Three Miles Past (8 page)

The clerk shrugged.

“Milk, then,” he said, handing the puppy back. “Who knows, right?”

William paid for two gallons, left, but the puppy wouldn’t drink any of it, even when he pulled over, leaked it into the cup of flesh that had been Julia’s nipple. Even when he leaked it onto his own.

He shook his head no, no, then just drove faster than he knew he should have, fast enough to get caught and
deserve
to get caught, but no blue lights flashed, everyone knew he was charmed, probably even wanted him doing what he did.

But the puppies.

He smiled, told them it was going to be all right, then, taking a road around some nothing-town, found himself easing through a ditch where a livestock trailer had overturned days ago. The cows were still there. William nodded, didn’t have to look to either side to see his father, moving among them right after the wreck, his sickle glinting moonlight.

Just past the cows were the dogs that had come to the smell. Green eyes in the tall grass, one of them moving to chase the truck, then all of them moving.

William nodded like this was the way it was supposed to be.

A quarter mile down, after the most long-winded of the dogs had fallen away, William saw what had to be there: one of the dogs, already run over.

He watched it in his headlights until he was sure it wasn’t going to rise, then stepped down, inspected. It was huge, a Rott like Lobo maybe, but bigger, with some Shepherd or something in it. Big like the bear cub.

William cradled its stiff body to his chest, peeled it from the asphalt, and put it on Julia’s feet, to keep her warm.

It was tonight. The dog had been a sign.

~

Three hours later, dawn not even a smell yet, William had two more dogs in the camper shell. Both Spaniel size. The third he had to go into town for, run down the address. It was a Lab, though, would hold enough to be worth the trouble.

Now all he needed was a place to work.

He stepped back up onto the interstate, knew immediately where he was, where the rest stops were each way, and it was comfortable, right. He kept the Chevy at sixty-five, let the big trucks slam past him for Florida, and blinked his lights, letting them pull back into his lane.

It was during one such black moment—headlights off—that the lightbar flared up behind him.

He touched his brakes, pulled his lights back on, and coasted to the side.

The cop followed his flashlight along the side of the truck, stood at an angle to the window William had already rolled down. The light played across both of William’s hands, gripped onto the wheel in plain sight. The back of them was white, dusted with the same hair his forearm was. The palms were black with blood, from the Lab.

“Sir,” the cop said.

“Officer?” William said back, turning his eyes from the light.

It was the same cop from the bear. The cop who knew the Ford. It was his county, his stretch of the interstate.

“I do something . . ?” William led off.

The officer had his beam of light shining pale through the tinted side window of the camper. And then he got the smell from the cab, stepped back, his hand falling to the butt of his gun.

“What the hell—?” he said.

William shrugged.

“Dogs,” he said, and pushed back into the bench seat, giving the officer a better angle on the puppies in the floorboard. The cardboard barrier William had cut, to keep them from the pedals.

The cop was breathing hard now, trying to.

“Where—where?”

“Weimeraners,” William said, a half lie. “Delivering them for my sister.”

“Your sister?”

William hooked his chin up the road.

“Not crossing any state lines,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

The cop blinked, wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve, and tapped his flashlight against the camper.

William kept his hands on the wheel, looked through the sliding glass behind him.

The other dogs were back there. They were moving, undulating, as if asleep: Julia, kicking slow under the tarp“Those ones are mine,” William said.

“All of them?”

Through the tinted side glass, the blood on the two smaller dogs’ coats would be the liver stains of a Springer Spaniel. And the bigger two dogs were black.

William nodded.

“Shouldn’t they be—awake?” the cop said, tapping the glass again.

William smiled, caught.

“Benadryl,” he said. “I should give them Dramamine, I know, but shit. You know what that costs?”

“Allergy medicine?”

William nodded, almost snapped, pictured the blood from the Lab spattering from his fingers to his face.

“Knocks ’em dead,” he said, shrugging.

“Serious?”

“You should try it.”

The cop flashed the light along the dashboard, to the one silver can. He held the light there, looked at William.

“Do I need to check your license, sir?” he asked.

“It’s old,” William said, then took a chance, dropped one hand into shadow and leaned over to the window, as if reaching for his wallet. “But if you want . . ?”

The cop started to step closer, breathed in the puppy shit again, and gagged, stepped out into the highway, and, without even thinking about it, William reached out through the window, pulled him back over, a Kenworth sucking past, its chrome mirror nearly skimming the camper shell, rocking the truck.

The cop tried to breathe, couldn’t.

There was blood on his sleeve, now, from William’s hand. On the black fabric.

He finally sucked in enough air to talk. His eyes wet, swimming.

“I know you,” he said, leaning on the truck, watching the road behind his cruiser.

“The bear,” William said.

The cop nodded.

“Whatever happened to it?” William said.

The cop lifted his head at the interstate, the truckers. “Them,” he said, his lips already thinning. “It must have been alive, crawled back up there for one more round or some shit.”

William nodded, leaned over to spit. The cop almost stepped back to let him, then just moved a little farther along the side of the truck instead.

It was all William could do not to smile.

The cop felt it too, just at the corners of his mouth, then patted William on the arm, told him to be safe, and extended his hand for a shake. But the twelve-inch light was still in it. Still on. And then he held it there.

William followed the pale beam.

Maybe sixty feet out, where the light started scattering into motes, was a tall black dog, her teats heavy with milk.

She was staring back along the beam of light.

The cop hissed through his teeth then took the light back, and told William to be safe. William nodded, watched the cop in the mirror, feeling along the side of the truck then disappearing behind it, walking as far in the ditch as he could back to his cruiser. Crawling in the passenger side.

He rolled the lights across his bar once in farewell, accelerated evenly into the night.

Minutes after he was gone, William pulled his headlights back on.

The dog was still there, watching him.

“Okay then, little momma,” William said, and started easing the Chevy forward.

~

She was another sign, led him first onto the service road then to a copse of trees. Buried in the trees was a trailer house, burned out. The same one.

William shook his head no, no, that you don’t do this, you don’t
ever
come back to the same place, even if it’s a perfect place, but she wasn’t listening, had already lowered herself under the trailer’s torn skirt.

He backed the Chevy to where he’d backed over Marissa’s head three times. There were ruts from it almost—a shallow depression, like the earth remembered.

No lights, no nothing.

Just fast. It had to be fast.

But not like before, either. Not like when something had been watching from the front door of the trailer.

In six trips, William carried in the four dead dogs, the armful of puppies, and Julia. She was still breathing, but it was like she was having to remind herself to.

William nodded, kept nodding, and rested her down onto the mildewed couch. The dogs were already on the floor, the Shepherd’s head lolling most of the way off, both ears still alert. A sorry state of affairs, but William would make do. He always had.

The seventh trip he made was for a six-pack of beer.

He stood over the hole where the sink had been and drank them one by one, dropping his cans down into the cabinet then digging them out to wipe his prints off. Walking back and forth from the Shepherd on the floor. Trying to fit the head back on. Telling himself it wasn’t important but then caping it out some anyway, like a trophy. Reaching up into the skull to drag more out, enough that a section of leg might fit up there now. Always room for more.

He was on the fifth beer, breathing hard, almost ready, telling himself he didn’t have time for Julia anymore but rubbing himself all the same, when one of the puppies rolled into her couch and he understood the whole, stupid night: the mother dog under the trailer, she was the one from the pound. The one whose puppies had been taken away. They’d killed her but she’d lived through it, and now here he was, with a whole, starving litter of ghost pups.

William smiled, left the beer half full on the counter.

He stepped down from the front door, off the wood somebody had stacked up as a staircase, and lowered himself to look under the skirt, snapped his fingers for her to come. She wouldn’t, though. Wouldn’t even growl, didn’t care about whistles or promises.

William stood, not mad. Not anything, really.

“Julia,” he called through the front door, sing-song, “Julia, I think she’s hungry, dear,” then stepped up, cut a perfect coin of meat from the palm of her right hand. Like a slice of pepperoni. He stood and her hand closed over the pain, and he thanked her, really meant it.

Down at the skirt again, he held the coin of meat into the darkness, but still the little momma wouldn’t come, even when he left it there. So he kicked the trailer and hit it and spit on it. When he lowered himself to the skirt again, though, the coin was gone, and he smiled.

She understood.

William nodded, tuned in for a moment to a recap flapping on the interstate; his radio, leaking country music; his beer on the counter inside, fizzing down.

This was going to be even better, this was the next thing: before, he’d just been putting the girls
in
the dogs. Now, though—now he could feed them
to
the dogs. Julia, at least. And then, and then she could nurse the puppy he chose, and in that way it would be a perfect circle.