The Power of the Dog: A Novel

by Thomas Savage

But his habits and appearance required strangers to alter their conception of an aristocrat to one who can afford to be himself.

When he had gone, one of the new loudmouthed young cowhands spoke right up. “Hey—he’s sort of a lonely cuss, ain’t he? Like about what we was saying before he come in, do you guess anybody ever loved him? Or maybe he ever loved anybody?”

what a weird question lol

“Then I’ll tell them,” the rancher said. “It means you’re a horse’s ass. And for that matter, so is your sissy of a son.” Johnny removed his hat, smoothed his hair, and put his hat back on. He didn’t take his eyes from the rancher. “My son is not a sissy.” “The boys around here say so.” “Because he reads. Because he thinks.” “Because he makes paper posies. Because he don’t know a foul ball from a fly.” Foolish of a small man like Johnny to lunge. Foolish of him to say, “You can’t call my son a sissy!” because the rancher could and the rancher did and did and did.

Late one fall afternoon, the air smelling strong of snow, Johnny returned from a trip out into the hills behind the town. He had delivered a woman of a dead child. Lucky, lucky child, he thought. One soul who would never fail, would never cower before the inexorable naturalistic principle—that the weak are destroyed by the strong.

“I would tell you, Peter, never to mind what people say. People can never know the heart of another.” “I’ll never mind what people say.” “And Peter, please don’t say it quite like that. Most who don’t mind—most of them grow hard, get hard. You must be kind, you must be kind. I think the man you will become could hurt people terribly, because you’re strong. Do you understand kindness, Peter?” “I’m not sure whether I do, father.” “Well, then. To be kind is to try to remove obstacles in the way of those who love or need you.”

He had apparently just completed combing his yellow hair, for he still bore in his right hand the black pocket comb he always carried, and before she spoke again he dragged his thumb over the teeth, and then again and again. She found the sound chilling. “Peter, please.” He stood looking past her, at the opposite wall. She turned to follow his eyes. “What do you see there?” Peter stood wondering what words he would use to tell her he had found his father upstairs, and had just cut him down from where he had hanged himself from one of those ropes coiled by the window for escape, in case of fire.

Far as Phil knew, George never blamed anybody, a virtue so remote and inhuman it probably accounted for the discomfort people felt in his presence; his silence they took for disapproval and it allowed them no chink to get at him and quarrel with him. His silence left people guilty and they had no chance to dilute their guilt with anger. Inhuman! But Phil felt no guilt. He always called the cards as they fell, played the cards as they were.

Had Johnny Gordon told her who’d torn his shirt and tossed him like a knotted rag against the wall, Rose would never have accepted George Burbank. But Johnny hadn’t said, feeling when you give a man a name you give him a face as well, and his humiliation was easier if the man was faceless, a force, like Fate. As she came to enjoy George’s quiet company—even to look forward to it—she rationalized the incident of the paper flowers. Maybe Mr. Phil Burbank had meant nothing. For what grown man would humiliate a boy? Was she too sensitive, too quick to remember old taunts in the schoolyard, to recall them again in the words of a perfectly ordinary conversation? What grown man would humiliate a boy!

The Old Gent turned to her. The question he was about to ask had often been on his mind. A hundred times he had phrased the question, opened his lips to speak it. Meeting her eyes, he had until now kept silent, wondering if she might not sense in the question some criticism of herself. “Do you think…?” Shocked, he suddenly realized the same question had been on her mind. It was she, then, who expressed it. “Do I think there might be something—something wrong—something wrong with Phil?”