The Dog Stars

by Peter Heller

  Sometimes back then, fishing with Jasper up the Sulphur, I hit my limit. I mean it felt my heart might just burst. Bursting is different than breaking. Like there is no way to contain how beautiful. Not it either, not just beauty. Something about how I fit. This little bend of smooth stones, the leaning cliffs. The smell of spruce. The small cutthroat making quiet rings in the black water of a pool. And no need to thank even. Just be. Just fish. Just walk up the creek, get dark, get cold, it is all a piece. Of me somehow.

  Melissa part of the same circle. But different because we are entrusted with certain souls. Like I could hold her carefully in my cupped hands, like to bear her carefully carefully, the country I cannot, but her I can, and maybe all along it was she holding me.

  The hospital St. Vincent’s was right across the lake. The orange helicopters landed there. At the end we talked about flying west but it was too late and there was the hospital, we went to the hospital. To one of the buildings they took over. Filling with the dead.

  Bangley just shows up. I’m changing oil. He could rap on the steel siding of the bay but he doesn’t he likes to give me a heart attack. Shows up beside me like a ghost.

  What are we monkeying with now?

  Jesus, if I have a coronary who will fly your patrols?

  We’d find someone wouldn’t we? Put an ad in the paper.

  His grin straight across his eyes never smiling.

  Anyway I bet I could fly this sucker.

  He says it every now and then. It’s like a warning. For what? If he wanted this windy place to himself he would have. A long time ago.

  Now Jasper is awake on his dusty blanket and growling. Jasper can’t stomach Bangley unless it’s like an emergency visitor situation in which case he keeps his trap shut, he’s a team player. Once just after Bangley showed up Jasper snapped at his arm and Bangley unholstered a sidearm big as like a skillet and aimed and I yelled. The only time. I said You shoot the dog we all die.

  Bangley blinked he had that grin. What do you mean we all die?

  I mean I fly patrols from the air, the only way we know we can secure the perimeter.

  That word. It was the only one that hit its target. I almost saw it go in his ear and through the tubes into his brain. Perimeter. Only way to secure. He blinked. He worked his jaw side to side. He stank. Like old blood like when you butcher a deer.

  Only reason I am still alive. How do you think I live here by myself?

  So that’s how the bargain was struck. Without even a negotiation.

  No words but that. I flew. He killed. Jasper growled. We let each other be.

  I was saying: I’m changing the oil in the Beast and he shows up beside me like a ghost.

  Why do you visit the Druids? he says.

  They’re not Druids they’re Mennonites.

  He grunts.

  I put down the filter wrench. Lay it on a rolling box. Pick up the safety wire pliers.

  Bangley is standing there. I smell before I see him. I feed the wire through the hole in the flange at the filter’s base, twist it with the pliers. It’s safety wire. Holds the filter on in case. All to spec. FAA regs. Wouldn’t want the oil filter to vibrate loose, fall off, spill all the oil midair and the engine tears apart. Has happened. They used to say all FAA rules resulted from a real accident. So the .032 mil wire is maybe a kind of memorial to some pilot. Maybe his family too.

  Bangley is picking his teeth with a splinter of wood, watching me. On top of the tool box is a shop rag a square of old t-shirt. The graphic is faded but I can see rows of smudged pink cartoon women: big breasted little breasted all shapes and underneath “melons” “peaches” “jugs” “plums” “raisins” a big “Cabo” bannered across the top. I read all the fruit before I reach in and wipe everything down one more time. Stab of pain. Just that. Fold it. A cartoon. That we are so hard wired that way. That two little arcs or circles of a cartoon boob could stir up memory, a temperature, change, a tightening of guts, a crawling in the groin. I think it’s curious. I half gulp, stand still for a second, breathe.

  Melissa was cantaloupes.

  Cabo is out at the end of a nine hundred mile peninsula. Plenty of fish probably. Is there some survivor like me out at the old municipal airport changing the oil in an antique Maule, flying recon every day, using a Ski Colorado t-shirt as a shop rag? Fishing of an evening off some dilapidated pier that still stinks of creosote? Wondering what it’s like to ski.

  Why didn’t Colorado shirts ever have tits on them? I ask Bangley.

  Not much of a sense of humor in old B.

  Walk to the north wall of the hangar slide a case of 50 straight weight Arrowshell off the stack. Set it down on a wooden stool. The sunlight is retreating back across the concrete slab to the open doorway. Bangley is wearing his honking sidearm. Night and day. Once he went to the pond in the creek bottom to hook a catfish and a bearded stranger built like a bear rose out of the Russian olive and attacked him. He says. Bangley shot him through his shaggy head. Brought an entire leg back still wearing three sets of ripped pants and a bandaged boot. The left. Threw it down in front of the hangar.

  For the dog he said. Angry. Because I didn’t do my job. To him. I didn’t guarantee the perimeter.

  Why do you visit the Mormons? he says again. He is fucking with me. He is ramrod straight and inclines forward real subtle when he is pissed.

  I pull at one flap of the cardboard box of motor oil. The glue is heavy, I tear it open tear the other side, four rows of three black quarts. The pale waxy line down the side of each tall rectangular bottle is translucent for reading the level, they remind me of tuxedo pants. One stripe of piping. Twelve little groomsmen.

  How do you know that I do?

  Bangley gets mad in gradations of increasing internal pressure like a volcano. The veins in his nose turn purple. Madder I mean. He is like one of those volcanoes in Ecuador that is always threatening to blow even when the top looks wisped with clouds like any other mountain.

  We agreed, he says. Seismologists at the USGS or wherever seeing portentous tremors on the graph. A certain vein in his forehead just under the bill of his Ducks Unlimited camo cap beginning to throb.

  No, you agreed. With yourself.

  Off limits. It’s off limits.

  What are you? The Base Commander?

  I should never talk to Bangley this way. I know it as I say it. I just get sick of the attitude sick to death of it. He’s working his jaw back and forth.

  I put the funnel, just an old oil bottle cut off halfway, back down on top of the other quarts. I face him.

  Look Bangley relax. Want a Coke?

  Once every two months I land on a cleared boulevard in Commerce City and restock ten cases of the oil. On the way over one day I found the Coke truck. I always bring back four cases, two for him two for me. A case of Sprite for the families which I don’t tell him about. Most of the cans have frozen too many times and burst but the plastic bottles survive. Bangley always goes through his Coke a lot faster.

  You’ll kill us both. We agreed.

  I get him a Coke. Here relax. It’s not good for your heart.

  He had arteriosclerosis. Has. Once he said: I’m a time bomb. Which he didn’t have to tell me.

  I open it so he has no choice. At the crack of the top and the sound of the fizz he winces like one more Coke down, one less in the world.

  Here.

  Hig you will kill us. He drinks, he can’t help himself. I can see it work in his throat and down into his barrel chest.

  He makes himself stop before he drains the whole bottle. You know just one cough, he says. That’s what they said at the end. Not just through blood.

  Sharing bodily fluids. I’m not fucking a Mennonite.

  A cough is a bodily fluid. Land in your eye. Open your mouth to speak.

  I don’t think that was ever proven.

  What the fuck does it matter if it’s proven. You want to get this far and die of the blood?

  This far. I’m thinking n
ot saying it. This far. Bangley and Jasper and a low fat diet. Well.

  You can’t choose for me Hig.

  I breathe.

  Everything we do is risky. Once in a while they need my help.

  For what? For fucking what? They have what? Two, three, five years tops? The luckiest? Every few months one dies. I can tell by how you mope around. For what? Boils and rash and bloody coughs and burning?

  They are people. They are trying to stay alive day by day. Maybe some can survive it. There were rumors of survivors.

  He is still inclined forward, still throbbing the vein with a dribble of fresh Coke on the stubble of his chin.

  They are no threat to us Bruce.

  The sound of his given name widens his eyes. He never told it to me, it was always just I’m Bangley, which like I said I rarely use.

  The families know to stay fifteen feet back. I’ve trained them. Not once not ever have they showed any aggression, nothing but gratitude, kind of embarrassing gratitude when I fix a pump or show them how to make a fish trap for the creek. Truth is I do it as much for me as them: it kinda loosens something inside me. That nearly froze up.

  Bangley works the jaw stares at me. That last thing—it’s like I just spoke perfect Japanese, a whole paragraph ending with a slight bow. Like A, he can’t believe I fucking said it, and B, he doesn’t understand a single syllable. Psycho spiritual language it leaves him, well, less than cold.

  Once I asked him if he thought there was something more. We were sharing two rare Cokes on the front porch of my house I never go in, under the bulb I leave on at night that used to work like a bug zapper for attackers. It was evening and the October sun was making for the mountains. Like some old couple taking their ease. Two wicker chairs losing their paint and cricking when we shifted our weight. His chair had a rhythm like he remembered what it was to sit in a rocker. Only time I can think of he told me anything about his life before. He grew up in Oklahoma. That’s what he told me.

  It’s not like you think, he added. Long story.

  That was it. A little cryptic. I hadn’t really thought anything. He never elaborated. Still, seemed like we were making leaps and bounds intimacy-wise.

  I told him I used to build houses.

  What kind of houses?

  Timber frame. Adobe. Odd custom stuff. Wrote a book too.

  A book on building houses.

  No. A little book. Poetry. Nobody read it.

  Shit? He took a measured sip of Coke watching me as he tipped back the bottle, watching me as he set it back down on his thigh, kind of appraising me with a new appreciation, not readable good or bad. Adjusting the context.

  Wrote for magazines now and then. Mostly about fishing, outdoor stuff.

  The relief it swept his face like pushing off a cloud shadow. I almost laughed. You could see the gears: Phew, outdoor stuff, Hig is not a homo.

  Growing up I wanted to be a writer. A great writer. Summers I worked construction, framing. Like that. Tough to make a living as a writer. Anyway I probably wasn’t so good. Got married bought a house. Led to another thing then the other thing.

  Long story, I said.

  Bangley held his Coke in both hands in his lap. He kind of hunched over himself maybe remembering. Suddenly remote like his spirit retreated to a safer distance. To watch. From a distance. Still rocking the chair that didn’t rock.

  We didn’t speak for a long time. The sun touched one of the higher peaks, broke slowly like a bloody yolk. Wind stirred, rattled the dried rabbit brush at the exact moment. Cold.

  I asked him if he ever thought there was anything more than this, than just surviving day to day. Recon, fixing the plane, growing the five vegetables, trapping a rabbit. Like what are we waiting for?

  His chair, crick crick, stopped. He got very still like a hunter that smelled an animal on the wind. Close. Like he woke up.

  Say again.

  More than this. Day to day.

  He worked his jaw, his mineral eyes graying in the fading light. Like maybe I’d tipped over the edge.

  Gotta go he said. Stood up. Hooked a finger in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt, fished out the bottle cap, screwed it on. Carried his Coke off the porch, boot cracking the broken step.

  That was maybe the second year. So now in the hangar I know the stuff about thawing out inside will not exactly exact sympathy. Half the time with Bangley I’m thinking about all the stuff I should never say.

  I crack a quart of oil and tip it into the funnel made from a cut off bottle and snug it down into its twin. Leave it to drain. Face him.

  Who knows maybe one day we will need them. We can’t know.

  Ha. A cough of contempt dismissive. Never happen Hig. For funeral detail maybe.

  He had consigned them, wished it. All of them dead.

  You want to be the only one left? You’d be just as happy. The only goddamn human being left on earth.

  If it shakes out like that. Better than the alternative. Anyway I got you. He tipped back the Coke watched me past the bottle.

  He meant the alternative if everyone’s going to die. I think. I didn’t say it: One day I’m gonna climb in the Beast and fly west and keep going.

  No you won’t he said.

  What?

  What you were thinking. There is no other safe place. Maybe on the planet. We got the perimeter, water, power, food, firepower. We got mountains close enough if the game gets scarce. We got no internal strife no politics cause it’s just you and me. We got no internal to tear apart. Like the Mormons like everybody else out there who ain’t alive anymore. We keep it simple we survive.

  He grins.

  Country boys will survive.

  His favorite phrase.

  I stare at my only friend on earth. I guess he’s my friend.

  Don’t go killing us, he says and leaves.

  Still I go when they ask. The patrol goes west to the mountain front then south. I follow the line of trees that mark the river. At the stacks of the power plant and the reservoir I swing back northwest. The Mennonites are on the creek. In an old turkey farm. Eight metal sheds in two rows of four set at angles like diagonally parked cars. Tall century old trees strung along a windbreak and clustered into a grove in the middle of which cants the asphalt roof of a big brick farmhouse. Two ponds fed by the creek. In one I can see floats, an empty canoe. An array of solar panels to the south of the sheds and two windmills, one mechanical for drawing water. Why they came here in the first place.

  In the yard, in the clearing, a thirty foot flagpole, flag long since gone, maybe stripped for a baby blanket. When they need help they hoist a ripped red union suit. Signal and wind sock. In a strong wind it splays legs and arms out stiff like a headless man.

  I land on the straight dirt drive that Ts from the old county road to the west. I can see the sign swiveling in the wind. At the head of the drive they wired a metal sign to two posts it has a red skull and crossbones says DANGER WE HAVE THE BLOOD. The drive floods, gets sliced with ruts. They come out with shovels and fill the holes. They aren’t good at maintenance, they’re most of the time too weak, but the landing strip is one thing they keep clean. Almost always a strong crosswind from say 330. I slip the Beast so she comes down cocked, almost sideways to the drive, left wing low, nose ruddered over hard to the south, then kick her straight at the last second, the kids in the yard jump up and down, I can see they are laughing from two hundred feet, it’s the only time I ever see them laugh.

  Jasper used to be able to jump up into the cockpit now he can’t. In the fourth year we had an argument. I took out the front passenger seat for weight and cargo and put down a flannel sleeping bag with a pattern of a man shooting a pheasant over and over, his dog on three legs, pointing, out in front. Not sure why I didn’t do that before. The dog doesn’t look like Jasper, still. I carried him. Lay him on the pattern of the man and the dog.

  You and me in another life I tell him.

  He likes to fly. Anyway I wouldn’t leave him al
one with Bangley.

  When I took out the seat he got depressed. He couldn’t sit up and look out. He knows to stay back of the rudder pedals. Once in a shear he skidded into them and nearly killed us. After that I fashioned like a four inch wood fence but scrapped it after he inspected it and jumped out of the plane and like refused to fly, no shit. It insulted him. The whole thing. I used to worry about the engine roar and prop blast, I wear the headset even though there is no one to talk to on the radio because it dampens the noise, but I worried about Jasper, even tried to make him his own hearing protector, this helmet kind of thing, it wouldn’t stay on. Probably why he’s mostly deaf now.

  When I picked up oil etc I moved the quilt to the top of the stack so he could look out.

  See? I said. At least it’s good half the time. Better than most of us can expect.

  He still thought it was lame I could tell. Not half as excited. So now when I’m not picking up, just flying, which is most of the time, I bolt the seat back in, it just takes a few minutes. Not like we don’t have time. First time he sat up straight again and glanced at me like What took you so long? then looked forward real serious, brow furrowed like a copilot. His mood it lifted palpable as weather.

  He’s getting old. I don’t count the years. I don’t multiply by seven.

  They bred dogs for everything else, even diving for fish, why didn’t they breed them to live longer, to live as long as a man?

  One weird thing: the GPS still works. The satellites, the military or whoever put them up there to spin around us and tell us where we are, they still send their signals, triangulate my position, the little Garmin mounted on the yoke still flashes a terrain warning if it thinks I am getting too close to high ground.

  I am always too close to high ground. That’s the other thing about the end of everything: I stopped worrying about my engine failing.

  There’s a Nearest button on the Garmin. Somebody was thinking. It tells you fast which way is the nearest airport and how far. It pops up a list of the closest airports, their identifiers, distance, bearing, tower frequency. When I used to worry about stuff the Nearest button was my pilot’s best friend. Any kind of weather or trouble or just getting low on fuel and I tapped it and there was the list and if I scrolled down and highlighted I could just press Go To and pop it gave my vector. Steer the arrow back to the center of the arc. Slickest thing.