The Midnight Dog of the Repo Man by W. Bruce Cameron

“W HAT KIND OF DOG doesn’t want to go for a walk?” I demand of my basset-houndish canine, who has responded with a sigh of disgust to my invitation for a stroll around the block. Jake’s stocky legs, which are barely long enough to keep his stomach from dragging when he’s upright, don’t even twitch as I slap my thighs and give a low whistle.
You go,
his mournful, deep brown eyes seem to be saying.
I’ll sleep
.
    â€œDogs love walks. It’s what they live for,” I insist.
    Jake’s expression indicates he thinks those other mutts are idiots. When I kneel down to look at him more closely, stroking his huge, velvet ears, he presses his eyes closed and tries to get his brown, white, and black body to blend in with the beige carpet.
    â€œHaven’t you read the dog manual?”
    You can’t see me; my eyes are closed.
    He’s a new dog and we’re still getting used to each other. Well, not “new” in the sense that he recently slid down the birth canal; he made that trip maybe eight years ago. But new to me, as is the experience of owning my own pet. The last time I lived with a dog it was a family Labrador named Spooky who was so determined to catch squirrels he would plunge through screen doors and leap out of car windows. I was six years old and it was my job to clean up after Spooky in the backyard, which was how I knew he was supplementing his dog food diet with unauthorized enhancements such as my sister’s doll clothes. Jake, however, believes squirrels should be allowed to scamper unmolested and can barely be bothered to stick his head in his bowl more than once or twice a day, so completely different from the food-frenzied Lab of my childhood that I’m still having trouble getting used to it.
    â€œI know it’s late, buddy. But that’s what you signed up for when you came to live with a bouncer in a bar—I usually don’t even get home before midnight.”
    I am not a midnight dog
.
    â€œCome on, Jake. Want a treat?”
    Jake has integrity and cannot be bribed into any conduct he holds in contempt.
    â€œI had three guns stuck in my face, the day I adopted you,” I remind Jake in a blatant attempt to guilt him into coming with me. He groans aloud:
Not
this
again
. “It’s true,” I insist. “Maybe not the same calendar day, but the same twenty-four-hour period. You owe me.”
    Jake decides I’m never going to shut up and lurches to his feet with a put-upon expression, grumpily following me outside into the darkness. Bugs are singing and a light breeze tickles the leaves in the trees overhead, though the splendors of such a perfect summer night are lost on my dog, who feels the whole forced-march ordeal should be kept as short as possible. It’s August and Jake has been my companion since early June—I’m no longer worried that his ex-owner is going to come try to steal him back.
    When I tell people the story of how my dog came to live with me, I always start with the two guns that were pointed in my direction at just past ten in the evening, the day before I met Jake. It’s a tenuous connection, to be sure, but to me it all links together logically—I’m certain I would never have adopted Jake if it hadn’t been for the men with the shotguns.
    There’s not really not much for me to do as the bouncer in the Black Bear Bar in Kalkaska, Michigan—picture a small town, a failing saloon, and me in the corner (a big, grumpy guy nursing beers and grudges in equal measure) and you pretty much have the scene. I was sitting by myself at a table, watching my sister, Becky, watch the only two patrons in the place—a couple of pretty ladies named Stasia Gaffney and Cora Sins. Becky is the person who involuntarily contributed the doll wardrobe to Spooky’s diet, back when we were kids—a bit of information I have never shared with her, preferring to hold it back so