No Justice: Adventures of the Black Dog

INTRODUCTION

The terrorists had Andrew Russle cornered in the poorly-lit underground walkway that passed beneath the boulevard. He stood there, back to the wall. Dirty standing water spotted with litter and leaves pooled on the concrete floor. A half-dozen men with scratchy beards and pistols formed a semi-circle around him

Infidel, one of them breathed, we are going to kill you. But first we are going to torture you.

Their prey nodded, agreeing evenly. That’s the way to go, he said, calmly unwrapping a piece of gum and popping it into his mouth. Cause if you try it the other way around, well, that’s going to be hard to explain.

With a casual flick, the wadded-up wrapper was tossed down. Which reminds me of a funny story, he said. In fact, your mother reminds me of a funny story. A second later, all hell broke loose.

CHAPTER 1

Just Us

It had all started 20 years earlier in the halls of Orangewood High School. Or more specifically, in the pool. A younger Andrew – Andy, really – was talking with Michelle Clay, a fellow student and sufferer by the snack bar near the wall that bounded the swimming pool deck area.

They heard cursing, sounds of a scuffle and the sound of a loud, flailing splash. Oh, criminey, not again, said Michelle, shaking her short hair and heaving a world-weary-sounding sigh that seemed pretty authentic for a 16-year-old.

We’d better go get him, said Andy. They pulled themselves up so they could peer over the concrete wall, saw that the coast was clear and swung their legs over, landing on the pool deck with a smack.

In the water a boy was churning around, cursing and gasping as he fought to stay afloat in deep end of the pool. It was Joey Decca, tossed in for the umpteenth time by the jerks from the school aquatics teams.

There was a long, curved lifeguard hook leaning against the wall of the adjacent gymnasium. Andy retrieved it as Michelle kicked off her shoes and quick-stepped to the edge of the diving board. With a precision born of rueful practice, Andy tossed the pole to Michelle, who reached down and hooked the soaked profaning boy and began to reel him in. She pulled him to the edge, where Andy leaned over the water and – grunting and blinking – pulled Joey to safety. Again.

What is this, the third time this month? said Andy. You really need either to learn to swim or to keep your mouth shut.

But Joey was as mad as the proverbial wet hen. Those miserable iceholes! he spat, starting to wring water out of his shirt. Those fecking bastiches all deserve to die. One of these days I’m gonna cut their bells off, dirty scum-sucking slugs in a ditch.

Andy and Michelle had to smile. Joey didn’t always show good judgment in what he said, but he always said it in an interesting way. And no one could doubt his courage, even though his timing was usually a bit off.

Of course, the real problem wasn’t Joey’s strangely near-foul mouth, but the folks who made a practice of throwing him in the pool. They were the boys from the water polo and swim teams. At most schools, the status sport was football and they were the kings of the campus. But at OHS, the football team was so epically mediocre and the aquatics squads so superior, the situation was different. Orangewood routinely turned out state champions, college athletic scholarships and Olympic team members in the wet disciplines while the football team struggled to win as many games as it lost.

Their position was so unchallenged, the accolades so constant that they had somehow crossed the line from activity to gang. Their private name for themselves was the Knautical Knights, and they traveled in packs, the better to lord it over anyone unwise enough to not give way in the halls or claim the wrong seats in the cafeteria at lunch.

I hate those guys, too, said Michelle, whose tomboyish dress and short haircut had made her the subject of more than one crude remark from the Knights, especially Chad Kine, the team captain. Headed for Princeton as a legacy as well as on a swimming scholarship, he made sure every one at Orangewood High knew that he and his Speedo-wearing colleagues were the royalty, and everyone else the peasants.

In a just world, she added, those guys would all get food poisoning or eyeball mumps.

Andy shook his head a little sadly. It’s an uncaring universe, he said, with the weary wisdom of a teenage boy who had never even kissed a girl or held a real job. There’s no justice. There’s just .... us.

Joey had pulled his socks off and was squeezing the water out of them. Everybody here is sick of those mud-brained stuckup motherfather piglickers, he said. There’s only 20 or so of them. Why do you guys let them push you around?

Because we don’t want to be thrown into the pool every day? countered Michelle. The bell rang. I mean, who would pull us out?

Standing not far away, Douglass Carter was listening and he started to think, really hard ....

CHAPTER 2

Turning Point

Andy Russle knew a bit about what it was like to be chased and tossed around. In fact, all of them in his circle did. Michelle was constantly teased with speculation – little of it encouraging – about her sexual orientation; Joey never backed down from a slight or insult despite being one of the shortest boys in the class.

Their friend Marian Langley, a bright, pretty but slightly awkward girl who tripped now and again found that some of the more popular girls enjoyed helping her trip. They were also so nice when they helped her up. With her trusting nature it took until the middle of her junior year for the willowy blonde with the green-blue eyes to understand why she seemed to stumble a lot more when they were around.

Andy grew up lonely as an only child, a skinny boy of average height with a dark brown shock of unruly hair combed unfashionably to the left in a style better suited to an earlier generation. He had a rather prominent Adam’s apple about which he was sensitive and which became the subject of some ill-tempered humor from even his friends.

Andy had run afoul of a different bunch of boys in junior high. Tough kids who lived in the ramshackle old houses a block from the school. He never could figure out just what he had done to have them target him, except perhaps he was a bit of a loner whose head was always in the clouds, therefore becoming easy pickings for all sorts of pranks and ambushes.

So he spent a good part of seventh and eighth grade running, trying to outhoof the pounding feet of the five or so low-rent jerks who enjoyed tormenting him. He ran not only because he didn’t want to get caught and roughed up, but also because he was running to refuge. His father was at work and his mother away more or less constantly visiting relatives but he had one fierce advocate on his side, the legendary Scout.

Scout was a coal-black dog, a mix of German shepherd and Labrador retriever, strong, fast and fiercely loyal. She adored Andy and accompanied him out to the porch each morning and watched him walk to school.

Each afternoon she waited patiently for him to return, an event that always sent her into rump-waving ecstasies of wagging. No one is ever as glad to see you as a dog is.

When being pursued by a gang of green-teethed felons-in-training, one is also pretty darned glad to see your ferocious-looking dog, too. Scout was a gentle soul, but quite protective and her ebony look, when accented by bared fangs and that deep throaty growl, gave her the appearance of one of the hounds of hell, on special assignment.

Sccccccooooouuut! Andy would wail as he felt the gap between himself and his pursuers shrink to an uncomfortable few yards. Her head would snap up, she’d assess the situation in an instant, and come tearing off the porch, the very figure of a highly-motivated canine avenger.

Andy’s tormenters skidded to absurd stops, sometimes falling over. It’s that gaw-dam black dog! one of them would shout. Holy sh– would be interrupted by the almost comic collisions that occurred as they sought to get out of each other’s way, the better to escape from that flesh-eating monster.

Scout never bit any one of them, but you could always tell she kept that option open. When they retreated to a safe distance, she would return more or less to normal, wagging her tail amiably as a grateful Andy rubbed her neck and whispered Thanks! once again.

Fading down the street came the voice. You won’t have that gaw-dam black dog around to protect you forever! the taunt would go. Gaw-dam black dog!

Life wasn’t easy for Douglass Carter, either. One of the few black kids at suburban Orangewood High, he rowed against all stereotypes. Not especially tall or muscle-bound, he wasn’t much of an athlete (to the mortification of his father), didn’t care much about looking or sounding tough, and didn’t have the common courtesy to be easily pegged. He floated around in his C+ to B- little world, preferring to tinker in his room or in the garage workshop on heaven knew what, because his distracted parents didn’t seem to care.

Slightly chunky, with short wiry black hair, he was often seen wearing a Howard University sweatshirt or a Brooklyn Dodgers jersey. Add to that his passion for science and disdain for most other academic disciplines and he straddled (somewhat precipitously) that sometimes-awkward space where a young man’s passions – fantasy, violence and curiosity – collide.

It’s not fair to say that this quintet were a group of outcasts, but they did share one thing: a sense of juvenile outrage at injustice. They were (with the possible exception of Joey) not the principal focus of the Knautical Knights’ petty outrages, but even as spectators, the very concept rankled. This latest episode with Decca in the pool was just the latest and, it seemed, the last straw.

Douglass walked up to the four of them after school (Marian having joined them) and startled them with a question. What is necessary for evil to triumph? he said. It was a line the teacher had repeated during a social studies lecture a few weeks ago.

They stared at him. I don’t know, said Andy, finally. Cheese off a water polo player?

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, recited Marian. That’s it, right?

The context was unspoken but understood. So what are we supposed to do about it? said Michelle. I can swim but they’ve got a mean streak, those Knautical Knight jerks.

Yeah, KK, said Joey, warming to the idea of organized resistance. They’re just one K short.

‘You said it before, I overheard you, said Douglass, turning to Andy. There’s no justice, there’s just us. We have to step up and do something. What are we going to do, wait until Joey drowns, or something else terrible happens? What do you think?"

Joey was game but the rest