Mauro Altamura

THE NEXT HERO

     The dog hung by its neck, strung from a bare limb. We stamped on the empty lot’s hard dirt, me and my cousins Frankie and Sallie, trying to bring back blood to our numb toes. Not a word, mouths shut, we watched the dog swing, heard the creak of the limb, the rope’s rub on a bare branch. Stiff and near frozen, it snaked up from the dog’s neck. Like everything else, it had been through hell. 

     “You know whose dog this is, Nicky?” Our friend Bootsie asked, huddled next to his twin, Junior.

     I stepped closer. The smell of blood and rot shot up my nose. I felt it like cold metal in my brain.

     “It’s dead,” I said, “whoever owned it.”

     “No kidding, genius,” Sallie said.

     A pile of long branches were stacked below the dog, torn from the junk trees. We called them trees, but they were nothing but weeds, the kind that never died. We’d find them clumped together in corners of the empty lots or next to old fences. Small green shoots that grew fat and tall, they sprouted branches and wide leaves in a few quick weeks. Once in a while we’d find some hacked to pulpy yellow stumps. We never knew who did the chopping. Sooner or later more grew in their place. 

     “We should take the dog down,” I said. “We should bury it.” 

     “Bury it? You crazy, Nicky?” Sallie said. “Let somebody else collect that old mutt. I’m not touching it. Maybe that’s the kind of shit you touch.” 

     “Shut up, Sallie,” his younger brother Frankie said.    

     “Call me Sal.”  

     “Sal? Who? Are you kidding? Your name’s Sallie. Period.” Frankie laughed. “That’ll always be your name.” 

      My cousin’s name was Salvatore. Fourteen. The rest of us were circling twelve.

     The mutt was part beagle, long ears and snout. Its coat would’ve been white once, with a big black spot. By the time we got to the lot, it was wet and matted. Not wet from rain. Blood, with dark flesh showing under the worn coat. 

     “Let’s get it down.” I didn’t want to see it hanging. I didn’t want anyone else to see it, either. Little kids, in particular. Little kids shouldn’t see dead dogs.

     Junior and Bootsie each picked up a branch, smacked them together, starting another duel. Their hooded sweatshirts and jackets, black pants and white sneakers matched. Exactly. Their mom’s choice, no question. Short, skinny kids, they ran, fought and yelled every minute. No one on the block could keep up with them. 

     “Watch me, Junior. You better watch my moves.” Bootsie blocked the slash of his twin’s branch. “I’ll crack this over your head, and you won’t ever hit me.”

     “Quit messing, man.” Junior held his branch crossways over his chest.  

     “Go ahead, fight it out.” Sallie pushed Bootsie across the line. “Let’s see who’s tougher.”

     The twins let their sticks drop. 

     “How about you, Nicky?” Sallie pointed a branch at me. “Wanna mess? Want a stick?”      

     I didn’t answer, had my hands jammed into my pockets for warmth since I walked into the lot, only pulling them out to blow, keep some blood flowing, at least in my fingers. It wasn’t working.

     “You playing pocket pool?” Sallie laughed.  

     All I could’ve answered was something just as stupid. My fingers were almost numb. 

     “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “We don’t need trouble.”

    Five-story tenements surrounded the lot, only a few apartments still occupied. Old people who couldn’t move away had stayed. Or people like us, who’d never leave the city.

     Broken bottles and slivers of glass covered the ground. A rusted-out trailer and two gray cars jammed against one wall. Broken cinder blocks and rotten wood planks with long nails, hidden like landmines. Bricks thrown off roofs. Once in a while we’d find pants and shirts, a shoe or two. Magazines with pictures of naked women and men, pages stuck together. They’d rip when we looked. 

     Frankie moved close to the dog. “Hey. I think it’s Miss Betty’s dog, right?” 

     “Miss Betty’s dog is dead.” Junior stood behind Frankie. “It got hit by a truck.”

     “Miss Betty’s dog was dumb and Miss Betty’s dumb,” Sallie said. “Who cares about them?”

     Miss Betty walked the block in slippers, even in the cold. Her arms were bones with newspaper flesh stretched over. She was Bootsie and Junior’s aunt and worked in a City Hall office. People came with problems. No water or heat in their apartments, nasty landlords trying to raise the rent. She wouldn’t refuse anyone. When she saw us, she’d stop to ask how we were. She’d give us a few dimes, the smell of cigarette smoke stuck fast on her hands, her face, the entire body.  

     “Get some candy, honey,” was her line. 

     “If it’s Miss Betty’s dog, we gotta tell her,” I said. “We can’t leave her dog like this.” 

     “Fuck that old lady,” Sallie said. “Fuck her and her dog.”

     Miss Betty, the twins and their mother lived in the tenement across the street from me and my cousins. We’d been friends since before we started going to school. We played punchball and football, Johnny-on-the-Pony. We messed around in the lots, the ones where buildings once stood. Riots all over the country that past summer had spilled onto our block. Apartments burned, store windows busted, gang fights. Not us. We stayed tight. Junior told us three of his cousins were arrested. He said the cops held them for looting and then beat the shit out of them.  

     “The cops just want to beat as many of us as they can,” he said. “They hate us.”

     We were all in the same school, off for Christmas break, the week before New Year’s. Cold, bad weather all the time. Nothing to do. Sallie’d been left back once already. He’d never get to eighth grade, I was sure.  

     “Fuck school,” he’d say. “I’m gonna join the army.”

     “They won’t take you,” Frankie said. “You’re too dumb.”

     “They’ll take me. They want guys like me. They can put me up front with a gun, next time there’s a war. I’ll do that. I don’t give a fuck.” 

     “Great. Go,” said Frankie. “Be a hero like Johnny.”

     “Don’t say shit about Johnny. Don’t anyone talk shit about him.”

       ~~~

     Johnny Coogan was twenty when he died in some stupid combat a few years before. He said he didn’t care about school or anything else. Before he went, he’d pick fights with older guys who were armed. He stole cars, stripped them for parts. He fenced swag for truck drivers: cameras and silverware, white dress shirts. Jewelry, once in a while. The cops knew him. They came to talk to him whenever they were on our block. He helped sometimes, in case he had to save his ass later on. He quit school when he was sixteen. He forged papers, joined up, and went into the army before he was old enough.

     His family lived down the block from us. His brother Tony was in our school. We were little kids, sitting on the couch in their apartment the last time Johnny came home on leave. He got dressed to go on a date. He brushed his hair and sang along with the radio. His hair wouldn’t lay flat on top of his head and it made him crazy. He wanted it straight and he wouldn’t go out until it looked right. He wore a black knit shirt and gray pants, nice shoes.

     “Get a haircut, Johnny,” I said. “You’re in the Army.”
    “I can do what I want,” he said. “There’s no rules over there.”

     His face in the mirror was older than when he’d left. He kept looking back at me as he messed around with his hair. He sang, making his voice go high. “Baby, baby. Baby, baby.” 

     I thought about calling him a girl for singing like that and for all his worry about the hair, but he would’ve punched me in the chest. He wouldn’t think twice, and he wouldn’t hold back.

     “Watch it punk.” He gave me a smack on the head as he walked out of the room, down the hallway and through the door. A month later he was dead. That was it. He got caught in an ambush in some desert village with only a knife and a pistol. The newspaper said Johnny was a hero because he killed five terrorists before they gunned him down.  

~~~

     “He killed the enemy,” Sallie said. “He’s definitely a hero.”

     “Where’d it get him?” Frankie said. “Dead, that’s where. Go ahead, Sallie. Join up. You be the next fucking hero.” 

     “I will.”

     A police siren sounded down the street, shut us up for a second, but the car passed. Nothing.

     “Gimme one of those branches.” Sallie pushed Junior out of the way, took a branch from the pile.

     “Watch who you’re pushing,” Junior said.

     Sallie measured the branch against himself. They were the same height, closing in on six feet.

     “Don’t get in my way, Junior. You understand?” Sallie stood in front of the dog. He stabbed the ground between his feet. The branch bounced, the sound dull and hollow, before it died.

     “No one’ll ever get in your way.” Junior backed up. “Don’t worry.”  

     Sallie had already been in juvie more times than anyone we knew. The first time he got picked up for throwing rocks through the church’s stained glass windows. Then he robbed a car and drove it across town, left it running outside the high school. He just walked away. He started a fire in our basement and watched while everyone screamed, trying to get out of the building. If he weren’t my cousin I wouldn’t have anything to do with him.

     Someone opened a window in one of the buildings just behind the fence. An old guy in a white t-shirt yelled. “Hey! What the hell you doing out there? I recognize you kids.”
    “No fucking kidding,” Sallie said. “Everybody knows us. We’re famous.”

     “Get out of the lots! Get away from that dog. You’re up to no good.”

     “Oh, yes we are.” Sallie picked up a rock and winged it toward the building. “We’re keeping everything safe.” The rock hit the fence and dropped, a soft thud onto the dirt.   

     “I’m gonna get your father after you.” The old man’s face was red.

     “Send my regards when you find him.” Sallie picked up another rock, threw it straight up. “Jerk off!” The rock landed on the hood of an abandoned car. The sound stuck in my stomach and wouldn’t leave. The man closed the window. All the while, the dog hung, motionless, waiting. 
    “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

    Sallie spit. “Sure, Little Nicky. Go home to your mommy.” He swung the branch inches from my face, whipping it through the air. A whoosh went past my ear, out into the cold air, where it froze.  

     “Watch where you’re doing that.”
    “Don’t worry. I’m always in control.” Sallie rested the branch on his shoulder like a ballplayer waiting to bat. 

     The dog’s head had flopped backwards. The spine was busted, couldn’t support the big head. Its eyes were open, fixed upward. I looked close. The whites and the brown pupils looked back, right at me. The teeth were sharp, yellow and brown, like it had eaten dirt every day. Its stomach was bloated. 

     “There’s some balls for you.” Sallie pointed. Huge. He started to whip the branch again.

     We stayed back while Sallie got cranked up. Times like this, we let him play it out. He moved in a circle, swung left and right.  

     “Don’t get that branch near me.” Frankie stood next to him. “You watch what you’re doing.”
    Sallie snapped the branch past his brother’s face. 

     “Cut it out.” Frankie tried to grab the branch, but missed. “You hit me, you’ll be sorry.”

     “You think you scare me?” Sallie said.
    “Nothing ever scares you,” Frankie said. “Nothing.” 

     Sallie whipped the branch again, now close to his brother’s chest. He gripped the branch tighter and pulled it back farther over his shoulder. He stepped next to the dog, looked up at the old man’s window.  

    “Jerk off.” Sallie whispered, his jaw muscles tensed.

     “Don’t be stupid, Sallie,” Frankie said.

     Sallie whipped the branch a few more times. He took a step closer to Frankie, away from the dog. Frankie didn’t flinch. 

     “Go ahead, asshole.” Frankie crossed his arms over his chest. “Hit me.”

     Junior and Bootsie jittered back and forth, laughed into their jackets, kept out of Sallie’s way. They’d spent enough time out-running him when he got into one of his moods.

     “Leave your brother alone.” I grabbed the branch from Sallie when it lay on his shoulder for a second. “We’ll take the dog down.”
    Sallie whipped around, eyes crazy, on fire.

     “Runt! You want me to smack you?” He pulled the branch out of my grip and swung it a couple of times. “I’ll hit you hard.” 

     More biting cold spiked into my skull. Far down the block two men yelled, arguing about money, coming closer. 

     Sallie put the branch down, off his shoulder. “Hey, doggie.” He pushed his face close to the dog’s eyes and mouth, flared his nostrils to get its scent. “You dead, doggie? Are you?” 

     No noise came from the street, as if covered with a blanket. Time had gotten lost in another part of the universe. None of us looked at each other, only watched Sallie talk to the dog.

     “Let’s go for a ride, all right, doggie?” Sallie rested the branch against his back. His face squeezed, then went blank. He pulled the stick back, swung hard, hit the dog’s mid-section. A flat, dull sound, like a beat drum rose around us. The dog folded with the blow and arced toward the cover of gray sky. It swung back and forth, a slow pendulum, side to side.
    “Nice.” Sallie pulled back. He got more power the second time, hit lower. The dog swung, a gray ball floating far away before it returned. Blood trickled from its mouth. The legs seemed to drop lower.   

     “Cut it out, Sallie,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”  

     “Fuck you, Nicky. Go if you want.” 

     “What the hell are you doing this for?” 

     “Practicing,” he said. 

     Frankie moved toward his brother. 

     “Don’t come near me.” Sallie held the stick straight out and sneered. 

     Junior and Bootsie buried their faces deeper in their jackets, no more laughs. 

     After the dog came to a rest, Sallie took a third cut, hit the lower portion just above the hind legs. More blood flew into the air, flying out fast, bullets that melted into the air.

     “You’re next.” Sallie flipped the branch, pushed into my chest. 

     “Get the hell outta here,” I said. “Forget it.”

     “Hit it, Nicky. Or you’re a fairy.”

     “Fuck you.”

     He put the branch in my hand and pushed me toward the dog. It swung in slow motion.

     “Everybody knows you’re a fairy, anyhow.” Sallie whispered. 

     Rotten breath clouded his pocked face. Dried crust clumped around his nose and the veins in his eyes ran nowhere. The branch separated us. I looked down and noticed Junior’s skin showing under his pants’ cuffs. Dry and flaky with a jagged scab on one ankle. He and Bootsie leaned into each other, shoulders together, like one person. One of the building’s windows reflected the clouds, but darker. There’d be nothing inside those apartments. The dog blurred, and I only saw the moving shape of Sallie, a red-faced mask, and the dog, a mass of slick, dirty fur and hanging legs.

     “Take it.” Sallie leaned the branch against my chest, delicate, as if giving me a fragile gift. Something wet clung to the stick’s end. “Let’s see what you can do.” He pushed his face close. It turned pale and hard. “Go ahead, Nicky.” He laughed hard, loud, holding his sides from laughing, his eyes tearing. “Hit the fucking dog.” 

     “Get away from me,” I said and took the stick.

     Sallie didn’t move. 

     “I’m warning you. Get out of here.” I gripped the branch tight, tensed my muscles, stared at him. Sallie would not move. His breath filled the space between us, a pungent odor, the rank smell everywhere. “Go. Now.” 

     The blood in Sallie’s veins and the breath in his lungs were the only part of him that kept on. My heartbeat rang in my ears, too fast, making me dizzy. I took a step back and the entire street, everything in the lot, and the dog, froze. The block was exactly the same as every other day. I knew nothing would ever be different. 

     I pulled the branch back, way over my shoulder, leaned forward, one eye on Salvatore, my cousin, and swung hard, with all the power I had. 

Mauro Altamura received an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers, Newark, and an MFA in Visual Art from SUNY Buffalo. His prose is published in Ovunquesiamo.com, Crimereads.com, Yolk Literary, Showcase: Object and Idea, Milk Candy Review, and forthcoming in Gnashing Teeth. He received a 2022 Prose Fellowship from the NJ State Council on the Arts, and fellowships in photography/visual arts from NJSCA, NYSCA, and the NEA. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023 and named to the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions in 2024. He lives in Jersey City, NJ.