Michael, Brother of Jerry | Page 6

brewery, inside his head.
A scurry of feet in the sand, and low sniffings, stiffened him to

alertness. It was as he had hoped. The dog had liked him from the start,
and had followed him.
For Dag Daughtry had a way with him, as Michael was quickly to learn,
when the man's hand reached out and clutched him, half by the jowl,
half by the slack of the neck under the ear. There was no threat in that
reach, nothing tentative nor timorous. It was hearty, all-confident, and
it produced confidence in Michael. It was roughness without hurt,
assertion without threat, surety without seduction. To him it was the
most natural thing in the world thus to be familiarly seized and shaken
about by a total stranger, while a jovial voice muttered: "That's right,
dog. Stick around, stick around, and you'll wear diamonds, maybe."
Certainly, Michael had never met a man so immediately likable. Dag
Daughtry knew, instinctively to be sure, how to get on with dogs. By
nature there was no cruelty in him. He never exceeded in
peremptoriness, nor in petting. He did not overbid for Michael's
friendliness. He did bid, but in a manner that conveyed no sense of
bidding. Scarcely had he given Michael that introductory jowl-shake,
when he released him and apparently forgot all about him.
He proceeded to light his pipe, using several matches as if the wind
blew them out. But while they burned close up to his fingers, and while
he made a simulation of prodigious puffing, his keen little blue eyes,
under shaggy, grizzled brows, intently studied Michael. And Michael,
ears cocked and eyes intent, gazed at this stranger who seemed never to
have been a stranger at all.
If anything, it was disappointment Michael experienced, in that this
delightful, two-legged god took no further notice of him. He even
challenged him to closer acquaintance with an invitation to play, with
an abrupt movement lifting his paws from the ground and striking them
down, stretched out well before, his body bent down from the rump in
such a curve that almost his chest touched the sand, his stump of a tail
waving signals of good nature while he uttered a sharp, inviting bark.
And the man was uninterested, pulling stolidly away at his pipe, in the
darkness following upon the third match.

Never was there a more consummate love-making, with all the base
intent of betrayal, than this cavalier seduction of Michael by the elderly,
six-quart ship's steward. When Michael, not entirely unwitting of the
snub of the man's lack of interest, stirred restlessly with a threat to
depart, he had flung at him gruffly:
"Stick around, dog, stick around."
Dag Daughtry chuckled to himself, as Michael, advancing, sniffed his
trousers' legs long and earnestly. And the man took advantage of his
nearness to study him some more, lighting his pipe and running over
the dog's excellent lines.
"Some dog, some points," he said aloud approvingly. "Say, dog, you
could pull down ribbons like a candy-kid in any bench show anywheres.
Only thing against you is that ear, and I could almost iron it out myself.
A vet. could do it."
Carelessly he dropped a hand to Michael's ear, and, with tips of fingers
instinct with sensuous sympathy, began to manipulate the base of the
ear where its roots bedded in the tightness of skin- stretch over the skull.
And Michael liked it. Never had a man's hand been so intimate with his
ear without hurting it. But these fingers were provocative only of
physical pleasure so keen that he twisted and writhed his whole body in
acknowledgment.
Next came a long, steady, upward pull of the ear, the ear slipping
slowly through the fingers to the very tip of it while it tingled
exquisitely down to its roots. Now to one ear, now to the other, this
happened, and all the while the man uttered low words that Michael did
not understand but which he accepted as addressed to him.
"Head all right, good 'n' flat," Dag Daughtry murmured, first sliding his
fingers over it, and then lighting a match. "An' no wrinkles, 'n' some
jaw, good 'n' punishing, an' not a shade too full in the cheek or too
empty."
He ran his fingers inside Michael's mouth and noted the strength and

evenness of the teeth, measured the breadth of shoulders and depth of
chest, and picked up a foot. In the light of another match he examined
all four feet.
"Black, all black, every nail of them," said Daughtry, "an' as clean feet
as ever a dog walked on, straight-out toes with the proper arch 'n' small
'n' not too small. I bet your daddy and your mother cantered away with
the ribbons in their day."
Michael was for growing