Dots’s presence turn away her eyes, too.) And she said to Dots’s presence, “Jesus Christ, no! No, no, no! he don’tintend to do what I think he intends to do! No, he couldn’t be such a …” But the man did what she thought he was not intending to do. He reached down. Down to the dog and the snow. And he wiped the dog’s behind. Twice. Clean. With the tissue paper that was pink as dirty snow, mixed with blood. He looked up sharply, like a man caught stealing. He tried to wipe the other dog. But that dog wouldn’t have any of it. He pranced off, as if ants were stinging his balls. He pranced and shook and scratched many invisible, stinging ants out of his balls and his ears. (Bernice thought of Putzi kissing Mrs. Burrmann with his pink tongue; and of the times, when eating alone, she would put Putzi on the table, to lick, wash, rinse and dry her plate.) When the man was satisfied that his dog was a clean dog, he looked anxiously up, to see whether anybody else knew his dog was a clean dog; and then he lifted the left side of his black winter coat with the black fur-trimmed collar, and he pushed the pink tissue paper back into his pocket. “Jesus Christ!” The shock was so great, that Bernice really thought Dots had seen the act.
Now, you have seen
(Bernice was not only talking to Dots, now; she was addressing the world and the room, which was the world),
now you have witness with your own two eyes the manner in which this world does spin round, from this window. I have seen them two niggermen pass here, and I have wonder if, because o’ the things I see, they aren’t two she-she men. What you think? Nobody can’t convince me that when two young, clean, strapping gentlemens walk ’bout the place, holding hand in hand, something ain’t wrong! As soon as darkness fall, they holding hands, as if one frighten for the darkness, and the other, for the Lord. And they think nobody don’t know? Christ, I been seeing them in this incidence days on end …
“Jesus God!” …
and it resting heavy on my
mind, Dots; heavy, heavy, heavy. When I tell you that one day I see those two sammy-geese pass ’cross here with their two dogs, and the two o’ them four-legged dogs dressed off in clothes. They were dressed off, and their two dogs were dressed-off, too, to suit. Man matching dog and dog matching master. Man, master and dog matched-up. On another occasion. One afternoon. Catching my breath before going back down in that steaming kitchen. When, I ups and see them two missy-missy men, standing up and waiting till their dogs did their number one, and number two, next to Mrs. Burrmann maple tree. Number one and number too, I tell yuh! Then. They bend down, both o’ them men. They bend down and wiped them two dogs …
“This is an advanced place, gal!” …
They wiped those two dogs as how you or me or the next human being would cleanse ourselves after going to the bathroom, and …
“They say this place is a civilized place, gal!” …
but a man, any man at all who does a thing like that to a dog, who is only a animal, that man isn’t really and truly a human being anymore. No, Dots; that man cease to be a man and become a dog, too. And if I had never seen a dog back home in Barbados, and if I had never witness how people back there treats their dogs, which after all is only animals, now that I’m in this country, this civilize place as you refer to it, I couldn’t discern a dog from a human person, at all! heh-heh-hai, looka Dots, I licked my mouth long enough, so let me crawl back downstairs and see what Princess Burrmann calling my name for
.
The night Estelle arrived in Canada it was cold. As cold as a dead man, dead a long time ago. Estelle filed past the Chinese stewardess, while jets of white fire came from the mouths of the other passengers, and from her mouth, as if she was a dragon. She looked at the shining macadam of ice, and at thewords of the aeroplane attendant, spoken in cold vapours;
Catty Diva
Rosanna Chiofalo
Christine Bell
A. M. Madden
David Gerrold
Bruce Wagner
Ric Nero
Dandi Daley Mackall
Kevin Collins
Amanda Quick