Ned Hanson never brought our water buckets out that day. I might have been thankful for the snow, but the snow was cold and eating it only made me colder. Even when the wind died down and the sun came out, it became harder and harder to stay warm. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to lie over the register in Lise and Cam’s old house, the hot air tickling my belly and heating me to the core. Those days seemed so long ago — even to me, a dog not yet a year old. But, a lot can happen in a year. Sometimes, even more can happen in a day.
Three more days went by again before Ned came back. By then, I could sense that my belly had shrunk, the skin pulling tight up into my ribs. I hadn’t felt my toes for over a week. Sometimes I had to look down, just to check that they were still on the ends of my legs. The first day after Estelle left, I paced in circles, trying to warm my bones. But that only made me more tired. I’d barked and barked the first two days, hoping to alert a distant neighbor or passerby on the road, but now even that was too much effort.
When a truck clanged down the driveway, I emerged from my doghouse, hopeful it was the other man Estelle had spoken of. But it was only Ned. I almost went back inside my flimsy shelter, when it occurred to me I ought to pee while I was out. I hadn’t peed in ... I couldn’t remember. I squatted, straining to empty my bladder, but only a few drops came out, staining the dirty snow a dark orange. Layers of my excrement were frozen beneath the ice. I was ashamed of the filth, my fur even smelled of urine and poop, but what could I do? If I had been allowed out, I would have done my business in a corner of the yard, like Lise had taught me. Ned could seldom be bothered to clean up after us, so it had piled up until there was hardly any place I could step that hadn’t been soiled. At least in the last few days I hadn’t had much inside me to get rid of. Like now.
Over Ned’s shoulder flopped a sack of dog food. It wasn’t our usual kind — the supply that Lise had sent with us had long since run out. The sacks Ned brought with him were often torn and taped. Remains, he called them. Sacks damaged in transit or by careless customers at the store. Sometimes chewed into by mice. So we got whatever was available. Once it had even been cat food. Tasty, but the diarrhea afterwards had almost made it not worth it.
He ducked into the barn. A minute later he came out and went back to his truck, where he fished out a plain brown sack. On his way back to the garage, he pulled a small bright yellow box from the sack. His grungy baseball cap turned backwards, he came out of the barn, rattling the kibble around in our metal bowls. Bit came out of her house, but I stayed inside. Even when he opened my door and slapped the pan down, I didn’t come out. No sense risking getting kicked. Or having my food spilled again. I’d waited three days already. I could wait three more minutes.
Bit could hardly help herself, though. She danced on her toes and did a couple of little leaps, she was so happy to be fed. This time she was smart enough to keep her distance, at least. I cringed as the door creaked open and Ned stomped inside Bit’s kennel.
Belching loudly, Ned dropped the bowl in the corner. “Yup, cheap beer and tacos. Breakfast of champions.” He rubbed his stomach in a circle and belched again. Just as he stepped out of Bit’s kennel and lifted his hand toward the latch, the sound of a donkey braying came out of his front pocket. He pulled his cell phone out. “Hey, Garth, you jackass! What’s up? ... Naw, it’s your turn to bring the case. Mine to bring the smokes. Marcus is bringing the food. Those girls still coming? ... Oh yeah, what kind of videos?” He turned in a circle, his pinkie stuffed in his free ear as he picked at some wax. His eyebrows waggled. “Yeah, man, that’s what I’m talking about. Gonna get me some. Now you remember that I got my eye on the redhead. Keep your hands off her, you hear? Else you’re gonna feel a rifle barrel jammed against your spine... Shut. Up. I ain’t kidding, you dumb asshole. Try me.”
He ambled away toward the house, his coat flapping open in front, the laces on his shoes loose and trailing over the muddy ground, as he rambled on about beer and girls.
Mud? Oh, the snow had melted. Funny, I didn’t feel warmer.
In the time it took him to go into the house and come back out lugging buckets of fresh water, Bit had licked her bowl clean, but I still hadn’t come out of my house. My brain was in a fog. It was like watching everything through a veil of cobwebs. I should have been excited about the food, but I could barely muster the energy to lift my head and watch as Ned put the buckets in our kennels, then went and got in his truck.
He left without incident. I had food and water. But somehow, it didn’t seem like enough.
Yawning, I stretched my legs. I knew I needed to eat, but my stomach hurt. I forced myself to sit up, then stand. My heart was racing so fast, it felt like I’d just run down to the pond and back at breakneck speed. But all I was doing was standing there.
A wave of dizziness swept over me. I sat down until it passed, closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again, I saw three little yellow birds with tufted crests perched on the edge of my bowl. I tried to bark at them, but it came out as nothing more than a breathy huff.
“You’re losing it, girl,” one of the birds spouted, puffing up her feathers. The other two flapped their wings in agreement.
I blinked, hard. What the ...? Their chirps morphed into clicks. No, they weren’t birds anymore. They were three golden hamsters hanging over the edge of the bowel, crunching on my kibble. They chattered in squeaky voices, laughing, and pointed at me with their tiny claws. More hamsters squeezed beneath the bottom bar of the kennel and jumped into the bowl. How dare they eat my food?!
I lunged forward in attack mode. My paws slammed into the bowl. It flipped up in the air, twisting on its axis, a wobbling disc of silver against a broad blue sky. At its apex, it hovered, kibble raining everywhere. Then it plummeted straight down before landing with a bone-clattering clang. The sound rang and rang in my ears like a gong that wouldn’t stop.
Furry lumps with red beady eyes scattered before me as I snapped and snapped and snapped, gobbling them up one by one. I swallowed without chewing or tasting. Until the ache in my stomach returned.
My guts twisted in agony. A cramp gripped my middle. Pushed up my throat. A heave rolled through me. I gagged. Moist nuggets spilled over my tongue in barely eaten blobs. I vomited again. And again. Piles of it. Kibble. Not hamsters or birds. No fur. No feathers. Just ... dog food.
I sat there awhile, staring at my dinner, a chunky puddle of bile spreading steadily outward. I didn’t feel well. No longer hungry, I backed away from it.
Then I heard Bit’s soft whimper. She was standing just outside my kennel, her black nose pressed to the links.
Outside? How did she get outside?
The latch. Ned had forgotten to flip down the latch on her door.
Bit pawed at my door, but it wouldn’t give. She stared up at my latch for a long, long time, the wheels turning in her head. Finally, she backed up a step, then sprang upward, over and over. With each leap, she gained height. She bounced off the door with her front feet, reaching her paws as high as she could.
But it wasn’t enough. The latch was too high. She quickly began to tire.
Go, Mother. Just go, I wanted to say. Run as fast as you can, as far as you can.
But of course, I couldn’t. All I could do was wish myself on the outside with her, wish for Lise to come and take us home, wish for this misery, this limbo, to end.
I folded to the ground, the bottom of my rib cage sinking into a stinking puddle of melted snow and urine. There was nowhere I could sit that wasn’t damp and dirty. I no longer cared.
The sun slid low, dipping behind the woods to the west of the small pasture. Shadows marched across the farmyard. Along with them, Bit retreated.
—o00o—
The silver light of dawn spilled over distant hills. On the bark of the broad oak that stood in the center of the big pasture, a pearlescent sheen of frost glimmered, each gnarled branch reaching outward likes the grasping fingers of an old man. A thin snow fog lingered above the ground, the air as breezeless as the inside of a house.
I remembered how it was, to be inside. Warm, dry, fed. I remembered being happy and loved, too. Belly rubs from Hunter. Playing ball. The way Lise used to dribble the warm, leftover gravy from dinner over my food. The quiet mornings spent with Cam by the fishing pond and all the times he took me to ride along in the truck.
Then Cam died. And everything changed.
On the top bar of my kennel, a robin sang a morning revelry, her rosy chest puffing with rapid breaths. Of course she was happy. She was free to come and go. All she had to do was spread her wings and fly.
A gray form emerged from the barely open barn door and floated through the breaking mist. It was Bit, looking far more energetic than I had felt in weeks. She paused before my kennel, gazed at me forlornly for a moment, then pawed at the links.
I lifted my head in greeting. It was all I could do. I was so, so cold. So very tired.
Whining, she trotted away toward the garage. Halfway there, she stopped, looked back at me as if I might suddenly be following her, then went inside the building. How careless of Ned to have left so many doors open and unlocked. There were valuable tools and machinery inside still. Ray would have been irate. I’d seen how he kept his wrenches lined up by size on the pegboard in the garage, the neatly ordered shelves with all their bottles, glass jars and boxes, and the garden tools hanging along the wall, grouped by purpose. Ray had taken pride in his home and his farm. And now Estelle had abandoned it all and left it in the care of Ned Hanson? He would have been so disappointed.
Inside, metal scraped over concrete. Bit was searching for something. Food? Or had she seen a rat dart beneath the wooden workbench? Metal rattled, clanged as it hit the floor. Then all went quiet.
A long time passed before Bit emerged. She walked slowly, licking her lips, her belly much fuller than it had been yesterday. She must have found the food.
But there was something off about her gait. Instead of coming straight to me, she veered to the left, staggered, then zagged right. She tripped over nothing, righted herself, and stood swaying, her head hanging low.
What’s wrong with her?
She stopped midway, rested awhile, then went toward the barn, her movements still off, but less obvious as she went more slowly.
When she disappeared inside the barn, I dragged myself to my doghouse, although every muscle in my body begged me to lie down again right where I was. Inside, I curled up and shut my eyes, sleep calling.
Hours must have gone by, for when I awoke, the sun was on the other side of the property, suspended above the bare tree branches of the woods. A pair of buzzards circled the pasture, gliding on a gentle wind. Then they banked away, disappearing somewhere beyond the roof of the barn.
I surveyed the barnyard, looking for Bit. It was a long, long time before I saw her. She came around the house, across the driveway and headed toward me. Something long and furry dangled from her mouth — a squirrel!
How many hours had I sat on Lise’s couch, with my front paws slung over the back of it, as I watched out the picture window at the squirrels taunting me from the maple trees in the front yard? I had studied them, dreamt of them, watched with nearly unbearable patience while they danced from limb to limb, flicking their tails teasingly. I was not allowed in the front yard, however, where Lise’s flower beds were, with their pansies and primroses, petunias and daisies. And the dastardly squirrels never ventured into the backyard, where Bit and I lounged beneath the shade of the tulip tree.
I was always hopeful, however, and never gave up my vigil. One day, I was sure, a squirrel, being as scatter-brained as they were, would tempt fate and invade our territory.
Its long tail swung side to side as she veered around an overturned wheelbarrow. Saliva pooled beneath my tongue. I licked my lips, anticipating the taste of it. Bit stopped in front of the kennel, bobbed her head, then spit the squirrel on the ground. She coughed once, then nudged it forward with her nose. But the bottom bar was too tight against the concrete, the links too small to pull it through. I tried, even though my experience with the kibble spill had taught me that my legs were too big to manage the task, but we dogs are ever persistent.
I pulled my paw back through the links and sat. There would be no supper tonight.
Bit coughed again, this time retching. When her cough had calmed, she gathered up the squirrel in her mouth and trotted to the garage, her steps uneven, her path crooked.
Late afternoon slid into evening. Darkness came early as clouds thickened in the west. Somewhere in the woods, a pack of coyotes yipped. Bit poked her head out of the garage, her amber eyes scanning the property. The yipping came closer. They were just on the other side of the barn now. Bit withdrew to the safety of the garage. They would not go in there. Coyotes kept to the open. They must have remembered the animals that used to live here. More than once, Ray had loaded up his shotgun in the evening and gone to sit at the back edge of the pasture, waiting for them to come by.
Their yips rose in pitch to a chorus of cackles. A shiver of terror shot down my backbone. I tucked myself deep inside my doghouse, where I waited for morning.
Tomorrow, maybe, Lise would come. To take us home.
Stupid of me to hope, I know. But hope was all I had.
—o00o—
Head low, Bit swayed. It had taken several minutes for her to cross from the garage to the kennels. She would stagger, lie down, struggle to her feet, and stumble forward a few more meager steps, before stopping to rest. When she came close enough for me to see her more clearly in the dreary mist of morning, I noticed long globs of drool dripping from her mouth.
Although I had barely enough energy, I got to my feet and went to stand by my door, wagging my nub in encouragement. Instinct told me she was sick, terribly sick. Without someone to care for us, this might not end well.
Things got worse very quickly for my mother. She was there, mere feet outside my kennel, and all I could do was watch as she vomited up vivid yellow-green bile. In time, her trembling turned into violent tremors. She fell to the ground, stiffened, and gazed at me with her golden eyes, begging for help. Then her legs began to jerk in erratic spasms.
I had to look away. I wanted so badly to lie beside her, to lick her face and comfort her, but I was powerless to do anything.
It went on for the longest time. Finally, she lay there, her chest barely rising as her breaths slowed. A trace of blood trickled over her swollen tongue — that long, gentle tongue that had cleaned me at my birth, washed the mud from my face so many times in my puppyhood, and licked my chin in affection as we sat together in the back of Ned’s truck and left the only home we had ever known.
She shut her eyes, blew out one last breath, and then ... her body was still. Drops of rain pattered over her once glossy fur, slicking down the stray tufts of her wavy coat.
I sat in the cold rain, trying to blink away the stinging in my eyes. Dogs don’t cry, I told myself. We can’t.
A deep and heavy sadness sucked at my gut, tugging my soul into a chasm so deep and dark that I, too, wanted to lie down and die beside my mother and go to sleep forever. There was no one to comfort me, no lap to rest my head in, no gentle fingers to stroke my ears, no small arms to wrap about my neck and whisper that everything was going to be okay.
I lifted my head to the unseen moon and let out a howl so long and woeful that even the coyotes joined in my keening.
In some primeval way, we were kindred — dogs and coyotes. We both nurtured our young, hunted together, and mourned the loss of one of our pack. I had seen them in the distance, loping across a harvested field in the golden light of an autumn sunset, and mused at how alike they were to my own kind.
And yet they were not. They were free to roam.
Still, they had also never known the warmth of a couch on a cold and rainy day, or tasted the smooth goodness of gravy, or played chase with a little boy while he laughed with absolute glee.
My yowls fell away to a prolonged whine, then a broken whimper. The rain had stopped. A chilly breeze parted the clouds to let the light of the moon stream down over Bit’s deflated form. Her hair was flattened against her wasted body, her spine prominent. Whatever she had eaten the past couple of days had been expelled in her bloody vomit.
I raised my face to the moon, embraced by a halo of silver. To its right, a star winked brightly. Hunter used to make wishes on stars. Maybe in this place called Covington, where he and Lise lived now, he could see the same star. Maybe he would wish for me to join him. Maybe.
My gaze drifted downward from the heavens. There stood Bit, her fur gleaming in the moonlight, her eyes as bright as that star. And yet, she looked as if she were made of air. She shook from head to tail, bowed her front playfully, and jumped up high. Her feet made no sound when she landed. She curled her body in circles and let out a soft, distant-sounding woo-woo-woo, her way of talking, Lise called it. She raced about, alternately leaping and bowing, her energy boundless.
I’d never seen Bit so happy, so uninhibited. I wanted to join her, to feel what she was feeling!
As she ran within the circle of light cast by the sole floodlight that stood between the garage and the barn, that’s when I noticed — that wasn’t Bit. It was her ghost. It was her soul set free.
Her body still lay where she had drawn her last breath.
As she crossed to the far side of the light’s circle, she — my mother’s ghost — dissolved into the darkness, leaving me alone.
If mere hours before I had wanted for Lise to save us, I no longer did. I was beyond hope, beyond caring. Cold and hunger and pain were all I knew and I’d had enough of suffering.
So I waited. For the end. For something better than the life I knew.