"Mohammed, get back here," Charlie said. It turned out the hellhounds could be trained, especially if you only told them to do things they were going to do anyway. ("Eat, Alvin. Good boy. Poop now. Excellent. ")
"Why do you call this dog Mohammed?" asked the bearded man.
"Because that's his name. "
"You should not have called this dog Mohammed. "
"I didn't call the dog Mohammed," Charlie said. "His name was Mohammed when I got him. It was on his collar. "
"It is blasphemy to call a dog Mohammed. "
"I tried calling him something else, but he doesn't listen. Watch. Steve, bite this man's leg? See, nothing. Spot, bite off this man's leg. Nothing. I might as well be speaking Farsi. You see where I'm going with this?"
"Well, I have named my dog Jesus. How do you feel about that?"
"Well, then I'm sorry, I didn't realize you'd lost your dog. "
"I have not lost my dog. "
"Really? I saw these flyers all over town with 'Have You Found Jesus?' on them. It must be another dog named Jesus. Was there a reward? A reward helps, you know. " Charlie noted that more and more lately, he had a hard time resisting the urge to fuck with people, especially when they insisted upon behaving like idiots.
"I do not have a dog named Jesus and that doesn't bother you because you are a godless infidel. "
"No, really, you can not name your dog anything you want and it won't bother me. But, yes, I am a godless infidel. At least that's how I voted in the last election. " Charlie grinned at him.
"Death to the infidel! Death to the infidel!" said the bearded man in response to Charlie's irresistible charm. He danced around shaking his fist in the Death Merchant's face, which scared Sophie so that she covered her eyes and started to cry.
"Stop that, you're scaring my daughter. "
"Death to the infidel! Death to the infidel!"
Mohammed and Alvin quickly got bored watching the dance and sat down to wait for someone to tell them to eat the guy in the nightshirt.
"I mean it," Charlie said. "You need to stop. " He looked around, feeling embarrassed, but there was no one else on the street.
"Death to the infidel. Death to the infidel," chanted the beard.
"Have you seen the size of these dogs, Mohammed?"
"Death to - hey, how did you know my name was Mohammed? Doesn't matter. Never mind. Death to the infidel. Death to the - "
"Wow, you certainly are brave," Charlie said, "but she's a little girl and you're scaring her and you really need to stop that now. "
"Death to the infidel! Death to the infidel!"
"Kitty!" Sophie said, uncovering her eyes and pointing at the man.
"Oh, honey," Charlie said. "I thought we weren't going to do that. "
Charlie slung Sophie up on his shoulders and walked on, leading the hellhounds away from the bearded dead man who lay in a peaceful heap on the sidewalk. He had stuffed the man's little woven hat in his pocket. It was glowing a dull red. Strangely, the bearded man's name wouldn't appear in Charlie's date book until the next day.
"See, a sense of humor is important," Charlie said, making a goofy face over his shoulder at his daughter.
"Silly Daddy," Sophie said.
Later, Charlie felt bad about his daughter using the "kitty" word as a weapon, and he felt that a decent father would try to give some sort of meaning to the experience - teach some sort of lesson, so he sat Sophie down with a pair of stuffed bears, some tiny cups of invisible tea, a plate of imaginary cookies, and two giant hounds from hell, and had his first, heart-to-heart, father-daughter talk.
"Honey, you understand why Daddy told you not to ever do that again, right? Why people can't know that you can do that?"