Luke O'Dell

William O’Dell is waiting for the bus on the corner of 39th and Troost with his wife of fifteen years. William O’Dell is, arguably, on the wrong side of town, but nobody around him could possibly know that he’s hardly ever been on the right side of one. He’s smoking a cigarette, watching the cars pull up to the stoplight, shiny cars and beaters, nearly everyone blasting loud music, everything vibrating and squealing and honking. His wife is chewing her cheek.

“Damn find of the sun to be coming out this late in the afternoon,” he says to his wife but really just to hear his own voice. It’s February and he’s sweating beneath his leather jacket. He thinks today would be the damnedest day of his life if he had twenty dollars and nowhere to be. As it is, the old lady needs a few tests done down at the hospital. He drops his cigarette on the sidewalk and grinds it with his heel. Everything should be alright, they both think. But still.

People keep piling onto the corner. There’s an older, bigger black lady and her daughter to the right of him on the ledge, both holding several bags from the drug store in their hands, there’s a few high school kids fooling around up front by the curb, yelling at the cars as they roll past. Everything is a little less heavy in the city, William thinks, when the sun is out in February. To his left there’s a boy and a girl talking about something. Movies or work or school or something. William turns to his wife.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks.

She looks at him for a second as if she’s just woken up. She stops chewing her cheek. “Oh. Just Harris. The moving company’s been gettin’ less jobs. He says he had to let one of his boys go last week. You remember Freddy? No? Well, I guess nobody’s moving into or out of town lately. Least nobody who needs movers.”


“Times are tough, mama. Can’t worry about everyone and everyone’s children.”

“Just wish I could help it.”

William leans back and contemplates, squinting into the sun. Not much to be done these days, he thinks. There was a time and a place when there was, maybe, but it wasn’t 2011 and it wasn’t at the bus stop. He wonders if he’ll ever get used to it.

Somewhere to his left there’s a baby crying. The high school kids by the curb are shoving each other a little bit. One of the smaller ones falls over and the others laugh at him. He laughs too, but not the same. Fucking kids, William thinks.

The boy and the girl next to him have edged a little closer. They are talking about a friend of theirs.

“—sure, he’s great. We were rough housing a like bit while Mary was making the drinks and he had my entire forearm in his jaws. He wasn’t clamped down hard, but you could really tell he could tear the thing off if he wanted to,” the boy, somewhere in his early 20s, said.

“Oh, I love Brusier!” the girl says.

“Yeah, yeah. He’s a beautiful dog. Pits get a bad rep for a lot of reasons, but Mary’s really got that dog wrapped around her finger. It’s funny watching her walk the guy. It’s just this huge dog almost dragging her up and down the street. She’s so small, you know?”

“I know, right? I--”

“I had a pitbull once,” William says, interrupting. The two kind of look at him half confused. He doesn’t notice, “by the name of Luke. He’s like you said, real nice, real good around kids. Good around anyone actually, ‘slong as they weren’t givin’ him too much shit, he’s playful as could be.”

“Oh. Yeah?” the girl says.

“Oh yeah. He’s beautiful too, little baby brown brindle. Raised him from a pup and we’d jump around in the fields behind my house and chase squirrels and shit. This was down in Joplin ‘bout 18 years ago. Boy, he was a good dog.”

“Sounds like it,” the girl says, ready to change the subject, “what are you out doing today?”

“Oh just headin’ up to the hospital with ma here.” He squints into the sun for a second. “But Luke was a good dog. He’s the most beautiful pit you’d’ve ever saw. People just don’t know what to do with pitbulls. Some of ‘em just think cause they’re kinda ugly and tough they can treat ‘em like it. Luke was a good one though, he died too young.”

“Oh! What happened?”

“Oh, I don’t know... Well, my wife—not ma here, but my wife at the time, down in Joplin—she, well she kicked me out of our house down there, it was her family’s you see.” William’s face tenses up a little bit as he begins and his voice is a little quieter. “Well, she kicked my ass out real fast and I had to leave my truck since it wasn’t runnin’ at the time and I had to leave Luke too, she kicked me out so fast. So I went into town and stayed there for a bit, had to work you know? Well, a week later I come back and figure I’ll run up to the old lady’s house—she was a firecracker, far too young for the younger old man I was back then. But I call ‘er up before and tell ‘er what I’m thinkin’ and she says alright, come on up you son of a bitch. So I run up there with some tools to fix the truck and when I get there I see that the truck ain’t where it was when I left. My blood was boilin’ when I saw that so I storm up to the front porch and see her brothers and her pa settin’ there waitin’ on me. Well, she’s still pissed as shit and her folks are settin’ there all ugly lookin’ and I ask what the hell she’s done with my truck. She says she sold it for 250 bucks.”

“Damn,” the boy says.

“Yeah. Now that was a thousand dollar truck, and she went and sold it for 250. Well, she gives me the check, some name I don’t recognize, some guy in Webb City. Now I’m not about to argue too much with a crazy woman, that’s one thing I knew then and somethin’ I still know, and I’m ‘specially not about to argue with a crazy woman whose got her ugly family settin’ all around her ‘specially when they all look sober and probably armed at that. So I say ‘well, okay, where’s Luke?’ and she just stares at me, the closest thing I’ve ever seen to the devil I swear, and says, ‘why don’t you just go out back?’ So I go out back and, sure enough, there’s my baby boy, raised from a pup, and—well, he’s just lying on his side in the grass with a bullet in his head.”

“Oh my god.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah... Now I don’t know this, but I think they had just shot ‘im. Probably right after I called up there. But he’s just lying there, still chained to his post, flies just startin’ to buzz all round ‘im. I about started cryin’ right there. I ran back into the house mad as a bull but when I get in there, there’s her folks again. So I just walk out that front door and went back on down the road.”

“Oh my god.”

“Did you take her to court?” the boy asks.

“Nah. No. Wasn’t about to do that. Just moved south for a little bit. Down to Texarkana in with my sister for a bit. He’s a good boy too... had a couple dogs since, but none of ‘em were quite like ol’ Luke.”

Everything gets quiet. Everything feels heavier for a second. The wind picks up a little, but it’s not cold today. The sun is shining even brighter and the clouds have drifted east for the night. The bus comes up on the corner. As its air brakes squeal through the wind, William’s wife leans over and mumbles something into his ear that he barely hears.

The boy looks back at William and asks, “What did she say?”

William looks up, “what’s that?” He squints for a second before finding a little smile and says, “oh, ma’s just tryin’ to make me feel better about my dog.”

He did.