Dog Run Moon (22 page)

Early summer days, maybe the finest time of the year. Mountains still capped with snow, the river on the rise, the hillsides electric green with new grass. Lauren walked her dogs at the shelter. She puttered her way through her chores. She had plenty of time left to stand at the kitchen window with her binoculars. The girl came out occasionally, always underdressed in the same pair of shorts and T-shirt. She wandered around the yard hitting things with sticks. She sometimes set out walking down the road toward the highway. She never went very far before she turned around and came back. Frequently she'd squat in the yard with a book of matches. Striking them, letting them burn down to her fingers, one at a time, over and over again. Obviously the child was bored out of her mind at best, some kind of pyromaniac at worst.

Jason emerged less frequently. Once he came out and hobbled over to the van and made some efforts to change the flat tire. He was still on crutches, and he leaned them against the side of the van as he knelt with the jack. He removed the flat tire and was going around to the back to get the spare. He was hopping along, steadying himself with a hand on the van. He'd really gotten fat. His stomach bulged over his jeans and his face was pale and doughy. He tripped over something and went down, and she kept the binoculars on him for a long time but he didn't move. He had a hand over his face so she couldn't see what was there but eventually he hauled himself up, retrieved the crutches, and went inside. The van was still on the jack. That had been a week ago.

Lauren had made them macaroni and cheese with chunks of ham. Now she was out of baking dishes and she was pissed off. Funny to think that, after everything, what finally drove her to his doorstep was the fact that she wanted her good Pyrex cookware back.

She stood on the dilapidated front porch and knocked. He opened the door, and, up close, he looked even worse—lank hair, bloodshot eyes, a gaping hole where a tooth should have been. If he was surprised to see her he didn't show it.

“You shouldn't have shot my steer,” Lauren said. It wasn't what she'd planned on saying but that's what came out.

He looked down. Shook his head. Lauren tried to see behind him into the trailer but his bulk blocked the door. There was a musty, fetid, shut-in smell. “It was just a dumb animal and it never did enough harm to you that you had to shoot it.”

Jason shrugged. His face might have been slightly red but it was hard to tell. He pointed to his foot, encased in a dingy white bandage. “I got diabetes,” he said. “They took off three of my toes.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Lauren said.

“I've been on disability for four years. Hardly enough to get by on. And now I got a dependent.” He sighed, and grimaced as if in pain. His missing tooth was like a black portal into the cave of his mouth. “Admit it, you married my dad just because you saw an opportunity to get yourself a place because you knew he wasn't long for the world and you knew you could take it from him. There was no other reason for a woman like you to marry a man like him.”

Jason was looking at her now, his nostrils flared slightly, and Lauren had imagined this conversation many times but now that it was happening, she realized it was nothing like what she had expected. Jason looked halfhearted, pathetic. She was old. It was a conversation that had no bearing, had no real reason for taking place. Any emotion attached was a faded shell of what had once been real hatred, fear, anger. They were going through the motions, and both of them knew it.

“Your dad was a miserable asshole, most of the time. You yourself hated him, probably for good reason. I married him because I'd loved someone and made a mess of it, and I wanted something to take my mind off it. To punish myself for being stupid. Maybe I needed to be needed. I don't know. It was a long time ago and things get muddled. I never wanted his shitty land. Is the girl your daughter?”

Jason was going to say something but a voice piped up from inside the trailer. She had obviously been close and listening. “He's not my dad,” she said.

“Mind your own business, Jo. I'm talking to this lady.”

“My dad's in the army. He's overseas.”

“Maybe he is, maybe he ain't. Go watch TV.”

“He's a sniper.”

“If you say so.”

“First thing he's going to do when he comes back is shoot you.”

“Hey. That's about enough from you. Go watch your show.” There was grumbling, and then the sound of the TV being turned up loud, some sort of violent cartoon. Animated shrieks and laughs and car tires screeching.

“I was in Florida,” Jason said. “I was with that girl's mother and then she left to see her sister in Tampa and never came back. I looked for two weeks but her sister don't even exist in Tampa as far as I can tell. I thought about just taking off, but I didn't. I could have, but I didn't.” He raised his chin and widened his eyes, as if this were still a surprise—the discovery of a small nobleness existent within him. “And now, I'm here. They took three of my toes and I got a half-wild girl child that's not even my own. All of that, and I'm on disability.”

And then, Lauren, surprising herself, started laughing. She felt it coming up from deep within her, a release of something pent up for a long time. She laughed until she coughed. “Those damn red cattle,” she said. “Truth be told, there's been times over the years when I would have paid someone to come out and do for all of them what you did for that one. They could be the most frustrating animals I ever had.”

She started to turn away and then she remembered. “If you want me to keep making you dinners you're going to have to give me my damn dishes back,” she said.

“Hey, I didn't ask you for anything,” he said, raising his hands as if to ward her off. “I got your dishes right here.” He retreated into the trailer and Lauren tried to look in, but he'd partially shut the door behind him. He came back, balancing her dishes on one arm, crutch under the other. They hadn't been washed. The corner of one pan had something stuck to it, furred with gray mold.

“I'm out of dish soap,” Jason said. “Otherwise I'd have got these clean.”

“That's okay,” Lauren said. Then she thought of something. “What happened to your dog?”

“Huh?”

“That big black shepherd you had.”

“Got dysplasia, and I had to put it down. Years ago. Got so it couldn't walk, and it turned mean. Understandable, I guess. I was trying to feed it one day and it bit me and that was that.”

“Well, that's too bad.”

“Was just a dog.”

“I've always liked dogs. That's why I asked. I remember watching that one walk across the field in the snow. A beautiful animal.”

“The day you get a dog is the day you sign up to bury it. It's a package deal. No sense getting too attached.”

“You could say that about anything. Everything in your life—either you bury it or it buries you. Doesn't mean you shouldn't get attached.”

Jason scratched his head and nodded, obviously unconvinced. He pointed at the dishes she was holding. “I got a freezer full of burritos,” he said. “But it's been nice to have some variety.”

The girl's voice came from inside. “I hate tuna!”

“You'll eat it, and you'll be happy to have it,” Jason shouted. He looked at Lauren and raised his eyebrows as if to say, See what I'm dealing with. He cleared his throat. “We appreciate it,” he said.

She'd planned on putting it off until later in the summer, but then she knew she'd have to contend with the storms that tended to come up suddenly that time of year, violent, with lightning and strong wind. And, she felt good,
now
. Who knew what the coming months held? When she'd worked at the assisted-living facility one of the residents—a funny old guy who dressed in a ratty coat and tie for dinner every evening—used to say, “When you get to my age, dear, you'll think twice about buying green bananas at the grocery store.” Lauren always laughed then; now she knew what he meant.

She drove to the trailhead at dawn. She had a small backpack with a few granola bars and water and a light jacket in case of rain. She had a walking stick with a loop of leather that she could put around her wrist. She brought Rocks, too. If she left him alone for long in the house, he had a tendency to upend the garbage or go into the bathroom and shred the toilet paper roll.

It was a cool morning, and as she started up the trail, the peak above her was obscured by skeins of fog. She'd done this hike many times, and she didn't allow herself to frame this one in terms of finality. She wanted to enjoy it for what it was, not some sad, elegiac trek up the mountain of her own mortality. Rocks was running ahead of her like a thing possessed. Sprinting down the trail, stopping suddenly, ears cocked, then turning to run back toward her, crashing into her legs with enthusiasm. “Go on in front and keep an eye out for moose,” she said. “I once saw three different moose on this trail. A big old cow moose would stomp the vacuum right out of your skull so fast, and then I'd finally be rid of you.”

The sun had come out, and as she started to gain elevation, the fog burned away. She stopped frequently to rest. Rocks chased the little red pine squirrels, growling and yipping in frustration.

She reached the top in early afternoon. The valley was splayed out below her, green, with the river winding silver down its middle. From where she stood, she could look down on a pair of ravens coasting along on a thermal. Anytime you were up high enough to see the back of a raven in flight, you knew you'd done a good bit of climbing.

She shared a granola bar with Rocks, and then she searched around until she'd found the tin that she'd left all those years ago. The notebook was still in there, swelled a bit with moisture but otherwise in good shape. It was over halfway filled with notes now. Hikers of all kinds had written their messages, and she spent a long time reading them, all the way back to the first one, the one she'd written on the day she'd scattered her mother out over the precipice.

She hadn't thought about it much until right that minute and it came to her now as a slight embarrassment—her mother had never climbed this, or any other mountain in her life. She liked working in her garden. She liked walking by the river. Hiking her ashes up here and tossing them over the edge hadn't been for her mother at all, that had been Lauren all the way. But maybe that's how it should have been. The treatment of ashes and bodies and remnants of all kinds was the duty of the living. The dead have no say, and it was silly to think they'd care either way. That was the rational line of thought. However, it was still something to consider. It was true that in her life Lauren had loved mountaintops. But if you wanted her to be comfortable in eternity, work her in with the cow manure, scatter her ashes for the chickens to dust in, dump her in the slop bucket for the pigs.

The sun was just starting to set by the time she made it down. She was dead tired. She'd twisted her knee on a loose rock and had to hobble to her truck, leaning heavily on her walking stick. On the drive home, Rocks slept on the seat next to her, instead of standing and smudging the window with his nose like he usually did.

She was too exhausted to even heat her soup, though she was ravenous. She opened a can and ate it cold, not bothering to pour it into a bowl. Tomorrow she'd wake up early and do her chores. She'd take a long hot bath, and after that she'd cook them something, maybe a pasta bake. That was easy enough. Some sausage, some pasta, spaghetti sauce, and cheese. She had all of the ingredients, and wouldn't even have to go to the store. It was a satisfying feeling to have a day figured out like that. One of the few benefits of getting old, an enjoyable economy, short-term planning started to look a lot like long-term planning too.

She rinsed her soup can and spoon and drank a glass of water standing at the kitchen sink looking out the window. It was all but dark now and she could see down to Jason's trailer. The lights were on, the blue glow of the TV faintly visible. Maybe it was none of her concern, but that girl should be in school. She'd tell him that tomorrow. It was obvious the TV was turning her brain to mush. She needed some decent clothes. Maybe she'd like to come over and feed the goats. Growing up in a place like Florida, she'd probably never been exposed to anything like that before. At the very least it would give her something to do besides setting fires. The wrong gust of wind in a couple of weeks when the grass got dry and things could go south in a hurry. She'd have to talk to Jason about that too.

She went to the back door and let Rocks out. He did a quick disdainful bout of nose- and rear-sniffing with the low-caste outside dogs. They came to her, all eight of them, mutts in varying shapes and sizes, all wagging their tails, snuffling at her hands, the more excitable ones among them jumping and trying to stick their snouts in her coat pocket. She made them all sit, a furred mass of anticipatory canine. She tossed them their biscuits one by one, and the air was soon full of the sound of happy crunching. She sat on her porch chair and she rubbed ears and tugged tails and scratched under chins. She'd always thought that petting a dog was the greatest activity in the world a person could engage in while thinking about other things.

Off to the other side of the field she could see her Red. The lone steer standing there, a silhouette, made small by the dark shapes of the mountains rising up behind it. While she petted her dogs she watched it, waiting for it to move—dip its head to graze, or lower itself to the ground, for sleep or something else—but it didn't. It remained poised until the light was gone.