THE DOG HUNTERS (completed)

29 - MACHINATIONS

One of the constants with the hunt was we never seemed to beat the spread. One night I asked Lulubelle about this while Tinto was outdoing laundry (if I had asked Tinto the answer would not have made sense and it would have been turned into a joke of which I was on thebutt end).

My question made Lulubelle weary. "I don't know. Statistics are ultimately a mystery, even for someone who bathes in them like I do.All I know is, it's a good thing. It's good not to be too good, you know?"

"What do you mean, too good?"

Lulubelle nodded, like I was an idiot. "Too good is when we beat our spread."

"So too good isn't good."

Lulubelle nodded and then shook his head. "When we beat the spread we celebrate. Tinto buys a bottle. You think he's annoying now? Check him out when he gets some whiskey in him."

I hadn't dealt with alcohol since I'd stolen that beer. I hadn't thought about alcohol since I'd hooked with the Dog Hunters – their world was too distracting. Suddenly my knees ached and my tongue went dry. Odd how that happens.

Lulubelle continued, "Sometimes beer, yeah, but he's pretty anal about it being the right temperature, so you know, whiskey – not that I know anything about that shit. Did he tell you about his sleeping problem– right? – how he only sleeps like once a week or so? Well, the way I see it, it's like that theory about how war is really about thinning the population cause there's too many men. This celebrating we do is really about Tinto medicating himself every once in a while– because it only happens, well, how long have you been on the hunt with us? It's been like five months? Anyway, it gives him the opportunity to get a real night's sleep, and not having to admit that's what he's doing. I mean, it all sort of works out, the way it works. But I'll tell you man, I hate it. It throws off my scheduling by about three days, and then it takes just as many to try to get things back up and straight again. I just hate that. I think the dogs suffer too."

The tour was a smoothly running machine, but it also sort of wasn't.Peeing was always a problem. There was a scheduled bathroom break each afternoon, but often the public part Lulubelle guided us to, had their bathrooms locked up. Tinto insisted we not publicly relieve ourselves except at night, so in my opinion we wasted lots of time finding fast food restaurants, and then dealing with that. Laundry was also always an issue. Anywhere other than camp where we weren't moving made Tinto feel like we were targets, and I don't think he was wrong. I began to think maybe one of the reasons I'd been brought onboard was to babysit Lulubelle so he could have more flexibility and peace of mind conducting necessary missions. I learned from Lulubelle he suspected Tinto pulled a disability check from the military, which financed the chow and other essentials of this operation. There were times when Tinto needed to collect and filepaper work, basically standing in line all day, and these were the most difficult times, and usually resulted in procuring a motel roomso Lulubelle could be safe. Having a real shower instead of using the sink at McDonalds was nice but more importantly these were days without hardly any dogs, and even I began to feel the ache.

 I pretended to learn a lot about the art and gospel of Dog Hunting as they understood it, but it ultimately ended up being too intricate and weird for me to really pick up (for example dog parks did not count, and I can't remember why. Interacting with dogs was strictly forbidden unless they raised their left paw. Etc.) I learned they had been at this for going on four years, and were always amazed at the changes in the dog landscape, made even more fascinating through Lulubelle's rich documentation.