the air by then, something made of god knows what and disgorging itself
on Dead River.
Kim was only a little girl at the time, she said.
There was a family living next door to her who had a teenage daughter.
An only child. Not a pretty girl or terribly smart either. Sort of
ordinary. A little unfriendly and sullen.
Anyway, for her birthday- her seventeenth- her parents gave her two
presents, a car and a Doberman puppy. Probably, Kim said, she was
unpopular at school, and the one gift- the car- was to
make her more popular, while the other gift was to console her if it
di~ glitllove,hepupp,
Both her parents had jobs, so the dog was home alone most of the time
during the day, and Kim remembered the girl's car roaring into the
driveway each afternoon at three-thirty and the girl racing up the
steps while the dog barked loudly and scratched at the screen door.
Then there would be a lot of jumping and squealing and hugging, which
even as a kid Kim found pretty disgusting. And finally there would be
a very big puppy tearing crazily around their own and
This happened every day.
Then one day there was none of it. The girl came home and there was no
barking and no scratching at the door. Just silence. Kim was playing
in the yard as usual and noticed that something was wrong. They'd
gotten pretty used to the dog by then. So she watched. The girl went
inside.
A few minutes later the girl came out holding the puppy and raced for
the car. She put the dog inside and quickly drove away. That was all
Kim saw. The rest she heard about later.
When the girl got home the puppy was in the kitchen, choking. There
was something caught in the throat. So she bundled it up and drove to
the vet. The vet took a look at the dog and told her to wait outside.
She did, for a while. But then the waiting started to get to her so
she decided to drive on home, and asked the nurse to call her when the
doctor was through.
She was only in the house a few minutes when the phone rang. It was
the vet. He said the dog was all right and asked her if she was home
alone. She said she was. He told her to get out of the house right
away, to go stand on the lawn or on the street. The police, he said
would be over right away.
She was not to ask questions. She was just to leave as fast as
possible.
They found her waiting on the front lawn, walking in circles, confused
and worried. Two squad cars emptied four officers into her house.
Upstairs, hiding in her father's closet, they found a man with ashirt
wrapped tight around a bleeding index finger. Or what was left of it.
I guess the dog had proven itself a good watchdog but a clumsy eater.
He'd taken the intruder's finger off at the knuckle and swallowed it
whole. And that was what was lodged there in his throat.
'I'm supposed to believe that?'
'Absolutely.'
Two finger stories in one week, I thought.
'If you don't believe me, ask Casey. The girl used to babysit for her
brother.'
'Her brother.'
I guess I jumped on that one a little.
'Sure. You ... you knew about her brother, didn't you?'
'Yes and no.'
She knew she'd made a mistake. I watched her get more and more
uncomfortable, trying to figure how to handle it. Finally she said,
'Well, you can ask Casey about Jean Drummond. She'll tell you.'
'-r , I,
Talk to me about her brother, Kim.
She considered it. I had the feeling that there was something there
she thought I ought to know. I knew she liked me. I remembered her
warning about Casey over Cokes that day. Loyalties, though. They die
hard.
'I'd ... rather not. That's Casey's business.'
'Not mine? Not even a little?'
'I didn't say that.'
'So? Should I ask her about it, Kimberley?'
She paused. 'Maybe you should. I don't know. It depends.
'On what?'
'On how well you need to know her, I guess.'
'Suppose that's a lot?'
She sighed. 'Then ask. Ask her for god's sake. Jesus! I can't hold
your goddamn hand for you.'
She stood and walked away from me into the shallows. As far as I knew
it was the first time she'd gone into the water all summer. I called
out to her.
'You won't like it.'
She turned around and looked at me. She spoke quietly. 'Neither will
you.'
The opportunity to ask her about her brother came along two nights
later.
I think I remember everything there is to remember about that night.
The smell of fresh-cut grass on her lawn, the warmth of the air its
exact temperature- the scent of the hair moving toward me and then away
on the flow of breeze through the open windows as we drifted along in
the car, the feel of damp earth under me later and the smell of that
too, the long empty silences, crickets, night birds, her awful shallow
breathing.
I remember every bit of it, because that night put all the rest in
