Ashes (5 page)

“You got the eggs right,” Robert said, chewing with his mouth open.

“Thank you.”

He powdered his grits with pepper until a soft black carpet lay atop them. The dust was nearly thick enough to make Alison sneeze. He worked his fork and moved the grits to his mouth, washing the bite down with another sip of the laced coffee.

“Maybe you can wait until tomorrow,” Alison said. She didn’t want to wait another day, and had waited months too long already, but she said what any wife would. She bit into her own bacon, which had grown cool and brittle.

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.” Robert wasn’t religious but he was peculiar about Sundays. It was a holdover from his upbringing as the son of a Missionary Baptist. Though Robert was a house painter by trade, he’d kept up the farming tradition. The government was buying out his tobacco allocation and cabbage was more of a hobby than a commercial crop. Robert raised a few goats and a beef steer, but they were more pets than anything. She didn’t think Robert would slaughter them even if they stood between him and starvation. He wasn’t a killer.

“Sunday might be a better day for it,” she said.

“No.” Robert nibbled a half-moon into the toast. “It’s been put off long enough.”

“Maybe we should let her in.”

“Not while we’re eating. No need to go changing habits now.”

“She won’t know the difference.”

“No, but I will.”

Alison drew her robe tighter across her body. The eggs had hardened a little, the yellow gone an obscene greenish shade.

Sandy Ann had been having kidney and liver problems and had lost fifteen pounds. The vet said they could perform an operation, which would cost $3,000, and there would still be no guarantee of recovery. Alison told Robert it would be tough coming up with the money, especially since she’d given up her own job, but she would be willing to make the necessary sacrifices. Robert said they would be selfish to keep the dog alive if it was suffering.

“Want some more grits?” she asked. Robert shook his head and finished the coffee. She looked at the fork in his hand and saw that it was quivering.

Sandy Ann ran away when Alison moved in. Robert stayed up until after midnight, going to the door and calling its name every half-hour. He’d prowled the woods with a flashlight while Alison dozed on the couch. Sandy Ann turned up three days later in the next town, and Robert said if he hadn’t burned his phone number into the leather collar, the dog might have been lost forever.

Sandy Ann was mostly Lab, with a little husky mix that gave its eyes a faint gray tint in certain light. The dog had been spayed before Robert got it at the pound. Robert’s mother had died that year, joining her husband in their Baptist heaven and leaving the farm to their sole heir. Sandy Ann had survived thirty-seven laying hens, two sows, a milk cow, one big mouser tomcat that haunted the barn, and a Shetland pony.

Until today.

Alison’s appetite was terrible even for her. Three slices of bacon remained on her plate. She pushed them onto a soiled paper napkin for the dog.

“Four’s enough,” Robert said.

“I thought you could give her one piece now.”

“It’s not like baiting a fish. A dog will follow bacon into hell if you give it half a chance.”

Robert finished his plate and took the dishes to the sink. She thought he was going to enter the cabinet for another shot of bourbon, but he simply rinsed the dishes and stacked them on top of the dirty skillet. His hair seemed to have become grayer at the temples and he hunched a little, like an old man with calcium deficiency.

“I’d like to come,” she said.

“We’ve been through that.”

“We’re supposed to be there for each other. You remember April eighth?”

“That was just a wedding. This is my dog.”

Alison resented Sandy Ann’s having the run of the house. The carpets were always muddy and no matter how often she vacuumed, dog hair seemed to snow from the ceiling. The battle had been long and subtle, but eventually Sandy Ann became an outdoor dog on all but the coldest days. The dog still had a favorite spot on the shotgun side of Robert’s pick-up, the vinyl seat cover scratched and animal-smelling. Alison all but refused to ride in the truck, and they took her Camry when they were out doing “couple things.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Alison asked. She had tried to draw him out. In the early days, Robert had been forthcoming about everything, surprising her with his honesty and depth of feeling. Despite the initial attraction, she had thought him a little rough around the edges. She’d been raised in a trailer park but had attended
Wake
Forest
University
and so thought she had escaped her breeding. But Robert reveled in his.

“Nothing left to say. Maybe later.”

“We can go down to the farmer’s market when you get back. Maybe we can get some sweet corn for dinner. And I’ve been looking for a philodendron for the living room.”

“I won’t feel like it.”

“Robert, I know it’s hard. Talk to me.”

“I am talking.”

“Really. Don’t shut me out.”

“Never have.”

She slammed her fist on the table, causing her flatware to jump and clatter. “Damn it, don’t be so stoic. You’re allowed to grieve.”

Robert wiped his hands on the kitchen towel that hung from the refrigerator handle. “Thanks for breakfast.”

He went past her to the hall. She heard him open the closet door and rummage on the upper shelf. One of the snow skis banged against the doorjamb. She had convinced Robert to try skiing, and they’d spent a weekend at Wintergreen in
Virginia
. He’d twisted his ankle on the first run. He said skiing was a rich kid’s sport and it had served him right to try and escape his breeding.

Robert came back to the kitchen, the rifle tucked against his right shoulder. A single bullet made a bulge in his pocket, the shape long and mean.

“Have you decided where to bury her?” Alison had always thought of Sandy Ann as an “it,” and had to consciously use the feminine pronoun. Alison wanted to show she cared, whether her husband appreciated it or not.

“She’s not that heavy, or I’d do it near where I was going to bury her. I’m figuring behind the barn. She loved to lay in the shade back there.”

Alison hated the back of the barn. It was full of barbed wire and blackberry vines, and once she’d seen a snake slither through the tall weeds. The garden lay beyond it, and she tended a bed of marigolds there, but she associated shadows with unseen reptiles. Sandy Ann would sometimes watch from the edge of the garden while Alison worked, but the two rarely communicated when Robert wasn’t around, though Alison often left bacon for it by the back steps.

The grease from breakfast coated Alison’s throat, and her chest ached. Robert went through the back door onto the porch. Alison followed him, trading the heavy smells of the kitchen for the tart, dry October morning. The mountains were vibrant in their dying glory, umber, burgundy, ochre.

Sandy Ann was sleeping in a hollowed-out place under the steps. The dog lifted its head at the sound of their feet. It must have smelled the bacon in Robert’s hand, because its dusty nose wiggled and Sandy Ann dragged itself into the yard.

The sun glinted in the tears that ran down Robert’s cheeks. “Good girl,” he said, giving the dog a piece of bacon. The dog swallowed it without chewing and ran its rough tongue over its lips, ears lifting a little in anticipation of more. Robert moved the bacon to his rifle hand and scratched the dog on top of the head.

“Come on, girl, let’s take a walk.” He headed toward the woods.

Sandy Ann looked back at Alison, eyes dim and hiding pain, brown crust in their corners. She held out the bacon in her hand. Unlike the other pieces she had fed it, this one wasn’t sprinkled with rat poison. The dog licked its lips once more, exhaled a chuffing sigh, then followed Robert, the yellow tail swinging gently like a piece of frozen rope.

Robert led the way across the yard, holding the bacon aloft so the dog could smell it. He and Sandy Ann went through a crooked gate and Robert leaned the rifle against the fence while he fastened the latch. He looked back at the porch. Alison waved and bit into her own bacon.

They started again, both of them stooped and limping. They reached the trees, Robert’s boots kicking up the brittle leaves, Sandy Ann laboring by his side. The last she saw of him was his plaid flannel shirt.

She should chase them. Maybe she could hold the bacon while Robert loaded the gun. After all, she had cooked it. And, in a way, she was replacing Sandy Ann. If Robert ever got another dog, it would be Alison’s home and therefore it would be the dog that would have to adjust, not the other way around. She didn’t think they would get another dog, not for a while.

Sandy Ann was just a dog, and Alison wasn’t a dog person. She was the practical one in the relationship. She could have driven Sandy Ann to the vet, even at the risk of getting dog hair in her car. The vet would have drawn out a nice, clean needle and Sandy Ann could drift off to sleep, dreaming of fast squirrels and chunks of cooked meat and snacks by the back porch of home.

Maybe Robert needed the catharsis of violence. Perhaps that would be his absolution, though surely he couldn’t view the dog’s infirmity as his fault. After all, it would have aged no matter the owner. Sandy Ann, like all of them, would die and go to whatever heaven was nearest. Robert’s way might be best after all. One split-second and then the pain would end.

Alison went inside and poured herself a half cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, looking through the window. The sunlight was soft on the stubbled garden. Some of the marigolds clung to a defiant life, their edges crinkled and brown. Collard leaves swayed in the breeze like the ears of small green puppies. The shovel stood by the barn, waiting.

Her coffee mug was to her lips when the shot sounded. The report echoed off the rocky slopes and the hard, knotty trees. Alison didn’t know whether to smile or pout against the ceramic rim. The house was hers.

When Robert returned, she would have tears in her eyes. She would hug him and let him sag onto her, and she would lead him to the couch. She would remind him of all the great memories, and let him talk for hours about the dog’s life. She would kneel before him and remove his boots and wipe the mud from them. He would have no appetite, but she would cook for him anyway, maybe something sweet, like a pie. If he wanted, he could have some more of the Jack Daniels. She would turn on the television and they would sit together, the two of them in their house.

Her house.

Alison finished her coffee. The remaining bacon was covered with a gray film of grease but she ate it anyway, her stomach finally unclenching.

She washed dishes, a chore she loathed. She rinsed the pans with hot water. Later in the evening, she would vacuum, try to remove the last traces of Sandy Ann from the living room carpet.

Something clicked on the porch steps. She wondered if Robert had decided to come back to the house before he began digging. Either way, Alison would be there for him. She would shovel until she raised blisters if he would let her. Alison wiped her hands on her bathrobe and hurried to the door, blinking rapidly so her eyes would water.

The scratching sound was at the door now, as if Robert were wiping his boots on the welcome mat. She braced herself for Robert’s crestfallen expression, the caved-in look of his eyes, the deep furrows at the corners of his mouth. She would never have inflicted such suffering if it weren’t for the best.