Petaluma by Bethany Browning

Ivan experienced two kinds of pain: sad pain and angry pain. The sad pain ranged from lightly melancholy to thoughtfully morose and downright mournful. The angry version took him on a wild ride through hissy fits to blinding tantrums.

Today, the anger was boiling. Ravenous fury tore at his abdomen like a feral beast.

Ivan’s pain had existed there, tucked next to his pancreas, snuggled up to his spleen, peeking out from under a lung, his whole life. Forty or more years now.

Enough.

Ivan phoned his physician at Yauza. No appointments. And for what? You want surgery? Today? Nyet, she said. I can prescribe more pills, she said.

Daily pain of this magnitude had inured Ivan to fear. Standing naked in his bathtub and clutching a serrated kitchen knife, he wondered why he’d waited until now.

On with it.

The incision was ragged and meaty. Blood dribbled onto the white porcelain and collected in crimson swirls around the drain. He could only manage five inches or so before he got lightheaded.

It would have to do.

He wriggled his hand into the wound.

Ivan located the source of his lifelong discomfort. It was slimy, as one would expect. It was writhing. That was unexpected.

The pain slipped under Ivan’s rib. It pressed against the lower lobe of his left lung. When he was finally able to extract the cause of his pain, it was accompanied by an afterbirth of fat, tissue and gristle.

And screaming.

Ivan was the one screaming now.

Because when he encountered the source of his misery for the first time, the source of his misery encountered him back.

Pink, hot and throbbing with indignation, the tiny thing glowered at Ivan.

It pooped.

Ivan, unaware until this exact moment of what his life could be like without constant agony, felt better.

And worse.

He had released his tormenter and given himself an unspeakable burden.

And, as it turned out, a remarkable opportunity.

#

Before I found Vegas, I was a full-time telemarketer. You might say that’s using the term loosely. I wasn’t selling legit-ish cable packages or conducting market research surveys. I was the dickhead who’d phone your Mee-Maw during supper and sweet talk her into giving out her credit card number. I’d sign her up for a $59 monthly subscription for vitamins that either a) never arrived or b) if they did arrive, did nothing more than give her lava squirts because they were concocted solely of leftover toad catfish guts scraped from the bottom of a tank in Fujian. Blaster Beans we used to call them.

I didn’t love it, but when you grow up like I did you take the jobs where you can get them. I made enough money to pay for my shitty Tampa apartment, a used RV, and my yearly week-long vacation to Pigeon Forge. And I could make my own hours, so I felt like a fucking king.

But all that changed with Vegas. He was taking a whiz on my buddy, LaPork, who’d passed out next to the trash cans in the alley behind Captain Smutty’s Cove on Cinco de Mayo last year. LaPork woke up and kicked Vegas, who launched about three feet through the air and landed at my feet.

I beat LaPork so severely he permanently lost hearing in his left ear. I don’t feel one bit bad about it. I will not abide animal abuse, even if you did wake up with piss in your mouth.

Vegas came home with me.

He smelled like a dirty diaper and looked like a gremlin someone had left tied up out back during a lightning storm. His hair, where he had it, was the color and texture of a pipe brush. He refused to eat anything but Little Caesars Three Meat Treat pizzas, and he preferred to wash that down with Mountain Dew. His tail was L-shaped and when I walked him on my right side, it pointed at me as if to say, “I’m with stupid.”

We loved the attention. People stopped us in the street. They took pictures. Someone said, “You should be on Instagram.” I got a smartphone and signed up for all the social media. The rest is history.

T-shirts. Mugs. Calendars.

A viral video called “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” showing him throwing up anything that wasn’t a Three Meat Treat got 1.2 million views. I learned what irony was.

I quit my job, and we went on the road.

The Ugly Dog Contest circuit was where it was at. Louisville. Texarkana. West Monroe. He swept every title.

 If cheap ribbons and gift bags full of crap from local sponsors were any indication, Vegas was the ugliest dog on the planet.  

At the Beast of Birmingham contest at the Alabama Patriotism Picnic, Gun Show and Jesus Jamboree, we won a Smith & Wesson 360 PD Airlite. It was our most valuable prize to date.

“This ain’t legal, is it?” I asked the woman handing out the prizes.

“It’s for women.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a ladies’ gun, sir,” she said. “Fits in a pocketbook. You can tuck it right there in your fanny pack. It’s what I carry. Here. Take some bullets.” She pulled three bullets from the pocket of her jeggings.

I popped the bullets into the chamber because this chick was looking at me like I was a pussy.

“Do I need a license or something?”

“Last time I checked, fanny packs were legal in all fifty states,” she said.

“All right, then,” I said.

“That mangy-ass mutt is a lock for the big show,” she said.

“The big show?”

“Petaluma,” she said.

“Petaluma,” I said, letting the syllables luxuriate on my tongue. “What is it?”

“California,” she said. “It’s the grandaddy of Ugly Dog Contests. The biggest and most prestigious. You win that, Vegas’ll be famous.”

“He’s already famous,” I said.

“Y’all’ll get on the Tonight Show though,” she said. “Y’all been on the Tonight Show? Or just Instaface and Snaptwit or whatever?”

I wanted to go on the Tonight Show. The Tonight Show could make us rich. I’d never have to hawk shitamins to shut-in grannies again if I could get Vegas on the Tonight Show.

 “There’s no way Vegas doesn’t win that one,” she said. “He’s ugly as sin.”

Vegas, excited about hearing his name, took a dump next to her prize table.

I looked into it, and the gun lady was right. We had to take Petaluma. The contest was a few weeks away. Easy peasy, boobie squeezy. Vegas and I motored west and set up housekeeping right in the campground in the parking lot of the fairgrounds where the contest was held.

Little Caesars was a six-block walk.

We had some free time in the days leading up to the event, so I decided to up the stakes by teaching Vegas a couple of tricks. His intelligence matched his beauty, which meant that there wasn’t much to work with. But give him the right amount of greasy pizza cheese and you could convince him that shaking hands and rolling over was worth it.

 My favorite trick, though, coaxed after about ten solid hours of frustrating training, was whipping my girl gun out of my fanny pack, pretending to fire, and he’d fall down dead.

It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. A showstopper. Those judges would have to be blind, deaf, dumb and stupid not to give my boy Vegas top prize.

In preparation for our inevitable triumph, I had spent the last bit of my savings on personalized Ugly Dog Contest Winner SWAG.

I’d spend evenings in the RV, Vegas cuddled up next to me, writing out slogans like, “Knock ‘Em Dead” and “Always Bet on Vegas.” My favorite said “Who’s Ugly Now, Bitch?” It wasn’t sexist. Bitch is a female dog.

All this merch was ready to go live on our site hours after the contest closed. That’s how much I believed we would win.

I’m not gonna lie. I was already practicing what I was going to say to Jimmy Fallon. Or was it Kimmel? Which one was Tonight Show? Jimmy Dean? Who knows? Who cares?

I planned it out something like this:

“Thanks for having us, Jimmy. Vegas and I are delighted to be here. You know, Jimmy, wherever Vegas and I go, animal adoptions spike in the weeks after. People realize that not all great dogs are beautiful. Vegas is an ambassador for dog adoptions. Oh, this T-shirt? It’s a custom Vegas available at our website, and you can get yourself one of these for $29.99. T-shirts not your style? Get yourself a mouse pad or a refrigerator magnet. I donate a portion of the proceeds to animal charities.”

That last part wasn’t true, but I had learned that you don’t need to be honest to make money. In fact, it works against you. Look, I will personally pound the tar out of anyone I see mistreating an animal. It’s my own personal charity, my superpower. I was keeping the money, and that’s how it was going to be.

#

It was the day of, and our shit was tight. Vegas’s tummy-tum was topped off with pizza and Dew. He’d gotten a full fourteen hours of sleep, and he was in a sunny mood. What he lacked in looks, he made up for in charisma. There were ugly dogs prancing all over the place; people were taking photos and petting them all. But not one of them got more attention than Vegas. Everyone recognized him. He knew exactly what was about to happen and he was lapping it up like it was another dog’s poo.

I surveyed the competition. A Chinese crested in a sequin top hat named Fitz. A shivering mini cockapoo whose only noticeable defect was obesity—and should have been disqualified for health reasons. People need to be responsible for their animals. Vegas may look like he’d been run through a cement mixer, but he was healthy as fuck. He had all his shots. His ten remaining teeth were pearly white. He hadn’t encountered a single flea since the night I found him at the dumpster. He had a bad diet, but I did my best. Who knew how long he’d been a dumpster diver before he met me? The gut wants what the gut wants. His BMI was, like, eight.

There were probably a hundred dogs, some of them real eye-stabbers, in this contest. But nothing compared to the grotesque combination of misshapen eyeballs, jutting underbite and undefinable stench of Vegas.

The competition started. One by one, the owners walked around the stage holding their dogs. They had names like “Guapo,” “JLo” and “Sweetie Pie.” No tricks. No X-factor. Just boring owners and their marginally unattractive dogs walking across the stage like it was a normal day in the park.

These amateurs were phoning it in. Did they not understand what was at stake?

Our turn.

Vegas darted up the stairs before me. He sat and waited for instruction, showing that he was a very good boy. He shook my hand. He rolled over. I made a finger gun (having realized earlier that producing a real firearm in a crowd was a bad idea). The crowd gasped.

“Bang!” I said.

Vegas dropped like a sack of rocks.

I blew the tip of my index finger and pantomimed holstering my weapon.

The crowd went wild.

“Vegas! Vegas! Vegas!”

He was a star. A grotesque, stinky, demonic star.

There was no losing this thing.

Strangers patted me on the back.

“That was awesome, dude,” they said. “Bang! That was cool.”

“He’s so ugly he’s cute,” they said. “You gonna breed him?”

“You got this,” they said. “Vegas is a winner. What’s that smell?”

People fed him treats. He barfed at their feet.

It was a madhouse. Exactly how I’d envisioned it.

I almost didn’t notice when Igor took the stage.

What was I looking at? A whippet? Mexican hairless? A fetal pig?

You could have told me that sumbitch was from outer space and I would have believed you.

I’d never seen nothing like that nowhere.

And what came next—well, no one could have seen that coming.

This thing had a routine. It scampered to one side of the stage and pumped its front legs up and down like a teenage pop star getting the crowd going. It performed a series of twirls and pirouettes. It glided. It walked on two legs like a champ.

It did a goddam somersault and I swear—and no one can tell me otherwise—it said “Ha-cha!” and flashed its spindly paws in jazz hands when it was done.

Its owner wrapped it in a blanket, James Brown-style, and shuttled it off the stage.

It appeared to be sweating.

Vegas and I were instantly forgotten.

“Igor! Igor! Igor!”

And, in the blink of a misshapen, golf ball-sized eye, we lost.

No trophy. No photo in the paper. No press release.

My savings, gone.

No Tonight Show.

#

We came in second.

And all because of my overconfidence, and my inability to research the competition, I was going to have to go back to telemarketing. I think they call that hubris.

By the way he was vigorously licking his own asshole, I could tell Vegas couldn’t have cared less. That only made me madder.

My gears were grinding.

Igor’s owner, whose name I never got, barely acknowledged me when I tried, grudgingly, to congratulate him. No reason not to be gentlemanly. We got beat fair and square.

“Congrats, man,” I said. “Enjoy the Tonight Show. You can turn that into a bunch of money, probably.” Look at me, a goddam E.F. Hutton.

“Yes,” he said. “Is point.”

He tucked Igor under his arm and sauntered off, looking like Lurch.  

Vegas farted.

I seethed.

But what more was there to do?  

“Here’s your gift bag,” the guy at the prize table said. “It’s pretty good. There’s a Lagunitas in there. And coupons for the sushi place at the casino. Sorry it didn’t work out better. Between you and me, I wish Vegas had won. My daughter has his calendar. And that guy? He’s a prick.”

“You know him?”

“Lives in my complex. I have a chiweenie named Waffles. I invited that guy and Igor to join us at the dog park next door and you would have thought I’d suggested we get together for a hydrochloric bubble bath and a vigorous round of fisting each other. He never even walks Igor as far as I can tell. Never seen him on a leash. Never leaves the apartment. He moved in a few weeks ago. Guess it was for this.”

“Vegas could use a run around a dog park,” I said. “Where do you live?”

“That’d be awesome,” he said. “Here’s the address. Crappy neighborhood. Great dog park, though.” He scribbled it on a piece of paper. “I’ll be home around five. Waffles would love to meet Vegas. And my daughter, of course. She’s gonna lose her mind. I’m Jordi. I live in 3C.”

Vegas extracted whatever it was out of his anus and was enthusiastically chewing it. He swallowed. He belched. It smelled like rotten cabbage.

“I think I’ll go congratulate him,” I said. “Be neighborly. Talk shop.”

“Good luck with that,” Jordi from 3C said. “Everyone hates him. We hear yelling all the time.”

“He yells at Igor?” My blood churned in my veins. I don’t care if you beat me in every ugly dog contest from Bangor to Bakersfield you will not talk rough to your animal. Not on my watch.

“Yeah man,” he said. “You can kind of hear Igor talking back, though? Weirdest thing in the world. Waffles will bark at me when I ask her to do something she don’t want to. But Igor? Don’t sound right.”

#

I parked the RV in front of Vineyard Village. It was a shitty apartment complex with flaking stucco and metal bars on all the windows. It had that weird combo of dollar store laundry detergent smell and cooked onions that seems to hang like a fog over spaces where too many poor people lived too close to each other.

But Jordi from 3C was right about one thing. The dog park next door was swank. Thick grass. Shade. Picnic tables. You’d have to be a real shithead to not take your dog there if you lived at Vineyard Village.

 I put Vegas on his leash and strutted around the courtyard like I owned the place. Best way to blend in is to act like you belong there.

Vegas sniffed around and peed on the landscaping. I heard yelling.

I couldn’t understand the language.

I followed the sounds to the last apartment at the end of the breezeway. I put my ear to the door. Two voices.

Was that German?

I looked through the window.

The Lurch-looking dick-licker was bitching at Igor. I couldn’t decipher what he was upset about. He sounded sad, then mad, then sad again. Like a spectrum.

Igor walked away.

He was wearing tiny pants. Khakis. And a crew neck sweater. And glasses.

I’d never seen those options at Pet Pals.

I looked down at Vegas. If I could get horn rims like that for his bulbous head and bulgy eyes, that would be a real humdinger.

Lurch wasn’t done. He followed Igor into the living room. He nudged Igor with his foot.

Igor jumped and made a noise. He clambered onto the sofa and continued vocalizing. It wasn’t a bark. Nor a growl. It felt like a debate.

I’d seen enough. I kicked the door open. Igor and Lurch stared at me with their mouths open.

I whipped the girl gun out of my fanny pack and fired all three shots into Lurch.

Vegas fell down, pretending to be dead.

Igor squealed and scurried into another room. I immediately worried that I had traumatized him.

I saw a news report once where this dog needed therapy after seeing its owner get flattened by falling tree branch. I worried that seeing his daddy take three bullets to the sternum would have the same negative effect on Igor’s emotional state.

 I felt bad about that.

“I’m calling the cops.” It was Jordi from 3C.

“Oh, shit. I shot the German,” I said.

“Russian.”

“What?”

“Ivan. He’s Russian. I’ve been watching. One-hundred-percent he’s a spy.”

I couldn’t make sense of what was happening. Vegas shoved his back foot into his ear and made whining sounds. He pulled it out and sniffed it.

“Don’t worry dude,” Jordi from 3C said, dialing the phone. “It was self-defense. You came by to congratulate him. You saw him pounding on Igor. He came after you. You fired. I saw the whole thing.”

“You did?”

He told dispatch he saw the whole thing.

“Whoa, is that Vegas from the ViewTube?” one of the cops asked when they arrived.

“You know him?” I asked.

“My kids do that thing he does.” The cop mimicked barfing. “You have no idea how much Little Caesars we go through now. Mind if I get a selfie?”

Turns out that the cops don’t give a shit about Russians getting shot in their short-term, fully furnished crappy apartments. You tell them that the guy you pumped three bullets into with a female gun is a KGB-defector-kompromat-Gorski-Putin-motherfucker who was beating his dog, and they thank you for doing the lord’s work. The EMTs whisked the body out of there, the cops went back to whatever it was they were doing, and it was like nothing had happened at all. They told me I might hear from the FBI, but maybe not.

After everyone left, Igor emerged from the back of the apartment. He cocked his head.

“You gonna take him?” Jordi from 3C was looking around the apartment for stuff he could pilfer.

“You don’t want him?”

“Nah,” he said. “I got Waffles. Landlord only allows one dog.”

I scooped Igor into my arms. He didn’t wiggle or give kisses. He didn’t sniff me.

He felt tense. Irritated.

He smelled like Irish Spring.

His breath didn’t have that fuggy dog smell. It was minty. Like he’d recently brushed.

“Looks like you’ve got two winners now,” Jordi from 3C said. “Imma call the Ugly Dog people and tell them you’ve generously agreed to take Igor and Vegas on the Tonight Show and whatever else they’ve lined up. Think they’ve got Today and Good Morning America, too. Don’t worry. I’ll spin it right. You’re a hero. Took down a spy ring. Gave a dog a home.”

I held Igor out in front of me like a baby. It felt like holding up a raw roasting chicken. If the chicken was dressed like Carlton Banks.

Igor scowled. He looked at me—hard—with his one good eye.

“You idiot,” he said.

He turned his head and spit at Vegas. The spittle sat on Vegas’s head like a frog’s foamy egg cluster. He was too stupid to notice it.

Under normal circumstances, I would have choked out anyone—or anything—that was disrespectful to Vegas.

But I didn’t know what this was. Only that it was mine now. And I had already killed to protect it.

I had given myself an unspeakable burden.

And, as it turned out, a remarkable opportunity.

Bethany Browning hides clues in all her stories for the plucky gang of middle schoolers who are determined to reveal her true identity. Keep going, guys! You’re closer than ever. She’s also had stories published at esotericamag.com and in the forthcoming volumes of Stories We Tell After Midnight and Angel Rust. She can be found on Twitter @buzzwordsocial