The Power of the Dog

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.

The more ignorant people were, the more they felt they had to decorate their backs.

One reason he hated booze, he was afraid of it, afraid of what he might tell.

“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.”

So Phil lived—watching, noting, figuring—as the rest of us see and forget.

it irritated Phil when he couldn’t be frank; he felt lost and angry.

Phil needn’t have worried, but you do wonder sometimes if people are what you think they are, or if you only think that they are and they are what they are and not what you think.

In other words, he knew all there was to know about love, that it’s the delight of being in the presence of the loved one.

Phil had, furthermore, absolutely no use for people who tried to make conversation, knowing it as a ploy people used to make themselves feel adequate and to ingratiate themselves.

How does one man, how does one man get the power to make the rest see in themselves what he sees in them? Where does he get the authority? But from somewhere he does get it.

Phil made no excuses.

But Phil knew Fate punishes the proud, and dashes hope.

Possessed of the most rigid morals himself, Phil seldom judged those more unfortunate than he in that department.

Phil liked to teach people a lesson.

Phil’s mind was photographic; each detail that passed before his eye was etched deep in that dark recess where, for the rest of us, float and drift those pointless hairlike shapes, where lights flash off and on, and some amorphous shape slides across.

Take what I’ve got. You’ve been good. Phil, at that moment in that place that smelled of years felt in his throat what he’d felt once before and dear God knows never expected nor wanted to feel again, for the loss of it breaks your heart.