The Dog Stars

by Peter Heller

  I assemble and string the rod and Jasper lies on a flat rock and watches me. It is the only one sunstruck and he watches me in a patch of warmer light, his own shadow thrown on the cobbles conforming to the round stones like thin water. The stalks of last year’s mullein stand on the bar like lightless candles. In the same sunlight I can see a hatch of tiny midges almost a mist.

  I take off boots and pants, slip on the light, sticky soled sneakers I’ve used for years. When the rubber wears out I’ve got more. On the last trip to the parking lot at the box store I took five pairs my size. Not as light, but workable. Three years maybe a set so that should last me until until. I can’t imagine. The pictures don’t cohere in my head. To multiply the years and divide by the desire to live is a kind of false accounting. We’ll keep track of this little rill. Of tying on fresh tippet and the tufty fly, and we’ll blow on it for luck. Of this cast and the next and if we ourselves are lucky it will add up to nightfall.

  And dinner. I want to yell that to Jasper but he is sleeping and he knows the word and would get too excited so I won’t yell it until I catch a fish. The first one always goes to him.

  I fished for a couple of hours. Cast and cast the caddis again and again. I walked to the top of the bend fishing the shallow water which turned silver as the sun came over the cut of the creek upstream. The current was silver and black twining, like mercury and oil. Then the sun moved over beyond the ridge and put us in cold shadow and the water reflected only the clear sky and I could see the stones again in the shallower runs. Green stones and water blue where it wrinkled and riffed. Somehow Jasper knows even in his sleep when I am walking more than a few steps and he roused himself and followed me and curled in a sand hollow between stones about fifty yards up. I left the fly on and tied a length of tippet to the hook and snugged on a beaded pheasant tail and caught four big carp in a few minutes. I let the bottom fly roll past the pool, the top caddis drifting easily, and it would stop, a small hitch, fleeting, not even a jerk, and then I knew a carp was mouthing the nymph below and I struck and set the hook. They fought without the vigor of a trout but with a sullen reluctance like a mule digging in its heels. They didn’t charge upstream or wrap themselves in the branches of an old deadfall, they simply refused to budge which wasn’t fun, but then there wasn’t much fun anymore and I came to admire their stoicism. A stolid refusal to be yet consumed by the universe.

  Like us.

  So when I picked the fat torso up in two hands and thwacked the head on a rock I said Thanks bud knowing just what it feels like not to be ready.

  I whistled. Jasper may be near deaf but something in the whistle tickles something in his head deeper than hearing and he uncurled and stood a little shakily and shook himself off and came trotting happily upstream and I gave him the first fish which could have weighed seven pounds. I filleted it, gave him the two slabs of gray meat, the head and the tail, and threw the bones back in the creek. The next one I caught I split and cleaned and the stomach was full of midges and a few big crawdads.

  Already late. I’d been wading all afternoon and the current was cold where it pushed up against my knees and thighs but my feet were long numb with that kind of dead warmth. Starting to get chilled. I caught a fifth fish, smaller, cleaned it and pushed the butt end of a hooked stick through its gills and slid it down to the others on the stringer. Lay it in the sled. Rubbed my naked legs to get the blood going. The sun was gone, the creek now luminous in early dusk. I felt what? Happy. We were thinking of nothing but the creek, but dinner, but making a camp just upstream on a sandy bar I liked to visit. I slipped my pants back on, sat on a rock and put on my boots. Jasper was revived after the fish, watching me with his mouth open, smiling because he knew we weren’t going far and there would be another fish or two, this time cooked and salted.

  Okay, let’s go.

  We walked around a thicket of willow and alder not yet leafed out and found the path through a stand of green and living and venerable fir trees, the bark, the almost pumpkin orange they get when very old, and we found our fire pit in the sand a few rocky yards from the water and the smooth sleeping place beneath one of the big old trees.

  I pulled some fallen limbs out of the denser woods that backed the camp and broke them up and lay them over a pillow of dried Spanish moss and quickly made a fire. So we could warm up. The wood was dry and full of resin and popped and cracked which was a domestic song above the syllabic murmur of the creek and the wind in the high boughs. Darkness was already in the forest, it filled the little canyon like a slow tide, and the flames deepened it but the sky was still bright with the thinnest blue and I could see two stars.

  Jasper was happy too. He curled up close to the fire upwind and out of the smoke and lay his head on his paws and watched me cook our fish on a light long handled mountain frying pan which must have been made a hundred years ago. The handle was wrapped in a sheath of shiny tin to disperse heat and stamped with Simpson and Sons Ranchware. A hundred years ago when the ranchers ran their herds up in the mountains in summer on Forest Service leases and camped for days, rounding them up in the fall like a cowboy song. Those hardbitten riders squatting at just such a fire. What they could never have imagined. What we can’t, cooking our fish here in the pan heavy with carp and spitting salvaged olive oil. Spit and sizzle, pop of branches, the flutter of flames in a shifting wind, the same wind downstream carrying cold from the higher slopes and rushing in the limbs of the trees like the ghost of long ago surf.

  Jasper is sitting up like a Sphinx now watching me closely. His moment. I salt the biggest fish, lay it on a flat stone and pull out the skeleton from the tail up, unzipping the bones.

  Provecho.

  He is up, tail wagging, first time today, and gobbles his dinner with quiet grunts.

  I tie a taut line from the big tree standing sentinel on our camp back to a young alder and string up the tarp just to keep the dew off.

  I cook a fish for me and kneel by the water on the rocks and drink and splash my face. In the smooth dark between stones with barely a current a waterskater slides away and a handful of stars shimmer.

  I spread out our bed under the tree and lie down. Get up again, untie two corners of the tarp and slide it back to the tree. We’ll get dewed on a little but I don’t care, we can dry everything out by the fire in the morning. Tonight I want to see the sky. Lie down again and Jasper walks stiff to me almost a hobble, the hike today long, and licks my face all over until I am laughing and turn away. Then he curls against my side with his customary collapse and huff. We listen to wind high, water low. I tuck my arms under my head and watch the Dipper brighten. I feel clean. Clean and good.

  In the morning I wake stiff. The sleeping bag and Jasper are covered in frost. So is my wool hat. Maybe not the best idea to sleep uncovered. It’s okay, we’ll start a fire in a minute.

  You must be cold, boy. C’mere. I pull at his Whoville quilt to fold it over him. He is heavy, unmoving. Getting stiffer, the morning’s harder.

  C’mon, bud, this’ll be better. Til I start a fire. C’mon.

  He ignores me. I tug at the quilt and lay it over him brush his ear.

  My hand stops. His ear is frozen. I run my hand around to his muzzle, rub his eyes.

  Jasper, you alright? Rub and rub. Rub and tug his ruff.

  Hey, hey.

  Pull on the scruff of his neck. Hey, wake up.

  I push up to sitting and roll over, chest on his back, and cover him.

  Hey, it’s okay. Sleep for a while.

  Sleep.

  I pull him, stiff and curled, closer to me and lay the quilt over him and lie back. I breathe. I should have noticed. What a hard time he was having on the walk. The tears that weren’t there yesterday flood. Break the dam and flood.

  Now what am I going to do? Start a fire in a few minutes.

  Jasper. Little brother. My heart.

  I’ll start a fire. Put sticks over moss and start. I’ll cook the last two fish. I’ll eat one. I’ll.


  We have traveled.

  Now you will be the path

  I will walk I will walk

  Over you.

  For the day I don’t move. I keep adding wood to the fire. I leave him in his quilt wrapped and cozy just his nose sticking out. It is the sight of him there I don’t want to leave.

  He is the only one now. The only sight. Which. Tomorrow I’ll. I don’t know.

  BOOK TWO

  I

  I don’t. Don’t do anything all day. Don’t start the fire. Don’t cook the fish. Leave them on the stringer hanging from a bough. Attractant to bear and cougar. Don’t care. Get up to pee, drink a little water from the creek running colder from the icy night. Lower in its bed, the fallen tree propped on rocks upstream higher off the water. So. Retreat. Heart like the stream contracted too.

  Go back to the sleeping bag and lie down next to him. Doze. Shove my leg over so I can feel his weight. Different now, wooden, but it is him. Drink in the afternoon. The day cool. The sun full on the creek, on the two of us, maybe three four hours then gone. Can smell the fish now. So.

  Keep the tarp rolled back and wait for night. What was that song? If I die before I wake, feed Jake, he’s been a good dog … Maybe better. But then he would have had to be the one to die of heartbreak. Better like this. Like the darkness pouring back into the canyon covering the stream covering us in a black shroud. Still. No resolution ever. None. Nothing decided, nothing finished. The Dipper wheels back into place. Just one turn. One turn of the wheel and we are different, never the same. Not ever. Not even those stars. Even they, they decay, collapse, coalesce, break apart. Close my eyes. It’s what’s inside. What’s inside moving, swimming in the pain like a blind fish forever swimming. Is what lives what remains. Renews, renews the love and the pain. The love is the creek bed and the pain fills it. Fills it every day with tears.

  Sometime in the night, sometime when the Twins are over the canyon, I think about the sled and the rifle inside it. What to do with it. I feel the weight of Jasper on my knee where I have wedged it beneath him and I think: He would not approve, no. He would say: what? He wouldn’t say a thing. He never left his post ever, he would give me strength that way. We never leave our posts do we? This is just who we are.

  Sometime under Gemini I fall asleep.

  It is the third day. At daybreak I shift, feel him in the quilt and have a moment. A moment where I have forgotten and then a moment where I remember and still expect him to stir. Fully expect him to resurrect. Because he could. We have defied everything haven’t we? Why not this?

  And then I sob. Sob and sob. And rouse myself and carry him in the quilt curled, carry him just under the trees and begin to dig. With a stick, with a flat rock, with my fingers.

  Most of the morning until it is deep enough to discourage a bear. Fitting. This was one of our favorite camps in the world. Year after year. If his spirit could look out. To the changing creek, season to season. I lay him in wrapped in the quilt and I say

  Goodbye, bud. You are Jasper. My heart. We are never apart, not here, not there.

  Then I scrape back in the dirt.

  I spend the rest of the day gathering stones. Cobbles, eggs, heavy rocks. Smoothed and rounded by the stream. I build a mound as high as my chest. In the top I don’t know what to put. I take off my old wool sweater. As much his smell as mine. I lay it over the top and pile on more rocks. To dissolve there like a prayer flag his smell and mine washing in the seasons. As if I could cover him.

  Then I load up the sled and walk upstream.

  Twenty times today I stopped and turned as if to call. Hey keep up. Twenty times I rolled my shoulders back into the hill. Put my head down, feet to the track.

  Stopped once, turned my face full into the sun, eyes closed, let the light sear my tears. Tipped my head back further, a coyote in full throat.

  The creek on my right crashing over a ledge. The sun overwhelming eyelids, pouring down like heavy water.

  If there is nothing else there is this: to be inundated, consumed.

  It is not that there is nothing left. There is everything left that was before, minus a dog. Minus a wife. Minus the noise, the clamor of.

  We think by talking and talking we can hold something off. Well. I couldn’t, could I? You couldn’t. You went along because you thought that was your job. Was I a fool? Were we both? To love is to take one side of the argument and hold it fast unto death. To land on one side with both feet. Or all four, huh, bud?

  We fools going up the trail, two fools, now one.

  There is a pain you can’t think your way out of. You can’t talk it away. If there were someone to talk to. You can walk. One foot the other foot. Breathe in breathe out. Drink from the stream. Piss. Eat the venison strips. Leave his venison in the trail for the coyotes the jays. And. You can’t metabolize the loss. It is in the cells of your face, your chest, behind the eyes, in the twists of your gut. Muscle sinew bone. It is all of you.

  When you walk you propel it forward. When you let go the sled and sit on a fallen log and. You imagine him curling beside you in the one patch of sun maybe lying over your feet. Not feeling so well. Then it sits with you, the Pain puts its arm over your shoulders. It is your closest friend. Steadfast. And at night you can’t bear to hear your own breath unaccompanied by another and underneath the big stillness like a score is the roaring of the cataract of everything being and being torn away. Then. The Pain is lying beside your side, close. Does not bother you with the sound even of breathing.

  That is some heavy shit, huh, Jasper? Getting all poetic on its ass when what it is is I miss you. I really fucking miss you.

  I walked for three days. Barely ate or slept. The lying down in the bag was a pro forma kind of thing. I didn’t feel like making a fire or sitting by it, I didn’t feel like sleeping or not sleeping, I didn’t know what else to do. Occasionally knelt on the stones and sipped from the creek. Walked west and then north. Straight into the Indian Peaks. When I am really hunting I leave the sled and pack at a base camp or landmark and continue quietly. I bring a smaller pack for the day with the down sweater, a liter bottle so I can take to the ridges or sit the day on some slope away from water. Matches, a game saw, a parka. Now I didn’t. I hauled the sled scraping and bumping and made a racket and saw no game, only chipmunks, nuthatch, crows, alarmed squirrels raising chatter from the trees, letting the whole country know: Here comes Hig. Hig with his gun. But he’s not serious, he’s banging around with that contraption, he doesn’t look so good, Where’s his mutt? The squirrel on a limb, alarmed, tail curved forward over his back, alive and twitching, the chatter as piercing as an alpenhorn. Might as well just blow a whistle. Olly Olly Incomefree. Ready or not here I come. Even the crows alight, twist their heads, fix us, me, with a shiny eye, open beak, stretch throat and dredge a signal angry cry from croaky mutterings. I inspire them. To heights of outrage. That the hunter is careless. That he is slamming up the trail. That he is heedless, loud, unaware, bungling. That he is upsetting the Order. The chain of. The hunters and hunted. A lack of respect. Something is wrong with him. CAWWREAACHH.

  Grief is an element. It has its own cycle like the carbon cycle, the nitrogen. It never diminishes not ever. It passes in and out of everything.

  The third evening it began to snow. A late spring snow but not heavy, not wet. The temperature dropped as suddenly as the passing of a cloud, cold, cold like midwinter and the wind dropped too. We were on the edge of a small basin above treeline and in the bottom were patches of old snow and a small lake recently cleared of ice. We. I. It is possible to continue together. Say what you like it felt that way to me. Walking behind, ranging to the side, the same but not apparent. Not as. A lake like a gem set in a bezel of tufted tundra and rough scree, the water green with the luminous unapologetic green of a semiprecious stone but textured with the wind. Then it wasn’t. The surface stilled and glassed off, polishing itself in an instant, the water reflecting the dark clouds that massed and poured against the ridg
es like something molten and it was suddenly very cold and the snowflakes began to touch the surface. Ringless, silent, vanishing. I let go the sled’s bridle. I was fifty yards from the water. The snow heavier. A white scrim that darkened the air, that hastened the dusk the way a fire deepens the night. I stood transfixed. Too cold for bare hands but my hands were bare. The flakes stuck in my eyelashes. They fell on my sleeves. Huge. Flowers and stars. They fell onto each other, held their shapes, became small piles of perfect asterisks and blooms tumbled together in their discrete geometries like children’s blocks.

  Something like laughter. That a flower could be this small, this fleeting, that a snowflake could be so large, so persistent. The improbable simplicity. I groaned. Why don’t we have a word for the utterance between laughing and crying?

  And I was suddenly very hungry. Took my eyes off of my left sleeve and looked around the col. The rock ridge and peak above me obscured. What the fuck are you doing here? Hig, what the fuck were you thinking? Why are you this high, this late in the day?

  Shouldn’t be. Benighted above treeline. Storms that move fast this time of year migrating like everything else. The cold. Exposed.

  An old panic rose in my chest. The panic of nightfall, of storm, of being alone on open ground. Surprised the shit out of me.

  Had to get down, get lower.

  I mean the panic was familiar the way a dread nausea or hangover is familiar but so long absent I thought it banished. Like stuck between living and dying there is no use for panic. It wasn’t. Banished I mean. Not a stranger at all. Panic close and familiar with its own smell, its own way of compressing the edges. I picked up the pull rope on the sled. Looked back at my own tracks over a field of crusted leftover snow. At the dark that thickened with the flakes. Too late to move. Fuck.