of shit. "Sit with your legs apart!" I bark at Toni. "Men sit with their legs apart!" Toni parts his knees as if Ive tossed hot coals between his legs. The cat falls to the floor, clawing Tonis thigh as he tries to hang on. It looks up at Toni and hisses before walking away. Toni shivers in the chair with his knees apart. I brush past him on my way to the kitchen. I stand for a moment at the sink and listen to him whimper and sniffle. A wave of sorrow washes over me. I want to hold him. (Im the same with Eartha Pearl. When I hurt her and make her cry, love and remorse comes up from the pit of my stomach. I get on my knees and beg her to forgive me. I kiss her thighs and hands until she rubs the back of my neck softly.) I walk over to Toni and put my hand on his shoulder. He stiffens his body at my touch I gently soothe him	5 Im sorry, baby," I say. "Im so sorry." I wipe away the blood from his thigh with my fingers. He leans his head on my shoulder. His tears flow down my arm. I kiss him and coax him back to bed. "Jethro, youve got to hurry! Will you come on! Its four o clock and the stores close at five!" Toni races ahead of me wearing a pair of red platform shoes. His bellbottomed pants hug his ass and dangle like loose pajamas around his ankles. His shirt with red and pink roses squeezes his body like a sausage casing. His steps are short and prissy as if hes stepping on spit. People raise their eyeberows at us. I try to walk far behind Toni, but he turns around and pulls me next to him. My head swims. All I see are flowers and eyes circling me--frowning eyes, arched judging eyes, eyes burning us like hot coals. "Cmon, Jethro, cmon," Toni sings to me over his shoulder. Three young men dressed in gold chains and baseball caps pass me and Toni. I hear them snicker like mice. "Cmon Jethro, Cmon," one mimics Tonis singsong voice. I look around at them. The darkest one tugs at his crotch. I start toward him. Toni grabs my arm. "No, baby, youll get us killed!" Toni pulls me away. "Ignore them, baby. Ignore them I snatch myself from Toni. "Stop walking so womanish and dont lean on me! Dont even talk to me." We walk on. Tonis shoulders are bowed. Ive hurt him again. But all of this shame I feel. Im hurting too. All of these eyes on me. "Im hurting too, bitch," I shout at Toni. "Look what youre doing to me--dragging me through your fucking gutter! I dont want to go to some punks ball. I dont want to bark my ass off for a bunch of queers. I want to go home, watch the Celtics, and play with my wife. Shes got real knockers. She cant have a baby, but shes got real knockers!" I can see Toni shuddering like its zero degrees. I feel a sharp pain in my tail bone. I grab my back. "Hey faggot, thats how my ten inch dick will feel up your ass!" I look around and a shower of glass and rocks rain toward me and Toni. We turn and run. I feel the needle pricks of glass pierce my legs. I run fast and hard until I feel Im reaching the edge of the world. Its not the bottles Im running from. A voice screeching like a wounded animal chases me. "Pleeease stop, Jethro! Dont leave me, Baby! Pleease! Pleeease!" Honking horns drown the voice in a noisy sea. I stop running. My legs feel as if theyre wrapped in thorns. Every building is the same--tall, gray, and ugly. I imagine there are spirits flying out the windows and bumping into me on the sidewalk. Where in hell am I? I stop. There is something familiar about this block. In front of me leans a Cadillac with the roof dented in. I look up into a window into the faces of Eartha Pearl and her cousin looking down at me--mouths open like two screaming cats. "And you just walk in from nowhere and dont say a word about where youve been. Just walk in like King Jethro and dont have to give nobody an explanation. Ha! We owes youan explanation about why we standing there with our mouths open. Lord have mercy," Eartha Pearl sung at me all the way to the airport in the taxicab. "Legs all bloody. And then insulting my cousin the way you did. Lord have mercy. I know itll rain ice cubes in hell before she invites us up here again. 'Did you screw my wife while I was gone? What kind of question was that to ask my cousin?" "All of yall know shes a dyke." I say smugly." "Its nobodys business what she is. And how dare an ingrate like you call her names. She was the one on the phone all day and into the night calling hospitals, morgues, city police, transit police in every county in New York." "Boroughs. New York has boroughs." "Bastard, dont you dare correct me! Girl crying herself to fits being put on hold, hung up on, and screaming into that damn phone and here a son of a bitch like you call her a dyke and try to correct me! If I had half the guts of Mommas Aunt Carrie, Id gut you like a pig. Just like she did that husband of hers. Cut his roots off too! Thats what a nigguh like you needs!" The Cab driver laughs. I know what hes laughing at. Some vision of me running down the street without my "Roots", blood running from a hole beneath my belly. I try to kiss Eartha Pearl. But Shes on fire with anger. "How can you kiss me after what youve done to me and my cousin. When I let you kiss me again youll be so old and senile, youll think Im a man," she says with a sharp jab in my ribs.
	6 Back in Houston a few months and the dust has settled, almost. Ive gone back to work. The pain is gone out of my back and legs. Eartha Pearl has let me make love to her once. Ive worn out my tongue telling C.C. about the hot chick I met on the subway, how she made me buck like a wild horse, and her fairy brother. "Yeah man, her brother wanted to give me a blow job--but I drew the line there. "Shit nigguh, uh huh, I bet you did," C.C. says back to me. "Ida took him on and I know I aint no punk, but turn down a blow job? Shit . . Yeah Im almost back to normal. If C.C. had said those words about punk and all to me a month ago, I would have have barked at him. But those words dont trouble me so now. Its just, its just that damn piece of paper that troubles me. I wish C.C. had thrown it in the trash instead of hollering out, "Well looky whos got them a letter from New York! Mister Jethro Green, Manager, Exxon, Baytown Texas, United States of America---Lord have mercy! Manager? Nigguh, what you tell them folks in New York you a manager of? You manages that shovel all right though!" I snatched the letter from C.C.. The first word I saw on the envelope was TONY. I jammed it in my back pocket. "Its just that chicks nutty brother," I said to all the laughing faces around me. "Ha! I knowed you was lying about that blow job," C.C. bellowed. That damn piece of paper----I crumble and toss in the trash, then sneak into the kitchen late at night and wipe the coffee grinds from it--I place it next to my heart. Dear Jethro: Please baby, Jethro, please call me. I love you. Here is some of my hair that you asked me to cut. Remember? I made it into a little bracelet for you. Dont that prove I love you? I thought you were going to be my life. You mean so much to me. Can you see the red tear stains on the letter? My heart is so broken my tears are red. I thought you were going to be my life. You loved me so and made me love myself. Why did you run away? Please, please call me. 718--622--2169. Love, Toni your love Some nights after I read that letter, I go out on the back porch and I bark and bark until the far off sky turns red like Toni's tear filled eyes. And Johnny Scardinos phone number rumbles through my head---all sevens and a zero.