The Natural Method of Dog Training
by Gary Fincke
1
For years, his mother said, “Accept no rides from strangers. Don’t even approach an unfamiliar car.” At twelve, he began to hitchhike.
2
According to The Natural Method for Dog Training, dogs are wolves that must accept dominance in order to be trained.
3
His father told him the search-party story, a naked boy found, too late, tied to a tree, the tongue pulled from his throat. “You never catch those drivers,” his father said, yet he stood, thirteen, at the roadside, thumb extended.
4
The natural method is laying tacks on the furniture, covering the forbidden places for sleep.
5
The woman who picked him up smoked three cigarettes in half an hour. Her dashboard had four St. Christopher statues. She said, “There’s no reason not to make sure we’re safe. They look in different directions. They keep an eye out like God.”
6
You place rat traps among the roses where digging is not allowed.
7
After the driver drifted off the highway into a corn field, snapping awake from the ruts, he refused the boy’s offer to take the wheel. “You’re not even old enough,” he said, and stuffed two sticks of gum in his mouth and began to chew. The boy, fourteen, watched him drive for twenty miles.
8
You throw firecrackers from your moving car to keep that dog off the road.
9
The drinkers said, “I know what I can handle,” and always did. None of the sex solicitors ever touched him. The speeders bragged about burying the needle. They passed on either side, weaving to avoid touching the brakes. One passed on the shoulder while the boy tried not to scream.
10
Or you spray that dog with a hose.
11
“Look here,” one driver murmured, so softly and so soon, the boy swiveled, saw milk cans, and said nothing at all while the driver described the explosions they’d make if they wrecked or tore through the wrong Ohio pothole. “Has you thinking, doesn’t it?” he said, making the boy think of opening his door like a school bus driver when they approached a set of railroad tracks. He didn’t ask out. For nearly an hour, he worked to ask no questions.
12
When nothing else works, you starve that dog to show who’s boss. It will come begging, then, apologetic and compliant.
13
Late in December, frigid across the full width of Ohio, the boy hopped in before he saw that the driver wore a state policeman’s uniform, the car unmarked. The boy kept eye contact with the highway, the Pennsylvania border five miles away. When they passed the welcome sign, not slowing, he thought he was a sadist’s dream.
In towns near that highway, a man had been entering the homes of women with a store-bought badge. So far, he’d let them live to be witnesses, all six repeating boots and blue hat, the dark-brown holster, none of them remembering a face. “You know you’re illegal on the interstate,” the driver said. The boy, sixteen now, studied chin and nose, a scar below the ear. “If I choose,” the man said, “I can make you pay.”
Outside, ambiguous snow swirled up, then cleared. The state policeman said he had pictures of a boy flung into a landfill, the work an overnight of rats can do. He said, “Look under the seat,” but the boy didn’t. Though the boy had mentioned Exit 2, the driver said, “End of the line,” slowed and entered the ramp for Exit 1. The boy threw open the door and plunged onto the shoulder.
The car idled on the ramp. The boy rose and stood still, blinking the snow from his eyes. Headlights flared and vanished, but the boy, head down, crossed the ramp and began to walk, his back to traffic, the four miles to the exit that ended where the ten-minute hike to his parents’ house began.
14
Now you own a well-trained dog.
Gary Fincke's latest collection is Nothing Falls from Nowhere (Stephen F. Austin, 2021). His flash fiction has been published lately in Wigleaf, Craft, Atticus Review, Pithead Chapel, Ghost Parachute, and Best Small Fictions 2020. He is co-editor of the annual anthology series Best Microfiction.
