Lock Jaw

Spending his days in a salvage yard, nothing but junk cars keeping him company, Richard knew poetry was not art that came naturally to men like himself. Still, on a night like this, even the most vulgar, unrefined man could feel the poetry that hung in the air. It was heavy and bated, like the air before a good rain, just waiting to be tapped into beautiful thoughts. But Richard wasn’t one to think beautiful thoughts—a fact he was sharply aware of as he drew his cigarettes from his dirty blue coveralls. Striking a light, he tossed the match on the ground and stubbed it underfoot, surveying the sprawling graveyard around him. 

He kept a notepad in his pocket for keeping track of recyclable materials, the make and model and section of field of the car they were found in. Every now and then, a scribbled-out line of attempted poeticism divided one quote of scrap from another. Even now, he had the vague impulse to take out his notepad, to make yet another attempt at some worthwhile thought. Something that would outlast him, when his own frame was as lifeless as the cars in this scrap heap. Richard jogged his eyebrows at the thought. It had some potential. 

He pulled the notepad from his pocket and flipped it to a random page, studying the water-warped lines through puffs of cigarette smoke. He stuffed his hand deeper into his pocket and pulled out a pen. With a click, Richard scribbled a line, attempting to capture this feeling of mortality, of being no longer lived than the scrap which he pilfered for parts. But the words came out too stilted, too awkward, too contrived. So he tore the page from the notepad, crumpled it, and chucked it into the puddle at his feet. It had rained nonstop the last few days. He shook his head at himself, took a long draw from his cigarette as the paper dissolved in the black, dirty water. Next, he tossed the cigarette into the puddle, watched as its glowing orange embers died out. Watched as flickering notes of blue and red light emerged from the water to dance in their stead.

Richard furrowed his brow at the sight. Then, through the hollow feeling that weighed in his chest, a spark of true life took hold of him, igniting the spirit inside of him. A poem was not needed to capture this feeling. A single word sufficed.

“Shit.”

The cops had switched on their lights at the last possible moment. Richard hardly got one leg over the other when the barking of a K-9 tore through the silence. Distant orbs of light, no bigger than the ends of cigarettes, stubbed out the darkness of the road between the scrap yard and the wheat field. They bobbed and weaved excitedly, five policemen headed his way. He could name at least one of them: Jackson Stiller, the deputy sheriff who had married Richard’s former fiancé two weeks ago. 

Richard wasn’t concerned about him. What concerned Richard was the sound of the police dog, for the way the mutt barked, one would have thought it starving for the meat of his master’s sworn enemy. This hate used to be mostly one-sided. It didn’t seem that way anymore.

But Richard didn’t have time to wonder how Stiller had found him out. He barely had time to clear a dense row of cars when the thudding of paws on dirt sounded behind him. The hound must’ve been running at Belle Vue speeds to have reached him so quickly. The scraping of claws on the hood of a car impaired Richard’s judgement. 

As he sprinted toward a muddy pit to the right of a rented excavator, one of the multiple pits he’d dug for dumping and burying unsellable scrap, the smart move would’ve been to skirt it. Instead, Richard made a straight shot, leaping as far as his legs could propel him. 

He slammed on his belly at the edge of the pit, doubling him over and knocking the wind clear out of his lungs. It took him some seconds to suck in a breath. By the time he dug in his elbows and dragged one leg out, it was already too late. A pair of jaws clamped down on his opposite shin, sixty pounds of dangling Belgian Malinois nearly yanking him into the hole. Fabric ripped, the coveralls pulled taut around his shoulders, then released. A splash. And he was free.

Richard belly-crawled forward until his long body was stretched across the dirt. Feeling akin to the excavator that slumbered nearby, its heavy jaws resting on the ground, Richard pressed his head in the dirt, gathered his legs underneath him, then unfolded himself upright. He staggered a couple steps sideways and peered over the side of the pit, where a whining dog splashed about frantically. Richard huffed.

“You’d think cop dogs would know how to swim,” he called. “Don’t worry, Chief. Your masters’ll be here any time now. They’ll haul your sorry ass out.”

He turned to take off. He’d make it to his car—he kept his keys in the driver’s side visor—then he’d be gone. Forever. Not forever. It would feel like forever. But he would be back, when this whole thing blew over. It wasn’t legal trouble he was in. This was personal.

Richard made it three steps, then was stopped in his tracks by a high-pitched yelp. He walked back to the pit, where the dog spun about in panicked circles. He switched his gaze to the flashlights in the distance, which had grown from the size of cigarette butts to about the size of dimes. They jittered about awkwardly, Richard could imagine them toeing delicately around rusted car frames and potholes. Bunch of pussywillows.

“Jesus,” he muttered. “They’re never gonna get here. They probably think you got me in your lock jaw.” He gave the dog a stern look. Not that it was looking at him. At this point, it looked more like it was gazing into the eyes of God. 

Richard had owned a few dogs throughout his life. He knew they were intelligent creatures, capable of knowing when they owed a man their life. So he got back down on his belly, crawled over the ledge until it was nearly at his hips, and reached his arm in as far as he could. 

He grabbed the dog’s scruff, shimmied back, and braced his other hand on the ground. With a mighty groan, he dragged the soaking mutt up the side of the pit to salvation. No sooner did he let go than it dove for his leg like the world’s juiciest bone, clamping down on his shin and shaking it like a chew toy.

“Hey! HEY! Jesus Christ, I just saved your life, you frigging animal!”

To the dog’s credit, it quit shaking his leg. It even wagged its tail at him. But its jaws were unrelenting. Richard made a fist and waved it over its head, but the dog did not flinch. It lifted its lips in a grin more than a snarl. Dammit. So it was smart enough to know when a man was not a danger, but not smart enough to know when he didn't deserve to get the piss bit out of him. Switching tactics, Robert patted its head. 

“There’s a good doggy. Got the bad man, didn’t ya? Now let the bad man go! Release! Let go! Free!” He whistled. The dog waved its tail. But it did not let go, release, or free him. Next, he tried prying its jaws apart, but it was about as useful as trying to unscrew a lug nut with his bare hands.

“The day someone pries apart a Malinois’s jaws with their bare hands, will be the day I’m truly afraid of a criminal.”

Richard glance to the side. Leaning against the excavator, watching with amusement, the sheriff himself smiled down on him. He had his hands in his pockets, one ankle crossed over the other. Richard rolled his eyes and laid back down, folding his hands over his chest and gazing up at the stars. He wasn’t going anywhere. 

“I’m not a criminal, Kelly. Just made some bad choices.”

“Care to explain the difference?” 

“Difference is, I’m about to get the shit beat out of me, and then I’ll get parked in front of a jury.” 

Kelly chuckled a little. “You won’t be seeing a jury,” he drawled. “Not with what you’ve done.”

“I’m sure they’ll frame me for something.”

“That’s not what I mean. At least you’ve been helpful and dug the grave yourself.”

Tough as he was trying to act, Richard cringed at the thought of his body in that water, his skin sloughing off under half a ton of dirt. He banished the thought. “You wouldn’t let that happen.”

“I wouldn’t?”

“Well. I guess we’ll see.”

“I guess we will. Got a light?”

“Some matches.”

“Strike pad?”

“Your stubby beard’ll do.”

A wry grin stretched the sheriff’s face, which was actually very well-bearded, though coarser than it used to be. The first day of Richard’s job as a nineteen-year-old officer, Kelly’s beard had been a solid black. The boys used to call him Captain Blackbeard when he wasn’t around. But the name was no longer fitting, if it ever had been for the even-keeled sheriff. Gray hairs had carried out a successful siege over the last seven years. The remaining black hairs were only stragglers. 

Richard pulled out his pack of matches and lit one for the sheriff. Kelly accepted it and lit his cigarette, flicking the match into the water below. He settled into a sitting position alongside his former subordinate. He reached out to rub the dog’s head, who happily thumped its tail in the dirt. 

The sheriff took a couple of lazy draws while watching the orbs of the flashlights grow bigger. Then he reached his hand to his shoulder, pressing down on the two-way radio. “Sheriff Kelly here. To the officers in the scrap yard. This is your chance to turn tail and leave while you’re authorized to your vehicles. This authorization can, and will be revoked if you don’t clear out immediately.”

The radio cut out with a sharp hiss of static. Richard craned his head toward the glowing orbs, which had grown eerily still. A heavy moment. Then an eruption of static through the radio. “Sheriff, this isn’t—”

Kelly’s hand flew back to the radio. “Either clear out this yard or clear out your lockers. What’ll it be?”

A nettled hiss of static flowed from the radio. Then, “Alright, Sheriff.”

The orbs switched out of view. Richard snickered at the sight.

“I knew you wouldn’t let ‘em get me. You’re a teddy bear.”

“If I was a teddy bear, they wouldn’t have turned around.”

“Yeah, well. They won’t be gone for long. It would also be real nice of you if you called off Shiloh here.”

“She’s a girl,” said Kelly. “Her name is Birdie.”

“Well, Birdie. Now that we’ve all come to an understanding, it would be swell if you let go of my leg.”

Hearing her name directly addressed, Birdie thumped her tail some more. But her teeth remained fixed in his shin. Richard was puzzling over the dumb dog’s intelligence when Kelly spoke up.

“You need to leave.”

“Yeah,” said Ricard. “I would like to. But there seems to be something anchoring me down, and—”

“No. I mean, you need to leave.”

Richard glanced at the sheriff and back to the side. Crap, not this. He would’ve preferred getting beaten to death. Even with his eyes locked on the nearby Chevy Sprint with the reusable glass and fenders, he could feel the sheriff looking at him. 

He continued to speak. “There’s nothing for you anymore. No family, no friends. You’ve made sure of that. You’re just a stray. And if you don’t leave, you’ll be a dead stray. I’m real sorry that your girl ran off with Stiller. But sticking around here, doing everything you can to make him want to kill you, won’t ever bring her—”

“I didn't do it cause of Sal,” snapped Richard. “She left me for that loser. And that’s that. As far as she’s concerned, I wish her all the happiness in the world.”

Kelly always seemed so wise and certain. So it felt pretty good to sense his surprise. “Then why’d you do it?” he asked.

Richard sighed. A sigh filled with woe of the sort that Sylvia Plath or Edgar Allan Poe would describe. They were poets who could take the most odorous emotions and perfume them with hints of tragic beauty. Coming from Richard himself, however, he just smelled his own cigarette. 

“If it weren’t for Stiller—”

“I won’t hear about that,” said Kelly, settling back into that infinite wisdom that simultaneously impressed and irked Richard to no end. “I’m sorry how things played out. I am. But there’s nothing to be done. If you hold out a few more years… move to a separate county…”

“There’s nothing for me out there,” said Richard bitterly.

“And what’s for you here?”

“You.”

Richard hadn’t really intended to say it, but he was tired of Kelly’s philosophical questions always leaving him with no good response. So he stumbled on before the silence grew too heavy. “You’re the only person in my life who’s ever cared. Who’s ever bothered to show up when I needed it. Even tonight. How the hell did you know where to find me? Anyway, that’s not the question here. The question here is, what do you even care anymore? Like you said, I’m a nobody. I’ve got no more to do with you anymore than the guys that you throw behind bars. So why bother?”

The sheriff didn't answer immediately. Of course he didn't. Richard felt embarrassment creep through him, warming his veins like Iso-HEET while Kelly gazed up at the stars, his broad-rimmed hat close to tipping off his head. Birdie, meanwhile, looked bored. Her grip on his leg eased up slightly, but he knew as soon as he moved it, her teeth would clamp back down. 

“You’re the closest thing I ever had to a son,” said Kelly, finally. “And it pains me to see you wasting your potential hanging on to something that will never get you anywhere.”

Richard scoffed, ignoring the burning in his eyes. “What potential? I’ve never had anything worthwhile to contribute to anyone.”

“You still write those poems?” asked Kelly.

“Oh, please.”

“They’re impressive!” the sheriff interjected, seeming uncharacteristically clumsy all of a sudden. “We found some of them while we were helping you clean out your things. I liked the one about that car’s rear headlights, where you… compared the turn signal to the beating of a heart, and… I think it was meant to mean that…”

“Jesus, Kelly, you’re gonna give yourself a stroke. I know they’re not good. That’s okay.”

“Well, I’m not saying you’ll make a living being poet larry-ate.”

“‘Laureate,’” Richard corrected.

“Point is,” continued Kelly, “you got a soul inside you, Rich. And I won’t see it wasted in a place it doesn’t belong. So, the deal is, you gotta promise me something. I’ll call off Birdie, help you pack your things, then you’re sending off by morning. And you gotta promise me that when you leave, you won’t come back. You’ll find a life for yourself out there.”

Richard nervously squeezed his thumb over his stomach. His cheek rested in the dirt as he looked the opposite way. 

“Look at me, Rich. We got a deal?”

Richard looked at him. Even in the dark, he knew his eyes looked red and sore. There was no point in hiding it. “I’m gonna miss you,” he said. 

Kelly rubbed hand on Richard’s head, much like he did to Birdie. “I’ll miss you, too. But God knows, I’ll be retiring somewhere in the next few years, if they don’t wrestle my badge from me first. And Hell if I’ll stick around here. I know too much about these people to trust them with my Jell-O.”

They shared a small chuckle and Kelly withdrew his hand. He put it in his lap and studied it with a thoughtful expression. “Guess what I’m saying is… maybe you could find a life out there for me, too. A nice retirement home you can shunt me away, to never bother anyone again. So. I’ll ask you one more time. We got a deal?” He held out his hand. Richard looked between his hand and his friendly, glowing eyes. He supposed he had nothing better to do. So he shook it. 

Kelly smiled, clapped him on his shoulder, and achingly stood to his feet. 

“Birdie,” he said. “Release!”

Birdie released. She put her paws on Kelly’s chest and jumped up and down, slobbering his chin. Richard watched in disbelief.

“I said the exact same thing. She didn't listen!”

“Well,” said Kelly, massaging the dog between her ears. “Maybe she knew you didn't mean it.” He stepped over Richard, heading toward his place. “C’mon. We got packing to do. I’m not touching your magazines.”

Richard got to his feet. “I don’t got any magazines,” he muttered.

“Not even under your mattress?”

“You’ll find a couple of LIFE’s, that’s it.”

“Really? Don’t know how I raised you so well.”

Richard tried to laugh, but his throat closed in on him. He watched Kelly walking away, Birdie prancing at his heels. He saw the stars overhead, the way they shone extra bright through the sheen over his eyes. He took out his notepad, clicked his pen. But he couldn’t think any beautiful thoughts. So he tossed them into the pit. The emotions he felt were painful, but pinning them with words was not necessary. There was something beautiful about them already. So he let them move through him. And then he walked on.