Isle of Dogs

"You'd better blow it somewhere quick," Andy said as he worked out a plan. "Here they come."

Ten

The most malignant smoke in Virginia was not generated by Salem Lights but by a highway pirate named Smoke, who had been consummately evil from birth. His lengthy rap sheet of crimes as a juvenile ranged from truancy to setting cats on fire to malicious wounding and homicide. Although he had finally been brought to justice in Virginia several years earlier, he had managed to break out of a maximum-security prison by forming a noose of sheets and pretending to hang himself from his stainless steel bed.

When prison guard A. P. Pi

Smoke watched Pi

Pi

"Look at that motherfucker, " Smoke said as he gulped down an Old Milwaukee. "He thinks he's something. "

Pi

"What does he think this is? The Academy Awards? I can still see the knot on his head from where I hit him with the tray. " Smoke pointed.

"He always had that bump on the back of his head, " said Cat, the most senior road dog. "See, he didn't use to shave his head and put wax on it like he does now. So the bump shows up. Man, he got one shiny head. Need to wear sunglasses to even look at it. " Cat squinted through cigarette smoke and tapped an ash into a beer can.

"What kinda wax you think he use?" asked another road dog named Possum, who was puny and unhealthy-looking and tended to stay in his room during the day, watching TV with the lights out. "Bee wax, you think? Hey, maybe he use Bed Head. 'Member that dude I bought the gun from? I ask him how he got his head so shiny and he say he use Bed Head that he got in New York in one of them Cosmetic Centers, and it cost like twenty bucks. It's in a little stick you gotta push up from the bottom and then rub it on your hand like dod'rant… "

"That fucker putting dod'rant on his head?" said a third road dog, Cuda, which was short for Barracuda. He stared blearily at Pi

"Shut up!" Smoke turned up the volume again.

He was getting excited because Pi

"… In your book Betrayed, " Reverend Justice was saying from his overstuffed chair next to a plyboard wall painted to look like a bookcase next to a cheery fireplace, "you went on at great length about how neighbors got to be neighbors instead of just living in the neighborhood. I believe I'm quoting correctly. "

"Uh huh, I said that. "

"So if we love our brothers and sisters and keep an eye on them coming and going, the neighborhood will change. "

"Uh huh. Yeah, I might have said that. "

"Did you have this philosophy before you got banged in the head?"

"I don't recall. Might have. " Pi

The reverend was turning pale and begi

"Forgiveness my ass! I ain't forgiving that punk. Hell, no. I find him one of these days and then we see who smacks who. " He glared into the camera, staring straight at Smoke. "And let me tell you, someone knows where that snake in the weed is. You seen him, you call this toll-free number at the bottom of the screen and we send you a reward. " He repeated the number several times. "He go by the street name of Smoke and is a plain-looking white boy with dreadlocks and what he calls a beard that got about as much hair as a possum tail. "

"Hey!" Possum objected, tossing an empty beer can at the TV.

Smoke pushed Possum off the ottoman and ordered

him to shut up. "You bust that TV and I'm going to bust your head!"

"Now I don't know what Smoke is wearing these days 'cause last time I seen him he was in an orange jumpsuit, but he's a young white male 'bout twenty-one or -two and mean as a snake, " Pi

"We will absolutely keep an eye out in the neighborhood, " Reverend Justice promised with a nod as he mopped his face with a handkerchief. "Sure is a lot of mea

"He take the reefer or just the cab?" Pi

"I didn't take no reefer. " Smoke made a pun to the TV. "Wish it had been full of reefer, though, instead of fucking pumpkins. What you want to bet Pi

"Yeah, he did, " the reverend said, nodding. "A Great Dane reefer, " which was trade talk for the top-of-the-line freight van that had been filled with pumpkins and hitched to the Peterbilt eighteen-wheeler truck. "I visited Moses in the hospital. " The reverend shook his head sadly. "That poor man look like a pit bull got hold of him. "

"What he say they did to him?" Pi

"What make you think he Trooper Truth?" asked Possum, who was computer literate and responsible for checking out the Trooper Truth website every morning to see if there was anything on it that Smoke ought to know about.

Possum also handled all Internet transactions, which included searches for eighteen-wheelers that might be parked somewhere with a FOR SALE sign, and news stories about truck shows, truck rodeos, truck accessories and parts, farmers' markets, piracy, smuggling, Canada, and a few of Possum's own special interests such as the Bonanza Fan Club and any related conventions that he would, undoubtedly, never get to attend. There was a large volume of e-mail, too, of course, from Smoke's criminal contacts, most of whom remained anonymous.