Animals

In the parking lot of the old market is where it happened. That's how Mr. Waltz got his name, or his name change. Sammy was short, it had happened before, I guess this time was one time too many. There was a fight, I don't know much, I wasn't there. These things happen so fast. I know he wasn't short by much. I know that was the last straw. I know he was there with Hummer.

Wynn was not a man you upset. I say man like he was older than us, which he was, but not by much. He certainly seemed like a man though, the kind that maybe you wanted to be. Yeah, that's how little we knew about him. He sold the drugs, he drove a nice car, his girl was the one we all thought and talked about. He was something out of a movie, only he was real.

Sammy was short. Wynn went to his trunk, which is never good, good things rarely come from trunks during parking lot drug deals. He came back with a wrench. People stood back, oh yeah, there were people there. No one ever suspects a crowd. Two guys along in an abandoned parking lot might mean something, but a few friends means everything's OK.

So Sammy starts going no no no, no please don't. And Hummer was with him, little Hummer, mutt that he was. He followed Sammy everywhere, he was our mascot. Wynn took the wrench to his leg. There are things you're sad you missed and things you're not. I don't want to have been there to hear that howl. To hear Sammy pleading NO NO NO NO PLEASE! To hear Hummer shriek and cry, to hear the bone break, to see the disbelief on his face, the not knowing why he was being punished for his master's crimes. It's inhumane, the kind of thing an animal does. But at least the animal has the decency to eat its prey.

They had to remove the leg. He hobbled around, got used to the tripod, someone took to calling him Mr. Waltz (one-two-three, one-two-three...) and that was that. Sammy wasn't short again. It wasn't enough to make him clean, but it was enough to make him pay. On time, in full. The light around Wynn shone a little less brightly for us. Maybe the most upsetting thing was the fact that it still shone a little.