I heard tires on the gravel driveway. Lifting my head, I sniffed hard, but I couldn’t get a good scent of whoever it was. Not that it mattered. My tail thumped on the floor.
The vehicle continued up to our trailer, which is at the end of a long driveway, back in the woods. The people got out, and I could hear their bootsteps on the uneven concrete blocks that led up to the front door.
Company! I was so excited, I twirled in circles, barking and wriggling my rear. I jumped at the closed door to greet the visitors. People don’t come often, but I love it when they do. It does get a bit lonesome, just me and Larry. Larry’s my person.
Once I found another dog in the woods and brought him home with me. Larry said we could keep him, but someone came looking for him, and of course he wanted to go with his own person.
Larry got up and went over to the door, but he didn’t open it.
Standing in front of the door but not opening it is the kind of thing that infuriates me about Larry sometimes. He won’t join me doing some of my favorite things, like digging through the garbage or rolling in the mud or bringing home a road-kill skunk. He spends most of his time in front of the TV with a beer and a joint, doing nothing. But he’s my best friend, and I love him.
Now he leaned against the door and said, “Go away or I’ll set the dog on you.”
I barked louder.
“Hush up, Rasputin,” Larry said.
Rasputin’s my name. I hear people talking all the time, but I don’t pay much attention to it unless someone says my name. Then I listen to see if I’m being told to do something. Or, more likely, not to do whatever it is I’m doing.
I learned long ago that it’s hard to make sense out of all that yakking, so most of the time I don’t even try.
“I’ll shoot the dog,” someone on the other side of the door said. “And you, too, if you don’t let us in.”
“What’d ya want?” Larry shouted through the door.
“The boss wants to know what you’re doing. He sent us to find out, and maybe bring you over to talk to him.”
With a sigh, Larry grabbed me by the collar and pulled me back so he could open the door.
Three people tumbled in, two men and a lady.
I tried to leap up to kiss the visitors—who doesn’t like to be kissed?—but Larry held tight to my collar.
“Keep that mutt away from me,” the man said, “or I’ll shoot it.”
I inhaled deeply. The man smelled like dirty socks, tobacco smoke, and cooked onions. Not bad, although I could do without the onions.
“Aw, Vern.” The lady pushed past him and held out a hand for me to sniff. “He’s just being friendly. He won’t hurt you, will you, boy?”
She had a chemical odor, like fake flowers. Maybe some kind of perfume. Underneath, though, I could detect that delicious female smell. She hadn’t taken a bath in a while. I yipped my approval.
She walked in little mincing steps, like a bitch in heat. I think it was that her pants were too tight. I pulled away from Larry to latch onto her leg and started humping.
“If that dog bites you, Ginny, don’t come crying to me,” Vern said.
“Ha. Scared of dogs, are you?” Laughing, she pushed me down and tickled my ears.
Everybody crowded into the tiny living room and sat down. Larry shrugged and went over to open the refrigerator door. He tossed cans of beer to the visitors.
I don’t drink beer. Usually.
Vern pulled out his cell phone. He looked at it, frowned, and got up to walk down the hallway.
I sat next to Ginny and laid my head on her lap.
“What’s his name?” she asked Larry.
“Rasputin.”
“Rasputin? Wasn’t that some kind of demented Russian genius?”
“Yeah. The dog’s mother was a purebred black Russian terrier. And look at his eyes.”
Ginny lifted my head and scratched under my chin. “That blue is a funny color for a dog’s eyes, isn’t it? And they’re awfully close together.”
“Kind of makes him look demented. But he’s no genius.”
She laughed again and rubbed my head.
Definitely my kind of visitor.
“I can’t get no signal on this phone,” Vern called from the end of the hallway.
“Not surprising. It can be hard to get a signal out here,” Larry said.
“What the…? I was supposed to call the boss as soon as we got here. He was gonna tell me what he wanted us to do. Besides have a look around.” Vern started opening doors in the hallway.
There wasn’t much down there. A closet, a bathroom, a space for a washer and dryer hookup, but Larry didn’t have a washer or dryer. And the plant room.
“What the hell is this?” Vern asked. I peered down the hallway. He’d found the plant room.
“Just my little garden,” Larry said.
“Maybe that’s what the boss is worried about. You’re dealing your own stuff.”
“Nah. That’s just for my personal use.”
“You must have, what—forty or fifty plants in here.”
“Yeah, well, I figured once I got the lights on timers and the space heaters going, I might as well grow as many as I can fit in there.”
“And you don’t sell any?”
“Nah. But sometimes I give some to friends. You want some?”
Vern coughed. “Sure. But not now. Is there anywhere around here I can get a cell phone signal?”
“Not really.” Larry drained his beer. He smelled sweaty. Funny. I couldn’t see that he was doing anything to make him work up a sweat. “Sometimes up the road on top of the hill, but not always.”
“Well, then, if I can’t talk to him, I guess we’re gonna have to go see the boss.”
“You just do that.”
“And you’re gonna come with us.” Vern put the cell phone back in his pocket.
Larry shook his head. “Not gonna happen.”
Vern planted himself in front of Larry. “I wasn’t asking you if you were coming with us. I was telling you.”
“You can’t make me.”
“Wanna bet?”
The other guy stepped over and seized one of Larry’s arms. Vern took the other one.
I stared at them. What kind of new game were they playing?
The two men started pulling Larry toward the door. He struggled.
People didn’t usually play this rough. In fact, Larry yelled at me when I tried to play wrestling games inside. But if they were going to, I wanted to be part of it. I stood up and barked.
Vern swung his foot at me.
I could play that game! I seized the leg of his overalls in my teeth, shook hard, and snarled. He tottered on one foot, leaning on Larry.
What fun!
Vern reached into his pocket and pulled out a gun. He aimed it at me.
Ginny grabbed my collar, pulled me back, and stepped between Vern and me.
Larry and the other guy were falling over, pulling Vern with them. As he fell, Vern turned the gun toward Larry.
“Don’t shoot him!” Ginny shouted.
“Huh?” Vern glanced at her.
The three men tumbled into a pile on the floor. The gun went off, sending a bullet through the sagging ceiling of the trailer.
A big drop of water plopped onto the floor beneath the hole. It turned into a steady drip.
Vern was on top. He turned and pressed the gun against Larry’s neck.
“The boss wants to talk to him,” Ginny said. “He can’t talk to a dead body.”
“She’s right.” The other guy was on the bottom. “He won’t like it if we bring in a dead guy.”
“I guess.” Vern struggled to his feet and shoved the gun back into his pocket. He held out a hand to help the other guy up.
Together they pulled on Larry. He didn’t want to get up.
Vern smacked Larry on the side of his head. “Stop it. You’re coming with us. Where’s your truck key?”
Larry shook his head, but he stopped pulling. “I’m not gonna let you use my truck.”
“We can’t all fit in the cab of my truck,” Vern said. “So I guess we’re just gonna have to hog-tie you and put duct tape on your mouth and dump you back in the bed.”
“It’s in my pocket,” Larry mumbled.
“Ginny, get the key. You can follow us in Larry’s truck.”
She let go of my collar and reached into the pocket of Larry’s jeans, pulling out the key.
We all headed out the door.
“Aren’t you gonna shut that mutt up inside?” Vern asked Ginny.
She looked down at me. “How long are we gonna be gone?”
“I dunno. It’s up to the boss.”
“Well, I’m gonna leave the door open a little. I don’t know how long it’s gonna be before somebody gets back here. There’s a bag of dog food by the sink he can knock over if he wants, and he can get out to poop.”
Vern shrugged. “Suit yourself. But if it gets real cold and the door’s open, the pipes might freeze. Not to mention all those lovely plants. Shame if they froze.”
“It’s not supposed to get that cold tonight.”
They headed toward the trucks. Vern climbed in behind the wheel. Larry and the other guy got in the passenger seat.
Vern was right. There really wasn’t room for another person.
Ginny got into Larry’s truck and started the engine.
I stood by the front steps, trying to figure out what to do. If Larry didn’t want me to go with him someplace, he’d say, “Rasputin, you be a good dog and stay home and mind the trailer.” Some of the saddest words any dog ever heard.
But nobody said that. So it must mean I could go, too.
I leapt into the back of Larry’s truck. Usually I sat in the cab, but sometimes he’d have me ride in the back. The best thing to do then is to curl up right against the cab and keep my head down. I missed some of the wonderful smells carried by the wind, but if I stood, or even sat up, I might fall over.
We lurched down the driveway and onto the road. I like riding in the truck, so I was happy we drove on for a long time.
By the time the truck stopped, the sun was going down and a light drizzle was falling. We were at an old farmhouse at the end of a driveway even longer than ours.
A strong odor filled the air. It almost smelled like a million cats had peed all over. But it was a sharper smell, and had other things I didn’t recognize mixed into it.
Ginny got out of the truck and went toward the house.
I stood in the bed of the truck, watching. The men had climbed out of the other truck, with Larry between the two big men. Kind of like how he held me when he didn’t want me to run off, but he didn’t have a collar, so they held his arms, pushing him ahead of them onto the front porch and into the house.
Too bad he didn’t run off. I would have gone with him. We could look for a deer to chase or something.
The door to the house slammed shut. I jumped out of the truck and went up to sniff it. The cat-pee odor was even stronger there. I shook my head and sneezed.
They weren’t letting me in.
The rain came down harder. The wind was chilly. It was suppertime, but no one seemed to be in any hurry to feed me. I sniffed around, but in the end I curled up in a corner of the porch, out of the wind and rain, wrapped my tail over my nose to keep it warm, and dozed off.
* * * *
I woke up when someone opened the door and stepped onto the porch. It was a woman, but not Ginny. Too bad. I liked Ginny.
She stood at the edge of the porch, smoking a cigarette and flicking the ashes into the rainy night. She had one of those tiny flashlights that just give a pinprick of light, and she was shining it at the floor.
Maybe she’d like some company. I stood up, stretched, and yawned.
The woman jerked the flashlight around so the light hit my face. It hurt my eyes a little, but she couldn’t help that. I wagged my tail hard to show her I was being friendly and opened my mouth in a big grin.
She screamed.
Startled, I jumped off the porch and ran over to Larry’s truck.
People came pouring out of the house. Vern was first.
Last ones out were Larry and someone who was pulling him by the arm. Larry swayed a bit and stumbled.
“A wolf!” the woman hollered. “Right up here on the porch.”
“A wolf?” Vern said doubtfully. “I don’t think there are any wolves around here.”
“Well, something. Something with big teeth and beady eyes.”
“Where is it now?”
“I don’t know. It jumped off the porch and ran away.”
Vern leaned back. “A coyote, I could believe. A wolf, no.”
“Coyotes are tan-colored,” the woman insisted. “This was dark gray. And bigger than a coyote.”
“Yeah, right. I bet it just looked that way in the dark.”
“Whatever.” The woman finished up her cigarette and tossed the butt onto the ground. “We can’t have a wolf around here. Or a coyote. You gonna do something about it?”
“Which way did it run?”
“That way,” the woman said, pointing off into the woods instead of toward the parked vehicles, where I cowered against the truck. I hadn’t seen anything myself, but the smell of fear was in the air.
I crawled under the truck. It was out of the rain, and if whatever they were afraid of tried to get at me, at least I could run out the other side. I peered at the people gathered on the porch. They were all staring off into the woods where the woman had pointed.
One guy lifted up a rifle and let loose with a shot in that direction. “That ought to scare it off, whatever it was.”
Vern pulled his handgun out of his overalls and shot twice in the same direction.
The noise seemed to jerk Larry fully awake. He shook his head.
No one was looking at him. Even the guy who was holding onto his arm wasn’t paying much attention to him.
Larry pulled his arm free and jumped off the side of the porch.
“Hey!” Vern twisted around. “Get him!”
But Larry had a good head start.
Vern lifted his gun and fired at Larry.
Larry tripped and almost fell, but he got his feet under him and kept going.
I was surprised. Larry usually doesn’t like the rain. And he wasn’t wearing his heavy jacket. Why was he coming out in this weather?
Not paying any attention to me, he ducked around the corner of the house. I followed him.
We pressed up against the wall. He held his left arm snuggled up against his chest. I heard people on the porch, so I crept back to where I could see what was going on.
A few people stood there, looking around.
“Where’d he go?” someone asked.
“I dunno. It’ll be hard to find him in the dark, though.”
“Did the shot hit him?”
“I think so. I saw blood on his shirt.”
“What are we gonna do?”
“Not much to do.”
“So we let him go?”
“The road’s over two miles away. He’s not gonna get far in this weather. Especially not if he’s losing blood. We can find him in the morning.”
“Suppose he dies?”
“So what? Then the boss doesn’t have to decide whether to off him or not.”
They turned around and trooped back into the house.
I trotted back to Larry. He looked down at me. “Rasputin? Where’d you come from?”
I wagged my tail and did a little dance, showing him how happy I was that he had decided to come out and play with me.
With the rain lashing at our faces, we crept around to the front of the house. He was careful to avoid the pools of light spilling out of the uncurtained windows of the house, so I was, too.
Four trucks and an old car sat in the driveway. Larry went over to them, keeping them between himself and the house. He stood for a minute, looking around.
I crawled under a high truck to get out of the rain.
Larry went to his truck and tried the door. It wouldn’t open.
One by one, he tried the other vehicles. None of the doors would open.
He turned to walk behind the house again. I came out from under the truck and went along.
It was hard to see much.
A few old outbuildings leaned at precarious angles. I sniffed at them. One had definitely been a chicken coop at some point. Another had an oily smell and a few rusted tools lying around. A third had housed goats. It still had an open bag of goat feed and some old straw up against the far wall.
Larry stepped inside. The roof leaked a little, but most of the interior was dry.
I went up to the bag of goat feed and sniffed it. It didn’t smell all that good, and it was moldy. I took a tentative mouthful, but it was scratchy and tasted terrible. I could eat it if I got hungry enough, but I wasn’t that hungry yet.
When were these people going to fix some real food? It was way past suppertime.
Larry turned and walked out. “Come on, Rasputin. We need to get away from here.”
He led me around the house once more, past the trucks, and we started down the driveway. It was uneven and muddy. Hard enough to walk with my four legs. Larry only had two. He kept tripping.
Most of the gravel had washed away. Even if we could see well, which we couldn’t, we couldn’t have avoided the holes. Each one was filled with water, and whenever we stepped in one, our feet got wet.
I trotted from one side of the driveway to the other, sniffing. The rain had intensified but scattered the smells, making it hard to tell where they were coming from.
Larry walked down the center. He was pretty unsteady on his feet. He fell a few times and had trouble getting back up. Then he went down again and could only get to his knees. I went up to him and whined, trying to ask why he didn’t just go back to the house. He grabbed onto me for support and turned to look at now-distant lighted windows, showing through the bare trees.
The rain beat against us and the wind whipped my fur and his shirt.
Leaning heavily on me, he stood and turned back the way we had come.
It took us lots longer to get back. By the time we got near the house, I wondered if Larry would be able to get up the steps. I figured I could go up and scratch at the door. Surely one of the people would come out and help him in.
But he stopped short of the house. We crept around back, to the goat shed, and went in. With his wet boot, Larry tried to pull some of the straw away from the wall.
Was he making a bed? Using my front paws, I dug into the pile and kicked it out on the floor. Larry tried to flatten it down, so I got onto it and turned around a few times, making a nest for us.
Larry collapsed onto it. I stood there for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do. Sometimes Larry let me sleep in bed with him. I shook the water from my fur as best I could and lay down next to him.
He was shivering.
I crawled my torso over his chest and lay my head next to his, being careful not to lean on the bloody spot on one side. That might be sore.
He moaned softly. I gave him a quick kiss.
It seemed like a funny place for him to choose for the night, but it would do.
Gradually his shivering stopped. We were still wet, but between the straw and our combined body heat, we got warmer. His breathing became slow and regular.
We slept.
* * * *
The rain was still coming down at dawn but not quite as hard. A cold wind blew between the warped boards covering the walls and through the open door.
I had to pee. And since no one had to open the door for me, I could just go out and do it. Why didn’t Larry just leave the door open like that at home? It would be much easier. Then I’d never have to wake him up or whine at the door to be let out.
The ground outside the shed was a sea of mud. I found a higher patch near a big tree and let loose. That taken care of, I trotted through the drenched grass to see if anyone was up in the house. No one had fed me my supper, and it was getting to be time for breakfast.
Ginny, the nice lady, was standing under the roof on the back porch, smoking a cigarette, and peering at one of those plastic rectangle things that light up and sometimes talk. Larry had one, but he didn’t use it much. Only sometimes when we were out in the truck. What’s so fascinating about a little piece of plastic, even if it can talk? It didn’t even taste good. I’d tried both licking it and chewing it.
I went over to the edge of the porch and stared up at her, but she didn’t look my way. I thought about going up on the porch and humping her leg or licking her hand or something, but to tell the truth, I hadn’t known her long enough to tell how she’d react. Maybe she’d get mad and send me away.
Larry might be waking up soon. I slipped back into the decrepit goat shed to see. He was still lying there, breathing heavily. Didn’t he have to go pee, too? Although he didn’t usually go outside to do it. Just used that big white bowl in the house that’s usually filled with drinking water.
No, he was still asleep. Not much fun at all.
I went back to see what Ginny was doing. Shouldn’t someone be fixing breakfast soon?
She was still looking at that little plastic thing.
The smells coming from the house didn’t seem breakfasty. In fact, they were rank. Some new chemical smells, worse than the cat-pee odor, burned my nose.
Ginny rubbed her nose. I know humans have a terrible sense of smell, but really, this was foul. And irritating.
Sure enough, she coughed and rubbed her nose again. Then she looked down at her cigarette and sniffed it.
It wasn’t the cigarette. It was the smell coming from inside the house. But how could I make her realize that?
I jumped up on the porch and gently grabbed her hand in my mouth, pulling her toward the stairs.
She started to jerk her hand back, then looked down at me. “Rasputin! How did you get here?” She tossed the cigarette and rubbed behind my ears with her other hand. “Did you play wolf last night and scare the living bejesus out of everybody?”
Now, I love to have my ears rubbed as much as the next dog, but the smell was burning my throat. It couldn’t be doing Ginny any good. I tugged.
“You got something to show me?” She laughed and came down the steps with me.
When she was a little ways away from the house, I dropped her hand and ran into the shed to see if Larry was awake yet. He might be waking up soon. He was still lying there, breathing heavily, but he moved a bit when I licked his face. Wasn’t he going to get up?
Next thing I knew, a huge explosion shook the air. I turned and ran out to look.
The windows in the house had blown out. Smoke was billowing through the empty holes. Someone inside was screaming.
Ginny was lying on the wet ground.
In the shed, Larry was trying to get to his feet, holding onto the rough wall with one hand. The other was tucked into his chest. When he saw me, he said, “You are here, Rasputin. I thought I must have dreamed seeing you.”
Wagging my tail furiously, I rubbed my head against him. He almost fell over.
“You’re all wet!” he said.
Well, it was still raining.
He leaned on me and struggled up. “Let’s see if we can get out of here.”
We went around to the front of the house. Smoke was still pouring out of the windows, and bright tongues of flames reached for the roof. Whoever had been screaming was quiet now.
Larry stumbled over to his truck and tugged at the door handle. No one had unlocked it overnight.
I went over to where Ginny lay and sniffed at her. She was getting pretty wet. I nudged her, and she rolled over and threw her arm over her face.
Still unsteady on his feet, Larry joined us. He reached down and grabbed Ginny’s shoulder, but he almost fell over. “Where’s my truck key?”
She moaned.
He shook her shoulder. “Where the hell is the key to my truck?”
“I dunno.”
“You drove the truck here. You must have had it. Where is it?”
“Maybe in my pocket?” She tried to sit up.
Larry rolled her over on her stomach and patted the outside of the back pockets of her jeans. The he reached in front and felt the front ones. “Damn.”
He pulled her onto her back and tried to reach a hand in her pocket. The jeans were too tight for him to get his hand in.
“Help me get up,” she said, shaking her head.
Holding onto me and each other, they both managed to stand. Ginny slipped her slender hand into a pocket and pulled out the key.
Larry tried to snatch it from her.
She jerked her hand back, keeping the key away from him. “Take me with you.”
“Why the hell should I do that?” Larry asked.
She held her hand behind her. “Because otherwise I’ll throw this key into the woods as far as I can, and you’ll never find it.” She looked up at him. “So please?”
Larry ran his hand through his hair, which was now soaking from the rain. “Okay. But let’s get going.”
We all headed for the truck, me dancing ahead and the two of them staggering, holding onto one another.
Ginny opened the passenger door. I jumped in. Then Larry grabbed the key and headed around to the driver’s side, holding onto the bed of the truck to keep from falling. Ginny clambered in, leaning her head back with her eyes closed.
Larry managed to get in, but since he was still holding his left arm close against his chest, he had trouble closing the door. He finally managed and started up the truck.
“What the hell happened?” he asked as he yanked the truck into gear and turned it toward the potholed driveway. He had to let go of the steering wheel to switch gears, so we drifted toward the side of the driveway.
“They were cooking up a batch,” Ginny said.
“Meth?”
“Yeah.”
“And it blew up?”
“Sure looks that way, don’t it?” she said.
It was Larry’s turn to say, “Yeah.”
We were all wet. The windows were streaked with moisture, inside and out. Larry turned on the wipers. “Look,” he said to Ginny. “Could you turn on the heat? And the defrosters? I can’t see where I’m going. And I can’t use my left hand.”
She leaned forward and fiddled with the buttons on the dashboard until a blast of cold air shot up by the inside of the windshield. “It’ll have to warm up,” she said. She pulled her sleeve over her hand and rubbed at the windshield in front of Larry. “That any better?”
“A little.”
He rolled down the side window and stuck his head out.
We bounced down the driveway, reaching the end. “Which way?” he asked.
Ginny shrugged. “Prob’ly the best bet is to go away from town. Right. Somebody’s gonna call in the fire. And we want to be as far away from that as we can.”
“I just want to get back to my place,” Larry said.
“Yeah. Well, you can go around and come in from the other side.”
“You think I have enough gas?”
“Maybe.”
We had only gone a little way along the road when we heard sirens. A huge pickup with flashing blue lights dashed past us, coming from the other direction, and whipped around the turn into the driveway so fast it slipped into the ditch.
“Damn volunteer firefighters,” Ginny said. “Some of them are good guys, but they have their share of cowboys.”
Larry started to pull the truck over to the side of the road.
“Are you crazy?” Ginny said. “Put as much distance between that house and us as you can.”
“But that guy might be hurt.”
“The whole damn fire department’s on their way. If he’s hurt, they’ll take care of him. We don’t want to be around for them to ask any questions.”
Nodding in agreement and letting go of the steering wheel to shift, Larry stepped on the accelerator. Steering and shifting and accelerating were enough to handle. Adding the nodding wasn’t such a good idea. The truck swerved toward the ditch, and he had to wrench it back onto the road.
Gradually the blast of air by the windshield grew warm, then hot. The glass cleared, at least on the inside. Larry rolled up the window.
“You hurt bad?” Ginny asked him.
Gingerly, Larry moved his left shoulder. “I don’t think so. I think the bullet nicked my rib and kept going. It’s sore as all hell, and it bled a lot, but it don’t feel like a cracked rib. I’ve had them before. How about you?”
“I dunno. That blast knocked me off my feet. I don’t think anything’s broken. I’m gonna be pretty stiff. And I maybe got a little concussion. But I think I’m okay.”
“What about the others?”
Ginny turned her head and looked out the window. “It was an inferno in there. I don’t see how anybody could have survived.”
“Is that where you lived?”
“Yeah. With Vern. A lot of people would’ve said he wasn’t much of a boyfriend. But he wasn’t so bad. At least to me.” She wiped her eye with her hand.
I laid my head on her arm and looked up at her. She scratched behind my ears. I sighed happily and dozed.
I woke up when Larry opened the truck door. We were in our own driveway. We climbed out and splashed up to the trailer.
“Might as well come in and see if we can find something to eat,” he said. “And feed Rasputin.”
Yes!
“And see how badly we’re hurt,” he continued. “I’m gonna take an oxie and get some more sleep. You can, too. Then we can decide what to do.”
I bounced ahead of them. Finally, I was going to be fed.
And Larry had brought Ginny home. Maybe we could keep her.
KM Rockwood draws on a varied background for stories, including working as a laborer in steel fabrication and fiberglass manufacture, and supervising an inmate work crew in a large state prison. These positions, as well as work as a special-education teacher in alternative education and a GED instructor in correctional facilities, provide material for numerous short stories and novels, including the Jesse Damon Crime Novel series. www.kmrockwood.com