by Evan Balkan
The men nearby were screaming at him. One of the soldiers was just near him, crawling toward the hole and screaming, screaming, screaming. His eyes were wide and terror-filled. It was Tyler, the quiet kid from New Mexico. But now he was screaming, and he was tugging on Caroline’s dad’s uniform, pulling him, trying to get him out of the hole.
But he just stood there, paralyzed. That’s when everything became completely quiet. The men were still firing; the bombs were still dropping; the screams were still piercing the air. But you couldn’t hear anything. Like in some vacuum. And nothing changed in that stillness until Caroline’s father looked down and there, on the muddy, bloody ground next to his boots, he saw it, the grenade that had come rolling into his hole.
But by the time he tried to climb out, it was too late.
BOOM!
CAROLINE GASPED AND sprung up in bed, her hair a sweaty mop plastered to her head, her pillow wet, too. She was crying, and didn’t know why. She’d had a dream, yes, but she couldn’t immediately recall what it had been about. She knew only that it had been terrible, that it would probably cling to her and gnaw at her and leave her with a deep, empty pit in her stomach.
Still in the grasp of sleepiness, she slowly realized that there was a strange noise, and it was in her room, right next to her, in fact. She finally realized it was Beautiful. The dog had been sleeping in her room, but was now yakking and yakking. It was a terrible sound, different this time from the others, edged with something malevolent. When Caroline collected herself, she realized that her mother was in the room, too.
“Where is she?” Mrs. Panski asked.
“Who?”
“Beautiful. Where is she?” Mrs. Panski repeated, flipping on the light, still in the fog of her own recent sleep. When the light came on, Caroline saw her mother’s hair was in wild disarray, her gauzy robe half-on, her eyes puffy. Bewildered, Caroline sat on the edge of her bed, her eyes trying to open fully but blinking back the obtrusive light.
And then they spotted Beautiful hunched against the closet, her body prone but her neck high in the air. She looked up at them, but continued her horrible honking. She inhaled through her nose, sucking in gulps of air, but each gulp brought on a new coughing fit that quickly degenerated into wheezing and choking.
“Mama, something’s wrong with her,” Caroline said.
Mrs. Panski started toward Beautiful, but Caroline got there first. Caroline scooped the dog into her arms and peppered her face with kisses. She pulled back only when Beautiful responded with violent snuffles, blowing strands of moisture from her nose.
Caroline looked up at her mother. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know.”
Beautiful endured another round of violent, spasmodic coughing before dropping her head to the floor. She looked exhausted, ready to give up the big fight. It was a battle, Caroline could tell that now. Beautiful could no longer breathe properly. She inhaled violently, like slurping her life through a straw. After several more coughing fits, she was too tired to even lift her head. Caroline curled up beside her and kept her hands on the dog, petting and whispering and singing to her. There was nothing else she could do but just be there and love her.
Mrs. Panski knelt beside Caroline. There was little suspense. Beautiful could not keep it up for much longer. She slowly wound down, like turning off a series of switches. She took a few last shallow inhalations, and then she was gone. Caroline buried her face in Beautiful’s fur and wept.
Beautiful had greeted Caroline with licks and tail wags when her parents first brought her home from the hospital. She’d been in the house Caroline’s whole life, and now, just like that, she was gone. One more hurt in a universe full of them.
Dawn arrived. They’d spent the previous hours huddled in Caroline’s room, alternately holding Beautiful, kissing her, crying. At certain moments, the crying became deep and intense and, while unacknowledged, it became clear that they were crying not only over this absence, this separation, but another, too. And while a dog’s departure from this life could not compare to a father’s and husband’s absence, Beautiful’s death felt somehow unnaturally cruel and they mourned the harder for it.
Mrs. Panski retrieved an old bedsheet that she had previously cut to make rags, and they wrapped up Beautiful, swaddled like a newborn baby, immediately rendering their beloved pet into little more than a series of folds and creases that bore little resemblance to the animal inside. Once secured there, Beautiful took on a weight she simply didn’t possess in life. When Sam stumbled into the room and saw her under the sheet, he knew immediately and started to cry.
The funeral was a simple affair, conducted in their postage stamp back yard. Surprising his sister and his mother, Sam took the lead. He acted as if he’d decided that Beautiful’s death marked the moment he needed to step up and be the man of the house. He pulled on a patch of dead grass in the corner of the yard near a divot just under a collapsing portion of wooden fencing where Beautiful, in her more vigorous years, used to dig and claw at some unseen thing on the other side of the fence or buried deep in the ground. The permanent divot was a reminder of her, and the space felt like the obvious place in which to lay her.
After clearing the dormant grass, Sam employed his father’s old shovel, making quick work of the soil, damp from an evening shower. Mrs. Panski watched her son, admiration on her face. She looked around at the yard, at the deplorable condition of it. They’d let the place go since David had gone off to war, and only the winter weather kept it from being an absolute riot of unchecked growth.
It had always been David’s space to maintain, and he’d taken a certain pleasure in it that he masked with frustration and, sometimes, anger, returning from a Saturday afternoon session of beating back the vines and weeds with muttered curses. But he’d grab a glass of water and then get right back out there, pulling and tugging and clipping and edging with vigor. He’d then run the push mower over it all, hitting it so low and tight that for a few days after, one would be hard pressed to identify what was grass and what were weeds. One year, he even planted a small garden. But the bounty was three withered pea pods, a tomato that some nocturnal critters attacked and ate, and half a dozen malformed zucchini. And that was the end of the Panski garden.
Seeing Sam work so vigorously in the yard brought a bittersweet smile to Mrs. Panski’s lips. It was a lovely sight, a preview, perhaps, of the man Sam would become.
He reached out for the bundle. Caroline held Beautiful to her chest for one last squeeze and handed it over. Sam gently placed the dog in the ground. He got up and all three stood in the cold silent morning for a few moments, not saying anything, staring at the hole, at the sheet, at the dog inside. And then Sam piled the dirt back on. He lovingly swept his hands over the fresh mound, patting it in place and leveling it. But he left the divot intact. A patch where the grass would not grow so well. A reminder.
THINGS HAD IMPROVED a bit at school, but now, after Beautiful’s death, Caroline reverted to quiet Caroline, withdrawn Caroline, residing in a private space that most allowed her to inhabit. But during lunch, impatient Beatrice demanded to know what it was now that caused Caroline to shun her friends. “My dog died,” she whispered, and her eyes grew heavy with moisture.
Alma and Genevieve sat quietly. Alma put her hand on Caroline’s shoulder and gave it a rub. Even Beatrice softened a bit. Until just before the bell, that is, when she noticed Caroline once again looking toward Joseph, wrapping up his lunch alone at his table on the far end of the cafeteria. Caroline’s eyes tracked Joseph all the way across the room as he got up and dumped the detritus of his lunch in the can. Anyone paying any attention could have seen. She was just so obvious about it. Beatrice stood suddenly. She didn’t even say goodbye to any of her friends, just snatched up her marbled notebook from the table and left.
Caroline couldn’t shake Beautiful from her thoughts. She heard Beautiful’s peculiar noises in the squeaks of her classmates’ chairs against the linoleum floors
, in the din of their voices in the cafeteria, in the squeal of tires along the streets. And she saw the dog not only in her mind’s eye, but as a corporeal creature, fully alive and darting here and there just beyond the periphery of her vision.
So it was not a terrible shock to Caroline when she actually did see Beautiful while walking home one day. The resemblance was remarkable. If she didn’t know Beautiful had died, she would have sworn that was her dog huddled up just on the lip of an alley, shaking and chattering, its little haunches curled up underneath her.
Caroline walked toward the dog. “Hi, sweetie,” she said, walking slowly, holding out her hand. The dog didn’t react at first, but just watched, warily. Then she cocked her head before shuffling back a few inches.
Caroline continued toward her, hand open, voice soothing.
The dog raised its lip. It shook violently now, its little teeth bared, the ragged fur on its head quivering. And then it struck, uncoiling itself from its pathetic position and snapping down hard on Caroline’s finger. The dog let out a shriek as it bit her, some hideous, unnatural sound that sprang from its mouth at the very moment it chomped down on Caroline’s finger, muffling and amplifying the sound all at once.
Caroline yelped and pulled back. Her finger throbbed with pain and she held it upright as pearls of blood formed over the teeth marks. The dog, lost, scared, and confused, took off. Caroline watched as it tore away, bounding right into the street just as a huge tail-finned Ford turned the corner. Caroline saw the bushy tail, the spots of gray in the fur, the little, almost stunted legs. Of course it wasn’t Beautiful, her precious dog, dead now and buried in the backyard. This was some lookalike masquerading as her beloved pet. And now Caroline had to watch this other poor creature breathe its last, just as she’d had to watch her own sweetie do the same.
The Ford rolled right over the dog. It didn’t stop or even slow, the driver completely unaware of the creature below. Caroline cried out, and then her heart flipflopped as she watched the dog emerge, amazingly, on the other side of the car, fully intact, and still running, before disappearing through another alley on the far side of the road.
The pain in her finger doubled. She pressed it, hoping to stanch the flow of blood. But pressing it made it hurt more, so she walked with it stretched out in front of her, squeezing just below the knuckle, and watching as the finger turned from a scarlet red to a strange white and then a bluish color that made her hurry, just a bit more, toward home.
When she got home, she knocked and stood there, frozen. Mrs. Panski opened the door and saw Caroline holding her bloodied finger out in front of her.
“What happened?” Mrs. Panski asked, her voice edged with alarm.
“I saw a dog that looked just like Beautiful. I went to pet her—”
Caroline did an admirable job of holding back a crying jag. Mrs. Panski could see it in Caroline’s face, the blood thrumming just below the surface, the tears just behind her glossy eyes. She held her daughter close and didn’t ask for an explanation. She could figure it out. Anyone could. She held her tighter still and Caroline submitted. Allowed herself to be swallowed up by her mother. It didn’t matter if they got blood on their clothes. At this moment, in this breathing-space of time, all either of them needed to know was that they were not alone. They had each other. And that could not and would not change.
After Mrs. Panski soothed her daughter, she poured antiseptic on the cut and then bandaged it up. They sat for some time, Caroline calming all the while.
“I was just about to go to the grocer’s. Sam is at a friend’s this afternoon. Why don’t you come with me?”
Caroline nodded. She liked the idea of being with her mother today, felt they needed each other. She knew her mother was still upset about the situation with Joseph out on the street, but in the wake of Beautiful’s death, the subject hadn’t come up again and Caroline knew better than to do anything to remind her mother of it. She surely had enough to worry about. Beautiful’s death had been a blow to everyone, but perhaps the most for Mrs. Panski.
Caroline knew her parents had gotten the puppy not long after they were married and had moved into their new home. And her absence now was a thing much heavier than her presence had been. She was a small dog and often quiet, content to lie curled up at someone’s feet for hours at a time. But with her gone, it felt like a cavern had opened up in the house. The quiet dog’s absence made this new quiet something much larger and profound. Caroline knew that for her mother, Beautiful was yet one more reminder of her husband.
Caroline watched her mother in the grocery. It seemed that walking the aisles allowed Mrs. Panski to enter into a kind of reverie of distraction. She took her time reading labels, comparing one product to another, even though, as far as Caroline knew, she hardly ever gave a thought to these things before. Price had always been the primary concern. Now, ingredients, ounces, even the colors on the packages—all these, it seemed, consumed her, allowed her to linger and not return so soon to their empty-feeling home, a place without comforting noises. Caroline retreated into neighboring aisles, occasionally peeking over at her mother, watching her, sensing that she needed some space to be alone with her private thoughts.
Mrs. Panski had been staring at a can of Ajax cleanser, lost in the red and blue swoop on the can, when a man passed behind her. It seemed something told her to look up and when she did, she froze. She stared at the man. Caroline did, too, sensing something troubling about him. He didn’t look dangerous, just an older man in a bowler hat and a blazer with a can of shaving cream in his hand.
The man looked over, perhaps sensing he was being watched. When he looked up, his face softened. He smiled and made his way over toward Caroline’s mother.
“Eloise Weatherbee?” he said.
“Hello,” Mrs. Panski replied.
“Well, I’ll be. How on earth are you, Eloise?”
“It’s actually Panski now.”
“Sure, of course. No chance a woman like you could remain unmarried for long.”
Caroline’s mother blushed.
“Well, it sure is nice to see you, Eloise,” he said, and he moved closer to her, his hand outstretched, as if he was about to touch her.
Caroline watched as her mother stepped backward and then dropped her can of Ajax on the floor, where the top opened and the white powder spilled and plumed all over, covering the man’s shoes. She stuttered, “I’m so sorry. Excuse me,” and then ran out of the store, abandoning all her groceries in the process.
“Mama?” Caroline squealed, and ran out after her.
She caught up to her mother on the sidewalk and placed her hand in hers. Mrs. Panski reacted by jerking her hand away and then, realizing it was Caroline, looked at her as if she had forgotten they were even together, and then grabbed her hand and hurried down the sidewalk toward home.
It wasn’t until they got home that Caroline asked, “Mama, who was that man?”
“My old hockey coach,” she said. “A little older, but same blazer, same bowler hat. I’d recognize him anywhere.”
“Why were you scared of him?”
“Well, I wasn’t scared. It was just … well, seeing him brought back some memories. A bad one.”
“Your leg?”
Mrs. Panski nodded.
“Will you tell me the story now, Mama?”
It was the popping sound she’d never forget. The pain came later. When the injury happened, it was the sound that stunned her.
The girl from the other team couldn’t stop herself. Eloise knew that, though she did recall being furious, thinking that perhaps if that woman had more skill on the ice she could have avoided the crash. She remembered the woman as more than a little clumsy, a huge woman who lumbered up and down the ice, whose main purpose was to clear out Spitfire players, to elicit whoops of delight from the crowd when she barreled at top speed into another girl, sending her sprawling and sliding across the ice. It was all spectacle. Eloise knew that. To sell tickets, you needed to give the
fans what they wanted. And the guys who came to the games—most of them anyway—just wanted to drink some beer and watch women crash into one another.
But there were other players, women like Eloise, who took pride in their play, who practiced, who tried to win and to win with style and do honor to the sport, playing hockey the way it should have been played.
When that colossus came barreling toward the goal, one of the Spitfire defenders tried to mix her up, clipping her just at her left shoulder. This sent the madwoman spinning on one skate and when she recovered her balance, it was too late. Eloise had come off her line to scoop up the puck and the woman crashed right into her, sending her against the immovable metal goal post and, pop, the leg came out of its socket, the tendons and cartilage twisted and strained and torn.
The pain—and it was terrible—only escalated in the days to come. Her leg swelled up and she spent three days in the hospital and then another two weeks in bed at home, and then six more weeks on crutches. Her playing days were over.
At first, it hit her hard. She mourned for what she had lost. But the season was over in any case and the faint dreams she had of playing the following year managed to dissipate in the happy news of her pregnancy.
Once her daughter came, she didn’t think too much of hockey. There were more important things at home. There was her husband to attend to, and she loved him. He was a good and decent man, and he adored her. He proved an excellent father, too—he loved nothing more than taking his baby girl in his arms and spinning her through the air, eliciting spasmodic giggles of delight. Once, when she vomited on him as he spun her around, he didn’t even blink. Not even then. He simply placed her down, cleaned himself up, and then started all over again, only slightly less rambunctiously.
So delighted was he with this child, they were soon at work on another. Though it proved more difficult than they anticipated, they kept at it until Sam was born. In the midst of all this, who had time to pine for hockey? Besides, by Sam’s second birthday, the women’s hockey league had folded.