A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews Read Free Book Online Page A

bottle down, looked at it, shook it gently, then handed it to his son.
    “Git us that pitcher,” said Big Joe, but Joe Lon had already gone to the sideboard, where there was a white crock pitcher beside a wash basin. He brought two short glasses and the pitcher of water. He poured a glass and gave it to his daddy. He had brought a glass for himself but he never did get around to pouring any water in it. He set the glasses on the floor beside the chair and did not look at it again.
    “You ought to have a little water with that whiskey,” said Big Joe.
    “I been trying to git drunk,” said Joe Lon, his voice flat and disinterested. “It don’t seem to be working though.” They watched the dog on the treadmill. The sound of his breathing, wet and ragged and irregular, filled the room. There was no alternative for the dog but to run even though he had obviously gone as far as he could go, further even, because now and then his front legs collapsed and the treadmill kept turning and the dog’s knees were scraped and ground against the electrical tread until somehow he regained his feet. The front of his legs was raw and bleeding. But the dog made no sound except for the irregular gasping gulps of air he managed to suck in over his lolling tongue. Part of the reason he made no sound was a weighted device strapped onto his lower jaw. It was to strengthen the snapping and chewing muscles and it had been hooked onto the animal’s jaw most of the afternoon so that now the dog could no longer support the weight and his mouth was splayed as though ripped, as though it were a raw and bleeding wound.
    “How’s Elf?” said Big Joe.
    “She ain’t doing bad,” said Joe Lon.
    “She ain’t run in to nothing else has she?”
    “Not yet,” Joe Lon said, “but shit you never can tell, she’s apt to fuck herself up any time.”
    “She’s a good woman, Elf is,” said Big Joe, “and you a lucky man. You one lucky man and don’t you ever forgit that, Joe Lon.”
    “Shit no,” said Joe Lon, “I ain’t gone forgit just how fucking lucky I am.”
    “You cuss too much for a boy,” said Big Joe. He passed the bottle. “I never liked that word for cussing. Fucking is no kind of word for a man to use to cuss with.”
    Joe Lon didn’t answer and they watched the dog, which had fallen, struggle back up from his battered knees again. Since he had been in the room the steady insistent sound of the television had been coming through the wall. Laughter, sudden and joyous, burst in and among the dog’s breathing. His sister, Beatriz Dargan Mackey but called Beeder by anybody who had a chance to call her anything which was not often because she stayed pretty close to the Muntz, had on Johnny Carson. Johnny’s sly badgering voice mixed nicely with the pit bull’s bloody breathing because the dog had started hemorrhaging from the mouth now and it smoothed out the ragged edges of sound until it almost sounded like someone with a pleasant voice humming a sweet song a little off-key.
    The old man whispered softly toward the dog now and Happed his batlike eyebrows: “Take it, you mean sumbitch. Do it! Work!” He crooned it in a little sing-song voice, the name words over and over again.
    “How much longer you gone leave Tuff on the wheel?” asked Joe Lon.
    “I don’t know, and Tuff don’t neither,” said Big Joe. “But we’ll both know when we git there.” The old man shifted, seemed to squirm in the chair where he sat. “Listen, I’m sorry I was so hateful on the telephone when I called you about the whiskey tonight.”
    Joe Lon didn’t answer. The whiskey was beginning to work. He was going to be able to get drunk and the knowledge lifted his heart. Suddenly, he wanted everybody to feel good, to get a break. Even the dog.
    “Listen,” said Joe Lon. “I think Tuff is taking a killing on that wheel.”
    The old man who had been crooning to the dog again stopped and said: “No, he ain’t. He ain’t taken a killing