A long curve on a rising grade, and at the top LeAnne got her first look at Bellville. The town lay in a valley where two rivers met at about a forty-five-degree angle, one wide and dull gray, the other much smaller and bright blue. Right about where the last of the blueness got swallowed by the dull gray, a bridge spanned the water, connecting both sides of the town, one part rising into eastern hills, the other spreading onto western flats before petering into farmland. She spotted two church spires, a big open space set up for baseball, football, and track, which had to be the high school, and a mill of some kind with a tall chimney, rising higher than the spires and sending up a thick column of smoke, which merged with the mist that hung over the whole town. Then the rain really started coming down, blotting out everything she’d just seen. Maybe that was enough, right there. LeAnne actually thought of turning around and . . . and then what? She took her foot off the brake and coasted down into Bellville, the windshield wipers whipping back and forth at their fastest, a wild motion that gave her a creepy feeling that found its place among all the fucked-up feelings already in her head.
The road leveled out, turned into East Main Street, the main drag. The downtown took up two or three blocks and then came a small residential neighborhood of modest houses and after that a sign reading Canada 16 Miles. LeAnne slowed down, and as she did, spotted a motel set back from the road in a grove of budding trees: Shady Grove Motel and Cabins, Flat-Screen TV, Free Wi-Fi, Reasonable Rates. The rain stopped, not instantly but just about. She pulled in.
“I can give you a room for fifty-nine ninety-five,” said the woman behind the counter in the office; a short, round woman wearing a Bellville High School baseball cap. The woman’s eyes were on her face, but they showed no reaction at all to what she saw.
“Okay,” said LeAnne, handing over her credit card.
The woman glanced at it. “Military? For military I can do you a cabin for the same price.”
“Okay,” LeAnne said, although she’d forgotten the quote.
“How long you gonna be staying?”
LeAnne picked a number. “Two.”
“Two nights?”
“Yeah.”
“Cabin six.” The woman handed her a key. “My name’s Dot, anything you need. Follow the path. Plug in the icebox if you plan on using it.”
LeAnne left the office, followed a white crushed-stone path through the trees, past several simple wooden cabins, none looking occupied, to number six, like the other cabins except that it backed on to a pond. A nice, round pond, surface area of maybe one half acre, with a pair of ducks sitting motionless on the far side, tall evergreens lining the banks. This had to be one of the most peaceful spots she’d ever been in. There was a lot to be said for drowning: no violence, no mess, and it could have been an accident. LeAnne unlocked the door to number six and entered.
Cabin six had a damp, foresty smell inside. She was fine with that. She was also fine with pine walls; and the linoleum floor, covered here and there with woven scatter rugs picturing moose, bears, wolves; and the little bathroom with a stall shower and fishing and hunting magazines on the toilet cistern; and the desk, an old schoolhouse desk with an inkwell hole and a flashlight in the drawer; and the bed, a double bed with a headboard that had a carved cameo of leaping fish, and a gingham spread. LeAnne kicked off Marci’s red sneaks and lay down. The red sneaks were back home. That couldn’t be bad. In fact: mission accomplished.
She closed her eye. Actually, they both closed; the right eyelid had survived and now it seemed to remember the program on its own. Had there been an eyelid discussion in Germany? Was there something else about titanium posts? LeAnne got no further with any of that. She felt around. Yes, her right eyelid was down, and in place for sleeping. Out on the pond, one of the ducks quacked, not a harsh cartoon-duck quack, but something softer, welcoming, beckoning.
LeAnne slept, first soundly and then not. A dream started up, she and Daddy building a birdhouse, then nailing it to a tree. Without warning, that changed to Wakil Razaq Salam hammering nails into Daddy’s chest. Then came more and more bad things, lots of shouting and screaming and shooting and slashing and the barking of a dog, and LeAnne awoke.
She was soaked in sweat, her body almost stuck to the gingham bedspread. Her heart was beating like a little drum machine turned up all the way. She’d never felt so afraid. A dog barked, not loudly, but close by. The dog was real? What else was real? The dreams stirred deep inside her, trying to draw her back down or simply letting her know they were there, patiently waiting.
LeAnne got up, stripped off her wet clothes, went into the bathroom, and took a long shower, first cold, then hot, and finally lukewarm. Her pulse and breathing returned to normal. The dark parts of her mind went blank.
There was a small four-paned window in the shower stall at head level. LeAnne wiped away the steam from one of the squares and looked out. She had a good view of the pond. The ducks were gone, but on the near bank, maybe fifty feet from the cabin—although she couldn’t be confident when it came to distance estimation, not anymore—a dog was prowling around. This dog was big and black, with a huge, square head, smallish ears, and a powerful way of walking. Not a cute dog like—what was the name of Ryan’s dog? Lew?—cute if you liked dogs—but . . . LeAnne forgot where she was going, spent time trying to recall the name of Dr. Machado’s dog. She could picture it—short-haired, brown—but the name wouldn’t come. Did it mean anything that very late in the game she had dogs in the picture? How could it? How were you expected to know even one goddamn thing for absolute sure? She made a mental note to get a weapon, ASAP.
LeAnne rubbed away the steam again. The big dog was still out there, now in the water at the edge of the pond, pawing away at the bank. Mud tore loose in big clumps and plopped into the water. What was he after? Once she’d seen a human femur, just lying by the side of a hilly track in Kunduz Province.
The dog paused, one huge paw raised, and then dipped his head toward the bank, momentarily hidden from view. Next he scrambled up from the pond—actually more like a bound—and shook himself off, water spraying everywhere, coppery in what looked like late afternoon light. But meanwhile, he had something in his mouth. LeAnne leaned closer to the glass, her left eye almost touching it. The something in the dog’s mouth was large, oval, off-white: a duck egg. A duck egg! The bastard had driven off the parents with his barking and he was about to—
LeAnne pounded on the glass. The dog heard, looked her way immediately, that one paw still raised in the air. LeAnne bolted from the shower and ran outside.
“No, goddamn it! Put that down!”
The dog turned its great head toward her, and in one jerking motion swallowed the egg, yoke running down his chin. LeAnne bent down, grabbed a stone, and flung it at him. She missed, although not by much, the stone sailing over his head and splashing down in the pond. The dog wheeled around immediately and leaped into the pond, swimming—and with amazing speed—toward the center of the spreading circles where the stone had fallen. Then he dove down, out of sight. LeAnne just stood there, naked and dripping, outside the door to cabin six.
The dog popped up to the surface, muzzle first. The stone was in his mouth. He swam to the edge of the pond, lurched out, came flying toward her, his speed and power and otherness terrifying. LeAnne backed quickly into the cabin and slammed the door.
Standing just on the inside, she heard him breathing a foot or two away. Then came a soft thud: the stone landing on the welcome mat. Then more breathing, followed by a soft pad-pad-pad as the dog trotted away. LeAnne went looking for the bottle of vodka.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
And before she knew it, she was right back down in a hellhole of bad dreams. The only way out was waking up, a fact known in one small part of her mind, but that part was not in control. She thrashed around, heard screams of agony, and watched live people she knew ripped to pieces, and the blood washed all over her, clotting her hair and soaking her whole body. Finally, she banged her e
lbow hard on the headboard and woke up, soaked not in blood but in sweat. She leaned over the edge of the bed, vomited on the floor, rose, and in rising put her hands on the gingham spread, put them right into a vodka-smelling puddle of previous vomit.
This could not go on.
LeAnne walked to the door, opened it, and went outside. A dark, moonless night, which was a good thing: she did not like moonlight on a mission. Might as well go in with a marching band. Someone had said that, probably long ago. She listened, heard no music of any kind, no traffic, no wind in the trees, nothing. The pond was the big feature of this night, somehow glowing faintly as though a dim, pearly light were shining way down deep. LeAnne climbed over the bank and stepped into the pond, up to her knees.
This pond was perfection. The water had to be cold at this time of year, but LeAnne didn’t feel its temperature at all, just the wetness. It was comforting. She’d been so thirsty and now she had all the water she would ever need. From the outside, bravery, of which she’d seen plenty, could look spectacular. It wasn’t like that on the inside. On the inside it was simply making up your mind to do something no matter what and then never thinking about it again. LeAnne’s mind was made up. She shut down all thinking and took another step, imposing her will on life.
Shutting off thought didn’t mean you weren’t aware. LeAnne was aware: of the wetness, of the soles of her feet on the bottom, thick, gritty mud squishing through her toes, of the pearly light. The bottom dropped quickly away and then she was buoyant. She turned on her back, floated on the surface. No moon, but there were stars, not bright, maybe on account of mist she couldn’t see. To those stars, she was dead already. The truth was she was dead already, period. The stars were right. She rolled over and swam a few strokes. LeAnne was not much better than an average swimmer, had never worked on her technique, but she’d always enjoyed the feeling of moving in the water—and, of course, the feeling of movement in general. She stopped swimming at once and lay on the surface, facedown. Tonight was not about enjoyment. The lid twister or metal shearer or whatever he was relaxed his grip at last and let her go.
How this was done: you jackknifed into a little duck dive—those poor ducks when they saw what was happening to their baby and could do nothing about it!—and kicked down to the bottom where you clung to a rock or a log or simply dug your hands into the mud and held on for all you were worth, and then . . . that was it. A done deal, mission accomplished. LeAnne did a little duck dive, cut through the still surface, and swam down toward the source of the pearly light. She shut down everything inside, everything unrelated to this one last physical task of finding an anchor and hanging on.
Despite the pearly light, things got darker the deeper she went in the pond. By the time her hand touched bottom—sandy, weedy bottom—she couldn’t see a damn thing. The water at the bottom of the pond was much warmer than the water above. That had to be a good sign, even a good sign of what was to come on the other side, if one existed. Things were starting to go her way. LeAnne felt around and almost immediately encountered something thick, woven, slimy. A rope? Yes. Her hands moved along it, came to a metal ring to which the rope seemed to be knotted. The metal ring was in turn attached to a large metal hunk, thick and triangular. An anchor? Yes, an actual anchor stuck on the bottom and just when she needed it, as though plans had been made long ago and now she was finally showing up. What kept you? LeAnne kicked her way down until she lay flat on the bottom. She got a good, strong grip on the anchor with both hands and made ready to let all the air out of her lungs, which would by reflex lead to . . . what it would lead to. That was that. She had made her own arrangements. And in those final moments it occurred to her that Daddy, too, had made his own arrangements. She was following him to the very last step. So, at the very end, she understood her life as never before. That had to be a blessing. She was at peace.
LeAnne told herself: on three. In her mind, she counted down: one, two—
But that was where the countdown came to an end. From out of nowhere—more accurately, from directly above—something sharp and mighty and alive clamped down on her right arm, just below the elbow. Then with a quick twisting motion of enormous raw power, this mighty living thing yanked her loose, jerked her away from the anchor and off the bottom—like her grip meant nothing—and up.
LeAnne felt the kicking of strong, hairy legs against her; thick blunt claws scraped her skin. She screamed, and that, not one last exhale, led to the desired end, meaning the inhalation of pond water. But at just about the same moment, she broke the surface, back into the world of air, where she gasped and sputtered and coughed up water, and breathed. Meanwhile, the mighty being still had her by the arm and was propelling her across the pond toward the cabin side. By starlight she saw the big square head of the mighty being, cutting through the water. It was the dog.
The dog swam LeAnne to the edge of the pond and then dragged her up the bank. Then he finally let go and gave himself a good shake, spraying water all over her. That was when LeAnne, lying in the grass and sucking in air, saw that he was in fact a she.
The dog came closer, stood beside LeAnne. Then she lowered her head toward LeAnne’s side and prodded her with her warm, wet muzzle. The message couldn’t have been clearer: Get up.
But LeAnne was too weak to get up. And did she even want to? What she wanted to do, and had almost pulled off before this dog had interfered, was to . . .
“What the fuck?” she said, the first time she’d addressed a dog in her life. “Where do you get off messing with me?”
LeAnne glared at the dog. The dog gazed back at her, not glaring, just alert.
“Go away, for Christ sake.”
The dog didn’t budge. Instead it—or she? Did dogs get called he and she or were they its? LeAnne had no idea. All she knew was that the dog had started emitting a series of low rumbly barks. Bark, pause, bark, pause, bark. Same basic message as the muzzle prod, except now more like, Get up, goddamn it.
LeAnne rolled over and sat up. Cold now and starting to shake, she—who’d been able to spring erect in one easy motion practically all her life—found herself unable to rise. The dog—seeming to grasp the problem, which, of course, was impossible—moved in closer. LeAnne placed her hands on the dog’s neck and pulled herself up. Then she made her way unsteadily, even staggering once or twice, back to cabin six. The door was open. She went inside and tried to close the door before the dog could get in, but the dog was already in. There was no more she could do. Her will was weak and her ability to impose it weaker. She shut the door, got in the bed, trying to avoid the pukey parts, pulled the covers around her, and lay there trembling.
Then came a thump. A long time went by before she realized what that was: the stone she’d thrown at the dog, now being dropped on the floor. The dog had brought it back after their first encounter, depositing it outside, evidently not quite a satisfactory conclusion. Now the stone was properly inside. The dog liked to play the game right.
LeAnne opened her eyes.
The events of the night before came back to her in bits and pieces, but she didn’t know whether to trust them, didn’t know what to believe, not until she twisted around and saw the dog, lying with its—with her back to the door, eyes closed, massive chest rising and falling. It had all really happened, meaning this was the first day of . . . of a sort of afterlife, as if she’d reached the other side after all.
Soft, gray daylight entered through the windows. It was raining outside, not hard. LeAnne took a good look at the dog. She was short-haired, pure black with no hint of other markings—not even a few nonblack hairs anywhere on her body—and powerfully built, with that deep chest and a broad back. Her tail was thick and short, slightly too long to be called stubby. Her eyes were wide apart, her ears small and round, her neck without tags or collar. There was nothing soft about her expression, not even in sleep.
LeAnne swung her legs over the side—she remembered Marci doing that exact same thing at Walter Reed, except one-le
ggedly—and stood up. The dog was awake and on her feet immediately.
“Why?” LeAnne said. “What do you want?”
The stone lay on the linoleum floor between them. The dog moved to it, lowered her head and gave the stone a nudge in LeAnne’s direction.
“This is all about fetch? You need me for a fetch partner?”
The dog just stood there, giving no indication of anything. Weren’t their tails a guide to dog mood and behavior? This dog’s tail was sticking out straight back, completely motionless.
“Do you want to go outside? Is that it?”
The short thick tail didn’t move. Slowly and with exaggerated enunciation, LeAnne repeated the word “outside” several times, figuring that if dogs were capable of recognizing a few words, outside would probably be one of them. But nothing. The dog gazed at LeAnne. She gazed at the dog. The dog’s eyes were as unreadable as shiny little coals. LeAnne had never taken a good long look at the eyes of any dog before this. She did now. Unreadable for sure, at least by her, but something was going on in that big square head.
LeAnne moved past the dog, went to the door, held it open. “Come on.”
The dog sat.
“ ‘Come on’ means ‘sit’?”
No reaction from the dog. LeAnne walked into the bathroom, closed the door, took a hot shower, felt a little bit alive. She checked her fake eye in the mirror. Its color did match, almost exactly, but the expression was dead. That was one way of seeing it. But could the fake eye also be seen, like the dog’s eyes, as unreadable? Was it possible to find a plus side to all this? LeAnne ran her hands through her hair, tried to think, found the thinking parts pretty much still shut down. But there was a strange, new feeling inside her head, or maybe more like a nonfeeling. An ache that had been there for weeks or months—she wasn’t even sure how long—and to which she had become accustomed as though it were just another part of herself, seemed to be gone. This ache had been a background ache, much milder that what the lid twister could do, although he, too, was inactive at the moment. LeAnne’s gaze wandered, took in the prominence of her collarbone and ribs; the bruises on her arm where the dog had gripped her, although the skin hadn’t been broken; and, of course, the scars on her face, more silvery than red today, maybe on account of the soft, gray light.
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