Shaking her head, she went back inside. Axel strained his ears and heard her soothing Bobby. Then he went back to counting.
Up the street, the Marshalls’ mangy old beagle began to howl. The sudden noise startled Axel, and he jumped in his chair. The dog howled again. It was a lonely, mournful sound—not anything like the happy call a beagle made when it was chasing a rabbit. A moment later, it was joined by Paul Crowley’s bear dogs in the kennel behind Paul’s house. Then, one by one, all of the dogs in Brinkley Springs joined in. The sound was unsettling, to say the least.
“What the hell is going on?”
Then Axel remembered that there was nobody around to answer him.
He waited for the spring peepers to resume their chorus, but they didn’t. Their silence was unsettlingly loud —much louder than the dogs were. Axel rubbed his hands some more and wondered what was happening. The aching grew more severe. He thought of Diane again, but this time, he wasn’t sure why.
***
Jean Sullivan returned to the kitchen table, where her son, Bobby, sat in the dark. His eyes were big and round, and he had the tip of one index finger stuck in his mouth—something he’d done since he was a toddler whenever he was scared or nervous. She assured him that everything was okay, and then fumbled around in one of the drawers beside the sink until she found some half-burned candles and a box of wooden matches. She lit a candle, blew out the match and tossed the smoldering stick in the sink, and then walked around the first floor of their home, lighting all of the other candles she could find. Since she’d bought most of them at craft stores, the home soon smelled of competing fragrances—vanilla and strawberries and lavender and potpourri. The soft glow slowly filled the house, chasing away her discomfort. Jean wasn’t sure why, but the sudden power outage had left her unsettled. The flickering candlelight made her feel better. She walked back into the kitchen and smiled at Bobby. He smiled back, clearly feeling better too, now that they had light again.
“What happened, Mommy?”
“I don’t know, baby. Somebody probably crashed their car into a pole somewhere. Or maybe a tree limb fell down on one of the lines. I’m sure they’ll have it up and running again soon.”
“Can I watch a movie?”
“Not while the electricity is off. Maybe we can read a book tonight instead.”
Bobby frowned. “But we never read books.”
“Well, I’ve been meaning to fix that. Maybe this is a good time to start. Now finish eating. Mommy’s got to call the power company and report the outage.”
“Okay.”
Bobby used his fork to move his meatloaf and peas around on his plate while Jean reached for the phone. Normally, she was resentful of the old rotary unit. She longed to have a cell phone, but simply couldn’t afford it—not on welfare and WIC. Nor could she afford one of those digital electronic units she’d seen at Wal-Mart. For Jean, her old rotary phone with its antiquated dial had always been a reminder of all the things she couldn’t give her son. Now, it was a lifeline. The folks with digital phones wouldn’t be able to make calls because they had no power. She picked up the receiver, put it to her ear and then paused with her index finger hovering over the dial.
There was no dial tone.
“Shit.”
Bobby gasped, then grinned. “You said a bad word, Mommy.”
“Mommy’s allowed to say a bad word when the phone lines are down.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the phone isn’t working, just like the electricity.”
“Does it mean I can say a bad word, too?”
“No. And eat your peas. I’ve told you before, moving your food around on the plate doesn’t make it look like you’ve eaten any more. All it does is—”
A long, plaintive howl cut her off. Jean and Bobby glanced at the window and then at each other. Another howl joined the first, then several more.
“Why are all the dogs barking, Mommy?”
Jean shook her head. “I don’t know, baby. I don’t know.”
“Maybe there’s a bear outside. Can I go see?”
“No, Bobby. Now I’m not telling you again. Eat your dinner.”
Jean moved to the kitchen window and peered outside. The barks and howls were louder now, seeming to fill the air. Outside, the street was dark, and she couldn’t see much of anything. For a moment, Jean considered going over to Axel’s house and checking on him, but then she decided against it. She didn’t want to leave Bobby alone. Jean didn’t know why, but her disquiet had returned, and this time no amount of candlelight would chase it away.
When Bobby began to playfully howl along with the dogs, she almost screamed.
***
Donny Osborne put the last box—marked on the side with black Magic Marker as PHOTO ALBUMS—in the back of his blue Ford pickup truck, grunting with the effort. Sighing, he slammed the tailgate shut. Both sounds, the sigh and the slam, had the tone of finality. He glanced down and noticed that one of his bootlaces was untied. Resting his foot on the rear bumper, he tied it again. The lace was damp from the dew on the grass. Despite the coolness in the air, Donny was sweating. After tying the lace and wiping his brow with the bottom of his T-shirt, Donny leaned back against the truck and sighed again. He tried not to look at the house because doing so filled him with sadness, but he couldn’t help himself. As he stood there, catching his breath, his eyes were drawn back to it once more.
The house seemed smaller somehow. Maybe that was because he was an adult now. Everything seemed smaller these days. His childhood home. This street. Brinkley Springs. The mountains. Hell, even the whole damned state of West Virginia seemed to have shrunk. As he stood there, Donny wondered why this was so. Was it just a matter of perspective, that he remembered these things through a child’s eyes but was looking at them now as a man? Or was it because he’d seen the rest of the world and understood now just how big it was, and how small this little section of the planet was? Was it because unlike percent of his classmates and childhood friends, he’d gone beyond the state borders and discovered that there was a whole wide world out there, a world full of different cultures and people and outlooks and beliefs that were nothing like what they’d grown up knowing? That there were towns other than Brinkley Springs, populated with people totally unlike themselves—and yet sharing similar hopes and dreams and wants and needs?
Places like Iraq, for instance.
Donny snickered. It was a humorless, spiteful sound.
Maybe Iraq wasn’t such a good example, although he had to admit, his second tour of duty in that godforsaken place had been much better than his first. By his second tour of duty, the much-maligned troop surge had worked, and as a result, he and the rest of his platoon spent more time interacting with the civilians or watching movies and playing video games back at Camp Basra than they did out on patrol. That first tour had been hell—going from house to house, searching for insurgents, never knowing when you were going to get shot. And it was hard to tell the insurgents from everyone else. They blended with the populace. In Iraq, everyone looked like a civilian, and all of them—friendly or otherwise— had weapons. Just because a family had an old Kalashnikov tucked away inside their cupboard, it didn’t mean they were the enemy. That would have been like rounding up and arresting every hunter in Brinkley Springs who owned a deer rifle. But even the house-to-house searches weren’t as bad as dealing with the suicide bombers and the IEDs. Many of Donny’s friends had lost their legs, arms or eyes to roadside bombs. One minute, they’d been sitting in a transport, and the next . . .
Well, what could you say about a country where you could get your legs blown off while just driving down the fucking road?
The thing that most amazed Donny now was how much he actually missed the place sometimes. Oh, not Iraq itself. Iraq was a cesspool. Iran could move in overnight and nuke Iraq, reducing it to a radioactive crater, and Donny would be just fine with that. But he missed his friends. His fellow soldiers. His brothers. It was funny. Donny had spent six years in the military just marking the days on his shorttimer’s calendar, counting the minutes until he was a civilian again. But now that he was out and back in the world, all he could think about was the time he’d
