When they get back to the station, Dale pulls the Bantam into the garage and cuts the engine. He turns to reach for Ora’s hand, but she has already opened the truck door, which hangs open behind her even after she has leaped to the ground and disappeared outside. Dale sits for a minute in the dark garage. Then he reaches across the seat and shuts the passenger door before getting out himself and easing the door closed behind him. He gets the .22 from the back of the truck and goes outside. Across the lot, Benny sits in his truck, watching; Dale can see the reflection of dashboard lights in his eyes.
Dale turns and starts to walk across the lot toward the station. Halfway there, he notices the dog standing warily in the shadows, and starts to approach him; the dog tucks his tail and sidles away. Dale frowns; that he should inspire such fear in the animal fills him with a deep sense of shame. He squats down and offers his hand, then remembers the rifle, and how earlier the dog had cowered at its end. And so he slides the rifle away from him, across the dirt. He calls to the dog gently; and cautiously, lured by Dale’s outstretched hand, the dog comes.
For several minutes, Dale squats there in the dirt and strokes the dog, between his ears, down the knobs of his spine, along the thick muscle of his neck. He thinks of nothing but the feel of the furred flesh beneath his palms, and beneath that the warm workings of life.
When he stands, the dog shudders off his touch, then follows him around the station to the back kitchen door. Dale lets the screen door close behind him. He flicks the light on and goes to the cabinet for two bowls; one he fills with water, the other with stew left over from dinner tonight. Dinner: it seems a lifetime ago. The dog stands at the door, his head lowered as he watches Dale through the screen, and when he sees Dale coming with the bowls, he backs away, turns a hungry circle in the dirt.
Dale sets the dishes on the ground. Then he goes back into the kitchen and gazes down the hallway. The door to their bedroom is open, and he can see that the room is empty. The door to Tobe’s room is closed. He walks quietly in that direction, and pauses outside the door. Then he taps on the door with his knuckle. There is no response.
“Ora,” he calls softly. “Ora, you in there?”
Again, there is no response.
“Ora,” he calls, a little more loudly, and taps on the door again.
Still nothing, so he tries the handle. The door is locked.
“Ora, can I come in?”
Silence. For a minute, Dale stands outside the door, as lonely as if he were the last person left in the world. Then he moves back down the hallway to the kitchen, where he puts the dishes from dinner away, taking them two by two from where Ora has set them to dry in the rack. Just as dinner seems a lifetime ago, so does morning seem a lifetime away. He feels lost in a purgatory of endless night; his hands are trembling, and he nearly drops two bowls.
He looks toward the door, where the dog has finished eating and is watching him again through the screen. Dale goes to the door and pushes it open, invites the dog inside. The animal sniffs around the corners of the kitchen, and when Dale leaves the room and goes back down the hallway, the dog follows, stops when Dale does again outside Tobe’s door.
He doesn’t knock, this time. He doesn’t call Ora’s name. Instead he sits down in the hall outside the door, leans against the wall. The dog explores their bedroom briefly, then returns to Dale and curls up on the floor beside him. Dale puts a hand on the animal, and shuts his eyes. Until Ora is ready, he will stay here, and he will wait.