Aunty Em's hens began to disappear. 'It's that dog. He's gone wild!' Aunty Em exclaimed. Toto unnerved her.
She would find him in her own yard, crouched and snarling at her, baring his fangs. When Aunty Em tried to grab him, he would scamper just out of reach and growl at her again.
'Dorothy! Dorothy! Come and call your dog!' Aunty Em would demand.
In the spring, the thaws began. Dorothy started school. She would walk every morning along the lane, between the ruts filled with muddy water and crusted with patches of ice. Toto would come out of the wallows from under the open arms of the scarecrows to meet Dorothy. He would be filthy, blinking and covered in mud. Dorothy would chuckle, and kneel down. 'You got that old lady real mad at you.'
He started to bring her presents. He brought her the Jewells' chickens, murdered and whole.
'Dorothy, you must control that dog. The Jewells are good neighbors to us and they can't afford to lose their livestock any more than we can. Now the next time you see him, you have a rope with you and you catch him and bring him back.'
'Yes, Ma'am,' said Dorothy. She somehow always forgot the rope.
Dorothy wanted to be good. That was why she worked so hard at her chores and her school exercises. She could sense goodness within her, like a pouch in her breast, to be opened. She wanted to love her aunty; it would be good to love her aunty. She loved Toto.
Toto was not good. He dug up the green shoots in Uncle Henry's fields. He tore down the washing from the clothesline into the mud. Once in the lane, he bit through the sleeve of Dorothy's only coat and tried to drag her with him, away.
'We can't go back, Toto,' she said, stroking the rough gray hair of his terrier head.
She began to see him less and less. Sometimes he disappeared for days at a time.
Then one day, in late afternoon, Dorothy walked back from school hugging her books, head down. Aunty Em was at the stove, slamming pots, loud as she could.
'Good day, Dorothy?'
'Yes, Ma'am.'
'What did you study, child?'
'Sub… subtraction.'
'Hmmm.'
They heard a bark.
'That dog. Back again.'
Aunty Em wiped her hands on her apron and opened the door.
The earth was soft, muddy, thawed. It was about four-thirty in the afternoon in late March, what had been a nice day, a sunset blur of orange and blue across a flat and featureless sky. Toto the dog sat waiting.
'We'll have to try to catch him,' said Aunty Em. She swept her coat on in one motion and put on gloves and took a rope. Dorothy followed, not wanting Toto hurt.
They opened the door again, and Toto had not run away. He was still there, at the end of the yard, waiting beside one of Aunty Em's dead flowerbeds. He barked as if to say: Here.
'What's he brought with him this time?' said Aunty Em, striding.
He had dug something up. He waited over it, eyes fixed on Aunty Em.
Aunty Em suddenly gave a kind of coughing, stricken cry. Her hand went to her throat, and she dropped the rope. Dorothy knew then that Toto had done something terrible.
Aunty Em broke into a run. 'Horrible, horrible animal! Horrible, horrible dog!' she said, sounding as if she were coughing. She ran toward him, trying to pick up a handful of mud, to throw at him. She slipped onto her knees and kept sliding toward the thing from out of the ground.
'Rob Roy,' cried Aunty Em, sobbing. 'Oh, Robbie! Rob Roy!'
Toto barked at her, just out of reach. He ran around her, bouncing furiously.
Toto had dug up the corpse of another dog. Dorothy walked up next to her aunt and stood watching.
'Toto, stop,' she said weakly.
There was bone with some wet and bedraggled fur still clinging to it, and hollow eyes, and a doggy smile full of teeth, a large skeleton with some skin still attached, a long, big corpse of a huge long-haired animal.
Aunty Em knelt in the mud, sobbing, covering her face.
Raf raf, raf raf, said Toto. He came hopping toward Emma. He was small and fierce and full of hate. You see, you see? Toto seemed to say. You had one too.
'Toto. Leave her alone,' whispered Dorothy.
Aunty Em spun around and grabbed Dorothy and shook her, thick spittle clogging her lips, gray eyes wild. 'Look at it! Look at it!' she demanded. 'See it? See it? That's death. That's what your mother looks like now, in the ground.'
Dorothy looked and saw the hollow eyes, the somewhat surprised and empty face that seemed to ask what had happened to itself. Where had it gone? Dorothy knew it was the truth. Her mother had no flesh now, or eyes, in the ground. Aunty Em wept, and Toto trotted back away, revenge taken. Dorothy saw him go, his tiny legs strutting across the gray mud, between the rounded gray humps.
