Dog Talk

By Terence L Anderson

Dog Talk concerns Dave Henry, newly blind, and his guide dog Ezra, a powerful wolf-shepherd cross. Either can be lethal. Made one by a bond forged on the primal instinct of Ezra’s lupine forebears, their abilities grow troubling. Premonition ensues, bringing Dave insight to the future, accurate, sickening distortions clouded by his murky past. The story is one of searing change. Dave and Ezra become something dangerous; wolf-like perception drawing them from the laws of man, back to the cruel but simple laws of nature. Circumstance involves them in the hunt for Edwin Carter, ER Doc, sexual sadist and serial killer. Driven by insatiable need, brilliance makes Carter a shadow. The plot flows through the lives of others as Dave and Ezra intercede. Past and future collide in the present, brought forth through the portal of their bond.
Dog Talk does more than entertain. Enter the world of a man suddenly blind. Feel the fear in your guts, and feel it fade as you come to know Ezra. Stay close to Dave as his world changes, sometimes distorted by premonition, again seeing clearly through the eyes of his dog.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terence L Anderson
• Release date: May 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9780578574202

Terence L Anderson

On occasion I find objects a mystery, and where I am other than where I expect to be. Normal gatherings of people seem a cacophony of sound. Blindness can distort reality, I know, having lost my lifelong struggle with retina disease. Fortunately life has improved for the blind, accessible technology making most of the difference. Even so, nothing yet has been devised to replace the cane. As you might expect, the right guide dog in most ways far surpasses the cane. Canes for the blind are designed to find things, period. Guide dogs go around things. Proper use of the cane is difficult to master, and for most, cane travel remains an arduous process. No one wanted to pet my cane. It seemed everyone wanted to pet Kirby. Kirby liked airports, escalators, and crowded sidewalks. He liked steep trails, and restaurants. It was our bond, enabling us to work as we did that led me to envision the story I had to tell. My first book, Dog Talk, arose from my understanding of this bond, entwined with a little distortion of my own. The sequel, Different Shades of Hardness is available now.I lost Kirby to lymphoma in October of 2019. Never quitting, he fought it, working up to the last day of his life. Kirby never failed to harness up. We sensed when the other was tired, and made allowance. The time writing was long, but seldom lonely, Kirby often asleep at my feet. He lives in my heart, a companion forever.In August of last year Cruiser entered my life, huge good fortune, securing a guide dog sometimes taking years. We bonded instantly; another big yellow lab, intelligent, insistent, a personality all his own. Cruiser traverses streets and trails with equal skill, such a pleasure to move without the cane. Once again, people engage, blindness not viewed as contagious: a wonderful thing.

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CHAPTER 1

New York, Monday Morning

BEN WAS IN A good mood. He drove quickly, skirting traffic as he could. Going into New Jersey, the morning’s coolness felt more like fall than late summer, the weather a quirk enjoyed by Ben and his dogs alike. In spite of the chill, a hazy sun rapidly burned away the gray overcast. It turned the air sticky and close, not bothering Ben at all. Even later not hot, he chortled to the black puppy that rode with him in the van. Not like Sinai, or Gaza.

Ben made it out of New York ahead of the morning rush, and they would soon be smelling grass. The team had worked hard in White Plains the last four months. The Jersey suburb where they would train today was a welcome change: new ground, new smells, and working alone, free of kennel distractions.

Ben was a partner in Bordeaux Kennels, and Ezra was a gamble. The twenty-one-month-old German Shepherd puppy, one quarter wolf, was the first of his kind produced by Bordeaux for guiding. He was the smartest dog Ben had ever seen. Ezra, by breeding, had the size, and to an extent the mentality and instincts of a wolf.

Ben’s abilities to train and nurture allowed the animal to thrive. The resulting excellent work was apparent to anyone, but it took a man like Ben to understand completely what could only be sensed. Ezra, guileless only to a point, was fierce and domineering. These traits were not normal in guides. Few would want these characteristics, and fewer yet could bond with such an animal. Not suitable for a normal candidate, pairing him with the wrong partner would result in failure. This assessment was shared by Walt Smith, rancher, third generation breeder, and Bordeaux’s patriarch. Although he was Walt’s creation, Ezra would always be Ben’s child.

Ben was a master at training them. Even so, he didn’t know how seeing eye dogs perform as they do, there being nothing natural about it for the animals. He understood the necessity of bonding, as well as its nature, priceless, and initially fragile. Canine and human learning to trust, giving over to it completely, creating a team, a living thing, guided by a dog. Training Ezra, Ben watched him impose his will, expanding his role in subtle, yet consequential ways, in and out of harness. Never had he felt such power resonate from an animal as it did from Ezra.

Bordeaux’s home was in Colorado. The partners spoke weekly, Ben’s voice conveying more than the words, his English terrible. Walt, Ezra different. He like what you expect when you breed, but I tell you, this dog worry me a little. Dog need big strong guy, but guy need be very tough, maybe little bit nasty.

Walt sighed before he spoke, sadness in his voice. Dave Henry called me two days ago. I know the man, a civil engineer. He’ll be perfect.

You mean guy who sit on ass all day at desk and do numbers?

Walt’s sadness lightened a little. Well, he replied slowly, he also does numbers.

Ben remembered that conversation as he drove. Today’s work, known in the industry as shorelining, was the protocol used by the dog to guide in areas having no curbs and gutters. Trained to walk against traffic at the road’s edge, the animal navigated an unpaved shoulder often obstructed by almost anything imaginable. Ezra was going to Colorado. He had a great deal to know, rural work as well as urban, different skills to solve varied problems. This neighborhood had seemed perfect: semi-rural conditions, public streets, and nothing that appeared criminal.

Ben Simon, an Israeli, had come to the United States thirteen years ago, impeccably trained through service in the Oketz Unit of the Israeli Defense Force. Nineteen years old and having no prospects, Oketz  had taught him the art and science of creating some of the finest military working dogs in the world. Considered elite soldiers, Oketz dog teams fought side by side with all units of the IDF. He looked like what he was; a thickset Jew with kinky black hair, and a broad pock-marked face weathered to leather from years in the desert.

Ben rolled into the neighborhood and parked, looking over at Ezra lying on the passenger side floor, wagging his tail. Ezzy, today we work new place, and learn new things. He locked the cab and headed for the back of the van, where as usual Ezra waited eagerly to exit, his big solid butt wagging right along with his tail. Ben opened the door and admired the happy pup, its clearly wolf-like features setting him apart from other Shepherds. Ezra had a broad head, rounded ears, and a wide muzzle. His yellow eyes glistened in sharp contrast to the animal’s thick, solid black coat. Ezra weighed one hundred twenty-five pounds, looked formidable, and would likely grow larger. Down this road lived something vile, and Ezra could already smell it.

Ben gestured the dog from the van, attached a lead to his collar, and buckled on his harness. Ezra caught on immediately, not put off by the gravel shoulder, but Ben sensed something more than eagerness in the dog’s manner. The team worked back and forth across the street, and once again headed out along the shoulder. Ben now held the lead as well as the harness handle in his left hand, the lead looping between his middle and ring fingers under the hand, to be held between his index finger and thumb. They stopped at a parked car long enough for Ben to work Ezra around it, the animal learning quickly, but mostly they just cruised. The neighborhood had been as Ben expected, but abruptly things changed. At the next street, a large trailer park faced them from across it as they turned, going left. Individual trailers were sited on larger lots along the side they walked, yards with chain link fencing, barking snarling dogs, and no people. Going as fast as Ben would allow, Ezra passed them all, aware but undistracted. He seemed to thrive in the break from city work: the hundreds of decisions, traffic and street crossings, urban congestion thick and endless.

Ezra worked past a cluster of child’s toys lying on the shoulder at the edge of a mostly dirt lawn. By the front stoop of a ratty trailer a scraggly man in his late twenties yelled at a pregnant woman holding a toddler by the hand. He glared at Ben as the team went by, yanking the woman and child back inside. Ezra ignored these distractions, but Ben spoke. I think is not so good Ezzy, feeling sorry for the little one, and the one soon to come.

Ezra’s low growl earned the animal a sharp No, but a hundred yards away Ben saw the problem. He knew he should have returned Ezra to the van and come back alone. Instead Ben dropped the harness handle. Ezzy, heel, we go. Ezra came crisply to his left side, now heeling, staying close, Ben moving fast for a short man weighing easily two hundred pounds. Running hard, he no longer smiled.

Ben stopped at the corner of a yard enclosed by a rusty chain link fence. Inside he watched a large man holding a whimpering pit bull well off the ground by its leather collar, shaking it and screaming. A second pit cowered in the shadow of a new Harley. Ben controlled his temper. Clearly less than twelve months old, the dogs had been beaten and starved. Boney ribs and patchy fur on scabby skin told the story, along with the frightened, pleading, rheumy eyes.

Ben spoke to his dog in a low voice. Ezra, we stop this real soon. Ezra showed no outward signs of aggression, but Ben sensed the animal’s rage. Ezra had hardened, yellow eyes staring through the fence, eyes not his own, eyes from something else. In a serious dog attack the man’s size meant nothing. Ben knew Ezra could maim or kill him in seconds. He wouldn’t allow that unless things went bad, like they did in Gaza, nearly every fucking time. The Israeli surveyed what could become a battlefield. He nodded. Today I see how Ezra fight.

A double-wide sat on concrete blocks half sunken into the dirt. Flies buzzed around near the ground, landing sporadically on their way to disappearing underneath it. The man, a skinhead bald except for patchy blond stubble had a body slabbed in fat, prison tattoos all over, prison muscle underneath. He wore camo pants, tucked into black boots, and a filthy black tank top. He smoked a fat cigar, sucking hard on it, making the end glow orange, getting ready to burn the struggling little pup.

Ben looked down at Ezra, speaking again in a low voice. Is okay. We fix it all. He looked at the man. Dog choking, you need put down. He stooped, deftly removing Ezra’s lead and harness, gaging the set of his un-moving yellow eyes, nodding again.

The man barely turned his head, and finally spoke, the fuck you hebe grunted out around the cigar.

A rock the size of a large tomato struck the Harley, dropping straight to the ground, all its energy drilled into the tank. Ben had a fifty-mile-an-hour arm, and the dent that flowered dripped gas, which quickly became a stream. The man still sucked the cigar, the thud deafened by the puppy’s whimpering, and Ben said, I tell you once to put down puppy. Now fancy motorcycle spring leak.

Narrow pig eyes turned to the Harley, bulging like a Chihuahua’s as they took in the damage. The pup cried out as it hit the ground but quickly scrambled out of reach.

Ben’s deep voice again. Maybe you be careful with goat shit cigar. Could light gas on fire.

The man lunged so hard for Ben that he bounced off the chain link fence, trying to strike.

Ben stepped neatly out of reach, and Ezra stared. The dog understood fences, but held his ground, waiting.

Again, Ben’s deep voice. Gate maybe work better. He knew the test was coming. Ezra, when I say wait, you do it.

The man struggled with the gate, eyes bulging, and spit flew from a mouth so contorted it could no longer speak.

Ben turned, looking along the fence, facing the gate, his eyes on the man, a hand resting lightly on Ezra’s shoulder, still speaking lowly. Here he come.

As the skinhead got through the gate and turned to charge, Ben saw the insanity on his face, completely berserk, Ezra still unnoticed.

Ben’s voice rang out sharp and clear. Break!

Ezra’s snarl cracked through the hot sticky air, deep, guttural, tailing off in the sound of attack. Menace splattered the man like molten pitch. Insanity became terror. He stumbled, trying for the gate, pitching into the fence three feet short of the opening.

Ezra was a blur, covering thirty feet, veering to intercept the man, digging in with all four feet to make the turn. Ben’s voice rang out again. Wait. Ezra’s deep trust in Ben brought grudging obedience, but the frustration of denial brought with it a snarl more terrible than the first.

The man stood rooted, back pressed to the fence, the face that had been cruel while torturing a pup twisted in fear. Ezra shimmered inches away, muzzle wrinkled, teeth bared, growling.

Ben had moved with his dog, feeling Ezra slide from beneath his hand, timing his command as best he could, almost too late. Now beside the dog, like before the charge, he felt the growl that never quite stopped resonate through his hand. Goood boy, goood boy, speaking in a deep low voice, calming the animal. Ezra stood still, no longer growling, just staring. The man slumped a little, the growling resumed. He had soaked the front of his pants and emptied his bowels in the back, the stink of it bad, growing worse in the heat.

Ben looked up into the man’s face, his voice cutting. You shit pants like baby. He gestured Ezra to stay and went to work at impaling the man on the chain link fence.

Moving fast into the yard he made a spare lead into a noose, pulling the clip end through the hand loop. The man resisted, rolling his head, and the growling resumed. Ben spoke, I think maybe next time dog just bite.

The man froze, the growling stopped, and Ben tightened the noose on the man’s throat, yanking it sharply left, then right, making it tight. Passing the clip end through the chain link fence, Ben pulled down hard before clipping the lead to a higher link. Ezra ignored the choking sounds.

Ben surveyed his work. Fat hanging out the arm holes, more fat bulging over the fence, pierced by bent and rusty tines, bleeding through the tank top. A foul chemical-like body odor mixed with the smell of shit. Goood boy, Ezzy, we almost done.

Ben walked to where the puppies still huddled by the Harley and knelt beside them. He slowly placed one hand on each head. Goood babies, you all right now. They flinched, but as he stroked them the fright in their eyes faded. He gently removed their leather collars.

With both hands, roughly stretching each of the man’s huge arms out along the fence, he fastened them, leather collars drawn as tight as he could, forcing each hand forward. Tines dug deeply into each wrist, tearing tendons and veins. In Ezra’s silence fury and pain replaced fear, and the man screamed, consumed by it.

Ben returned to Ezra’s side and smiled. Ezzy, go meet new friends. Ezra bounded into the yard, for the time again a puppy.

Ben looked at the man secured in front of him, then slowly turned his head, scanning the neighborhood. The man’s pig eyes looked on, smoldering yet dead. Ben saw no human activity on the street or in any of the yards. Not so strange, he thought, looking past the fence to the trailer.

Ben collected the gear that lay in the dirt and called to Ezra. They jogged back to the van, two small pit bulls close on their heels. Moving quickly Ben opened the doors, directing Ezra in with a soft command. The little dogs began to whimper. One tried the leap, and fell back, landing hard, fear returning to the guileless brown eyes. Ben knelt, and rubbed their ears as they huddled at his feet. Is okay babies. He picked them up, one in each hand, and placed them gently in the van. Ezra sat watching, and when the pups were in led them to the front.

Ben closed the doors, again moving quickly, getting in the cab. He thought about his childhood which had been miserable, killing his first man with a hurled rock at the age of eleven. Even after everything he had seen and done, all the killing and suffering, he couldn’t bear to visit the pound.

Ben looked down to his right. Ezra was on the floor, and the two pits were curled up together on the passenger seat, nearly asleep. Ezra sat, listening. Finally satisfied, he curled up but didn’t sleep, his eyes slits.

Ben watched a police car through the windshield, then in the mirror, its left taillight blinking. As the cruiser disappeared, so did Ben, driving away, speaking softly to Ezra. Ezzy, they find bad man stuck to fence because how good you did.

He knew they would find more. Inside the trailer, human flesh dissolved in a tub of hydrofluoric acid. He had smelled it once, and seen the results, on point for a Sayeret Golani Special Forces unit in the Gaza Strip.

A sickening sensation engulfed him, bad memories of war awash in his head, brought back by the stink of the skinhead. Ben’s hands began to shake. A frigid wind entered the van taking his breath. In the seconds it lasted the icy blast quelled the nausea, and settled his fear. Ben let the dead return to the earth, finally certain after all the years he could only kill them once. His hands stopped shaking and Ezra slept peacefully.

CHAPTER 2

Denver, One Year later. Thursday Morning, Early

DAVE HENRY APPEARED NORMAL, though he did stand out. Rangy, with easily twice the strength that would run with a man his size, his face held a peculiar hardness, once enhanced by the intelligence contained in his probing blue eyes. Now dark sunglasses covered the eyes, necessitated by blindness, and the face had aged.

He sat on the wooden deck in the rustic old chair with soft canvas cushions and wide arms, good for holding his coffee cup. This morning he permitted himself to contemplate blindness, and the cost of befriending it. Blindness wasn’t much of a friend, but hating it only increased the pain. It always wanted more, but he trusted its certainty, the consequences of ignoring its requirements immediate and unpleasant. He had learned the worst part of blindness was becoming blind. The blindness itself brought insidious pain, though this however could be eased by attaining proficiency in the skills for living in spite of it. Cane travel was the most relentless. Seeing with a cane is an unnatural act. Humbling and immensely difficult, it epitomized the human terror of blindness. Dave Henry pushed through it, and became good with his cane. Over time all of his skills grew strong, like the legs of a centipede. Even so, the suffering involved in learning to live without sight never fully eased the pain. The grieving remained, and had its own special ways of inflicting torment from the fringes of existence. Early on, when the pain became unbearable he had told it to piss up a rope, and gone out with his cane.

He drank coffee, the hot liquid he loved grown cold. He frowned as something else cold gnawed from the fringes. He had found since blindness anxious feelings often seemed to have no source, which could tend to distort them. He realized diminished cognition was the usual cause, but this sensation seemed different, like an arthritic ache from a phantom bone. It went straight to that part of his nature where the fierceness lived. In addition to being blind Dave Henry knew he was anything but normal, and drifting further. Why the drift he didn’t know, but the increments were jagged, and certain as the passage of time. The roar of a lawn mower interrupted his thoughts.

Not yet seven o’ clock, Marv was halfway through with the lawn. The newly cut grass smelled good, pungent in the morning dew that made it hard to cut. The Washington Park suburb was mostly quiet except for his gardener. As the mower went by, Dave remembered working with his wife planting every one of the beds.

The yard was large by current standard, and had a spacious simplicity, making it one of the nicest parts of their home. He smelled his wife’s herb garden just off the deck in the raised beds, where it would get the right amount of sun. Dave spent time each day remembering the important things. He tried to picture his family, aware of how much they had already changed. Trouble was, the clarity of these pictures soon faded to nothing but memory of their existence. The images were fuzzy from inception, just like the trouble he was certain came attached to the gnawing at the grainy edge of his nature.

Marv said, Later man, and was through the gate to the front yard before Dave could reply. He was a great gardener, but no longer liked to speak to Dave. It was one of those things that afflicted some when it came to the blind, and Dave didn’t take it personally.

Ezra lay within reach on his left, snoozing, but wary even as he rested, a trait becoming to Dave like an extension of his own senses. Their year together had increased Dave’s abilities, improving life immeasurably. In a week he would be unemployed, making him all the more grateful for such a loyal companion.

At forty-six, Dave was a civil engineer and a partner in Soils and Structures; the sixty-man firm where he had worked more than twenty years. S and S was being acquired by a huge corporation. His interest would be purchased, and his career would end. Dave was a good engineer, at one time bringing significant business to the firm, but that wouldn’t be enough to save him. The job involved a great deal of field work requiring vision, thus nullifying the benefit of his experience. He had accepted a one-year contract to work on an as-needed basis, keeping his health benefits in place and getting him out of the house. The pay was generous, and gave him a little breathing room. The buyout had been fair, and given the vagaries of corporate change, Dave was grateful.

His mind wandered, ill at ease, giving thought to things from his past, unconsciously filling the void behind his eyes. Dangerous things not readily apparent, like Gene Mead.

CHAPTER 3

Thursday Morning

YEARS AGO, DAVE’S FIRM had been retained to represent a client concerning an oil well. Dave worked closely with Gene Mead, the client’s real estate broker, a competent, engaging man. Three months later Mead was on trial for the murder of his family. Dave, along with many others, had been stunned. He had come to realize that the dog beside him would certainly have discerned Mead’s true nature.

Over the past six months Dave’s perception of human intentions had heightened. What troubled him was not this awareness, but the depth and clarity of these cognitions. He saw it his first week back in the office, home from New York with the dog.

It became clear that an associate he considered honest had designs on his partnership. Meeting the man, Ezra stiffened, not allowing himself to be petted.

The man bristled. Not too friendly, is he?

Dave replied, Sometimes, his stomach hurting.

The next day, after stewing on it overnight, Dave followed the man into the men’s room, using his cane. The man stood at a urinal, and Dave walked into him, smiling. Sorry about that.

The man said, Sure, no problem.

Dave pressed, his voice low. I think there is. What you’re doing to me isn’t right.

The man said, I don’t know what you’re talking about, as he zipped his fly.

Dave said nothing, letting the silence work.

At last the man sneered. You can’t do the job, and you know it. Without Len’s protection you’d be gone.

Dave kept smiling, using the silence to hold the man a few more seconds. And you’re trying to make everyone believe that. You want to advance around here, get off your ass. Dave stood aside, letting the man leave, and a week later the man left for good.

Dave started digging. Canine-human interaction was a warren, a common labyrinth of psychological and emotional roots. Extending back in human existence long preceding canine domestication, it nurtured both species. This provided insight, but didn’t explain Ezra.

He and his dog worked seamlessly, as did many seasoned teams. Ezra’s sense of people went deep, finding things concealed below the surface, carefully hidden, but it was more. Their interaction far exceeded what normally stemmed from qualities intrinsic in a seeing eye dog. The animal’s perceptions found their way into Dave’s mind, becoming his own, sometimes leaving him edgy, disturbed by things he couldn’t grasp.

Seeing eye dogs must be highly intelligent, emotionally tough, and steadfast in their work ethic, qualities imperative for making the many decisions constantly required of them when they work. Ezra remembered every place they had ever been, usually after one visit. He often anticipated what Dave wanted him to do, almost without error. Dave suspected Ezra’s highly selective breeding, rendering him one quarter wolf, was playing a part.

Dave lost his vision in an automobile accident violent enough to sever his optic nerves, blinding him instantly. A woman, texting on her phone, ran a red light, ramming the driver’s side door of his company Suburban. In addition to losing his vision he suffered five broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder, but the large vehicle saved his life. Everything changed for the Henry family: Dave, his wife and young daughter. Life went on, as it does. Change took root, like ancient pods cracking glacial ice, and then change took hold.

Dave went