“Yes, I’ll hold.” Athena held the phone to her ear, while Pam watched her, waiting for her to speak again. Beyond the doorway, the crickets had begun their deafening rattle.
Through the back door, gunfire still sounded, muted and faraway. Violent burning colors streaked the sky, deep purples and reds. Small stars emerged, and bats commenced the evening’s hunt for flying insects.
“But where is he? Where could he be then?” Pam had nearly doubled over. “We looked everywhere. Did you get them yet?”
“Could you be still? Hello, operator? I’m trying to reach the state police. That number’s busy. Could you—? Yes, it may be an emergency. No, I want the…”
Pamela shrieked.
A massive bundle in his arms, Matthew stood at the door. His face ran with grimy tears. Both he and his burden were covered with a mixture of fresh and drying blood.
Athena dropped the phone as the boy stepped unsteadily into the house. He panted, a shining line of bubbles at his mouth. He staggered, and she ran to him. “Matthew, give him to me. Let go. Let me take him. Matthew, give me the dog.” She got the animal away from him, grunted and stumbled under the weight. “Jesus! Clear a space! I’ve got to put him down!” Almost dropping the beast, she marveled at the boy’s strength.
“Oh, ’Thena, your blouse,” Pam sobbed. “Blood, ’Thena, blood gettin’ all over you.” Her hysteria unabated, she pointed a trembling finger as she backed away from the dripping, unmoving animal. “No! Get it away! ’Thena, dogs! The dogs! Oh, my baby! Get it away! Get it away ’fore he gets rabies!”
Already, blood coated the floorboards, and almost slipping, Athena set the dog down carefully. Dooley whined and squirmed feebly, eyes rolling in pain. “Matthew, are you hurt anywhere? Matthew, look at me. Does it hurt?” The bloody boy only stood still, breathing heavily and looking at the dog.
Pam had backed up against the wall. “Oh my baby oh my Matty.” She made desperate, clawing grabs at the boy but kept snatching her hands away.
“It’s all right. I don’t think he’s hurt. At least, I can’t find anything. Just exhausted, I think.” She turned back to the animal while Pamela began to fluster and shriek around the child.
The dog lay with its tongue hanging out, sides heaving.
“Oh, my God. Oh God, it’s dead! Oh Matty, poor Dooley’s dead!”
Athena got the first-aid kit from under the sink and crouched beside the animal. “Pamela, please, shut up.” She poked at the bloody fur, prodding, examining the furry lips of a wound. Taking a bottle of peroxide out of the kit, she uncapped it and poured it over the gash with one hand, groping in the kit for a package of sterile gauze with the other. “Pamela, I need…Pamela, would you be quiet and listen? I need more peroxide. This stuff. Run upstairs to the bathroom. In the medicine cabinet there’s a brown bottle. Just like this one. Bring it to me.” She returned her attention to the dog. “Now, Pamela! I need it now.”
Wringing her hands, Pam slowly wandered out of the room.
Something nudged Athena’s arm. She turned to find the boy crouched beside her, fresh tears streaking the dirt on his face. He gazed into the eyes of his dog, eyes that had gone all milky.
She mopped blood with a small sponge and snipped away fur with a scissors. “It looks as though the bullet passed right through the shoulder muscle. I don’t see any other holes.” Soon she was red to the elbows. “It may not be as bad as it looks,” she added more gently. “I can’t feel any broken bones. He’s in shock, Matthew.” She watched the boy’s face. “How did you find him?”
Matty only stared down at the scarcely moving dog, at the leaking mess of Dooley’s back.
“Is this what you wanted, ’Thena?”
She snatched the bottle from Pam, emptied the contents over the animal. “Damn it. I wish we had better light in here.”
Pam hovered uncertainly, still trembling a little and looking nauseated. She watched as Athena began to thread a needle. Matty sat on the cracked, worn floor beside his mother, closely observing everything she did, taking it all in.
“Do you want to help?”
“Oh God oh, ’Thena, I—”
“Not you. Matthew? You want to help?”
Gently, the boy reached out his hand and stroked the blood-matted tail.
“Put your finger here. Now push while I…no, not like…just enough to hold it so…That’s it.” Drawing the edges of the wound together, she pushed the needle through them.
Pam gasped, and Dooley whined a little. Fresh blood glistened in the folds of the boy’s knuckles.
The air hummed with flies. Straw covered the floor, and the hot interior held an overpowering stench of old feces. Only a few unshaded bulbs above the corroded cages diluted the gloom, and Steve peered into the shadows. Many of the pens appeared empty, though small shapes might have huddled in the corners. The clearly occupied ones contained a pathetic lot: an ancient raccoon, a turkey vulture, a barnyard goat.
The proprietor followed him into the barn. “Like I said, no charge for seeing the animals, Officer. Not for one of you guys.” He smiled nervously at Steve’s back. “I bought this place from a guy. Could of made a fortune, they’d only built that damn highway they was all talking about. Used to have a two-headed snake, but it got away.”
“Any other animals ever escape from here?”
“Never.” The old man’s eyes slitted. “Why do you want to know? Somebody say something? You should of seen that snake with them two tongues, one in, other out. Wild.”
The man looked scared, and Steve figured he probably had a still hidden somewhere nearby. “This the lot?”
Muttering to himself, the old man beckoned toward an open back door, and Steve strode out of the barn. Once outside the fetid shed, he spat, and some of the thick saliva clung to his lips. Raising his shoulder, he rubbed his mouth against his shirt. The air seemed cooler. Post and wire enclosures tilted against the buildings, and as his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, he spotted some chickens, a few overfed rabbits. And a wolf.
“Officer? Could you tell me exactly what you’re looking for? Officer?”
Steve edged closer to the largest pen.
Full in the sunshine and scarcely breathing, the wolf sprawled in its own urine. The stench was primitive, intensely territorial. Steve pressed against the fence. The animal looked diseased. Insects crawled on it. Nose twitching, it unsteadily lifted its head, and the gummed slits of its eyes opened, barely focused on him. Those filmed eyes burned.
Matthew tilted the mug, pouring tepid broth into his cupped hand. Supporting the animal’s head with his other hand, he held the broth to Dooley’s mouth. The mongrel felt hot to him, even through the fur. With flickering movements no more powerful than the wings of a butterfly, the dog licked the broth. Even the tongue felt hot.
The steady lapping tickled his palm. Pam had made the broth, at his urging, and as he poured more of it into his hand, he could hear her outside, humming to herself as she scattered feed for the remaining hen. Unconsciously, he began to turn in the direction of her voice, and his eyes were drawn to the open back door.
Beyond the porch, beyond the yard, waited the ragged pines. He stared through the screen, and a rippling sensation traveled across his skin.
The dog’s breath felt damp on his hand, and Dooley whimpered. Turning back, the boy murmured soothingly and poured the last of the liquid into his hand. “Come on now,” he coaxed. “Come on now finish it up like a good boy now finish it.”
