The Dog Stars (24 page)

Let him up Dad, she said. Enough. Let him up.

Her voice was husky. I blinked up at her straight into the sun. Felt his capable hands loose the rope.

I walked away from them to a cottonwood by the edge of the creek and pissed. I didn’t care. I wasn’t shy. The pour and burble of the stream covered my sobs. Cool in the deep shade. Sobbed so hard I gagged. Maybe they were watching, no, they were definitely watching, fuck them. I just let it finish, then breathed. Knelt and splashed my face, the cuts that were already rashing into a spray of scabs. Drank. Why the fuck was I crying all the time? I didn’t give a shit, not really. I wasn’t cracking up, it’s just what I felt like doing. Nine years barely a drop, then Jasper, now this.

The world opens suddenly, opens into a narrow box canyon with four sheep, and we grieve. Two shepherds, maybe not in their right mind, and we grieve. The relief of company not Bangley, not the blood disease, we grieve. We grieve. That this was once the middle of nowhere and now it’s not even that. And I am not even that. Before I could locate myself: I am a widower. I am fighting for survival. I am the keeper of something, not sure what, not the flame, maybe just Jasper. Now I couldn’t. I didn’t know what I was. So grieve.

I stood in the shade of the tree in the cool breath of the moving water and let the sound, the light breeze blow through me. I was a shell. Empty. Put me to your ear and you would hear the distant rush of a ghost ocean. Just nothing. The slightest pressure of current or tide could push and roll me. I would wash up. Here on this bank, dry out and bleach and the wind would scour and roughen me, strip away the thinnest layers until I was brittle and the thickness of paper. Until I crumbled into sand. That’s how I felt. I’d say it was a relief to have at last nothing, nothing, but I was too hollow to register relief, too empty to carry it.

I really didn’t give a shit what this old bastard did to me. Nothing to lose is so empty, so light, that the sand you crumble to at last blows away in a gust, so insubstantial it’s carried upwards to shirr into the sandstorm of the stars. That’s where we all get to. The rest is just wearing thin waiting for wind.

Certainly not a place to negotiate from. There is nothing to trade. I didn’t even think,
I spared his life and his daughter’s he owes me at least one. What? One thing. Twenty frigging points
.

Walked back.

I’m leaving. Back up that fucking tree. Pretty clear you prefer your own company.

I looked at her.

Could I please have a dip? Was never a habit, but right now it smells good. Thanks.

Took a big pinch. The nicotine hit as soon as I’d taken the first swallow and I felt dizzy for a second.

Damn. I forgot.

I spit.

Shoot me in the back on the way up and like I said I’m not sure you wouldn’t be doing me a favor.

They stared at me. She had a dark stain on her throat like a bruise.

I’ll need my Glock, my rifle. You keep the grenades. Housewarming.

He hesitated, picked the handgun off the table, handed it to me butt first. I holstered it. He lifted the rifle to muster, across his chest, passed it to me.

Thanks. Thanks for kicking me in the ass.

I hauled off and slugged him.

The one I’d been saving, a solid short right that connected to his left cheek. It knocked him off his feet clean and hard and he hit the dirt ass first. Knocked his hat off. Total surprise. He pushed up on his hands and blinked at me and only when I let my eyes travel over the whole picture did I see one hand filled with a handgun. Like magic. A heavy .45, officer issue.

You didn’t have to kick me in the ass. Or play executioner. I would’ve gone anywhere you told me.

Who was I to talk?

I turned around and walked across the open ground upstream, my back as naked and ready for a bullet as for the fall and click of the next moment.

You, You, Hey.

What?

Higs, right? That’s what you said.

Hig.

Hig. You want some lunch?

Stopped. She was probably half an inch taller than me. A sunburned scar parted her dark hair, her right eyebrow. Thin and sharp. The bruise at her throat.

Lunch? Do people still eat lunch.

We do.

Glanced back at the house. The old bastard was shoving the gun into the back of his waistband, adjusting his hat, watching us.

He really your dad?

Yes. On my father’s side.

No apology for him. No small betrayal. I appreciated that.
On my father’s side
. What a funny thing to say. She was smiling.

He may not want to have lunch with me.

I didn’t invite him.

She hooked her thumbs in the pockets of her shorts and straightened her arms in a stretch. I did notice. How it lifted her breasts, how it exposed her waist above the waistband.

But I will, if you all promise not to punch or shoot each other.

You all
. A country girl. Before. I stared at her. Honestly I didn’t know if I wanted to have lunch with them or not. I had gotten kind of used to the idea of living on air, of blowing away. Some comfort in that.

Hig?
Yes? Bangley’s voice again, disembodied. I could imagine his rough laugh if he knew he was kinda my superego. Which I couldn’t get rid of, just like a bad pop song.
The girl is inviting you to lunch. She feels bad you almost pissed your pants. Ha! Be polite
.

Okay.

Okay I said.

Cimarron. She held out her hand.

Everybody calls me—

She stopped, looked around the canyon, smiled.

Cima.

Shepherd’s pie with butter. Well salted. Ground beef. I thought I was going to die. Pops was right, the sun traveled over the rim of the canyon and we ate at the plank table in the shade. Close enough to the creek: a pleasant sift. It mixed with the breeze which also sounded like rushing water when it shirred the tops of the cottonwoods. Butter. Melting in glops over the mashed potato, puddling. Who would’ve thought something so unresistant and pale could mesmerize a man? She kept bringing it, I kept eating it. A steel pitcher of milk chilled in the creek which I emptied twice. Holy shit. Hig had you climbed that stupid tree and flown away or even been shot in the back you would’ve missed the meal of your life. I was so enchanted with the food I didn’t even notice if Pops was giving me the Wolf Eye or Stink Eye or Shark Eye or whatever kind of eye you give to somebody who has just raised a welt on your face and was now eating your provisions nonstop.

To be offered cold milk. To have your blue enameled plate filled again. By a woman. To have her walk from an outside fire bearing your dish. To sit in the shade of a big old tree, not a metal hangar, and eat. To hear the bleat of a sheep come through the loud rustle of the leaves. To have an older man sitting across from you in silence, eating also, enemy or friend not sure, it doesn’t matter. To be a guest. To break bread.

The pleasure almost split me like a baking stuffed tomato. Like my heart swelled and my skin got thinner and thinner in the heat of it. Of company.

Bangley and I ate together often, but it was different can’t say how: it was like feeding time in a zoo of our own making. This was different. I was free to leave. They were free to disinvite me. The sense of privilege.

Nobody said much. I moaned, grunted. Hunched over the plate. Only realized it when I looked up and she was smiling. Her face was drawn too thin. Her huge eyes reminded me of a radar dish absorbing everything, unable not to. Like the squelch was set too low and much of what she absorbed was pain. Another bruise on her forearm, the one that handed me the plate. Glanced up once and she was rubbing the back of her neck with a wince. Clearly getting pleasure also from my famished devouring.

Don’t get out much Pops said. You.

I stopped chewing.

No not really. Where I live most of the restaurants are too expensive.

Where do you live?

Denver. North of there.

They were both staring at me now. Hungry like me. In a different way.

I set my fork on the boards, took a long swallow of cold milk, wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my jacket.

It was bad, I said. Ninety nine point whatever. Mortality. Just about killed everyone.

Your family? she said.

I nodded.

Everyone. Infrastructure frayed then fell apart. Before the end it was. It was bad.

Reached for the cup of milk and drank as if it could cool.

It was a frenzy. Everyone clinging to some shred: that they might be the one who was immune. Because we had heard of that, too, the mysterious resistance that ran in families. Genetic.

They were staring at me. He opened a pocket knife, picked his teeth.

When my wife died I made my way to the country airport where I keep my plane. I hid out.

You defended it, he said, scanning my face.

I nodded.

With help.

He was reading my own capacity for hell, for death, for wreaking it.

We defended it. Me and Bangley. Who showed up one day with a trailer full of weapons.

Bangley? He grunted. He knew what he was about old Bangley. Didn’t he?

He put an elbow on the table, stretched out his long legs, picked his teeth.

He brought you along. Kinda trained you up. Set a perimeter didn’t he? He had no problem killing anything that crossed it. Young, old, men, women. But you did.

But you got over it.

Dad.

Ninety nine point whatever. What’s left? Point whatever. One out of two hundred? Three hundred? We’ve seen what that is. It’s not usually pretty is it? Is it Higs?

Hig.

Big Hig.

I stared at him.

Not pretty what’s left, is it?

I stared at him. His eyes were alight with equal parts cold knowledge and warm mischief.

He spat a fleck of food off his tongue. You’re a hunter. Deer, elk. Before.

Nodded. How—?

He waved it away.

The way you hold your rifle. Way you move down the creek. Looking at sign. Can’t help yourself.

My mouth opened. I saw myself stepping in the suncrackled needles studying the piles of scat. He was watching. He could have had me any time he wanted.

Never in the service though.

I stared at him.

Fact you don’t like killing anybody. Not even a bull elk I’d bet. If there was one to kill. Not even a trout. If there was one. Too bad. You love to fish too.

Who the fuck was this guy? How—?

I saw you studying the creek. You stood right where I would’ve stood so as not to spook the fish in the pool.

I stared.

But killing is something you can get used to. Isn’t it, Hig?

No.

So you say.

He leaned forward and his eyes bore into mine. He aimed his gray eyes into mine and they sparked like he had lit the fuses.

I suggest you shrug out of your pissant self-righteousness. Like a rattler out of old skin. You’d move easier, smoother. Turned and spat. Nobody at this table is an innocent. That shit with the pheasant? Had you been close enough I would’ve slit your throat. Not thinking. Glad you weren’t. That would’ve been a real dumbshit move.