by Rowan Massey
Not wanting to think too long about it, I started covering her up without being told. Each thrust into the loose pile of earth brought a bigger wave of an emotion I didn’t recognize at first. I was angry. It was my first time finding something serious to rebel against. Killing the dog had been wrong. I wouldn’t be convinced otherwise, not by any kind of rationalizing, not by any amount of guilt.
Grandpa sensed the change in me. He told me to hurry it up. I knew he was frustrated with my newly found attitude. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t about Liam. That had been my fault, and I could own up to it, but I didn’t think the lesson was where he thought it was. I should have treated Liam with more care. That was the issue. The kittens had nothing to do with it.
After returning to the house and taking a quick shower under tepid water, I resolved to make sure no one found the cats. I probably wouldn’t be allowed to return to the woods, but I could still find a way to feed the mother.
Having cleaned ourselves up, it was time for lunch. The idea of having a ham sandwich after the burial bothered me, but I could only take my rebellion so far. One day, I would be a grown up and I’d start buying my own food. I could be a vegetarian then. The idea comforted me and gave me a sense of control in an out of control world.
Grandma fed me without saying a word to me, but before sending me back to my room, she gave me the mercy of handing me two fat, old books. They were Oliver Twist and David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Then she took a tube of a pain relieving cream and a small bottle of aspirin from her pockets and handed them to me covertly. I nodded in thanks and gave her a small smile.
Upstairs, between those terrible four walls again, I took my shirt off and tried to put the cream on my wounded back, but twisting my arms around just made it more painful for my sunburn. I gave up quickly and went to the bathroom sink to take an aspirin, then returned and sat cross-legged on the bed. The book would have to give me some soothing.
In the very first line I read from the pages, I found immediate escape. It smelled wonderfully of yellowing paper. “I Am Born”, read the title. The three words echoed nicely in my thoughts, as did every other sentence after that. Plenty of it went over my head, but if at any point I got tired of reading, the room presented me with absolutely nothing else to do, and I kept going. Soon, I’d immersed myself completely. Killing the dog was a part of a distant world of the past. I existed only in the quiet world of the novel.
I was called down to dinner, sent back up, and left in silence again. I kept reading. After being told to go to sleep at ten o’clock, I was heavily tempted to read by the dim light of the full moon, but despite my rebellious thoughts, I still wanted to take my punishment and show that I wanted to be a good person.
I slept badly and woke with a sense of dread. I’d been dreaming about dirty dogs running all over the house, jumping around on furniture, barking to each other endlessly. Among them, the yellow dog cavorted with preternatural speed, eyes wild.
The barking was real, but distant. The pack was nearby. I listened closely. They were snarling, barking, whining. It was a fight. Were they fighting each other or had they found some other animal?
A door opened and shut in the house. Grandpa’s heavy footsteps seemed to shake the building. When the back door cracked open and the screen door slammed, I bolted out of bed and down the steps. There was no plan, only my bare feet on worn carpet and air against the sore skin of my back. A light shone out from the little office. It wasn’t until I reached the back door that I thought about how painful walking around out in the darkness would be, but I didn’t hesitate to step outside and chase after Grandpa. He was carrying his rifle against his shoulder. The rumble and squeak of a window opening above and behind me made me slow for a moment.
“Clay!” Grandma called. “Get back inside!”
I was torn in two directions in the space between my grandparents. Grandpa’s dark silhouette stopped and turned towards me, and Grandma’s bright bedroom light shone down at me. When I pivoted and hurried towards Grandpa and the barking dogs, she made a noise of exasperation, but he said nothing. He allowed me to catch up to him, took his orange hat off and placed it on my head. We continued in the darkness side by side. My eyes were adjusting quickly, and I saw that he was wearing his slippers and patterned pajamas. I tried to pick my way across the sparse grass without stepping on anything painful, but the task was impossible.
“Maybe we can catch them,” I said pleadingly. “I can help. I bet they’re friendly.”
“Does that sound friendly to you?” he said in a lowered voice. “They’re on the hunt. People near here keep goats and the dogs killed two of the kids. This is what needs to be done, Clay. We’ll talk about it later.” He motioned for me to be quiet, and we stalked across the neighbor’s backyard.
The closer we got to the noise, the more anxious I became. I hadn’t known about the kid goats, and I couldn’t help wondering about the animal they were attacking. I’d come out into the night to convince Grandpa to stop, but maybe he was right.
One of the dogs sped out of the darkness, heading right for us. I startled and froze. When Grandpa lowered his gun, it turned back just as quickly and disappeared back into the dark. I braced for a gunshot that didn’t come. We continued walking, faster this time. I stopped trying to avoid the twigs and pebbles that assaulted the soles of my feet.
One dog was eating something on the ground, using its front paws to help him pull the carcass apart, and the others circled him, testing him by jumping close, then darting away. His body language was hostile, and he was growling and chewing at the same time. I’d never seen dogs behave that way, never heard them make such a racket. They’d seen us but ignored us for the most part since we hadn’t tried to approach them. One stopped to bark our direction but the meat was more interesting to him.
The rifle was lowered, I covered my ears, and Grandpa started to shoot. If it hadn’t been dark, I would have seen in full color what it looks like for a dog to be shot in the skull. As it was, I saw his head jerk to the side. He landed next to his meal, dead before he hit the ground.
Grandpa’s movements were smooth and practiced as he aimed and shot again and again in quick succession, but the two dogs took off into the night with energetic speed, leaving another sibling behind.
◆◆◆
The images of the two dogs being taken down—efficient, quick, distant; one under the sun, and one under the moon—slid around in my psyche like a heavy tongue that licked at every moment and every thought. We’d left the two bodies where they lay. They would be taken care of in the morning. It was surreal to return to my room as if nothing had happened while the two dead lay out under the sky all night, alone and exposed, one unidentified. I was supposed to go back to sleep, but I found it impossible. My nerves rang endlessly with the sound of the bullets. An hour or so passed, and I gave in to the urge to bury myself in Dickens again. There was no stirring in the house, so I dared to turn my lamp on in order to read comfortably.
I woke during the dawn with my hand between the pages of the book. The banal sound of pots and pans in the kitchen traveled up through the walls. My eyes squeezed shut. I knew I would have to bury the animals. When would the carnage stop?
Not wanting to have to be told to show up for breakfast, I pried my aching body out of bed and got dressed. My feet were raw and dirty, but I would have to ignore that along with everything else. I’d tracked dirt into my bed, so I pulled the bedding up and covered it. Grandma would have to be mad about it another day.
I went to the kitchen, entering cautiously. Grandpa sat at the table with a newspaper, and Grandma turned to me and gave me a small, pitying smile.
“Two eggs?” she asked, and I nodded.
With slow and steady movements, not sure what I was afraid could happen, I sat in my usual spot and stared with unfocused eyes at my hands until a plate full of food was put in front of me. Grandpa prayed quickly and we ate in silence. The night had been long, the day would probably
be even longer, and I ate with a bottomless sense of starvation. After cleaning my plate, I made myself a second piece of toast with butter and strawberry jam.
Grandpa hid behind his paper throughout the meal, but as he finished up his coffee, he put the news aside and rested his elbows on the table, leaning towards me.
“Listen now,” he said, “I know you’ve been learning a hard lesson. A very hard lesson, but I can see you thinking on it, and I hope you learn good.”
He waited for a response, so I said, “Yes, sir”.
“The way I see it, God put these dogs where they needed to be, just when you needed to learn something from them. Tell me what you learned so far?”
“Don’t put animals before people,” I said, having thought many times on those words.
“That’s right. Life has a certain amount of cruelty in it, and we can’t stop all of it. We have to know when to protect and when to kill. That’s the merciful thing to do. Now, those goats were a financial investment, and now they’re gone. They were just little baby goats like those kittens you found. Do you think some bunch of wild dogs—someone else’s mistaken mercy—should have the right to keep killing people’s animals?”
I shook my head, but I still wasn’t sure, and he could tell. I kept thinking there had to be a better answer. They were adults. Couldn’t they find a better way?
“I said it once, Clay, and I’ll say it until you get it through your head—life has a certain amount of cruelty in it, and we can’t go around thinking we can stop it all. Thinking that way leads to more cruelty.”
After breakfast, Grandpa sent me out to bag and bury the dog while he talked to the neighbors about it. With gloves on, a plastic bag in one hand, and the shovel in the other, I hauled myself towards the distant sight of motionless black fur in the distance. Grandpa had said it was safe to assume the neighbors would be fine with burying it where it lay. I walked towards the rising sun with grim resolve. I told myself that being tired, in pain, stressed, and so on couldn’t be allowed to slow me down if I was going to prove myself in any way, but nothing could have prepared me for the sight of the dog in broad daylight. Spattered blood had dried all across the grass, and the carcass was already covered with flies and ants. They crawled around eagerly in the wound, which had taken out the dog’s eyes. Having focused like a laser on the dog, it took me a minute to recognize the chewed animal beside it. It wasn’t a racoon or opossum. It was the mother cat, fur caked in blood and crawling with insects. I wanted to throw up, but the thing trying to come up and out was raw emotion, not food. If I screamed, would the horror go away like the nausea after vomiting?
I turned and staggered away from them, my eyes searching for my grandparents. My instinct was to run to them and get the comfort I’d always found there, but I slowed my pace, worried they would think I was weak and morally bankrupt. My hands gripped the bag and shovel tightly, and I swayed for a moment, trying to decide. I saw Grandpa walking casually from the neighbor’s house to ours. I willed him to look my way, to come and help me somehow, to tell me I didn’t have to look at those bodies again. I had violent images in my head of the dogs working in a blur of violence to take the cat down and rip into her flesh despite her undoubtedly fierce claws. I remembered the wild snarling and barking in the darkness.
A moan escaped me, sounding like something between a sob and a whine. My face contorted in preparation to cry, but nothing came. I was foolish and unworthy. No, I was righteous and angry. Wrong again; I was just defeated.
I dropped the shovel and bent at the waist, resting my hands on my knees. My eyes squeezed shut.
“I can’t,” I cried to no one. “I can’t. I can’t.”
Saying it out loud calmed me somewhat, and I stood straight again with slow, wobbling movements. Grandpa was standing near the house, looking over at me with his hand up to block the sun’s rays. I felt the presence of the bodies behind me, but I couldn’t turn and look at them again. I also couldn’t run towards Grandpa.
The kittens were out there alone. They would die. I looked towards to woods as if I could see them. Two dogs were still running free. Even if they weren’t found by the dogs, they would slowly starve to death. If they had to die, then they had to die, but I couldn’t leave it to chance. I knew I would be in huge trouble if I went into the woods again, but I had to. They had to understand. I was responsible for those little lives.
Grandpa was slowly walking towards me. I stood and stared at him for a long moment, my mind spinning. In the end, there was no real choice. There was only one thing I could imagine living with.
I started off towards the trees, so weak inside that I could barely push myself into a jog, but the movement had momentum, and I reached the woods in seconds. My legs barreled through the underbrush. I was glad I’d put on pants and not shorts. Once I could glance back and not see the clearing, I slowed and made a more focused effort. I had to dodge bushes and fallen branches, but also keep in mind my direction. It would be easy to get lost. I found myself veering towards the sun in an effort to avoid the area where I knew I would find evidence of what I’d done to Liam. Once I got past that general area, I found it easier to relax my chest and breath at a closer to normal pace. I started looking for the big tree, and found it more easily than I’d expected to thanks to the kittens’ cries. The mewing broke my heart. The plastic bag was still gripped in my fist.
I found my T-shirt bunched and pulled down into the branches I’d so carefully placed it over. Peering inside and expecting to see nothing but fur and cuteness, I was met with a strange smell coming from something only a few feet from my face. One of them had died and the others had been stuck there with her, unable to climb out with their soft claws. It was the third body I’d discovered in less than an hour, and I was jarred. They’d been right. It wasn’t a mercy to try to save them. I had to be strong, for their sake.
The plastic bag had to be shaken out first, then I tenderly took the kittens from their foul nest, only to place them inside the dark bag. I didn’t want to, but I owed it to them to look at them if I was going to kill them. The smell was terrible. Their cries intensified and they stepped on each other’s heads trying to get out. They were already dirty and thin. Hadn’t the mother had a chance to feed them at all? Maybe not.
I took a few steps to sit on a large root and tied the bag shut in a big knot down near where they mewed. They moved around and meowed for so long that I finally put the bag down and sat watching it jerk spastically across the ground. I dragged my hands over my head, wondering if I’d done something wrong. It went two feet before their meows became fewer and finally stopped.
Hand to my chest, I tried to make myself breath. I’d done the right thing. Everyone would agree. They might be angry with me for running off, but they would tell me I’d done the right thing.
For a while, I was afraid to approach the bag. I didn’t think I could stand it if one of them stirred. Leaving them there in the open didn’t seem right, so I made myself pick it up and stuff them back in with the other dead kitten. Their fragile little bones shifted around as I did it. I grabbed some sticks and tried to cover the grave as well as possible.
The right thing. It had been the right thing. My head tilted back. I could see up through the big tree to where I’d climbed to the top and was so proud of myself. It felt like something that had happened years ago.
Walking back to the house took forever. I finally understood the slow, plodding way adults sometimes walked, complaining endlessly about being tired and having aches and pains, groaning over having to bend over and pick up something they’d dropped. At some point in the recent past, I’d told myself I’d never be like that. I’d been young and stupid enough to think it was an option. I already missed my innocence.
When I broke through the treeline and into the neighborhood, I found that I was in a neighbor’s yard; the one further from where Grandpa had killed the black dog. No one was in sight. The closer I trudged towards the back door of my grandparent’s
house, the more fearful I was, but I was becoming inured to my own emotions. I opened the screen door and tried the door knob. It wasn’t locked. I went inside. Having been outdoors, the rooms seemed dark to me, and the familiar scents of the place filled my nostrils. A floorboard creaked. Grandma stood before me in the hallway. Her expression was hard to read. She wasn’t angry or worried, not that I could tell, but she was stern.
“Your Grandpa is in the den,” she said, and disappeared into the kitchen.
My mouth was dry, my back was sore, my skin burned, my chest itched, and my feet hurt. I felt that I’d payed enough for what I’d done. I didn’t want to deal with explanations, but I headed into the den anyway. He was in the recliner fiddling with a portable radio, apparently unable to make it work. The look he gave me held a warning.
“Where did you go?” he asked.
I rubbed my hands on my sides and forced myself to answer.
“I went and got the kittens and…I put them down.” I said.
He froze a moment, looking up at me with surprise, then slowly placed the radio on the coffee table.
“And how did you do that?”