His name was Dozer, but I liked to call him Baby. 

Baby, sit. Baby, shake. Baby, roll over. He never listened because he only knew his real name, since Daddy and Peter called him so, but I knew he liked Baby, too, because he’d look at me with his big brown eyes when I said it like there was nowhere he’d rather be than pretending to be mine. 

Daddy, Peter, and I liked to walk to the junkyard and back when the weather was like this, an hour or so before a summer storm, and Daddy said we had to tire ourselves out or else we’d drive him nuts. Dirt packed beneath my flip flops. Peter picked at a scab on his arm, talking Daddy’s ear off about what new thing he’d learned today in third grade: KAHFOOTY means: Keep all hands, feet, and other objects to yourself! 

Daddy laughed at this, then sipped his beer, saving the dregs for when we arrived at the junkyard and he could toss the empty can in with the rest of the trash. Baby would always try to chase after it, but Daddy yelled Dozer, No! and he listened. 

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On the walk back, I skipped ahead of Peter and twisted the bottom of my tank top into little frays. Before long, Peter and I were both running—a wordless race that Daddy expected by now. I could barely hear him over the wind rushing past my ears, whooping and cheering us on, telling Peter that I was right on his tail when I was awfully far behind him. That was something about Daddy: sometimes he lied. He lied about Santa Claus and where Momma was. He lied to our school, saying we were home sick when really he couldn’t afford gas to drive us after we’d missed the bus. He lied if he had been outside on the phone and smoking what Peter told me was a doobie. He lied to Peter about his position in our footraces. 

(Peter came home from school once, parroting another rule he had been taught: Honesty is the best policy. He looked at Daddy when he said it, but Daddy hadn’t been paying attention).

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Up ahead I see Gigi, my best friend from down the road. She waits for the four of us on the two warped steps of her trailer house sometimes, and when she sees us return, she jumps up and dances around, her tongue between her lips. She shakes her behind with mockery: Nanny-Nanny Boo-Boo. 

Baby. No. I have a vision a second before it happens. 

The incoming storm is rattling Baby’s bones and making him antsy. But he doesn’t listen because he doesn’t know his name is Baby, because I’m no good at making him behave. Something about Gigi’s dance is hypnotizing for him, and for me too because all I do is watch as Baby does what he is sometimes prone to do: growl and run and pounce and bite. That was something about Baby: sometimes he bit. 

That’s the worst thing a doggie could do. 

Something rings in my ears: a little-girl scream or a jolt of thunder.

Daddy sends Peter and me home, and Peter yanks Baby by his collar the rest of the dusty walk. He seems a bit sorry, like how I feel after I snap my dolls’ arms in half. I see Gigi’s Pappy come out to see about her squalling, and Daddy is doing some explaining and probably some lying, but I turn away before they finish talking. 

It’s an hour or so before Daddy gets back home. By then there’s nothing to do: Peter’s already yelled at Baby and pointed his finger at him in a mean way. There’s nothing but the screen door slamming against the dilapidated frame and Daddy’s boots squeaking against the linoleum in the kitchen. C’mere you fuckin’ dog. Dozer listens. 

Gigi’s Pappy is waiting outside with his hands on his hips, a shotgun slung across his shoulders the way Peter carries his messenger bag to school. I close my eyes as the door clatters behind Daddy, as a crack of thunder ripples across the dry grass and buggies outside, as the swelling clouds finally spill the teeming rainfall and the whimper of my baby splinters the yard, splattering a bit on the concrete porch steps, where I know Daddy’ll be mad about it staining.

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Elaina Knipple is a student at the University of Missouri, where she studies Secondary English Education and minors in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in the university’s literary magazine EPIC, as well as the interdisciplinary literary and art magazine Same Faces Collective. She can often be found wasting time considering the major implications of her existence and playing online solitaire.