Rules

“They’re coming for all the fuckin’ dogs man.”

“They aren’t coming for all the dogs, Ed. Just the shepherds.”

“Ya man, yesterday it was the pits. Then the Dobes. Tomorrow the labs. She gonna be next bro.”

“Why don’t you smoke another bowl Ed. Fuck outta here with that shit. I’m tired of it.”

He leant over the edge of the sofa and scratched Maribel between her ears. Oblivious, the little tracker mutt groaned in satisfaction, and promptly slumped back into her nap. Across the street, the spectacle that his narcotically inclined cousin was on about had just about wrapped.

They said that there was no pain, after an animal was apprehended. Of course not, didn’t want to be inhumane. Just a little injection and it drifted off to sleep forever. But there was a lot of pain in the Souweids’ driveway right now, in the father holding back his crying child whose best friend was being dragged into the back of a van to be killed for no real reason.

And the noose did keep tightening. They’d let the bullies go after that video of the Stevenson kid went viral – kind of hard to deny – but no one thought it would go any further, at first. Some trumped up video of a black shepherd managed to get both the Dobes and the GSDs banned. Everyone knew that was bullshit, though the sheps did have the worst and most bites. Some shit-for-brains who probably pulled the wrong dog’s tail as a kid ramrodded that amendment through. Rotties had escaped because they had been gradually swapped in for the GSDs over the years in law enforcement anyway – but those who owned one were still nervous.

“What comes next bro?”

Caleb knew what he was getting at. He peered at Maribel between his feet, her paws shuffling in a sleep run. “I don’t know Ed.”

“Dinner,” came a soft call from the kitchen. Carrie was quiet as she set the pot down in the centre of the table. Her parents had agreed to keep her 8 year old shepherd when she’d moved here for school. It wouldn’t be long now.

It was getting harder and harder not to talk about, too. Almost no one owned a pit bull. That was one thing. Very few had Dobes; they were expensive.

Everyone had a shepherd.

The vans seemed to swarm the blocks – the occupants looked swollen with their bite-proof armor. One would carry a weapon or two against the humans who fought back. Caleb had never seen a dog bite the abductors. He’d seen plenty of humans swing fists and bats though.

Shouldn’t that be enough? If someone was willing to risk their life to protect an animal, maybe let the animal live? At least long enough for a real discussion.

“The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers,” Princess Leia had said. He thought of that line every time he saw an abductor choke slam a dog, or push an old lady back into her house as she pleaded her age and infirmity. The demographics had certainly swung against dog owners as immigration persisted, but a loud and angry mob was still a political problem.

It was tearing apart families and neighbourhoods.

All three of them had given up meat years ago, but after the bully ban, he and Carrie went off dairy, too. The images of four legged family members being wrenched away from the only life they’d ever known paralleled uncomfortably closely with the same things happening on dairy farms every day. Calves never suck from their mother, the tour guide had said like it was a brag.

The spoons clinked as they slurped the stew.

“So we just gonna not say nothin’ then?”

Caleb took a drink instead of smashing him in the face. He swished the water in his mouth and exhaled for a long time. “That’s correct Ed. We’ll say nothing.”

“Ugh, the fuck man?”  Blessedly though, he didn’t persist in his grievance.

The hardest part of dealing with Eddie was that he was completely correct about all of it. He’d predicted everything up to this point with an alarming accuracy. But he had no solutions, no comforts, just a lot of gripes and a big mouth.

***

                “Aw come the fuck on!” The coffee cup hit the screen, leaving streaks across the unwitting news anchor’s face. “Such fucking bullshit.”

                Caleb sat quietly eating his lunch. It was easier to talk on the midnight shift - not so much supervision. There was little overlap with the daytime crew. Still, he didn’t need anyone else to know, if they didn’t already.

                “Fuck do you care? They took my King and you didn’t say shit.”

                “Your King was dangerous, Manning. Dobes are savage. They’re going to take both of my dogs!”

                “My King never hurt a soul.”

                “Well neither did my labs. I don’t understand this.”

                “See how bullshit that is? Now you got opinions. Now you got a spine. Now you got politics. Now that it affects you. Man fuck you,” said Manning. “What a selfish piece of shit you are.”

                Too much talk he thought, looking at the other quiet guy in the room. His eyes were trained down at his plate, only glancing up occasionally, but it sure looked like a listening posture.

                “I guess that’s it then. Millennia of animal companionship done and over with cuz we let in these fuckin rag heads and let them overrun our democracy.”

                Another chair screeched back against the tiles and golden bronze hands pounded the table. “You wanna come again with that? I didn’t take your dogs, Peterson. I didn’t vote for it. Watch your mouth.”

                “Or what, Sam? Or should I say Wassim? You gonna have your buddies come for me too? Just collect my whole household at once?”

                “Guys, come on,” said Caleb, quietly but firmly.

                “Fuck you care Conway? Do you even like dogs?”

                Caleb exchanged a silent look with Manning and ever so slightly nodded his thanks. “I’m not much an animal person, Peterson. Don’t mean I think this is right. Now sit down and eat. We got ten more minutes.”

***

The door opened to reveal a dashingly handsome man in the puffed-up body armour of an abductor.

“Caleb Conway? Hello, I’m Officer Daniels from animal acquisition. Please take a moment to say your goodbyes.”

“Caleb’s not home, white boy. No dogs here either.”

“Our registration shows one - ” he checked his paper – “Maribel? Thirty five pounds, grey, wire haired?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Mr. Conway several of your neighbours have confirmed this information.”

“I guess several of my neighbours need to ease off the ganj, eh?” he tried to joke, turning sideways in the doorway.

The officer stepped his lean body into Eddie’s globular one and, icily, said, “Move.”

Firmly, Eddie replied. “No.”

The tension in the air was traveling like smoke, and it was at that moment the little dummy with a heart and bark bigger than her stature wrenched out of Caleb’s arms and bolted downstairs and started snarling, something she’d never done in her life. Eddie swore under his breath.

“Mixed breed ratter? Terrible things could happen to a baby with an animal like that around,” the officer said. “Aggressive behaviour, too.”

“No man, she’s just a tracker. Truffles and such. Doesn’t even eat meat, the poor thing.” He leaned his ample frame across the doorway.”

“Please step out of the way sir.”

“How about you go fuck yourself with a sideways fork you fucking pendejo?”

Daniels sighed a pretty sigh and flicked his pretty hair back. “Jacks,” he said, and beckoned with a wag of his head.

“Eddie, stop!” Caleb stepped around the corner and closed his legs in front of Maribel. “They’ll arrest you.”

“Who? This puto? He’d probably love to take me in.”

By now the other officer had stepped up behind Daniels like a bodyguard, weapon crackling with threatening lightning arcs.

And then it all happened. The bigger officer stepped forward, Caleb recoiled reflexively. “Ed stop, you’re going to get yourself-”

“Go, C,” said Eddie, stone cold, and he went, scooping up Maribel and out the back door to the alley where Carrie was already waiting in a running sedan. He paused, just long enough to look through the back window and see Eddie’s fat body position itself to block the abductor’s view.  

“Sir that was an error of judgement that, to amend, will require both your immediate displacement and the revelation of where that man and that dog are headed.”

“Tu puta madre.”

“Go!” Caleb told Carrie as the smell of burning flesh drifted through the alley.

When they felt confident no one was pursuing them, Carrie broke the long silence.

“Cale…I need to know where to go…”

“I don’t know,” said Caleb as the flashing lights turned on behind them. “Just drive.”

She pressed the accelerator harder, and they made the red light. They didn’t wait to see if the van did.