Say No More

by Sasson, Gemini

  Time, I told myself. Just give her time.

  Meanwhile, Hunter needed a friend. After a few laps around the yard, I did my business, then hurried to stand before Hunter, my nub wagging enthusiastically as he squeezed the tattered ball in his fist.

  Bouncing on all fours, I barked. Throw it! Throw it! Throw it!

  He cranked his arm back, swung it forward, and lobbed the ball in a high arc. The grungy yellow dot spun across a blue, blue sky. Bursting forward, I ran to the far corner of the yard, my eyes tracking its trajectory and speed. As the ball began to descend, my instincts told me I hadn’t gone quite far enough. I launched myself skyward with the strength of my haunches, twisting in the air as I stretched my neck. The ball hurtled toward me, whirling on its axis. My teeth snapped together, sinking into the rubbery orb.

  Gravity commanded me back to earth. The moment my feet hit the ground, I bounded forward, racing back toward Hunter. I dropped the prize at his feet.

  He threw it again. And again and again and again. Until it was so coated in my slobber that he refused to touch it. So I picked it up in my mouth and ran in small circles around him. He laughed, spinning around to watch me. It was the first time he’d done that since before his daddy died.

  Panting, I dropped the ball at his feet again and barked at him. When he reached for it, I grabbed it before his fingers could close around it and sped off. He ran after me, his short arms windmilling at his sides. On the other side of the leafless tulip tree, I pivoted and darted past him. He exploded in laughter. Back and forth we raced, until my legs began to tire and my breath became heavier. I slowed, turned around to face him, waiting for him to catch up with me.

  “Halo,” Hunter said, his small chest heaving, his jaw hanging open as he gulped in air, “come ... here. Give —”

  He swayed, went down on his knees. His eyes rolled up to disappear beneath fluttering lids. He hit the ground like a sack of kibble tossed from the truck bed.

  I spat my ball out and hurried to him, first nudging him with my nose and then licking his cheek and neck vigorously when he didn’t respond. I woofed softly in his ear, thinking maybe he was just playing turtle again, but he didn’t move. I wasn’t even sure he was breathing.

  I ran to the back door and barked as loudly as I could. I didn’t stop until Lise pushed open the door. She was about to scold me when she saw Hunter lying on the ground.

  She flew to him, touched his back, said his name. Still, he didn’t move. Carefully, she rolled him over and placed her ear against his chest, listening. With a nervous sigh of relief, she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and punched in a few numbers.

  “Come on, come on, come on ... Yes, I need an ambulance. It’s my son. He’s unconscious ... Yes, he’s breathing ... He does, but it’s faint. Very faint. And rapid. I don’t know what that means, but please, please, please hurry.”

  By the time the ambulance arrived, Hunter was alert enough to respond to his mother, but when the EMTs asked him questions, he wouldn’t speak, only nod or shake his head.

  What it meant, I learned later when Lise spent an hour on the phone relaying the day’s events to her mom, was that Hunter had a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a thickening of the walls of the heart. He had inherited the condition from his father, it seemed, although it had never caused much of an issue for Cam. The only thing the doctors could tell Lise was that chances were that Hunter would lead a normal life. All that could be done for now was to watch him carefully. If the need ever arose, there were medications that could be administered, even surgery that could be done. In rare cases, however, the condition was fatal.

  When Lise brought him home from the hospital that evening, she made him a bed on the couch, popped in his favorite animal video, one about giraffes, and watched him from the kitchen as he drifted off to sleep. Every time Hunter stirred, she abandoned her stacks of paper and went to stoop over him, watching his chest rise and fall in a slight but steady rhythm.

  “I can’t lose you, Hunter,” she whispered, sitting on the arm of the couch as she stroked his sandy locks from his forehead. “You mean the world to me. You and this little one are all I have. I have to keep you safe. Nothing else matters.”

  I curled up in my crate, one eye cocked open as the light from the TV flickered, then went off.

  chapter 8

  He came a few days later, so early that Hunter wasn’t even awake yet. His name was Ned Hanson, Ray and Estelle’s next door neighbor — although when you live out in the country ‘neighbor’ means the person whose property abuts yours, even if their house is on the other side of the woods and across the bridge, three miles away.

  I’d seen him a few times before at Ray’s barn. Usually with a wrench or two hanging out of his front overalls pocket and an oily rag dangling from the back one. He always had scruff on his chin, never a full beard and never clean shaven. Then there was that baseball cap. Always the same one, green with the threads on the logo on the front so worn and smudged you could no longer make out what it had once said. He wore it over a full mop of greasy blond hair, no matter whether it was a hundred degrees out or like an icebox.

  Which was what it was the day he came for Bit and me. Cold. Bitterly, bone-biting cold.

  The moment I saw him, the hair on the back of my neck bristled. He’d never paid us dogs much heed, not even Slick, but I didn’t mind that. He left me alone and so I never had reason to fear or mistrust him. But that day, it was the first day he’d ever really looked at me. And I didn’t like it, although I had no idea why. It was like I had a feeling deep down in my guts, like a tiny worm gnawing at my intestines, filling me with a queasiness. Maybe if I ate some grass right now, I could spew bile and get rid of the feeling.

  I stared at him through the chain link, safe on my side of the fence, sizing him up.

  His lip lifted in a sneer. “You sure that lil’ one with the weird spots don’t bite?”

  Lise tossed a bag of kibble into the bed of his truck. “No! Why would you say that? Did Estelle say something?”

  “Just the way he’s looking at me.” He rubbed at his nose with a dirty sleeve. “Not sure I like it.”

  The feeling was mutual. I slunk behind Bit, who was wagging her whole bum. Bit loved everyone. That trait would get her in trouble some day. Better to be cautious about people you didn’t know. Take time to make sure they didn’t mean you any harm. Lise was always encouraging me to let people pet me, but the older I got, the less sense that made to me. Why should I automatically trust everyone? Wouldn’t it be safer not to? Bit climbed up the chain link fence to hang her paws over the top rail. Couldn’t she see that this man’s arrival was bad news for us? I nipped her hock and darted away before Lise could reprimand me for it. Bit just tossed me a look that said she was too busy to play right now. Stupid dog! I went and hid behind the broad trunk of the old tulip tree.

  “You mean ‘she’,” Lise said.

  Ned scratched at his neck, his dirty fingernails scraping over stubble. “Huh?”

  “Halo is a girl.” I heard the latch slide up, then ping as the metal clicked back into place. “Come here, Halo.”

  As stealthily as I could, I peeked around the tree. Lise was inside the fence now, crouching down, her hand outstretched. She already had a leash on Bit, who was sitting obediently beside her. I noticed Bit’s ears were flattened, which meant even she knew now that something was up.

  “Please, Halo,” Lise said. “It’s okay. Ned here’s just going to take you to Estelle’s to stay awhile. I’ll come and get you as soon as I can.”

  I stayed put. Her words didn’t match the tremor in her voice. I wasn’t as gullible anymore as she might believe. I’d been lied to before. More than once, I’d come trotting when she offered a treat, only to find out that the biscuit she’d promised meant a soaking in the bathtub. Something in her voice had not been right then, and it wasn’t right now. We weren’t going on a walk or taking a car ride to the feed store. She was sending me away with
this Ned.

  I glanced at Bit and saw the tension in her muscles, but every time Lise took a step forward, Bit followed, the leash hanging slack. There was a fine line between obedience and sheer stupidity.

  “Please, don’t make this any harder on me than it has to be.” Lise crept closer, tugging Bit along. I flattened myself against the backside of the tree, trying to make my point as obvious as possible. The moment I heard Lise’s footsteps close in on me, I sped to the corner of the yard and hunkered down, but she was quicker than I’d counted on. She swooped in and hooked her hand into my collar. She snapped the leash onto the metal ring, then reeled me in close. My instinct was to bite her again, a sharp nip to let her know this was wrong, a hundred ways wrong, but if I did that in front of this man, that would give him even more reason to hate me. Lise might hate me, too, then.

  She breathed into my fur. “I can’t bear to do this.”

  Then why are you? I didn’t understand. Lise and Hunter were my whole life. How could I not be theirs?

  “Hey, if you don’t mind,” Ned said, “I need to get going. Gonna be all day out in the field, so ... if you could just throw ‘em in the back ...?”

  Lise shot to her feet. Her grip on my leash tightened. “No, they can’t ride in the back. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Listen, sweetheart, I rode in the bed of a pick-up my whole life as a kid. Didn’t do me no harm. Couple of farms dogs like that’ll be just fine. Ain’t that far to Ray and ... I mean to Estelle’s place, anyway.” He shoved the bag of dog food over to the side of the bed. “Now, do you want me to take ‘em or not? Only got so much time.”

  “Okay, okay.” When Lise stepped forward, I locked my legs in place. She dragged me a few steps, my pads scraping over the roots of the tree. Bit glared at me reproachfully. I hung my head, although I had no intention of giving in. Lise was ignoring every signal I could send. Somehow, though, I sensed I was only making things worse, that Lise was doing what she had to do, even though she didn’t want to.

  Finally, Lise picked me up. I tucked my head against her chest, pressing myself close. This didn’t feel right. I couldn’t let her do this.

  Before I knew it, we were at the gate. I looked up in time to see Lise’s fingers hover at the latch, hesitate.

  Don’t do it, Lise, I thought. Don’t.

  But the words I think never make sounds, even though I know their meaning. A dog’s language is subtle, our gestures simple. And yet ... humans are so blind to them.

  Lise flipped the latch and swung the gate open. The tailgate of the truck gaped before me. In the bed of the truck a man sat on top of a short stack of feed sacks with his elbows resting on his knees. He wore a checkered flannel shirt, buttoned up halfway, and beneath it a plain white T-shirt. He patted the side of the bag on which he sat. My gaze wandered to his face. I knew those eyes, that strong chin, the broad shoulders, and sandy hair. Joy squeezed my heart. It was Cam!

  It’s okay, girl, he said softly, winking at me. His words were muted, like the sounds that came out of the TV when Lise had it turned down really low so it wouldn’t wake Hunter up. And he looked all blurry, like a reflection in water. His lips curved into a smile. Everything’ll turn out fine. Trust me.

  I lurched toward the truck and let out a happy bark, almost pulling Lise off her feet. Ned scuttled aside and waved his hands in front of him. “Whoa, there.”

  Cam laughed softly, and I leaped up to put my front feet on the tailgate. It was too high, or else I would have jumped in on my own. He reached for me.

  “Stop it, Halo! What are you doing?” Lise jerked back on the leash so suddenly it caught my windpipe. My head dipped as I coughed, waiting for the airflow to return to normal. “Calm down. Honestly, Ned, she’s usually not like this. I think she knows something’s up.”

  He clucked under his tongue. “Whatever you say. Just put her in the back.”

  Lise tapped on the tailgate. Bit sprang onto it and Ned tied her leash to a hook by the rear window. As Lise bent down to gather me up, I backed up to look into the bed. Cam wasn’t there anymore. He was gone. It was as if Lise had never seen him. Slipping from Lise’s grasp, I pulled to the end of the leash and scanned beneath the truck, beside it, behind me. I swung around, hoping he might be inside the fence or on the porch. Nowhere.

  Lise’s arms wrapped around me, lifted me up, just like when I was a little puppy. But there was none of the tender warmth, the little strokes of my fur, the scratches behind my ears. She slid me onto the rusty bed, shoved me as far as her arms would allow.

  “I’ll come back for you,” she said flatly. “Soon.”

  Ned grabbed my leash and yanked me closer to the window as he clipped me in. Bit nuzzled my neck, then licked inside my ear to let me know it was okay.

  But it wasn’t.

  Lise didn’t wave goodbye or watch us go down the road. She just turned her back and walked inside.

  And everyone thinks dogs have it easy. Try being one for a day.

  —o00o—

  I was sure that ‘soon’ meant tomorrow. Or at most, next week. But ‘soon’ turned out to be a lot longer than I thought.

  Months passed and Lise didn’t come to get us. The dumb thing was, I kept hoping that she would, even as mad as I was at her, because I knew my place was with her and Hunter and the little baby not yet born.

  Instead of being with my family, I was tossed in an outdoor kennel next to Bit at Ray and Estelle’s farm. Left forgotten in the cold, no children to play with, no home to protect, no job, no purpose.

  Boredom, though, was the least of my problems.

  Even though Estelle still lived in the big farm house, she never checked on us. Sometimes she’d come out the door, gaze our way for a few moments, then get in her car and drive away. When she returned, we weren’t even afforded a glance. Ned took care of us. But I wouldn’t even say he did that.

  I dreaded his arrivals as much as I looked forward to them. Ned’s rusted out Chevy truck bumping down the limestone drive meant food, when he remembered. Once a week we’d also get clean water, if he could be bothered to crack the ice in the buckets to replace it. Although a week could mean five days or ten, there was never any way to know.

  The snow in my kennel had drifted up so high in the corner that Ned had to scoop out a path with the snow shovel to open the kennel door.

  “Goddamn good-for-nothing dogs.” His breath billowed outward in a fog of ice. He spat a glob of brown phlegm near me and I backed away. Whatever he kept tucked between his cheek and gum stank. He never swallowed it, but would spit it out when he’d chewed on it long enough. Then he’d take a crinkly pouch out of his front coat pocket, dig his fingers in, and draw a pinch of brown leaves out and stuff it in his mouth again. He was never without it. “Y’all don’t do nothing but eat and shit. That’s about the sum of it.”

  Bit stayed hidden in her dog house in the kennel next to mine. For weeks, she would come out to greet him, hopeful for a pat on the head or a biscuit, but he was never generous like that. We were a chore, an imposition, not his friends. I had no intention of pushing the matter. Even Bit finally gave up on him, keeping her distance ever since he’d whacked her in the ribs with the pooper scooper for putting a muddy paw on his already dirty jeans.

  Ned slammed the shovel in the bank of snow, so that the handle stood upright, tugged his gloves off, and blew his nose, one nostril at a time. Then he wiped his upper lip with an oil-stained sleeve. “My hunting dogs are each worth ten of you. Buster treed three coons last Sunday alone. And what have you done?” He glared at me accusingly.

  What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t do the work I was bred for. Estelle had sent all the cows off to auction a month ago. Too much to take care of, she’d told Ned. She’d even sold Slick to some cattleman out in Missouri. Fetched a pretty penny for him, she boasted. The hogs and chickens were gone, too. The farm was not the same without them all. What had once been a place of endless fascination for me was now a wintery wasteland, Bit and I
being the last two occupants.

  The clatter of tree branches broke the silence as a fierce wind kicked up, carrying in its wake last night’s dusting of snow to swirl in crystalline eddies. Beneath the fresh powder lay an icy crust. Two days ago, a wicked storm had blasted over the land, daggers of rain descending from steely skies as the north wind ripped away every shred of warmth within its reach. By the time the clouds broke and rolled away, every surface — the electrical wires hanging heavy from their poles, the leaning outdoor lamp post, the stubble of old flowers in Estelle’s garden — was coated in a layer of ice an inch thick. The flimsy piece of metal siding that had served as a roof over our kennels had blown away within the first hour, exposing Bit and me to the January misery. At least if we had been housed in the same kennel, Bit and I could have huddled together for warmth. As it was, we had only our cold dog houses and a compacted bed of straw. If not for the windbreak afforded us by the fact that our kennels sat on the east side of the barn’s outer wall, we might have frozen to death.

  In those two days since the storm, Estelle had emerged from her house only once, forgetting to feed us or bring us thawed water. We knew she was in there. We saw the lights — or a light, at least. A very dim light that floated from the kitchen, to the living room, and then to the upper bedroom as night came on fully.

  Yesterday morning, we had heard the crack of ice as the kitchen door was hammered open. Bit and I stretched our frozen limbs and braved the cold to stare at the back porch. Estelle snatched three logs from the woodpile stacked against the house and went back inside, never once looking our way. I let out a bark as the door clicked shut, then several more. Bit gave me a cynical look. Yes, I knew my efforts were futile, that I was probably just wasting energy, but I had to try.

  A minute later, Bit had walked stiffly back to her doghouse and crawled inside. I barked for an hour, pacing back and forth, jumping against the kennel door, anything to warm my blood, until my throat gave out from the strain and my muscles grew weak and shaky. And then I watched and waited for a long, long while, while my mouth went dry and my toes numb and my belly cramped with hunger.