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  • Rogue Soldier
  • Darius Stewart (bio)

I take the dog out for a walk one early Tuesday morning before work. Neighbors have already begun slowly emerging from their houses to stand on their porches, some in bathrobes, coffee in hand; some, a newspaper; some want to gather a sense of the weather, or simply to gaze at the pale light hovering over the mountains in the distance, which makes the morning appear colorless the way a palette might still retain stains of a previous effort to paint a canvas.

We're all smiles and good mornings and doin' just fines.

No one, least of all me, has imagined that trouble has been burrowing beneath the brambles and brush that keeps parts of Rosedale Avenue unkempt.

But it's here and probably has been for some time, looming in a relatively small area of land at the top of a steep hill that descends all the way to the backyards of the neighbors that live below us.

It's there in what we think is just torn-up grass and sticks bundled together like shredded basket weavings.

It's there as unassuming as apples concealing razor blades in their cores.

And it finds me there after the dog leaves clumps of shit on their ground and kicks up the already broken grass to mark the territory as ours.

But it's not ours.

I tug the leash to pull the dog away from a scent that has his nose mired in the earth. He's too strong and stubborn, so I relent and let him linger, listening to him snort as he attempts to root out the source of the smell.

I turn my eyes to the sky to decide whether the pale light—an almost haze—indicates rainfall later on. But I can't tell. [End Page 65]

"Come on, Fry," I say.

I'm loud and have grown annoyed, but I am instantly apologetic when he looks at me, hiding the whites of his eyes, which tells me he, too, is sorry for whatever he has done.

Perhaps having heard the raised pitch in my voice, a small flock of black birds take sudden flight from the telephone wires above us. They offer a proposition, nevertheless. Four of them, I count, are heading south toward Morningside Park. I consider, by way of apology, walking Fry there to keep him out a bit longer before he's shut in most of the day while I'm away at work. But we can go only as far as the Alex Haley statue and then back home again. I tug on the leash more gently this time, and Fry knows it's time to go. He scrapes up one last clod of dirt and grass, digging in deep with his hind legs so the air fills with an explosion of debris, and trots away to join me at my side.

And that's when I see them: in a flurry, summoned from beneath the ground, one, two, five, seven becomes a swarm of yellow jackets, designated sentinels sent to attack. They target my mouth first with their bites and their stings as if to muffle the cries lodged in my throat. My lips become more and more tender as their assault grows more incessant, like a mallet upon a slab of beef.

A rogue soldier aims for my left eye; it lands on my cheek before it crawls inside the bottom lid to the subcutaneous tissue.

I crush it and feel the explosion of its body, the stinging, unmerciful pain.

I have to escape, but it seems there is no escape.

They have been provoked, and they are not bees. They can sting and bite, and they will never die.

So I run away with arms flailing, the leash held high so Fry can keep pace. We run past the Rottweiler, the poodle, the pit bulls all roving inside their chainlink fences and excited by the commotion, barking and jumping onto their enclosures as if to barrel them down to join Fry and me.

I pull my shirt up to shield my face and head, and looking down through the bottom of the...

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