“What do you hunt?”
“Do you mean what do I kill? Deer mostly. I had a friend who taught me to take down pheasants. I liked that.” He pantomimed by pivoting on his heel, pulled back the arrowless bow, aiming first at a point near the ground then moving with amazing speed to a point forty-five degrees higher, and finally let go. Rocky could almost hear the thud of a pheasant hitting the ground, wings spread wide.
“Have you ever heard of a dog being shot by an arrow?” she asked.
He turned around and faced her. “A dog? Most people don’t take dogs bow hunting because they keep the game away. But I have seen them hit, mostly by accident when a dog is in the wrong place. Why do you ask?”
She unpacked the borrowed bow and notched the arrow. “Because I found a dog a few weeks ago, four weeks now, who had been shot. That’s how I found you, indirectly, asking about traditional bows. Then I got curious about shooting. So here I am.” She took her stand and although she wished that she could erase his presence so that she could concentrate better, she could not. But she did pull smoothly. And the arrow did hit a good mid-zone on the target.
“Do it again,” he said without further comment about the shot. “There’s no bow season on your island. There was a special deer season declared a few years back to bring down the deer population, but it wasn’t a bow season. So who shot the dog?”
“Nobody knows, or nobody is saying. Isaiah thinks it might have been a tourist.”
“Who’s Isaiah?”
“My boss, longtime resident, public works director, minister. Older Black man. There’s probably more that he does but I don’t know everything. He’s a little sour on tourists these days. The last renters trashed his house.”
Hill’s jaw muscles tightened and his eyes narrowed slightly. “Anyone who is a skilled archer is not going to mistake a dog for a deer. There’s no excuse for idiots like that who forget that they are working with a major weapon. Or worse yet, someone doing it on purpose. If someone was trying to shoot a dog on purpose and the dog lived, then they were a lousy archer to begin with.”
“The dog is recovering. I’ve taken him in until his owners can be found, but that is looking less likely all the time. Usually, owners are either frantically searching for a dog or they don’t want to be bothered. There’s not much in between.” Rocky paused, suddenly noticing the lack of something at Hill’s house. No dog sounds, no dog barking inside. Wouldn’t a guy like Hill have a dog? And his wife was never here, or if she was here, she was the quietest woman on earth.
“Do you have a dog?” asked Rocky.
Hill picked up the next weight bow with the twenty-five-pound draw, and handed it to Rocky without comment. “Used to. My wife and I are separated and the dog went with her. We had that dog for five years. She was a good strong mutt, smart as anything. Julie said I’m not home enough to have a dog. Let’s see you try that bow,” he said.
She was less accurate with the next size bow, but not bad, and she knew she’d be better by the next lesson. She knew she’d do even better if she could get more sleep, which still eluded her.
The dog’s recovery was remarkable, flesh grew back with flesh, muscle accommodated, bones meshed. He had a limp that grew less noticeable, his large black body tweaking less to the left. But Rocky noted that his early-morning restlessness continued. She woke everyday by 4:30, pulling herself reluctantly from her dreams where she searched for Bob, scoured the land where souls of the dead live to catch a glimpse of him turning a corner, catch a scent of him. When she woke, exhausted from her journey into the land of death, the dog was always there, standing near her bed, his ears up in alarm, and with a whine coming from his throat.
As soon as she peeled back the covers, the dog appeared to relax, his ears settled down, and he put his nose into her hand.
“You too, big guy? Looks like neither of us can sleep.”
She made coffee and they went outside to walk the beach. Walking brought her back into her body and she knew the dog needed to keep moving to get stronger. Tess had told her that physical therapy for the dog was important and Rocky added in a few more minutes of his walk every day.
In mid-December she left the island for one night, meeting with her brother about details of her house that had been rented out for the year. The temperamental furnace needed to be repaired or replaced. She knew Melissa would be at her father’s house so she asked Tess to keep Lloyd for the night.
“Tess, will you keep Lloyd with you while I’m gone? It’s easier if he stays on the island.” She forgot to warn Tess about the dog’s restlessness. When Rocky came back she said, “You’re probably never going to take him again, are you? He’s a restless guy at 4:30 in the morning. Sorry.”
“What do you mean?” said Tess. “This guy didn’t budge until I got up at seven. I’m not one of those old farts who gets up at dawn.”
“No way. This dog is wide awake every morning at 4:30 when I get up,” said Rocky.
Tess handed the bag of dog food to Rocky. “That’s the hour of the distressed. Why are you waking up then?”
The truth of the situation hit Rocky. The dog woke up because she did. She was the one disturbing his sleep.
When she had been on the mainland, she read a newspaper article about dogs trained to alert people of impending seizures two hours prior to the event. It was speculated that they smelled the chemical change happening in the human. Maybe Lloyd smelled her sadness in a way that others couldn’t sense. Bob used to tell her about the neurotic behavior of dogs who belonged to anxious people. Or of dogs who were overly protective of people who were afraid of everything, who were sure that criminals lurked in every corner. “There’s not much about us that they don’t know,” he had said.
Rocky set the dog food back on Tess’s counter. She knelt by the black Lab. She gave him her hand to sniff. “Lloyd, I think I’m keeping you awake at night. Sorry buddy.”
Chapter 13
The dog still caught old wisps of her scent, once at the food store, again on a beach chair stacked near a restaurant, and when he did, the pain of first loss rose up in him. He knew, in the place where scent traveled through neuron, leaping over synapse to the perfect place in his brain, that she was dead. The smell of death was given to all dogs and it was carried back throughout time from the very first death when dogs came in from the bush to join humans.
It was a primordial scent that announced the end of one human, a different smell than the death of another dog. Once dogs joined the packs of humans, this smell was unlike all others. He knew she was dead, the one he had joined with, slept near, awaited, greeted, licked, cajoled into play, soothed through bad times, lowered her heart rate, her breath, sighed deeply to her to signal that it was time to go to sleep. And she in turn had loved him, remembered him, delighted him with food, thrilled him with car trips where he hung his great black head out the car window, and together they had been majestic.
She was gone. He had failed her, failed to protect her, and save her. An unspeakable tear had ripped through them. His powerful nose tortured him in moments when a thread of her scent caught him off guard and made him halt in his tracks.
The new human who had saved him, and he knew that without her he would have perished, needed extra watching at night. By day he kept a leisurely vigil between her and the door, between her and unknown people. Her thin substance blew in and out of rooms, houses and cars as if she was the alpha one, and he let her. When she slept, her attempt at alpha nature evaporated and her terror began. He smelled it the first night, even groggy from his own surgery, his own disaster. He sensed the alarm, the hunt. Her body restless in sleep, carried traces of an ancient hunter, tracking senselessly, flailing about, sending off waves of scented pain to him.
He had tried to follow humans before into their dreamscapes and the road was treacherous. Following them meant abandoning his watch here, leaving the house unattended, and it was not wise to do so for long. Humans heard nearly nothing while they slept. And t
hey smelled even less. He had experimented many times, walking right up to them in their slumber, holding his nose right up to theirs and still they slept.
To join them in dreaming was a drastic measure, but he feared for this human. He did not want to lose another. He waited until her breathing deepened, then grew quiet. He smelled her sleeping. He crept on her bed, careful to adjust his bulk to not wake her, although any dog would have roused long ago. He lowered his weight and pushed one paw toward her, touching lightly at her back and closed his eyes, chancing that he could find her in their dreams.
He fell through the waking and let himself wash away, perilously so. There, there she was, rushing through houses, opening any door, searching. A wave of acrid smoke caught him, with a flavor of desperation. She would be willing to do anything to find the one she hunted. Here is what he needed to know, she tracked a dead one. Now he understood. This was where she spent her nights. Only sickness will result from this journey of hers. He followed her all night, not needing to hide himself because she had eyes for nothing but her precious dead one. He left her weeping in the dust and could finally stay no more. He pulled himself out of the dream, back to his furred body, next to her in bed. He rose from the bed, walked to her side and whined in alarm until she opened her eyes.
Once she was awake, he urged her outside. The fresh air was a relief to him, blowing all her dream horrors away. They made their way to the beach, and each day, he urged her along a bit more, going farther every day.
Chapter 14
She could not afford to trust Rocky. The woman was rude and chaotic and she seemed to peer directly through Melissa’s skin, into the abandoned quarry of her stomach. Yet when Rocky had asked if Melissa wanted a job walking Lloyd after school, she thought only of the chance to be with the black dog. Cross-country season was over. She could skip some of her workouts at the Y until Lloyd was fully recovered or until Rocky located his real owner. Right now, he needed Melissa. They had agreed that Melissa could take Lloyd for a walk every day if Rocky was not home by five. Once she had agreed and it looked like Rocky really had not seen her at the club, she was relieved that her efforts at extinguishing a momentary flaw had been successful. Let Rocky work out at the club, Melissa didn’t care.
After school she hopped the ferry back to the island and walked the mile from the ferry to Rocky’s house. She knocked to make sure that Rocky was out, even though the truck was gone. She found the key under the mat and let herself in, calling to Lloyd as she entered.
“Hey, Lloyd, it’s me, just me.” He greeted her with the unabashed joy that only a full-sized black Lab can offer. Direct, caressing, embarrassing, nose, lips, teeth, tail, and the snap of black claws on the linoleum. “Touch me, touch me!” signaled the dog as he offered his head, the scruff of his neck, and the favorite spot above his tail. “I have missed you more than anything, and now you have returned and I adore you,” his body and dark brown eyes intoned to her.
Melissa let him out for the quick pee. She stood in the doorway, her thin hands rubbing the painted edges of the frame. He bounded back into the house, knowing that Melissa was, on this day, the bearer of food. She closed the door and it was just the two of them, which is how Melissa liked it. She sighed and for the first time that day, relaxed the barest fraction.
She opened the closet where a full-sized plastic garbage can held his fifty-pound bag of dog food. Rocky must have brought this from the mainland. Melissa scooped out three cups. Rocky had insisted that dry food was enough, but several times a week Melissa brought a can of wet food and Lloyd was guaranteed to do an appreciative dance at those times, bounding from one side to another for a few steps.
“Not tonight, sorry,” she said.
He was a lay-down eater. That’s what Rocky called him. He lay down with the dish between his front paws and dipped his head into the dish, eating his food in a surprisingly delicate manner, one kibble at a time. Melissa liked this part the best. She scooted near him, pressing her back against the wall, exhaling stale air of her restricted day as he ate with sureness and innocence. She marveled at this.
Melissa had eaten an apple at school, half for breakfast and half for lunch. She was so hungry that part of her thought of nothing else. By afternoon her head hurt and her thinking was jagged and filled with holes.
“You are so good, Lloyd. Everything about you is good.”
He paused and lifted his ears as he listened to her, thumping his black tail twice at the sound of one of his favorite words.
Watching Lloyd eat was fascinating, as if there was nothing more amazing than seeing his sharp teeth crack open the fat kibbles, his long tongue guiding each one in, and finally delivering it to his throat. In between kibbles, the dog looked over at Melissa, and she thought she saw his eyebrows knit together.
He stopped eating; a few kibbles remained. He looked at the girl, and she saw her image reflected in the light of his eyes, a strange glint from the kitchen light giving her the opportunity to see her hair pulled tight, her eyes looked larger and not unlike a puppy. Lloyd stood, wagged his tail with encouragement, burped as best he could to welcome her and sat back on his haunches.
Her brain was rumpled, but her body read all the messages from Lloyd and slowly she reached forward, moving to her hands and knees until the dish was within reach. With her butt pushed up and her head down to the floor, she peered into the dog dish, and saw three kibbles amid the slick of saliva and Lloyd’s oily scent. She looked back at the dog. She took his soft-mouthed smile as a sign. She put her face into the dish and opened her lips around one kibble, and tasted the sweet grain and meats. She scraped her teeth against it and she remembered a hundred flavors that had been lost for months. She softened each kibble in her mouth and swallowed.
Chapter 15
Rocky brought a weekly report into Isaiah’s office. It was an accounting of dead animals removed from roadways, animals taken to the mainland, calls about lost cats, and calls requesting her help with troublesome animals. She also added, although Isaiah had said her level of detail was not necessary, an accounting of her walks on the shore, of sea gull carcasses, and of unusual high tides that ate a new inch out of the cove.
“You’re not responsible for the work of the ocean,” he said when he read one of her reports for the first time. “I know I mentioned that you could keep track of beach erosion, but I forgot that you would be such a scientist.”
“I think there should be an accounting of it, of the changes. Someone should know that a gull died.”
He put the report on his oil-stained desk, then he reached into a box beneath his desk and extracted a folder and put the report in it. He wrote on the manila folder with a ballpoint pen, “Life as recorded by the Animal Control Warden.”
“Agreed. Write down everything happening on our fair island,” he said.
And she did. After the dog came along, she added in his recovery and his speedy rehabilitation. She added in brief notes about her archery practice. One week she wrote, “Five hours archery, no change.” The next week she recorded, “Moved up to the twenty-five-pound bow. Now it is hard all over again.”
Rocky had just stopped by with the latest report. Isaiah read the report, nodded with approval and said, “I haven’t asked you because you told me not to back in October. But is this helping you in any way, pretending to be who you are not? Is this all constructed so you don’t have to talk about your husband? People handle death in all sorts of ways. I’ve seen some whoppers; people will try the never talking about it method, and on a rare occasion, it works. I can’t say why, but it’s not the way for most.”
He had both of his hands wrapped around a blue coffee mug that said, “Mutual Life.” Rocky still had her coat on and her nose stung from the cold wind that pummeled the island. She weighed her choices. There was something about the hiss of the woodstove and the way a jet of steam rose out of the dented aluminum pot of water on the stove and the way the black dog suddenly gave one deep-throated bark from her truck.
“Let me get the dog if we’re going to talk awhile. He gets worried that I’ll get into trouble if I’m gone too long.”
Since the dog had come into her life, Rocky had been thinking more about bodies, about how everyone might live in bodies but only like a prom dress or a tuxedo, a costume for the play. She had watched Lloyd struggle with his injury, fight to survive, endure the worst loneliness and despair, just to keep living in his black-furred body that had miraculously healed. But his body had changed. His limp was integrated into a slightly altered body. Lloyd had a new life and a modified body.
Her body had changed also. First, after Bob’s death, she had stopped caring about her body; exactly the opposite reaction of the dog. She’d lost interest in sustaining her lonely shell of a body. But somewhere between the dog and archery she had slid back into her arms and legs, wrapped her torso around her heart and lungs, and started making, and eating, grilled cheese sandwiches.
Rocky and Isaiah talked for hours, until his wife called and said where in the world are you at this hour, and he told her. Then they talked more and Rocky told Isaiah everything about Bob, about the way he could put his hand on the small of her back and warm her entire spine, and how he had two free spay-and-neuter clinics every year that just about killed him, and how they talked about having kids and had not ruled out the idea but they both knew it was starting to get late. She told him about tossing Bob’s ashes in the deep fryer at the local restaurant. She stopped and asked him if he had ever in all his years as a minister ever heard of anyone doing that and didn’t he think that she was crazy for doing that.
He rubbed his knuckles with his thumb. “Yes, you were crazy to do that. We often go crazy with death. I hope you didn’t keep throwing things into that poor man’s deep fryer, did you?”
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