THE CRUMBS WHICH FALL 3/3

[perfectfigure]

Trigger warning for sexual violence, physical violence, and all kinds of unpleasantness.

"Yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.”
Matthew 15:27

PART THREE: IN THE WORLD

Cooper watches Master fall with no expression on his face. There's blood and brains splattered all over the carpet. The man with the mirrors comes in and shuts the door behind him. "Is there anyone else here?" he asks Cooper.

Cooper shakes his head, just a little.

"No other pets, dogs? No people?"

Cooper shakes his head again.

The man puts the gun back in a holster under his armpit. There's a second holster and gun on the other side. Cooper lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding.

"I'm Saul. You're coming with me." He gestures to Cooper and Cooper steps carefully over the body and mess on the floor.

Cooper glances back at Master's body a final time as the door swings shut behind them.

Saul puts Cooper in his car, a big black SUV with windows tinted so dark no one can see inside. The engine rumbles and Saul drives faster than he is supposed to.

After over an hour, Saul looks at Cooper in the rearview mirror. "Do you still have your tongue?"

Cooper opens his mouth, sticks out his tongue.

"Talk. Tell me how a half-dead fighting dog ended up as a pet."

Cooper looks out the window at the trees rushing by.

"Don't play slave games," Saul says. "You'll be free in a month so you better start practicing. Talk."

Cooper shifts, pulling his knees up to his chest and looking at the side of Saul's face that he can see. Saul glances at him again in the mirror. He grabs his sunglasses and tosses them on the passenger seat. Where Saul's left eye should be, there is nothing but puckered scar tissue.

Cooper stares at it for a long time and then says, "I fought you."

"You won."

The sunglasses go back on, but now Cooper can't stop looking at this man who used to be a dog, now wearing fancy human clothes and driving a fancy human vehicle. He remembers the fight, if only because it was worse than the others. Someone in the audience threw out a little bottle, small enough to hide inside Cooper's palm, and when Cooper managed to get the other dog down, despite the difference in size, the spectators screamed in a frenzy for him to use it. Put it in its eyes, put it in its eyes. Cooper did, and he still has nightmares about the sound the dog made as the acid began to burn and eat at its flesh.

Cooper remembers all the dogs he hurt -- many he killed -- and he feels like his chest is full of that same acid, like maybe there's not anything left in there at all.

After awhile, Saul tells Cooper that the drive will be long and he should sleep. Cooper doesn't think one bit but only reacts to an order, curling up in the back seat and closing his eyes. He lets the hum of the rolling tires lull him to sleep.

He wakes for Saul to shove a package of human food and a bottle of human water at him. The sun is starting to go down. Cooper sits and opens the package clumsily. When he breaks off the first morsel of food and puts it in his mouth, he is shocked fully awake. It's like heaven. He tries to take his time with the rest of it but ends up gobbling it nearly all at once. The water, too, is delicious and clear, tasting like nothing and everything all at once, and Cooper drinks until he feels sick.

The next time Cooper wakes, Saul is talking on one of the magic phones. "I have him," Cooper hears Saul say. "The owner resisted and I had to shoot him... Yes, he's dead... I'll keep you updated."

The vehicle stops and the door slams like a shot. Cooper sits, adrenaline pumping. In the bright of the headlights he can see trees, trees everywhere, and a house made of wood and a path leading down a steep hill. It doesn't look at all like the rural suburbs where dog fights are popular. It doesn't look like anything Cooper has ever seen.

Saul opens the back door. "Get out," he says. He is not wearing the glasses and the darkness where an eye should be makes him look like a monster.

Cooper's joints crack as he gets out and he follows Saul to the back of the vehicle. Saul promptly fills Cooper's arms with boxes, and then his own, and says, "Follow me."

The house is full of dust and smells funny. Saul sets his boxes by the door and walks through the rooms, flipping on lights. From the sound of Saul's shoes on the floor, Cooper can tell this house is much bigger than old Master's. He didn't think that was possible.

"Put that stuff down. Go into the living room and take off your clothes."

Cooper does as he's told, carefully folding his simple clothing and piling it next to him. He hears Saul rustling and digging through one of the boxes.

"I have to do a quick medical," Saul says, carrying a bag with him into the room and tossing it on the couch. He starts to dig out metal instruments and Cooper starts to tremble. Saul doesn't notice. "Do you have any unhealed injuries right now?"

Cooper shakes his head

"Any chronic pain from old injuries?"

Cooper nods. His eyes don't leave the glittering metal behind Saul.

"Where?"

"Everywhere," Cooper mouths.

"Be specific."

Cooper points numbly, more than ten places on his body. Saul scribbles notes down.

"Turn around, move your hair. I have to note all your scars."

Cooper does.

"I have to touch you now." Saul puts a cold circle attached to a snake on Cooper's chest and back, telling him to breathe deep. He shines a light in Cooper's eye, his nose, his ears, his mouth. He runs his hands all over Cooper's body, pushing and prodding. "You're in good shape, considering. Good weight. Skin looks good. Heart and lungs sound ok. Do you think you need medical care right now, or can you wait for an exam by a real doctor?"

Cooper clenches his fists, nails biting. His eyes are still on the bag and its contents. Nothing has hurt him yet. Yet is the key word. Every time he looks at Saul, all he can think about is the way Saul sounded screaming. He sounds so different now, slow-talking like a human with all the time in the world.

"Look at me. Do you need a vet?"

"No," Cooper chokes out.

"Good. Sit on the couch. I'll be right back."

Saul comes back after a few minutes. He is wearing a different shirt so his arms show. Between his elbow and wrist are ragged, swollen scars, blending together to take up most of the inside of his arm. He catches Cooper looking and says, "I did this myself without a reader, didn't know where it was. You won't even have a scar."

He puts the towel next to Cooper. He puts on a pair of gloves. He rubs sour-smelling liquid all over Cooper's arm and runs the machine over it until it beeps. "You need to stay still. It'll only take a minute. If you move, it'll hurt worse."

Cooper shudders. He's heard that before.

Saul takes a tiny knife and cuts three lines around the area that made the machine beep. With the handle of the tiny knife in his teeth, he carefully peels back the flap of skin. Blood rushes out and he pads at it with a big swab of cotton. Underneath Cooper's skin is a little clear oblong that obviously doesn't belong. Cooper stares, eyes wide, as Saul uses a pair of tweezers to pull it out. Saul drops it on the towel and smooths Cooper's skin back over the wound and, his fingers quick and exact, sews the flap back together.

A quick snip of the nearly-invisible thread and Saul says, "Done."

Cooper hugs his arm to his still-naked belly and looks at the bloody thing on the towel.

"That's an info chip," Saul says. "It has all the information anyone could ever want to know on you on it. Wins, losses, ownership history, registration number, pedigree, if you had one. Some of the new ones have trackers, too, which is why this one is going down the toilet."

Cooper stares down at his arm while Saul cleans up. He hears the whoosh of water as the toilet flushes, the sound of the sink as Saul washes his hands. Cooper doesn't look up when Saul comes back into the living room, but he says, "They can't find me now?"

"No. They can't."

For no reason at all, Cooper starts to cry.

Saul just sits on the couch while Cooper cries. When Cooper's sobs have died out into occasional hiccups, Saul says, "You want to go back to fighting, is that it?"

"What are you going to do to me?"

"I work with a group that rescues and rehabilitates slaves. Your owner had six other slaves registered to him, should've been a good bust. You were the only one on the property."

Cooper gasps, the words hitting him like a sledgehammer. Six? He isn't good at counting but he knows that's a lot more than one or two. Master said he was special. Master gave him all those fruits and saved him from Big Man and touched him so nicely. How many others did he say were special? How many others did he touch like that?

Cooper isn't sorry he's dead, not one bit.

"Because you're in acceptable health and have spent some time as a housepet, we'll probably be here about a month, and then one of my colleagues will take you and set you up with papers, a place to live, a place to work. You'll be a regular person just like me. Except better looking."

Cooper looks at Saul's face, wiping tears from his own. "I did that to you."

"We both did what we had to do."

"I'm not a person. I'm not like you."

"What's the difference? Living in that fancy house, surely you noticed you aren't any different than that master of yours."

Cooper shrugs.

"Did he give you a name? You need one."

"Cooper."

Saul nods and stands. "Have you ever seen a lake?"

Cooper doesn't know what a lake is but he just shakes his head.

"Put your clothes on. Let's go."

Cooper had no idea such a thing existed. Even in the dark, when the only difference betewen the trees and the water was the depth of the shadows, the water seems to go on forever. Saul just watches Cooper.

"You like it? This is Table Rock Lake, one of the last beautiful things in this shitty country. Here, sit down. Be careful not to fall in."

Cooper sits next to Saul. "Is this... on the water?"

Saul laughs, an unexpected sound out of his mouth. "It's called a dock. Yes, it's floating on the water."

"Is it magic?"

"There's no such thing as magic. It's just physics. Put your feet in."

Cooper watches Saul take off his shoes and socks and drop his feet over the edge of the dock. The water makes a little splash. Hesitantly, Cooper hikes up his pants and put his feet over the edge, too. The night is warm and the water is cool and Cooper sighs with this small pleasure.

They sit in silence. After awhile, Saul stands up. "Time for bed," he says. Cooper follows him back up to the house, stepping carefully among rocks and fallen sticks.

"Here's everything you need." Saul hands Cooper a little clear pack with toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, bar of soap. "Get ready for bed and meet me downstairs."

Cooper looks at the staircase in the corner of the living room. It goes down a hole in the floor and curves into darkness like a dungeon. A quick shudder runs through him but it doesn't stop him from doing as he's told, like a good dog. He washes his hands and brushes his teeth and combs his hair just like old Master taught him. He takes off his clothes and folds them carefully, again, and carefully walks down the stairs naked, just like old Master liked.

Saul has turned on one of the magic lights so it's not so much like a dungeon but just another room. The floor is hard and one of the walls is glass so Cooper can see the trees crowding up against the house. In the corner are two piles of mattresses, halfway to the ceiling, and there's one pulled onto the floor and fitted with sheets, pillows, blankets.

Saul looks at Cooper's nakedness and says nothing. "Sleep there," he says, pointing to the mattress. Cooper sets his clothes next to the bed and climbs in, tucking the blankets around himself neatly and leaving room for Saul. "Lights going off now." In the dimmest moonlight, Cooper can see Saul's silhouette as he lowers himself to the floor and curls up, pulling a blanket over his shoulders.

Cooper hears a body moving around the room not long after sunrise, but he can't force himself up out of murky dreams. He sleeps longer -- no way to know how long -- and wakes up with a start. The room is empty, Saul's blanket folded and piled on the extra mattresses.

Out the window, Cooper's eyes catch a flash of movement, weaving through the trees. Cooper stands at the glass wall and watches as it gets bigger, clearer. Cooper's heart stops as he realizes it's Saul, running, and a fear so strong it nearly makes him vomit overtakes him in waves until he notices Saul's careful, steady stride and unfocused eyes. He's not fast and clumsy, looking over his shoulder for an assailant. He's just exercising.

It takes Cooper's heart awhile to slow again. He bites at a chunk of his hair. Saul hasn't noticed him watching yet, but maybe Saul is still too far away from the cabin to see Cooper in the glass. Saul is shirtless and his torso is a mess of scars. Cooper knows many of them from the time they fought -- the cuts, splits, bites, of fighting scars -- but there's a big mass of scar tissue across his ribs that is newer, the ugly raw meat look of burns, an iron brand applied over and over until the individual marks merged into a mess of nothing but pain, burns on top of burns.

Cooper can imagine: Saul lost the fight, one he should've been able to win against a littler dog, and got his face ruined in the process. That's the kind of thing that would make the wrong kind of master blind with rage. Maybe the master just wanted to put a few more marks on him, and maybe Saul made too much noise. Maybe he screamed like he did when Cooper poured the acid into his eye. Maybe his master got even more angry, until he was hitting the dog with the branding iron, over and over, even when the dog passed out from the pain, even as the smell of burnt flesh became overpowering. The dog was worth nothing, so if the dog's master wasn't going to get any money out of it, he might as well work out a little rage. And when he dumped the body, no one would question or care. No one would say, What have you done to him? No one would do anything, except maybe pay a few bucks so they could turn the body into food for other dogs.

Saul's stride slows to a walk. Underneath the scars his body is nothing but bone and muscle. If they were to fight again, Cooper would lose.

At last, Saul sees Cooper watching. His mouth doesn't change, the line of it flat and grim, but his good eye seems to smile. Saul trots up to the glass. He grabs a handle to pull it to the side so suddenly there is nothing between him and Cooper. Cooper jumps back, startled.

"It's a door," Saul says. He pulls the door back and forth and Cooper sees how it's on a track and feels silly for being surprised. After all the wonders he's seen in the human world, a glass door should hardly be a novelty.

"Those burns," Cooper says.

Saul's hand ghosts over his ribs as if self-conscious. "You didn't do it."

"No, but..." Cooper reaches out and touches the mass of scar. Some of it has overgrown the bounds of the original wound, bulbous and red. "I'm sorry. For what I did to you. This, too."

Saul looks away. "We're safe now."

Saul says Cooper needs his hair cut, so Cooper sits in a chair outside and Saul brings the instruments. The glint of metal scissors and buzz of clippers make Cooper shudder, nearly jumping out of his seat.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Saul says, and he just stands there, waiting for Cooper to settle again.

First Saul gathers Cooper's hair all together in his hand and cuts as close to Cooper's head as he can get. A huge chunk of hair falls to the ground, thick and longer than Cooper's hand. Saul stands in front of Cooper and turns on the clippers again. "Not going to hurt at all," he says. He puts the metal teeth against his hand to show, and Cooper nods, even though he isn't quite convinced.

Cooper watches the hair pile up around him. It takes a long time for the clippers to work through all of it and it tickles, but at last, Saul says he's done. "Feel it."

Cooper reaches up and runs a hand backwards over his head. It feels prickly and strange and he giggles. He can see his reflection in the door, and he looks even less like himself than usual. He can't stop touching it. A man is looking back at him, a man with his crooked nose.

Cooper looks back at Saul, who is kicking the hair into the grass. “Some birds'll be happy today,” he says, making his eye-smile.

“Why?”

“They can use your hair to make parts of their nest.”

Cooper looks at the hair, fluttering across the grass in the wind. He looks at the birds up in the trees. And he smiles - not the shy little smile he used to give Master, but a real one that makes his eyes squint and teeth show.

Saul takes Cooper out on the boat. It's like a car, but it floats on water like the dock, and it goes fast so Cooper can feel the wind rushing through the prickly hairs on his head. For a long time he holds tight to the silver bars along the edges of the boat, afraid he'll be thrown out into the water at any moment, but eventually he trusts in the magic Saul calls physics and lets go, leaning into the wind with his eyes closed.

Cooper opens his eyes when the boat begins to slow. They are in the middle of the lake and Cooper can't see anything but water and trees all around them, not even the little cove they came out of. It scares him. He didn't know there was anything so big and alien out in the world.

"I'm getting in," Saul says. "Do you want to?"

"In the lake?" Cooper peers over the side of the boat, staring at the murky water as it rocks them to and fro.

"Yup. Aren't you hot?"

"Do I have to?"

"Of course not." Saul takes off his sunglasses and then his shirt. He opens a trapdoor in the floor of the boat and pulls out an orange vest. "Life jacket," he says, "it'll make you float, if you can't swim."

Cooper just looks at him. Saul shrugs and suddenly -- at least it seems that way to Cooper -- hops up on the back of the boat and dives overboard. Cooper squeaks in surprise and rushes from the front of the boat to the side where Saul disappeared, watching the water. Saul pops up again a handful of yards away from the boat, shaking wet hair out of his face.

Saul swims back to the boat. There is a small wooden platform in the back, just over the propeller, and Saul pulls himself up on it without effort. As the boat rocks, water slips over his feet. "Come on," he says, "put on the jacket. You'll like it."

Cooper bites at his bottom lip. "Is it a trick?"

"No."

"Can I stand, like in the bath?"

"No. That's what the jacket is for."

"If I don't like it, can I get back on the boat?"

"Yes."

Nervously, Cooper picks up the life jacket and puts his arm through the holes, buckles the four black snaps on the front. "Come over here and I'll tighten it up for you," Saul says.

Wishing there were handles on this part of the boat, Cooper climbs onto the platform. The boat tips and his feet get wet and he grabs for Saul, afraid he's going to fall. "You're ok," Saul says, smiling. He tugs on the different straps of the vest until it fits snugly around Cooper. "Sit down on the dock with your feet in," he says. "I'll help you in."

Saul jumps back in while Cooper sits, clinging to the tiny platform Saul called a dock. How can this be a dock and the thing back at the house be a dock, too? One is big and solid; this one is tiny and attached to a boat. Cooper thinks he will never understand the human world.

Saul is in front of him, holding his hands out to Cooper. "Come on," he says, "I won't let you drown."

Cooper takes one of Saul's hands and holds on to the dock with the other. He wiggles his butt until it's on the very edge of the dock, his legs hanging in empty space, and then he throws caution to the wind and lets himself fall.

He does not really expect the water -- or Saul -- to catch him, but they both do. Saul's grip is tight on his hand and the water pushes him back upwards. "Oh," he says.

"You ok?" Saul asks.

"Yeah," Cooper says.

The life vest rides up until it pinches at his armpits, but his head stays above water and that's all that matters. Cooper lets go of Saul's hand and kicks experimentally, sending himself away from the boat a foot or two. He laughs and kicks some more, flailing a bit, but it keeps him moving. He can feel the water rushing over the hairs on his legs and it tickles a bit.

When he looks back, Saul is sitting on the edge of the boat dock, watching. Cooper gives him a grin then turns away and keeps kicking.