It was closer to an hour and a half before the man I’d spoken with on the phone showed up. I didn’t know it was him of course, not until the old rusty green pickup truck he was driving pulled into the parking lot with the high beams on, blinding me and anyone else who happened to be looking in the wrong direction. I covered my eyes as the truck growled to a stop right in front of me.
The guy rolled down his window. “You the dog girl?” he called out in the rain. He didn’t stick anything but his nose out the window though, so I didn’t get much of a look at him.
“Yeah,” I nodded, biting my lip and thinking this was it. I had one last chance to change my mind.
“Well, let’s get goin’ then.” And I saw his vague shape lean over and the passenger side door creaked open as I dashed through the heavy drops and climbed in.
“Hi,” I said, trying to sound cheerful because I didn’t want to sound nervous, but my heart was beating faster and I had to concentrate to slow my breathing down.
“Howdy,” he said, and then we were backing up and soon on the road leading to the highway and Enumclaw.
“Uh, thanks for coming to get me. I’m sorry I don’t have a car of my own…” I always felt this urge to apologize when I was nervous.
“No problem. I like getting out of the house once in awhile,” he shrugged. “So tell me about yourself, girl.”
“Well…” I figured I oughta start with my name, since proper introductions hadn’t come up yet. “My name is Rachael and…”
“Rachael, huh?” He chuckled. “No need for any of that. I’ll be calling you ‘girl’ or maybe ‘bitch’ from now on, depending on circumstances.”
“Oh.” I licked my lips, not really knowing how to respond to that. “I guess uh, well … okay.”
I wasn’t sure I was going to like being called bitch all the time, but girl was sort of acceptable, in a way. He was older than me, a lot older, maybe even older than my dad, who was 53 and pretty old, in my opinion. The man had a strong jaw and deep set eyes, but otherwise it was hard to get anything from his profile. Thin lips, not much for smiling I supposed, and short iron grey hair. He wasn’t fat or skinny, but just average in build and dressed like a farmer, with a flannel shirt and jeans. He smelled like fresh cut hay too, or so I imagined, not really knowing what fresh cut hay smelled like. It could have been alfalfa for all I knew.
“You’re a looker,” he glanced at me in the dim light. “I’ll give ya that, girl. Kinda small though, you sure you like ’em big?”
“Dogs?” I asked and he gave a little nod. “Yeah, I like all kinds of dogs. They’re cute.”
“Cute?” He laughed at that. “I had three girls come round applying for the job, none of ’em thought my boys were cute.”
“Your boys?” I wondered at that, since we’d been talking about dogs.
“My dogs, yeah. I ain’t never been much for family, so I call them my boys.” He smiled to himself. “They’re spoiled a bit, but good lads every one of ’em. So go on, tell me more about yourself then.”
We had gotten away from his original question, so I started talking about me.
“Well, I graduated high school last January and…”
“January?” He looked at me. “I recall most folks graduate in June. What happened to you?”
I blushed a little. “I had a little trouble with math,” I admitted. “I just get my numbers mixed up sometimes, especially that geometry and algebra stuff. Trigonometry too.”
“That about covers most of it,” he grinned.
“Yeah,” I nodded, feeling a little silly. “So, anyway, I had to take some classes over … a few times.” I’d actually taken trigonometry three times before I passed it with a D- and remedial algebra twice.
“Don’t you fret about that stuff, girl, you won’t be needing to count much more than three at my place.”
“Oh, um, good.” I hoped he wasn’t just humoring me. “So, after I graduated I moved in with my boyfriend. He was a football player, but now he works down at the docks, unloading ships and stuff. He’s really sweet…”
“Sounds like a good fella. How come you ain’t with him tonight?”
“Uh, see, he sort of broke up with me.” I swallowed hard, not really wanting to talk about my personal life like that, but I guessed the man wanted to know who he was hiring.
“Broke up?” He looked at me again and I pulled my short skirt down a little since my panties were showing, just a bit. “Is he stupid?”
“What?” I widened my eyes. “No, uh-uh, he um, well he gets real jealous sometimes. See, I was working as a dancer at H.R. Muff ‘n Stuff, that’s a little dance club by the airport? There isn’t any H.R. though, Janey just said they liked the way the name sounds with the letters in front and…”
“Janey?”
“Yeah, Janey was my boss and well, see, she had a fight with Bambi, her girlfriend, because she only likes girls. So she asked if she could stay at my place, just for one night…” I tried to keep this story short, really, but it was hard, ” … so we were sleeping together in bed when my boyfriend came home and he thought we were sleeping together! I mean, yeah, we were sleeping together, but not really sleeping together! Janey was asleep and I was asleep, see?”
“So you and your boss were sleeping together, but not sleeping together.” The guy was laughing a little. “You don’t have both oars in the water, do ya, girl?”
“Uh … I’m not even in the boat,” I laughed nervously. “Am I?”
“Nope. I reckon not,” the man agreed and I felt a little better. Sometimes people say stuff like that and it confuses me a little.
“When my boyfriend saw me and Janey in bed together, I guess he was drunk or something, cause he started taking off all his clothes and getting in between us. That woke me up, and Janey too, and she doesn’t like boys very much anyway. I guess maybe she thought my boyfriend was gonna rape us or something, cause she kneed him in the balls really hard. And then did it again, just in case she missed the first time.”
“Hmmm…” the man frowned a little at that, as I guess most men would.
“Then my boyfriend was lying on the floor, sort of white and looking like he might throw up, you know,” I shrugged. “And Janey left and I didn’t know what to do, but when I tried to help my boyfriend he just got mad at me, calling me a dyke and a cunt, and all sorts of stuff I didn’t like. So I left, thinking maybe I’d come back when he was feeling better.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” the man said with a nod.
“So I went to the club and Janey was sort of mad too, telling me that when she’d said she wanted to sleep with me, she hadn’t meant sleep with me and my boyfriend. Like it was my fault!” I sighed. “So I sort of quit, even though Janey apologized and offered me a raise. She said I was the best little money maker she had,” I told the man proudly. “But I couldn’t stay. I mean, not after she’d hurt my boyfriend like that, could I?”
“Uh, nope. I don’t reckon,” the man agreed.
“But when I got home, all my stuff was thrown out the window! My boyfriend wouldn’t even open the door, he just said he was gonna call the police on me and Janey for being man hating dykes who’d beaten him up! And while I tried to talk to him upstairs, all the bums and whores and anybody else walking by was taking all my stuff!”
It almost made me cry thinking about all that, but it felt good to talk about it too. Like I was getting it all out of my system and I felt a lot lighter inside, which is good, because with the dark and the rain and all that it was mostly pretty depressing.
“So then you called me?” the guy asked and I nodded. “Well, I ain’t gonna toss you, girl. If it don’t work out with my boys, I’ll drive you back, don’t worry about that.”
“Okay,” I smiled a little and wiped at the one little tear that had started in my left eye.
“But, I gotta tell you, I had three girls and a fag come by for the job, and not one of ’em worked out.” He made a little sighing sound. “My boys are pretty picky and they can be a mite rough too. Hell, that faggot couldn’t get his foot out the door of his car. My boys didn’t like him at all. And the girls, well, one of ’em took one look at Bandy and decided to join a convent. Found Jesus right on the spot!” he laughed.
“Oh!” I wasn’t sure what a dog might have to do with finding Jesus, but he sounded serious.
“The other girls, well, one of ’em gave Barley a try and he locked her up so tight she was screamin’ and scootin’ and tryin’ to get away.” The man was smiling at the memory of it. “Said she didn’t ever want to see another dick in her life after Big Barley was done with her.”
“A dick?” I looked at the guy wondering what he was talking about.
“Yeah, ain’t that something?” he laughed like I knew what the joke was. “Turned that woman queer as a three dollar bill right there in the backyard.”
“Oh, uh, I’m not a lesbian,” I promised him. “I just slept with Janey, I didn’t sleep with…”
“And the third girl, well, she wasn’t much to look at, sort of feisty too. Had an abrasive personality.” The man looked at me. “She was untrainable.”
“Oh, um … I like training,” I told the man.
“That so?” He seemed to ponder that.
“Oh yeah. I was a trainee at Wendy’s, a good one too, and um, at McDonald’s? I was a trainee there for three weeks, until I broke the ice cream machine.” I frowned, thinking maybe I shouldn’t have said that. “You uh, you don’t have an ice cream machine, do you?”
The man was laughing. “Nope, no ice cream.”
“Good,” I smiled. “Anyway, see I’m real trainable,” I promised. “And I don’t want to be a nun or anything like that.”
“We’ll see,” the man chuckled. “You do seem promising, girl.”
“Really?” I smiled and felt warm inside. It was nice to be promising at something besides lap dances for a change.
“So, what’s the biggest dog you ever had?” the guy asked, since it was a pretty long drive and we were just maybe halfway into it.
“Well, I never really had a dog,” I admitted, a little shyly. “I had a lot of dogs follow me home though and I liked to play with them a lot,” I hastened to add, seeing the man’s frown.
“Really?” He looked at me.
“Oh yeah! Everyday almost since I was little, all sorts of dogs would follow me around. I’d bring them home sometimes after school, give them a bath and some food, then we’d wrestle around.” I was smiling as I recalled all those happy moments. “Dogs love to wrestle, you know?” Because maybe he didn’t.
“Heh. If that’s what you wanna call it.”
“And some of those dogs were pretty big too, as big as me or even bigger sometimes. Our neighbors, three doors down, had a really big dog. I used to ride him around like a pony,” I giggled. “I always wanted a pony, but we lived in a small house in Lynnwood.”
“I see … and this big dog, he ever ride you?” the man grinned at me.
I laughed. “No! That’s silly! But, mmmm … He thought about it maybe. A lot of those dogs liked to jump on me and stuff, especially after we were wrestling good and I was hot and sweaty, you know? Then they’d hug me and stuff, sort of like they wanted a ride.”
I wasn’t sure what the guy meant exactly, nor was I exactly sure what I was talking about, but that happened with me sometimes. Like I might get an idea right on the tip of my tongue, but it just wouldn’t quite come into focus, you know? I know those dogs liked me though, and they liked wrestling around and hugging and licking at me too. But I wasn’t going to tell the guy about how they tried to lick me down between my legs. That was sort of personal.
“But you never give one a ride?” the man asked. “Not even once?”
“Ummm…” I wasn’t sure why he was asking me that; didn’t I just say that I hadn’t?
“After all that wrestling around, and that big dog starts hugging you…” the man suggested slowly. “Didn’t you ever let him do it?”
“Ummm … Oh.” My eyes widened and my cheeks got hot. “Oh!” I was finally understanding what he meant. “You mean, when the dog’s thingy got hard?”
The man laughed. “Yeah. The dog’s thingy,” he nodded with a grin.
“Well, um, sometimes it was like they thought I was a girl dog or something,” I told him, feeling a little embarrassed. “Dogs get a little confused I guess, like anybody else, and sometimes they’d try and put their thingy in me but I always kept my panties on, so … uh…” I licked my lips, ” … sometimes I let them rub me. Sorta. You know, just to make them feel good.”
“Rub you?” the man pursed his thin lips.
“Yeah, like between my legs, just rubbing me and um, well, it got sort of messy and stuff, but it felt good for the dog.” I shrugged, hoping that would explain why I’d let a dog rub his penis against my panty covered sex.
“Felt good for you too, I bet.” He was grinning at me like he knew a secret and I was blushing hard then, looking out my window at the passing darkness.
We drove a few minutes in silence and I couldn’t really think of anything to say, but it was sort of uncomfortable like that too. I always feel like people are waiting for me to say something, although I don’t know why. I like to listen too.
“Anyway,” I said, hopefully changing the subject. “Dogs like me a lot.”
“Oh, I think my boys are gonna love you, girl,” the man agreed cheerfully “I don’t think they ever had a virgin to break in.”
“A virgin?” I sat up a little and stared at him. “I’m not a virgin!” I said a little indignantly, like it was a bad thing to suggest or something, which seemed a little silly actually.
“You say so,” the man laughed and I felt a little humiliated by it.
“I’ve had a lot of sex, for your information.” I was pouting a little, but I couldn’t help it. “I’ve had three boyfriends and I did it with all of them. And more than once with the last one!”
“More than once, eh?” He was laughing so hard I thought we might go in the ditch.
“Yeah!” I crossed my arms defensively.
“You’re a sweetie, girl. I really hope my boys like you as much as I do.” He reached over and patted my bare thigh. It was a friendly touch, not like the guys in the club touched me sometimes, so I ignored it.
“You like me?” I finally caught up with what he’d just said.
“Course I do. What’s not to like? You’re cute as hell, sweeter’n sugar, and about as complicated as a hole in the ground. If you ain’t perfect, then I’m Abe Lincoln’s grandpaw,” he said with an exaggerated drawl, teasing me a little maybe, but I paid it little attention.
“Oh.” I thought about that for a minute, not sure if being compared to a hole in the ground was a good thing or not, and finally deciding it was meant as a compliment. Country people had a strange way of talking, I realized.
“You know, if this thing does work out, you’re gonna be stayin’ for awhile, right?” He was looking at me again. “This isn’t some weekend getaway, or a little vacation until your boyfriend comes back to his senses. We’re gonna have some work to do and you need to be sure you’re the right girl for the job.”
“Oh, I am!” I promised. “I don’t ever want to see my boyfriend again!”
“Too bad for him,” the man said under his breath. “Now, seeing how you’re so young and all, maybe a ten year contract might be good. What do you think of that?”
“Ten years? A contract?” I didn’t know anything about business stuff. I mean, I’d filled out some job applications, and tried to do my taxes once, but the IRS had sent me a letter and returned my check along with one of theirs, saying they owed me 48 dollars and I didn’t owe them $287,210.37 at all. They seriously warned me against writing bad checks to the government in the future and suggested I hire someone to do my taxes. Someone I trusted a lot, they said.
“Well, yeah. I figured we’d get it all in writing and avoid a lot of misunderstanding later,” he said reasonably and that sounded like a good idea to me.
“Ummm … How much does the job pay, anyway?” I’d really been wondering about that.
“Hmmm … Well, you’ll be living in my house…” he shrugged, ” … sorta, and eating my food. I’ll pay for your clothing and um, jewelry…”
“Jewelry?” I asked, brightening slightly and wondering why he’d buy me jewelry, but not really caring why. I liked jewelry.
“Yeah, there’s some rings and uh, window dressing I’d like to see you wearing.” He was sort of vague. “We’ll get to that later.”
I nodded. “Okay.” Rings are nice, I had a couple on my fingers and one on my big toe, but they were all pretty cheap.
“Anyway, so I think if you sign for ten years I can put your pay in a trust…”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A trust? Like a special bank account. The money sits there until a certain time and then you can get it out,” he shrugged. “It earns interest while it’s in there, so you end up with more money later, see?”
“Hmmm…” That sounded sort of good, I thought. More money later. My Daddy had always told me to think of the future and this sounded like a good way to do it.
“So, for ten years I put your pay in the bank, in a trust, and after that you can quit if you want. Take your money and do whatever you want, how’s that sound?”
“Okay. I guess it’s alright. Ten years is a long time though…” And it did seem like forever, considering I wasn’t even twice ten years old yet.
“Nah, it goes by quick, believe me. You’ll just be 29 then and have more money than you ever dreamed of.” He gave me a reassuring smile.
“Really?”
“Oh yeah,” he nodded. “Banks pay almost three percent on a good savings account these days.”
I wasn’t sure how much three percent was, that math stuff always confused me, but the guy seemed to know what he was talking about. Still … ten years, that was a lot.
“But um … What if you’re dogs don’t like me?” I asked, although I couldn’t really imagine that and I didn’t think he could either.
“Then I’ll give you a hundred dollars and a ride home tomorrow, just for your trouble, how’s that sound?”
“Great!” I nodded with a smile. It sounded good, except for the home part, since I didn’t really have one of those anymore. So I figured I’d better make friends with those dogs, or I was gonna be sitting in front of the 7-11 again.
“Good. We got ourselves a deal then.” He was smiling and held out his hand so I could shake on it with him.
“Yes sir,” I nodded and hoped I was doing the right thing.
“I got some contracts all ready in the glove compartment there. Open her up and take a look.” He reached up and turned on the dome light.
“You have contracts already? Here?” I blinked at that. Some things just feel strange, you know? Like finding yourself in an old episode of the Twilight Zone or something and I almost looked around for Rod Serling, before I remembered he was probably dead.
“Well, you just never know when you might meet the perfect girl, you know?” He smiled as I opened up the glove compartment and found some papers. “I used to be a lawyer before I took up farming. Well, I’m still a lawyer too,” he chuckled. “It’s like the mob; once you’re in they never let you go. Anyway, I’m a hell of a lawyer.” I noticed that he’d lost that country drawl all of a sudden. “Corporate law. I made a lot of friends, a lot of enemies, and a whole lot of money.”
“Oh,” I said, for lack of anything better. He didn’t seem like much of a lawyer to me, not like the ones I saw on TV. I read the paper slowly, mostly because we were rolling down the road sort bumpily, but also because there were some words I didn’t understand. Heck, I didn’t even know you could put that many letters together in some of those words.
” … the undersigned also agrees to unconditional modification of physical attributes to include decorative and/or functional facilitation of employment requirements?”
“That’s just fancy talk for tattoos and piercings mostly,” the man shrugged. “Do you have any tattoos or piercings?”
“Ummm … no,” I said, not really ever wanting any either. “Except my ears, I mean.”
“Good,” he was nodding. “I like a clean slate.”
“Uhhh … okay.” I wasn’t sure what that meant. I kept reading, ” … the undersigned understands fully and accepts without reservation the inherent and unavoidable physical risks that she will endure in the performance of her daily tasks?”
“I had to put that in there just because you’re going to be working with animals. Dogs can get a little rough, you know,” he chuckled. “That’s just a standard clause.”
“Oh, sure.” I’d been scratched plenty of times by accident, so I guess he had a point. “Umm, how about this … the uh, undersigned confesses and discloses freely her willful desire to engage in acts of bestiality for such purposes as may be defined and required in the performance of her job? … What’s bestiality?”
“Playing with dogs,” the man smiled. “Well, any animal really, but the next paragraph specifies that dogs are what we’re talking about.”
“Oh, yeah.” I read the next paragraph and it did say that this contract only covered bestiality involving dogs and that if another species of animal were to be involved in the future, we’d address that in clause number 6 of annex C, whatever that was.
“It’s a lot of paper, I know,” the man apologized. “You can read the whole thing later if you want, but we’re almost home now. Why don’t you go on and sign the last couple pages. There’s some initialing to do to, everywhere you see a little red arrow.”
“I guess you really are a lawyer!” I giggled and signed and initialed and signed some more. There were three copies there, one for him, one for me, and one for… “Who’s this copy for?” I asked him as we turned onto a dirt road.
“Oh, that’s for the Tribal Register,” he said, like that would mean something. “We’re on Indian land now. My great, great grandmother was part Yakima, so they leased me a few acres,” he grinned at me. “Made me part of the tribe, even though they aren’t Yakima, or even Skagit.”
“You’re an Indian?” I looked at him, thinking he looked as white as George Bush.
“Well, just a little. Mostly I’m legal counsel for the tribe’s casino. Making a donation to the reservation’s Children Education Fund helped too,” he laughed. “Anyway, being on reservation land makes it a lot easier keeping a little dog girl like you. We’ll get the contract certified and legalized and you’ll be all set and proper.”
“Uh, proper what?” I had to ask.
“Proper, um … property!” the man grinned and rubbed my knee. “But don’t you worry about that, it’s time to meet the boys.”
He was pulling up to a stop in front of an old country house that had never been built by Indians, I was pretty sure. It was old and solid and looked like one of those fancy Victorian houses, but well kept. The man told me that Teddy Roosevelt had stayed there once, but that had been a long time ago. There was a big barn, a corral with a horse, some sheds and a silo and everything. It really was a farm and I was a little excited about being there. I’d lived in the city my whole life.
I wasn’t sure about him using the word property though. That seemed kind of strange. I soon forgot about it as we stepped out of the truck, however. It had stopped raining halfway between Seattle and there, and the ground wasn’t even damp. But it would be raining soon, I thought. There were flashes of lightning on the horizon and I wrapped my arms around myself in the chill air, wondering where the dogs were.