Warning: it's not pretty, there's obscenity, and what I'm shooting for is not to sneer at the holidays, but to play with some realistic fiction. You were warned.
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The Hat
Though it rained all night and melted most of the snow, grey-white ice lay in the shadows between houses. Detritus of the winter emerged: a blue-and-white child’s glove, flattened cigarette packs, bits of black plastic. The couple was walking their dog now that the rain had stopped. Christmas lights burned in the windows. The woman wore a long blue wool coat and immaculate hiking boots. She walked with her arms crossed and her bare hands tucked under the woolen arms of her coat. She held the blue leash in her right hand and their new dog darted back and forth on the bare sidewalk. Her husband walked beside her. They didn’t speak. He wore a large furry Russian hat and smoked a cigar. The smoke billowed up behind them as they walked, grew thin and disappeared.
“Fucking dog,” the husband growled when the animal lunged in front of his feet. When it squatted in someone’s yard a moment later, the sudden stop jerked the woman’s leash arm open, making her twist stiffly. She made mewling sounds to coax the dog to hurry while they waited. It strained and trembled, then bounded onto the sidewalk. “Goddamn fucking dog” the husband said. The woman jerked hard at the leash but the dog pulled away at the end of his collar anyway, choking and scrabbling.
A man had come out on his upstairs porch to smoke a cigarette now that the rain had stopped. His house had a giant candy cane cutout hammered into the front lawn. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted down to the couple. “You want me to clean that up?” he said. The dog started barking at the man. The couple kept walking without speaking. “Hey!” the man said. He was barefoot and leaned on the banister with both hands. “You gonna leave that shit there for me to clean up?” The tiny dog lunged into the collar and in so doing its blue leash tangled around the legs of the husband, forcing him to stumble. The dog yelped and ran from him, forcing the woman to spin on one heel. Blue smoke from the cigar filled the air.
The husband grabbed the collar and neatly flipped the dog over. He held it to the ground by the throat with his left hand and made a fist with the right. His gloved hand hit the dog in the belly, the chest, the face. He stood over the animal and twisted his body to put all his weight into it. The dog yelped and struggled and the skin on its face was cut against its teeth. The husband’s fluffy hat fell to the wet sidewalk and rolled against his wife’s boots. Blood spattered on the husband’s coat and when he stopped, the knuckles of his glove had been cut open. “What are you doing?” cried the man on the porch. He stood up, cigarette still between his fingers. “What the hell are you doing?” he said. “It’s not the fucking dog’s fault, you asshole,” he said, his voice thin and trembling. “It’s not the fucking dog’s fault” he repeated. The husband and the wife stood still for a moment. The dog huddled at the extreme end of his leash, mouth open, panting. The woman bent to pick up the husband’s beautiful hat.
“Where do you get off being so vulgar?” said the woman to the man on the porch. “Just who do you think you are?”
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