The Girl from Charnelle

by K. L. Cook

  In heat, Fay would attract all the neighboring hounds and mutts and alley rovers, who would howl and paw and try to jump the rusting metal fence to get into the backyard, and sometimes they would succeed. Laura and her brothers would watch in fascination as the dogs nipped and bit at each other, the males with their extended pink penises, like flayed lizards, obscene, raw, vulnerable. If a dog got into the pen, Mr. or Mrs. Tate would be out with a broomstick or a rake, beating the dog or shooing it away until it jumped back over the fence, sometimes with its tail between its legs, sometimes snarling at the thwarted opportunity. If Laura’s parents were not there, then Manny or, before she eloped, Gloria would fight off the dogs. But on occasion they would all just watch the males tie up with Fay, panting, their tongues lolling wetly from the sides of their mouths, the other males barking and whining and pacing back and forth in the alley next to the fence, Greta either hiding in her shed or barking madly at the coupled animals.

  Laura and her brothers and sometimes the gang of freckled fools Manny ran around with would watch the dogs’ ritual, laughing at first, the boys wise-cracking—Get ’er, stud! Stick it in ’er!—but then they would quiet down and stare with a charged stillness as the dogs labored with a persistence that seemed both grotesque and fascinating. They weren’t dumb. They knew that litters resulted from these incidents and that they themselves were the result of their parents’ similar activities, but it was not pleasant for them to make the connection in their heads. Laura had never been able to adequately imagine her mother and father tied up, tongues dripping, grunting mindlessly like this. To think too much about it, which she sometimes did seeing the dogs, always made her feel nauseous and sad and strangely frightened.

  When Greta first came into heat, two weeks before Easter, rather than wait for the males to jump over the fence, she dug a hole underneath and was gone. The whole family searched down alleys and gravel roads, at the pound, in the fields and parks, on the two highways leading out of Charnelle. They were sure she was lost forever, maybe dead, or had run off with a pack of coyotes. Gene and Rich cried.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Mrs. Tate said, looking out the window, her arms folded across her chest. It was dark outside, so the light reflected off the window like a mirror. From the big chair, Laura could see her mother’s face clearly in the glass.

  Mr. Tate knelt down beside the couch, where the boys were sitting. “Maybe she’ll come back.”

  Laura’s mother turned toward them. “Maybe she won’t,” she said flatly.

  He gave her a sharp look. “We don’t know,” he said.

  “Exactly. We don’t know. She was difficult and a misfit, and she didn’t want to be here. It’s just as well that she’s gone.”

  “We’re responsible for her,” he said.

  “No, we’re not.”

  “She ours. She belongs to us.”

  “She doesn’t belong to anyone, Zeeke.”

  There was a pocket of painful silence. He rose from the couch and squared his shoulders. “She ours,” he said again.

  Laura’s mother looked at him for a moment, then turned back to the window and stared into the dark yard. She didn’t say anything else.

  A few days after Easter, as Laura was going out to feed Fay, she found Greta whimpering by the fence, her fur matted, filthy, cockleburred. Deep, coagulated wounds were gouged in her nose and back right foot. The end of her tail and chunks from her left ear were missing. Laura, her brothers, and her mother fed and bathed the dog, tried to nurse her wounds. She bared her teeth and snapped, put marks in Manny’s boots. Mrs. Tate poured some sweet rum inside a butter cake and fed it to Greta to calm her down. Then Manny stroked her coat gently as Mrs. Tate muzzled her with a leather belt so that they could finish tending to her wounds. The dog shook at first, as with a palsy, then relinquished her fear and let herself be cared for.

  When Mr. Tate returned home, he removed the muzzle and sat outside with Greta for a full two hours, stroking her, feeling for broken bones, inspecting the wounds and bandages, redoing most of it, soothing the dog with his voice. He palmed her belly, and she snapped again, but he stayed calm, told her that everything was okay, not to worry. He fed her crumbled strips of jerky from his hand, held water up to her mouth, stroked her until she fell asleep. When he came inside, he scrubbed his hands with the gritty rectangle of soap he sandpapered himself with after work. Then he ran his fingers through his pomaded hair and announced, “I think that dog’s pregnant.”

  “Zeeke, she’s too young,” Mrs. Tate said.

  “I guess not.”

  “We can’t let her. She’s not ready.”

  “We ain’t got a choice.”

  “We do, too.”

  He shook his head.

  Mrs. Tate stared down at the knotholes on the floor for the longest time, as if they held secrets that the family was waiting for her to decode. Then she shook her head and stared at her husband. “This is gonna turn out bad, Zeeke. I’m telling you.”

  “It might calm her down,” he said.

  She said, “Mark my words.”

  Weeks passed. Greta’s wounds healed until she was well enough to eat by herself and to get on her feet. There was something darkly troubling about the dog, and Laura found herself studying Greta, afraid both of and for her. Her teeth yellowed. She bared them constantly. Her eyes were bloodshot. Fay tried to help Greta, mothering her, licking her wounds, nuzzling her when she was ill, but once Greta grew stronger, she attacked the older dog, biting at her neck, drawing blood, sending Fay whimpering off. Mr. Tate put up a new pen to isolate Greta, who lay in her shed, panting, shifting her head suspiciously from side to side, awaiting intruders. Except for Mr. Tate, she wouldn’t let anyone approach her, not even to give her food or water. During the day, she’d gnaw at the hair on her stomach, welting herself. During the warmer afternoons, when she was able, she’d pace frantically in her pen, burning the grass, her belly with its load and the dark, thick, extended teats swaying below her.

  At first, Mrs. Tate wouldn’t have anything to do with the dog, wouldn’t even acknowledge her, was short-tempered with the kids, and silent and sullen when Mr. Tate was home. But as Greta began to heal from her wounds and progressed in her pregnancy, Laura’s mother began watching the dog from the kitchen window. When she was outside, while doing the laundry or preparing the garden, she’d eye Greta curiously as the dog lay huddled in her shed, half in light, half in shadow, panting, watching the woman in return.

  On a Friday morning in early May, a month before they thought Greta was due, Laura was sick and home from school. She sat at the kitchen table, sipping hot cider, nibbling on buttered toast, watching Rich play as Mrs. Tate did chores in the backyard, hanging up the laundry on the lines, sweeping dried mud from the porch, wiping off the dust from the canned tomatoes and peaches that were in the storm cellar, hoeing the weeds in the garden, which had been recently seeded. It was an exceptionally warm day. The kitchen window was open for the fresh air. Laura heard her mother whistling songs, Bob Wills and Hank Williams tunes that were always playing on the radio. Fay was loose, nosing her way along the edges of the alley fence, sniffing and pissing where the strays had entered her territory. At first Greta stayed in her shed, as usual, though her eyes were open. She seldom slept. After a time, she stood and cautiously inched out of the shed toward her water and food bowls, all the while watching Mrs. Tate and Fay. Greta drank from her bowl, then looked up and barked.

  Mrs. Tate turned to her quickly from the clothesline and arched her eyebrow. “What is it, girl?”

  The dog barked again. Fay ambled over to the edge of Greta’s pen and cautiously sniffed.

  “You don’t like my whistling?”

  Both dogs looked at her, then cocked their heads quizzically. Greta barked again, followed by Fay. Laura’s mother laughed and walked over to the pen with a sheet and some clothespins in her hands. Inside the house, Laura smiled, sipped her cider.

  “You out of water?” Mrs. Tate s
aid. She went over to the hose in the garden, which was dripping in the dirt, and pulled it to the bowl and let it fill up. Greta looked at the hose and at the woman and back at the hose in something like a gesture of gratitude. Mrs. Tate tossed the sheet into the laundry basket and sat on the flat stump across from Greta. The clothespins, like two tiny wooden beaks, dangled from her mouth. She watched the dog drink. Greta ignored her, though Fay kept nuzzling under her apron, and Mrs. Tate scratched the older dog’s head.

  She took some jerky from her apron pocket and let Fay eat it from her palm. Greta looked up, put her face through the chain link of the pen, and sniffed.

  “You want some of this, girl?”

  Greta stuck her nose farther through the chain link. Mrs. Tate shooed the older dog away, stood up, and slowly approached the pen. Greta withdrew her snout and began retreating, her head low, her ears back.

  “It’s okay. Calm down now, girl.”

  Mrs. Tate dangled the jerky and bent toward the bowl. Greta growled low and deep without opening her mouth. Mrs. Tate took one of the clothespins wedged in her mouth, fingered the wood, and opened and closed it methodically. The dog’s lips quivered. She growled again, her yellow teeth showing this time.

  Fay barked.

  “Hush up, you!” Mrs. Tate turned back to the younger dog and spoke to her soothingly, a whispery litany on the theme of “I’m not gonna hurt you.” She crouched close to the fence and slowly inched the jerky through the holes, encouraging, “Come on, girl. Come here and get it. It’s good.”

  Suddenly Greta charged the fence and leapt, not at the jerky strip but at Mrs. Tate’s face, mouth open, her teeth possessing a malevolent propulsion of their own. Laura’s mother sprawled back. The fence rattled. Greta yelped and then, miraculously, stuck there on the fence, her back paws dangling above her water bowl. The wires were stuck between her teeth, and the whole fence bowed with the weight of the wailing dog. Fay commenced a full-scale bark at her daughter. Greta’s bloodshot eyes rolled in her head. She seemed to be searching for some way out, expecting something terrible to happen.

  Jumping up from the table, Laura knocked off her cider cup. It smashed on the hardwood floor, green ceramic shards splashing. She felt spikes in her feet, but she hopped to the door and out onto the porch, where she saw her mother back-sprawled on the ground, Greta still hanging on the fence.

  “Are you okay?” Laura shouted. Fay barked crazily. Greta’s wails were high-pitched and hurt Laura’s ears.

  “Shut up, Fay!” Mrs. Tate shouted. “Shut up!”

  “Momma!” Laura called.

  “Fay, shut up! Now!”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Fay, hush!”

  Her mother rose and inspected the caught dog. She grabbed the fence above Greta’s face and shook it to free her, but the shaking only served to flop the dog’s body in a way that left her shoulder now flush against the fence and her head twisted sideways. Greta whimpered, exhausted.

  Laura swiped at her feet. There was blood, nothing serious.

  “Laura, go fetch me your father’s toolbox. Hurry now.”

  Rich had followed Laura. She picked him up and put him in his crib. She grabbed the toolbox from the closet and ran out to the backyard. The steel wire had somehow slipped between the dog’s back molars and was caught between her teeth and gums. How the wire got there without breaking the teeth was amazing, like the time Laura had seen a magician pull a cloth from a fully set table without displacing the settings.

  Her mother took the long flathead screwdriver and wedged it into Greta’s mouth, between the tooth and the fence. “Hand me those pliers, Laura. Now hold on to this screwdriver while I work the wire out.”

  It must have taken only a few minutes to dislodge the dog, but it seemed interminable, with Greta whimpering shrilly, her bloody fangs poking through the fence, Fay jumping around, barking, Rich inside screaming. Mrs. Tate was able to wriggle the wire free from one side. Greta let out a muted wail and hung there by the two molars on the left side of her face. The leverage was against them. Finally Mrs. Tate jerked the wire through the other teeth. They broke, tiny enamel missiles flying past Laura’s face. The dog fell to the ground, lay in shock for several minutes, and then passed out. Mrs. Tate sat down on the stump across from the pen and stared at the dog, then sent Laura inside to check on Rich.

  She rescued him from his crib, calmed him down, swept up the broken cup, tossed it in the trash, then sat down on the back porch and watched her mother stroke Fay. Greta got up and staggered back to her shed. Blood was matted on her chin. She yelped in pain every few seconds.

  “What should we do?” Laura asked.

  “You go back in, honey. I’ll take care of this.”

  Mrs. Tate stayed there on the stump for the rest of the afternoon, just staring, not saying a word and not coming in, just opening and closing the wooden pins in her hands. Something’s happening, Laura sensed, there’s something more to this, but she didn’t know how to say it because it was at once impossible to articulate and yet so obvious, hovering in the air like an unacknowledged ghost.

  Later, after the excitement had waned, Laura felt weak and feverish again, but she was afraid to disturb her mother. She put Rich down for his nap and then lay down herself. Drifting in and out of a shivering daytime sleep, she replayed in her mind what had happened and tried to figure out what it meant. It had been the same way, she suddenly thought, a year ago when Gloria eloped with Jerome. Gloria didn’t say a word about it to Laura, even though they shared a bed. She knew that her sister was in love with the lieutenant. She’d read some of their letters, hidden in a small brown box at the back of Gloria’s bottom drawer, beneath her underwear, and Laura figured they might get married soon enough, after Gloria turned eighteen, but the whole family was shocked to find her gone one morning, leaving only a note, saying she and Jerome had eloped to Mexico and that she would write later.

  Laura’s father was in a furious rant for a couple of months—wanting to hunt them down and throttle them both, grounding all the children as if they’d been party to this conspiracy, even threatening to contact the air force and bring charges against Jerome. But then he seemed to resign himself to the fact of her absence. Their mother stayed silent, as if she knew more about what had happened with Gloria than she was willing to tell. Not until a week after Gloria’s eighteenth birthday did they receive a postcard from Switzerland, saying that she and Jerome would be moving to Greece soon. It wasn’t clear to any of them if she was ever coming back.

  “There are no secrets,” Laura’s mother said mysteriously after the family read the postcard, shaking her head as if indeed there were secrets, and you needed to be clairvoyant to understand them.

  It had amazed Laura that her sister could do such a thing. At the time, it had seemed, like what Greta had done, violent and inexplicable. But the more Laura brooded over it, the more she retraced her conversations in bed at night with Gloria, the more she recalled her sister’s behavior leading up to the elopement—the secret letters, Gloria working extra jobs and hoarding her money, the way she seemed distracted and worried but also jovial, manic, even—the more it all made sense, as her mother had said, like a clear and obvious path leading backward from this one moment. It made her a believer, though she wouldn’t have known how to say it at the time, that there were always seeds of the future in the present, growing, preparing for the blossom.

  In mid-May, Mr. Tate went to Amarillo for four days to work on a construction job for the new downtown bank. They didn’t expect Greta’s puppies for a couple of weeks, but Mr. Tate had already built the whelping pen, an open-topped plywood box, with one side partially cut away and a pull-out chicken-wire gate over the opening. He nailed down old scraps of carpet he’d salvaged. Greta had been relatively docile since falling from the fence. She paced less, didn’t growl as much. But she still favored Mr. Tate. He made a small do
or in the fence so that Manny could feed her without having to go into the pen, and the hose could be draped, as usual, through the chain link into her water bowl. He told the family not to worry about her. She still had plenty of time.

  The third day he was gone, however, Greta started her labor. By dusk she’d begun turning in circles, clawing at the old scraps of carpet in her shed. Fay lay in her own shed with her chin on her paws and watched quietly.

  “We’ve got to get her into the whelping pen,” Mrs. Tate said. “If she stays in the shed, we won’t be able to help her.”

  When they opened the gate, Greta barked wildly. The hair on the back of her neck bristled. Then she hunkered into her shed and growled, her teeth glowing in the evening light. Mrs. Tate sent Manny to the back of the shed and had him bang on it to get Greta out, but she just barked until he slipped his stick between two boards and prodded her. She snapped at it, then skittered out. Mrs. Tate stood by the door, and after Greta ran through the opening, she guided the dog with the rake into the whelping pen and dropped the gate. Manny then boarded up the opening of her shed with a piece of plywood.

  “Should we muzzle her?” Manny asked.

  “I don’t know if we could if we wanted to. Besides, we got to let her pant. We’ll just wait here and see what happens. Gene, go get the newspapers.”

  Gene brought the stack of old newspapers they’d been saving. Mrs. Tate and Manny dumped the paper in the pen and moved back. Greta clawed at the paper, bunched it together in a pile, sat on it, rose, turned several more circles, and clawed again. She sat back down and began breathing in short, shallow breaths, her belly rising and falling quickly. Mrs. Tate slipped the garden hose through the links and filled the water bowl. Greta lapped at it, but she still eyed them all as if they were to blame for her misery.