9

I’M NOT SURE WHY I thought news about three strange dogs would make my dad finally speak to me. My mom had died in the lightning tree on Friday, and he’d barely said a word since. His voice seemed to have passed right along with her. Our paths crossed in the house and in the barn, and he made meals at the proper times, but his eyes were somewhere else.

When I saw the dogs in the front yard, walking around and nipping at each other, they gave me a strange feeling, like something out there was watching me, keeping an eye on me, and not in a good way. I hadn’t seen them before, and it was unusual to see strange dogs in the valley. They foamed at the mouth and didn’t behave like normal dogs, and even though they looked like black German shepherds, they were bigger, like wolves. But we didn’t have any wolves in Deen. At least I didn’t think so. I wondered if they had come down from the mountain.

I walked into our small living room. It was hot in there. The windows were open and a breeze smelling wet and green came through the screens, a summer day after a storm. In fact, it had rained, with thunder and lightning, off and on since Friday. Ever since my mom died. Every time lightning struck, I had this image of the tree, its largest branch shredded and broken, hanging down toward the ground. But on the day I saw the dogs, the storms had cleared and the July sun threatened to get hot.

“I saw three dogs,” I told my dad quietly, not sure if he would even look at me. “I think they were sick.”

My dad glanced up from his brown armchair. I missed being a little kid and sitting there with him, cheering on our favorite baseball team or pretending to watch world news in the evenings. I used to fall asleep there, and he’d carry me up to my bed. Sometimes I’d pretend to be asleep so he’d carry me.

It was strange, him sitting there. I couldn’t remember anything like it ever happening in my entire life, not on a Monday morning—Monday was a day for work, a day to make up for not working on Sunday. What would happen to our farm if Dad didn’t recover? I wondered if the world would fall in on us.

“Why?” he asked.

The sound of his voice sent a shock wave through me, a pulse of joy and sadness, and I didn’t know if I could answer his one-word question without crying. I hadn’t heard his voice since Friday night.

“Their eyes didn’t seem right. They were foaming at the mouth. They didn’t run away, not even when I shouted at them.”

“Rabies,” he mumbled. “Are they still out there?”

“Not last time I checked,” I said.

“Let me know if you see ’em again. I’ll have to shoot ’em.”

I nodded. It was good to hear his voice again, but it was different. He sounded tired and sad and on the edge of giving up. He leaned back in his brown armchair, sighed, and turned the television up even louder. The announcer’s voice tried to drown out the emptiness in the house, but nothing could do that.

Just a bit outside for ball three. He’s having some trouble controlling those pitches today. Not sure how much longer he’ll be in the game. And now the bull pen is warming up.

I backed slowly out of the room. Ever since my mom died, Dad had kept the volume on the television louder than usual. It made my brain feel garbled and overwhelmed.

Suddenly there was a snarling outside, by the lightning tree.

I pushed open the screen door and it slammed behind me. Dad was always reminding me not to let the screen door slam. I stopped on the porch. Huge puddles sat everywhere in the yard—hidden in the grass and filling the potholes in the lane—and they were as blue as the sky they reflected. I heard a loud yelp and looked at the tree. Right there at the base, right there where the lightning scar met the grass, a crowd of animals was fighting.

“Dad!” I shouted. “Dad!”

There they were, the three large dogs. The other two animals were brown and furry and low to the ground, stocky and thick. When the animals drew apart for a moment, I realized the two small ones were groundhogs, and they seemed to be fighting the dogs. Then they were all back together, rolling and snarling and biting and clawing, a pile of chaos and teeth.

My dad charged through the door, raised his gun to his shoulder, and BANG!

The three dogs ran down the lane. My dad released the spent shell and moved the bolt back and then forward, pushing another bullet into the chamber of the gun.

BANG!

A small burst of dust flew up right beside the dogs. They ran faster over the road, dashed past the church across the street, and disappeared into the graveyard. Dad ran after them, his gun in hand. I walked toward the oak tree.

One of the groundhogs had disappeared into the garden, but the other one was still at the base of the lightning scar, and it wasn’t moving. As I got closer, I could see it was still breathing, its furry chest rising and falling. Blood oozed from a bullet wound close to one of its front shoulders, matting its fur.

I picked up a small stick and nudged it. It shifted its weight a bit, but it couldn’t seem to move. I got down on my knees beside it. I had never seen anything die, at least not until the Friday before, but even then I hadn’t actually seen my mom pass away. Just a lightning bolt, darkness, and the space where she had been.

The groundhog’s eyes were still open and shining. Its little tail twitched once, twice. Besides that, it didn’t move much at all. Even its breathing came on either side of a long stillness. When I looked back at its eyes, I noticed that the groundhog was studying me, taking me in, as if he had heard a lot about me from someone else and was now seeing me for the first time.

The groundhog made a funny sound, so I moved even closer. But it went limp. It was dead.

My dad came walking slowly back up the lane. A strong breeze blew the lightning tree above me, and a thousand drops of rain from the previous storm fell on me and the dead groundhog—cold, wet drops that went down the back of my shirt and hit me hard on the top of the head. I knew my dad hadn’t gotten any of the dogs because he walked slowly and came with only his gun in his hand.

I sat down on the wet ground with my back against the tree. My dad walked past me and into the house without saying a word. The farm seemed saturated with a great emptiness.

A few hours later I was back in bed. It felt strange lying in my bed during the day, sunlight streaming through my window, but nothing else felt right either. I heard my dad watch the end of the ball game, and he kept the volume loud—so loud, in fact, that I could follow the game pretty well from up there in my room.

My mother’s funeral was scheduled for the next day, Tuesday, but all I could think about was the groundhog and everything that had happened in town that week—the man in the shadows at the antique store and the three old women. Mostly, though, I kept replaying the words I had seen written in the middle of the table.

Find the Tree of Life.

Had I really seen that? Or was my mind making stuff up? If I went back there, would that table still be there with the words scratched on it? I wondered if Mr. Pelle would let me go to the prep room or if I’d have to sneak in.

The sound of the television stopped. Dad must have turned it off. I heard his footsteps move across the creaky floor to the steps. He came up the stairs very slowly and stopped outside my room. I could see his shadow through the crack under the door. For a moment I wanted to run over, fling wide the door, and give him a huge hug. I didn’t want to feel so alone anymore.

But I didn’t. I was angry. Angry that he had killed the groundhog. Angry that he wouldn’t talk to me now that Mom was dead. Angry that Mom was dead. Angry that life was changing. Angry that I had to figure out how to bring her back on my own.

The door started to open.

I fell back onto my pillow, held my breath, closed my eyes, and pretended to sleep. I could feel my dad looking at me from the doorway. Again I fought the urge to jump up and run to him. I heard the door creak shut. He was gone. I took a deep breath and let out a long, confused sigh.

I crept over to my window and put my chin down on the windowsill. I stared hard at the massive oak tree now marked by the lightning, the sunlight glinting off the leaves. I peered toward the church, searching for signs of the dogs. I didn’t see any of them, or the remaining groundhog. They were gone.

Then I saw a man.

He walked up our lane, limping. He was a short, round person with a thick neck. He wore navy blue work pants and a button-up shirt. He wasn’t walking fast, and he stopped every thirty seconds or so to take a comb out of his front shirt pocket and brush his hair straight back. And he was constantly frowning. Or scowling. Or muttering words to himself.

He stopped by the oak tree, in the spot where the animals had been fighting, and he got down on one knee and reached toward the ground. He touched the wet grass and raised his hand up close to his face, scowling the entire time. He ran his hand down the long, pale scar the lightning had left.

He turned and walked toward the house, and as he got closer, I thought I had seen him before. The way he hobbled from side to side, the shape of his shoulders and the roundness of his body—all of it reminded me of the man in the antique store. Granted, I hadn’t seen the man’s face, but I couldn’t help but think this was him.

He kept walking slowly, always limping, sometimes stopping to comb his hair, and when he got close enough to the house I could no longer see him. I heard his footsteps go up onto the front porch and move toward the front door. All went silent.

And then I heard a loud knock.