Bucky asks me to kill his dog. An odd request, unless you know Bucky. I tell him I’ll think about it.

Another week goes by and he says, “What about it? Can you do it?”

“It?” I say.

“You know,” he says. “The dog,” he says. “Can you do it?”

We’re eating lunch in our makeshift kitchen – card table and baby-blue plastic playskool chairs. Bucky and I share the upstairs of an old house by the tracks. Our landlord is Mr. Gottefried. He’s close to eighty and hard of hearing. The rent’s pretty cheap, but we have to follow a couple rules. Number one: don’t flush the shitter when he’s in the shower; and number two: no loud music – which is kind of strange, considering.

The dog in question has these ugly tumors along its back. Mostly it lies around on the porch all day, or it might hobble into the kitchen and munch on some Kibbles. I’m not sure I want to be remembered as a dog killer. Might even be laws against it, I don’t know.

“Take him to the dog doctor,” I say.

Bucky makes a fist, knocks on my head, says, “Hello in there. Hello, anybody home?”

Bucky's not violent or anything, but he’s like this a lot. Knocking on my head. Indian burns to wake me up. Ambush noogies while I’m watching TV.

“What?” I say.

“You got a hundred bucks?”

“For what?”

“For the doggie doctor,” he says.

I whistle. “No shit,” I say. “A hundred?”

He says, “Do I look like I’m shitting you?”

“How much you got?” I say.

“I’m close,” he says.

“Like how close?” I say.

“Maybe fifty bucks if I count the ten in your wallet.”

“How much if I do it?”

Bucky makes another fist, raps me on the forehead.

“You listening to me?” he says. “I got fifty bucks. Fifty bucks is all I’ve got. I’ll give you twenty-five after you do the hit.”

Do the hit. Bucky likes his television. He likes to think of himself as a member of The Sopranos. He goes around saying stuff like that all the time. Wearing black clothes. Eating spaghetti.

I say, “Twenty-five, huh?”

“Upon completion of the contract.”

Oh brother. I watch TV too, so I say, “I need half up front.”

“No way,” he says. “Twenty-five at closing or no dice.”

I walk over to the sink, rinse my plate, say, “No dice, then.” I look out the window, wait for an answer.

“Half, you say. Like ten bucks or something?”

Division not being my strong suit – never could get used to the carryover, the subtraction, that remainder bullshit – I say, “Closer to fifteen.”

He dumps his plate in the sink, puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezes. He says, “Okay. But you gotta do it today.”

*

I wrap the dog in some dirty green-brown blankets, stuff him in the backseat floor of the landlord’s car and drive out to the country. Bucky flips me the finger on my way out. He’s in the backyard digging a grave. Next to me, on the passenger seat, is a shotgun.

I park the car. I scoop the dog out and carry him into the woods. Through the blankets I can feel the lumps along his back. I set him down in a pile of leaves and sit down on a nearby stump. We sit there like that for a while. Just looking at each other. I walk over to him, rub behind his ear, then head back to the car for the shotgun.

How do you shoot a dog like this? I think about just driving back, leaving him out here and letting him die that way. He’s an old dog, yes, and I’m sure those tumors hurt, but still, leaving him out here alone doesn’t seem like the right thing to do either. I set the dog in my gunsight, wrap my finger around the trigger.

But I can’t do it. It’s not something I can explain either. But it feels like the wrong thing to do. Twenty-five bucks or not, this is wrong.

I go over to the dog, lie down next to him, his tail faintly thumping the ground next to me. I rest my hand on his back.

Looking up into the darkening sky I say to no one, to everyone, “Why is this so hard?”

####

Scott Ford, 35, lives in Houston, Texas with his wife and four children. (He loves all animals, including dogs.)

He is a senior tax manager with Grant Thorton, LLP, a national accounting and consulting firm.

Dog Killer is his first published story.

You can reach him by email at: sford1201@cs.com.