He got off the 233 bus at the Oxnard Street stop on Van Nuys Boulevard instead of getting off at his usual stop two blocks back, Delano Street. Just over six months now working at the FedEx Ground shipping terminal in Sun Valley, riding the bus five nights a week, this was his first time missing his stop.
He walked down the boulevard passing the abandon car dealership, the porn shop, the post office and the police station across the street. He passed the Delano Street bus stop, the Chinese restaurant with the 'B' letter grade taped to the window, the check-cashing place, the corner hamburger stand. He made a left on Erwin Street.
The cool late night wind was drying the sweat on his face and shirt. It took longer for the sweat on his work belt to dry, especially the Velcro section that was unhooked at the front and dangled as he walked. The ice-cold sweat at the small of his back and in his armpits was drying at a slower rate than anywhere else.
He heard the slow creaking of the tall swaying palm trees. The night sky was a light purple, scattered with big gray-blue clouds and tiny flickering stars. He couldn't see the moon. The apartment complexes on either side of the street were quiet, every gated fence making a slow swaggering metallic sound as the wind pushed itself upon them. A usual walk home from the bus stop accompanied with the usual sounds of night.
Then he heard something else up ahead.
A high-pitched hiss, consistently trickling.
At first, it sounded like a snake. No. There was something watery in the noise. Maybe someone left a water hose on. As he continued walking, the sound grew louder and began taking form in his mind.
He reached the origin of the sound: a huge, fat base of a palm tree. He examined it. The sound disappeared. The snake, dead or gone. The hose, turned off.
He looked behind the palm tree and saw a dog, shaking off its elevated right leg, bouncing up and down on its left hind leg as it tried to keep balance. The dog had just finished pissing on the tree. The limp was obvious as the dog turned around to observe its one-man audience. It limped up to the man and he bent down to greet it properly.
The dog was small and dirty, with a scruffy light-brown shaggy coat. The man saw that there was no ID collar around the dog's neck. Its long ears flapped against its face as he slobbered on the man's face in absolute affection, his tail waving ferociously.
The man got up, wiped the slimy saliva from his face and patted the dog on the head. He was tired. The gesture was sweet but he was tired. He patted the dog one last time, shaking its entire head with his palm and walked off.
He dug into his front-right pant pocket, his fingers blindly scouring for a cigarette. He retrieved it, the half-smoked cigarette, pinching it in between his index and middle finger and bringing it up to his mouth. His right hand went back into the pant pocket and found a book of matches. He stopped walking. The matchbook was thin, an alarming sign for the moment; he flicked the cover back with a finger. One match left. Shit.
He tore off the match, flipped the book of matches around and quickly slid the match head over the tiny brown igniter bar. Nothing. Half of the match head was scraped off. Shit. He flipped over the match, positioned it cautiously with his index finger, mumbled, "Come on," and struck again.
Victory! A bright spark cracked violently and hissed. The small flame shrunk fast. He brought up the lit match to the cigarette dangling from his lips with measured care, making sure not to act too slow or fast, considering the fast dying flare. The cigarette lit. He inhaled deeply, the warm smoke flooding his lungs, and exhaled.
He started walking again. He forgot about the sweat on his face and shirt. He looked up to the sky. Palm trees and stars. A moon too, somewhere behind the giant night clouds. He closed his eyes. And then he heard something. Footsteps. The extreme quiet of the street accentuating any sudden break in the silence.
This was Van Nuys: not a shit-ghetto, not a city war zone, nothing like Compton or the bad side of East L.A. and Watts, not South Central –Van Nuys, a slummy city in the diseased heart of the San Fernando Valley. The city was predominately Mexican, with a big Mexican gang. The city had an average amount of drive-bys and random muggings; though with an occasional nice car or apartment complex sprouting out of nowhere, each block had a drastically different property value -attempts in aesthetically improving the city. The graffiti and broken beer bottles on the sidewalk, the pairs of shoes dangling from the power lines, the skinny hookers at the corners, abandon cars, abandon couches, abandon kid bikes sprawled in the driveways, the awaiting drug dealers standing in front of their buildings, the police car slowly passing by; an undisturbed web of existence. No, there is worse, real worse. But this city was still a slum, a slum with the waiting potential to be just as bad, just as worse as the rest. It was dangerous with the neighborhood crackheads and gangsters hopped up on crystal meth walking the street at night like lost ghosts, their agendas a perilous mystery. Weaponry, armament was sometimes –at night, most of the time- necessary: a can of mace, a knife, a screwdriver, your house keys protruding from your closed fist like spiked-knuckles, something, anything. You knew that. Everyone knew that. He knew that.
He dug into his front-left pant pocket, his fingers finding and grabbing the pocket knife quickly.
He stopped walking, feeling his throat tighten with anxiety, took out the blade and turned around.
The dog ran up to him, hitting the crotch of his pants with a couple violent thuds that caused the man to automatically crouch over. The cigarette dropped from his lips, bounced off the dog's head and fell to the ground.
He slapped the dog away and caught his breath. He put the knife back in his pocket and looked at the dog. The dog glanced up at the man and then down again at the ground, afraid of making long-lasting eye-contact.
The dog's tail waved, unfaltering. The man saw it and smiled, his anger quickly receding. He held out his hand. The dog hesitated for a moment and licked it. The man turned around and continued walking home, the dog hurriedly limping beside him.
He arrived at his apartment building. The downstairs neighbors were outside drinking beer and talking. They saw the man, recognized him, and saw the dog at his side. Someone said a joke in Spanish about the astonishing similarities of a dirty Mexican coyote and that dog. They all laughed. The man next to the dog didn't think it was that funny and got angry. The dog was unchanged and seemingly took it with more maturity.
He pulled open the gated fence to his apartment building. The dog was about to cross and follow him in when the man turned around just in time to gently push the dog's face away.
He looked at the dog and felt sorry for it, for all dogs, homeless and hungry, limping and dirty, betrayed, without identity, alone and dying that way. He related. He didn't have it as bad, no, not nearly as bad, but he knew of struggles and desperate conditions. The men weren't laughing anymore.
He turned around and began walking up the stairs to his apartment. He got to the balcony, turned around and looked down at the street. He had a good view of both sides of Erwin Street, the top of most of the apartment complexes, the 10-year-old parked cars on the street, the street lamps, the purple California night sky and the giant low-hanging yellow moon slowly sinking behind all of it. He got out his keys and turned around to unlock the door.
He stepped in, locked the door behind him and walked to the bedroom. He didn't bother to flick on the light switch. He was tired. He sat on his bed and took off his sweat-soaked work belt, then unlaced his boots and took off his shirt and pants. From the bedroom window he saw the same thing he's always seen, the tall sky-obstructing neighboring apartment building. He reached down to the floor where his pants were and dug into the front-left pant pocket. He felt the weight of the small pocket knife in his right hand as he pulled it out.
With his left hand, he pulled out the 3-inch chipped blade and slowly traced it with his index finger. It felt sharp under his finger. He put the blade to the upper left forearm and pressed down, slowly. He looked at the blade unflinchingly, the skin on his forearm, imagining the vertical line he was going to have to trace, feeling the blade beginning to cut through the first layer of skin. Then he heard something.
Barking.
It was loud, almost ferocious, yelping as if with pain. He heard the drunk neighbors downstairs shouting in Spanish for the dog to shut the fuck up. The dog barked louder.
For some reason it brought a smile to the man's face. That dog. He didn't know the basis for the barking, but he felt a strange feeling of respect. The man took the blade away from his arm and let it drop on the floor. The dog kept barking, the men shouting and shushing with annoyance. He got on his pants as fast as he could, put on his shirt and didn't bother lacing up his boots. The barks became more and more defiant.
Not understanding it, he walked out of his apartment feeling different, with a sudden change of plans—noticing the giant yellow moon going down behind the tall palm trees and the roofs of the city.
