Barking at Bufferflies
Ed McBain

Damn dog barked at everything.
Sounds nobody else could hear, in the middle of the night the damn dog barked at them.
"He's protecting us," Carrie would say.
Protecting us. Damn dog weighs eight pounds soaking wet, he's what's called a Maltese poodle, he's protecting us. His name is Valletta, which is the capital of Malta. That's where the breed originated, I suppose. Some sissy Maltese nobleman must've decided he needed a yappy little lapdog that looked like a white feather duster. Little black nose. Black lips. Black button eyes. Shaggy little pip-squeak named Valletta. Who barked at everything from a fart to a butterfly. Is that someone ringing the bell? The damn dog would hurl himself at the door like a grizzly bear, yelping and growling and raising a fuss that could wake the dead in the entire county.
"He's just protecting us," Carrie would say.
Protecting us.
I hated that damn dog.
I still do.
He was Carrie's dog, you see. She rescued him from a husband-and-wife team who used to beat him when he was just a puppy—gee, I wonder why. This was two years before we got married. I used to think he was cute while she was training him. She'd say, "Sit, Valletta," and he'd walk away. She'd say, "Stay, Valletta," and he'd bark. She'd say, "Come, Valletta," and he'd take a nap. This went on for six months. He still isn't trained.
Carrie loved him to death.
As for El Mutto, the only thing on earth he loved was Carrie. Well, you save a person's life, he naturally feels indebted. But this went beyond mere gratitude. Whenever Carrie left the house, Valletta would lie down just inside the door, waiting for her to come home. Serve him a hot pastrami on rye, tell him, "Come, Valletta, time to eat," he'd look at me as if he'd been abandoned by the love of his life and never cared to breathe again. When he heard her car in the driveway, he'd start squealing and peeing on the rug. The minute she put her key in the lock, he jumped up in the air like a Chinese acrobat, danced and pranced on his hind legs when she opened the door, began squealing and leaping all around her until she knelt beside him and scooped him into her embrace and made comforting little sounds to him: "Yes, Valletta, yes, Mommy, what a good boy, oh, yes, what a beautiful little puppyboy."
I used to joke about cooking him.
"Maltese meatloaf is delicious," I used to tell Carrie. "We'll pluck him first, and then wash him real good, and stuff him and put him in the oven for what, an hour? Maybe forty-five minutes, the size of him. Serve him with roast potatoes and—"
"He understands every word you say," she'd tell me.
Damn dog would just cock his head and look up at me. Pretended to be bewildered, the canny little son of a bitch.
"Would you like to be a meatloaf?" I'd ask him.
He'd yawn.
"You'd better be a good dog or I'll sell you to a Filipino man."
"He understands you."
"You want to go home with a Filipino man?"
"Why do you talk to him that way?"
"In the Philippines they eat dogs, did you know that, Valletta? Dogs are a delicacy in the Philippines. You want to go home with a Filipino man?"
"You're hurting him."
"He'll turn you into a rack of Maltese chops, would you like that, Valletta?"
"You're hurting me, too."
"Or some breaded Maltese cutlets, what do you say, Valletta? You want to go to Manila?"
"Please don't, John. You know I love him."
Damn dog would rush into the bathroom after her, sit by the tub while she took her shower, lick the water from her toes while she dried herself. Damn dog would sit at her feet while she was peeing on the toilet. Damn dog would even sit beside the bed whenever we made love. I asked her once to please put him out in the hall.
"I feel as if there's a pervert here in the bedroom watching us," I said.
"He's not watching us."
"He's sitting there staring at us."
"No, he's not."
"Yes, he is. It embarrasses me, him staring at my privates that way."
"Your privates? When did you start using that expression?"
"Ever since he started staring at it."
"He's not staring at it."
"He is. In fact, he's glaring at it. He doesn't like me making love to you."
"Don't be silly, John. He's just a cute little puppydog." 
One day, cute little puppydog began barking at me.
I came in the front door, and the stupid little animal was sitting smack in the middle of the entry, snarling and barking at rne as if I were a person come to read the gas meter.
"What?" I said.
He kept barking.
"You're barking at me?" I said. "This is my house, I live here, you little shit, how dare you bark at me?"
"What is it, what is it?" Carrie yelled, rushing into the hallway.
"He's barking at me," I said.
"Shhh, Valletta," she said. "Don't bark at John."
He kept barking, the little well-trained bastard.
"How would you like to become a Maltese hamburger?" I asked him.
He kept barking.
I don't know when I decided to kill him.
Perhaps it was the night Carrie seated him at the dinner table with us. Until then, she'd been content to have him sitting at our feet like the despicable little beggar he was, studying every bite we took, waiting for scraps from the table.
"Go ahead," I'd say, "watch every morsel we put in our mouths. You're not getting fed from the table."
"Oh, John," Carrie would say.
"I can't enjoy my meal with him staring at me that way."
"He's not staring at you."
"What do you call what he's doing right this minute? Look at him! If that isn't staring, what is it?"
"I think you're obsessed with this idea of the dog staring at you."
"Maybe because he is staring at me."
"If he is, it's because he loves you."
"He doesn't love me, Carrie."
"Yes, he does."
"He loves you"
"He loves you, too, John."
"No, just you. In fact, if you want to talk about obsession, that's obsession. What that damn mutt feels for you is obsession."
"He's not a mutt, and he's not obsessed. He just wants to be part of the family. He sees us eating, he wants to join us. Come, Valletta, come sweei puppyboy, come little Mommy, come sit with your family," she said, anc hoisted him off the floor and plunked him down on a chair between us.
"I'll get your dish, sweet babypup," she said.
"Carrie," I said, "I will not have that mutt sitting at the table with us." "He's not a mutt," she said. "He's purebred." "Valletta," I said, "get the hell off that chair or I'll—" He began barking.
"You mustn't raise your hand to him," Carrie said. "He was abused. He thinks you're about to hit him."
"Hit him?" I said. "I'm about to kill him!"
The dog kept barking.
And barking.
And barking.
I guess that's when I decided to do it.
October is a good time for dying.
"Come, Valletta," I said, "let's go for a walk."
He heard me say "Come," so naturally he decided to go watch television.
"Is Daddy taking you for a walk?" Carrie asked.
Daddy.
Daddy had Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson in the pocket of his bush jacket. Daddy was going to walk little pisspot here into the woods far from the house and put a few bullets in his head and then sell his carcass to a passing Filipino man or toss it to a wayward coyote or drop it in the river. Daddy was going to tell Carrie that her prized purebred mutt had run away, naturally, when I commanded him to come. I called and called, I would tell her, but he ran and ran, and God knows where he is now.
"Don't forget his leash," Carrie called from the kitchen.
"I won't, darling."
"Be careful," she said. "Don't step on any snakes."
"Valletta will protect me," I said, and off we went.
The leaves were in full voice, brassy overhead, rasping underfoot. Valletta kept backing off on the red leather leash, stubbornly planting himself every ten feet or so into the woods, trying to turn back to the house where his beloved mistress awaited his return. I kept assuring him that we were safe here under the trees, leaves dropping gently everywhere around us. "Come, little babypup," I cooed, "come little woofikins, there's nothing can hurt you here in the woods."
The air was as crisp as a cleric's collar.
When we had come a far-enough distance from the house, I reached into my pocket and took out the gun. "See this, Valletta?" I said. "I am going to shoot you with this. You are never going to bark again, Valletta. You are going to be the most silent dog on earth. Do you understand, Valletta?"
He began barking.
"Quiet," I said.
He would not stop barking.
"Damn you!" I shouted. "Shut up!"
And suddenly he yanked the leash from my hands and darted away like the sneaky little sissydog he was, all white and furry against the orange and yellow and brown of the forest floor, racing like a ragged whisper through the carpet of leaves, trailing the red leash behind him like a narrow trickle of blood. I came thrashing after him. I was no more than six feet behind him when he ran into a clearing saturated with golden light. I followed him with the gun hand, aiming at him. Just as my finger tightened on the trigger, Carrie burst into the clearing from the opposite end.
"No!" she shouted, and dropped to her knees to scoop him protectively into her arms, the explosion shattering the incessant whisper of the leaves, the dog leaping into her embrace, blood flowering on her chest, oh dear God, no, I thought, oh dear sweet Jesus, no, and dropped the gun and ran to her and pressed her bleeding and still against me while the damn dumb dog barked and barked.
He has not barked since.
For him, it must seem as if she's gone someplace very far away, somewhere never even remotely perceived in his tiny Maltese mentality. In a sense this is true. In fact, I have repeated the story so often to so many people that I've come to believe it myself. I told her family and mine, I told all our friends, I even told the police, whom her brother was suspicious and vile enough to call, that I came home from work one day and she was simply gone. Not a hint that she was leaving. Not even a note. All she'd left behind was the dog. And she hadn't even bothered to feed him before her departure.
Valletta often wanders into the woods looking for her.
He circles the spot where two autumns ago her blood seeped into the earth. The area is bursting with fresh spring growth now, but he circles and sniffs the bright green shoots, searching, searching. He will never find her, of course. She is wrapped in a tarpaulin and buried deep in the woods some fifty miles north of where the three of us once lived together, Carrie and I and the dog.
There are only the two of us now.
He is all I have left to remind me of her.
He never barks and I never speak to him.
He eats when I feed him, but then he walks away from his bowl without once looking at me and falls to the floor just inside the entrance door, waiting for her return.
I can't honestly say I like him any better now that he's stopped barking. But sometimes . . .
Sometimes when he cocks his head in bewilderment to observe a floating butterfly, he looks so cute I could eat him alive.