Benjamin Myers

Copper

We was stealing copper when the dog showed up. I had just ripped the wiring from a fuse box on the side of the old Ford dealership when I looked up to see the dog sitting by my truck, head cocked to one side like he wondered what I was doing there. Hell, I wondered what I was doing there. Tommy said we could make good money selling scrap copper. He said we could get the copper from air units and pipes and such, so there I was parked behind the Ford dealership out by the highway at three o’clock in the morning, ducking every time a truck went by even though nobody could see us behind that big metal building.

The dog was a mutt, full-grown, with a bit of lab I guess and maybe some rottweiler. Its feet were too big for its skinny body, and it was black all over except for a little patch of tan on its nose. I thought it would start barking or growling, but the dang thing just sat there and looked at me. Tommy came around the corner of the building and threw a little armful of pipe into the back of the truck. He glanced at the dog but didn’t pay much attention to it. “Come on,” he said, opening the passenger side door. He was talking to me, of course, but the dog didn’t know that. Before Tommy could step up into the cab, the dog had brushed past him and was sitting there on the bench of my old Ram like he belonged there.

“What the hell?” Tommy said. “Where’d this dog come from?”

I shrugged.

“Well, you gonna get it out of there?” He said, standing back from the door a little like he was scared of the dog or something.

I shrugged again. “Hell,” I said and got into the truck. It was my truck—Tommy’s truck go impounded on his last DUI—so if I wanted a dog in there, then the dog was going to be in there. Tommy got in and closed the door, but he was so close to the end of the seat I’m surprised he didn’t pinch himself in the doorframe.

By the time we got back to my trailer my back was hurting so bad I nearly forgot about the copper, Tommy, and the dog altogether. I went inside to take my pills and left Tommy to put the copper in the old tin barn. We was taking it to recyclers here and there little by little so nobody would get suspicious. We had a pile of it in the empty barn.

When I came out of the bathroom, I went to look for my cigarettes. I usually leave my keys, pack, and lighter and stuff on the kitchen counter when I come into the house, so I figured that is where they must be. I was lighting up when I noticed the dog sitting on my front steps. I could see the dumb thing through the storm door, his head cocked to the side again and his tail wagging like he was happily waiting to come inside. I opened the door, and he came just trotting in. “Hell,” I said.

So, then I was taking care of the dog. Nancy said she can’t rely on me. Says I’m irresponsible and undependable. That’s why she left. I was making good money in the oil field, before I hurt my back. Before I got hurt, she thought I was dependable enough, but, when the worker’s comp didn’t come through, she decided I ain’t so dependable after all.  I didn’t get the worker’s comp cause I wasn’t on the job when I got hurt. I was drunk, and I fell off a tractor I hotwired for a joyride. But they didn’t know that. I told them I hurt my back running pipe to the derrick. But they didn’t find my story dependable. This dog didn’t seem to find me particularly undependable, at least.

I named the dog Copper. Seemed like the obvious thing to do, and I usually do the obvious thing. At least it’s usually obvious to me.

The funny thing is, that dog always wanted to go when we was stealing copper. If I was just going to town for a burger or to get smokes, Copper might have or might not have jumped up to go with me. Just as likely, he would have just kept lying there on the living room floor, maybe chewing lazily on some of the loose strands of my cigarette burned carpet. But if it was a copper run late at night, he would stick close to me until I let him in the truck. Tommy complained at first, but he got used to it after a while. We was stealing copper from every little town within sixty miles of Wakefield by then, and the dog was just part of the crew: me and Tommy and Copper.

Like I said, the copper stealing had been Tommy’s idea, after he got out from his DUI. He said we could make good money with just a little work a night or two a week. He said nobody would get hurt and the places we robbed would have insurance anyways. Pills cost money whether you need them or not, so I said I was in. He said I’d have to drive, since his truck was still in impound, and since my Ram looked like a hundred other trucks in Wakefield and hereabouts.

A few weeks later we was sitting around the circle where I burn my trash, me and Tommy and a few guys I knew in school and from when I worked for the energy company. I was jumpy cause we were sitting in plastic lawn chairs pretty close to the fire, and I couldn’t remember if I’d thrown away any of Nancy’s old hairspray cans or anything like that. So I kept thinking something could pop big any second and we’d be right there for the shrapnel and punctured ear drums. But nothing had exploded so far, so I had another beer and leaned back in my chair.

“Hey, dumbass,” Tommy said all of a sudden, pointing at Copper where he was laying by my feet. “Don’t you know Copper is supposed to be a name for a red dog, not for a black one.”

“Hey, dumbass,” I answered. “Don’t you remember where we got him.” Tommy gave me his bug-eyed look then. He didn’t want those other guys to know we was stealing copper.

“Hell,” he said and got up to get another beer from the cooler.

My back was starting to hurt again, and I started fishing around in my jacket pocket for my pills. I wasn’t in the mood for Tommy’s crap. When Tommy sat back down I grinned at him and said slowly and loudly, “Hey, dumbass, don’t you remember where I got this here dog.” Again the bug-eyed look and clenched teeth. That face was supposed to look menacing, I guess.

I had my pill bottle out by now and was about to wash two of them down with the last of my beer when Tommy piped up with, “I don’t know, Rick, was it the same place you found them pills there?” I just gave him the finger, swallowed my pills, and pitched my empty bottle into the fire. Then I went into the trailer and laid down on my bed. I could hear them all out there jawing and laughing but not for long before I was out cold.

In the morning Copper was sleeping on the steps by the front door. He was curled in a ball with his nose tucked into his ass for warmth. I opened the door and he limped stiffly into the trailer. “Hell,” I said. “I’ll try to be more dependable.”

We’d mainly been hitting businesses, car dealerships and stuff like that, but Tommy showed up one Sunday night and said we ought to check out this new housing development out by the interstate. “Right here in Wakefield?” I said. “Ain’t that kind of risky?”

“Hell,” he said, “ain’t risky at all. The whole thing sits down in this low spot with the road in up above. You can see anyone coming five to ten minutes before they get to the first house. We can come in through the back, where the whole thing backs up to a pasture. I know where the gate is, and we can cut the lock at the road and then cut the fence behind the houses. Nobody’ll be there on a Sunday night. Ain’t risky at all. It’s a sure thing.”

The whole thing made me twitchy, but I needed the money for pills. So Copper and me picked up Tommy about one o’clock in the morning. My trailer was on my own land out in the country, but Tommy lived in the Zion Hill park, over close to town. I had to park on the highway outside the trailer park and wait for him to come walking up the drive, cause the woman he lives with don’t like him going out to steal copper at night. He waits for her to fall asleep then sneaks out and meets me by the road. She finds out every time, but Tommy likes to at least put the fight off a while if he can.

I sat there, parked just far enough from the streetlight at the entrance to stay shadowy. Tommy came down the drive and out the entrance, wincing and walking all gingerly in his socks on the gravel and carrying his boots in one hand and a big pair of bolt cutters in the other. “Hey, dumbass,” I said as he got in the truck, “why didn’t you put your boots on up by your trailer?” He slammed the truck door and gave me the finger. Then he tapped the dash three time and pointed forward through the windshield. “Hell,” I said and yanked the truck into drive.

Like Tommy said, we didn’t drive in the front of the addition. Instead we drove around to the other side of the section line. I slowed down then, and we watched the fence line for the cattle gate. When I spotted the gate, I pulled in and aimed the lights at the gate. “Shut off them lights, dumbass,” Tommy said, pushing open the truck door.

“I thought you said the house ain’t even on this section, so he won’t see us,” I said in a kind of whisper before he closed the door.

“The people in the house won’t see us, dumbass, but somebody might. We don’t want nobody seeing us.” He closed the truck door, and I shut off the lights and got out of the truck with the engine still running. Copper tried to follow, but I shut the door before he could get out behind me. We’d be back in the truck in a minute anyway.

Tommy had the bolt cutters open and was squeezing hard on the long yellow handles like he was trying to play an accordion or something. The padlock rattled around on the chain. Every muscle in Tommy’s small body seemed tensed and strained, like somebody was yanking on a thread that connected the whole thing. I took the bolt cutters from him and braced one long handle against the post of the gate. Then I leaned sideways on the other handle until the shackle of the padlock snapped. “Hell,” I said and handed the bolt cutters back to Tommy. He threw them in the back of the truck while I swung the gate open, and we got back in the cab, where Copper was waiting.

I sat behind the wheel squinting into the nearly black space ahead. “How am I supposed to see where I’m going without headlights?” I said. Tommy mumbled something I couldn’t hear then opened the door again and got out. He walked in front of the truck and switched on a small Maglite he must have been keeping somewhere in his jacket. He started walking forward and I shifted into drive and followed behind him.

We bumped slowly along through the pasture, hitting clumps of bunch grass and gopher holes. Tommy was trying to follow the ruts left by a feeding truck, but he kept wandering off to one side or the other. I wondered how he could be so sure we could get the truck through to the back fence. All around us it was dark, and Copper sat right next to me in the silent cab.

When Tommy stopped at the back fence, I almost ran him down in slow motion. I hadn’t expected us to come to the other side of the pasture so soon. He pulled the bolt cutters out of the back of the truck, quickly snipped the barbed wire, and pulled the cut strands aside as he motioned me through the gap in the fence. I drove through and stopped so he could put the bolt cutters in the truck bed and go back to his position in front. Then we moved forward into the back of the housing addition.

The first thing we did was crack open air units. We moved from house to house with Tommy’s toolbox, taking apart the AC unit to pull out radiators, compressors, and tubing. Some of it we would have to break down further later, but we also got a lot of copper straight off. The units were already prepped to run, so we had to drain freon out onto the ground. Tommy made jokes about someone calling the EPA. “Hell,” I said, “they can get in line for their shot at us.”

We was getting close to finished, just pulling a little more wire from some of the lampposts along the street, when we saw lights up on the road in. “Time to go,” Tommy said, throwing a last bit of wire into the back of the truck.

“Hell,” I said. “Come on, Copper.” The dog was nosing around the back of a house where burger wrappers and fast food sacks left by the workers had blown into scrubby bushes along the back fence. “Hey, Copper, come on,” I said again, opening the truck door and snapping my fingers. He kept nosing at the food trash. Up on the road, the headlights stopped. I figured it was hired security, or maybe the contractor himself, checking on things. “Come on, boy,” I hissed at Copper again. Tommy was already in the truck.

“Leave him, dumbass,” Tommy said from the dark cab of the truck, his voice all high-pitched and panicked.

“I ain’t leaving him.” The headlights started to move again. Whoever was coming would be on top of us any minute.

Tommy got out of the truck, leaving the passenger door open. He walked around the back of the truck and up to the bushes where Copper was still sniffing around. With no working light posts on the street, all we had to see by was the pale moon through high clouds, but I could clearly see Tommy reach into his waistband and pull out a handgun. “What the hell?” I said, but he kept walking, right up to Copper. Looking me straight in the eyes, Tommy pointed the gun right at Copper’s head. The dog kept chewing on a Taco Bell wrapper.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said and stepped toward the man and the dog.

“We need to go. No reason for you to stay if the damn dog is dead,” he said. “I sure as hell ain’t going back to jail cause this damn dog won’t get in the truck.” He was looking at me with his eyes all scrunched together, almost like he felt bad about it. His hand was shaking, but he kept the barrel centered on Copper’s forehead. The dog just sat there looking at him, a bit of taco wrapper hanging from his drooling bottom lip.

I knew whoever was in that car was almost here. I knew it was probably either the foreman or hired security and that whoever it was had probably already seen us and called the cops. I thought about Nancy. I thought about dependability. I pulled out my keys and tossed them next to Tommy’s boot.

Tommy stared at me for a second. Then he lowered the gun, scooped up the keys, and ran past me to the truck. A moment later I watched the truck pass back through the hole in the fence and disappear into the dark pasture. I don’t know how he was planning to make it out of the pasture without turning on the headlights, but I figured that maybe he would get lucky.

I walked over and sat down on the grass next to Copper. He stood up, turned three circles, and sat back down next to me. By now there were two more cars on the high road in, a sheriff and a deputy, I guessed. I put my hands in my coat pocket and pulled out my empty pill bottle. I tossed it into the scrub along the fence. Then I sat there.

Benjamin Myers is a former poet laureate of Oklahoma and the author of four books of poetry, including Black Sunday and the Family Book of Martyrs, both published by Lamar University Press. His poems have appeared in Image, The Yale Review, 32 Poems, Rattle, and many other journals.