Say No More (11 page)

The snow in my kennel had drifted up so high in the corner that Ned had to scoop out a path with the snow shovel to open the kennel door.

“Goddamn good-for-nothing dogs.” His breath billowed outward in a fog of ice. He spat a glob of brown phlegm near me and I backed away. Whatever he kept tucked between his cheek and gum stank. He never swallowed it, but would spit it out when he’d chewed on it long enough. Then he’d take a crinkly pouch out of his front coat pocket, dig his fingers in, and draw a pinch of brown leaves out and stuff it in his mouth again. He was never without it. “Y’all don’t do nothing but eat and shit. That’s about the sum of it.”

Bit stayed hidden in her dog house in the kennel next to mine. For weeks, she would come out to greet him, hopeful for a pat on the head or a biscuit, but he was never generous like that. We were a chore, an imposition, not his friends. I had no intention of pushing the matter. Even Bit finally gave up on him, keeping her distance ever since he’d whacked her in the ribs with the pooper scooper for putting a muddy paw on his already dirty jeans.

Ned slammed the shovel in the bank of snow, so that the handle stood upright, tugged his gloves off, and blew his nose, one nostril at a time. Then he wiped his upper lip with an oil-stained sleeve. “My hunting dogs are each worth ten of you. Buster treed three coons last Sunday alone. And what have you done?” He glared at me accusingly.

What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t do the work I was bred for. Estelle had sent all the cows off to auction a month ago. Too much to take care of, she’d told Ned. She’d even sold Slick to some cattleman out in Missouri. Fetched a pretty penny for him, she boasted. The hogs and chickens were gone, too. The farm was not the same without them all. What had once been a place of endless fascination for me was now a wintery wasteland, Bit and I being the last two occupants.

The clatter of tree branches broke the silence as a fierce wind kicked up, carrying in its wake last night’s dusting of snow to swirl in crystalline eddies. Beneath the fresh powder lay an icy crust. Two days ago, a wicked storm had blasted over the land, daggers of rain descending from steely skies as the north wind ripped away every shred of warmth within its reach. By the time the clouds broke and rolled away, every surface — the electrical wires hanging heavy from their poles, the leaning outdoor lamp post, the stubble of old flowers in Estelle’s garden — was coated in a layer of ice an inch thick. The flimsy piece of metal siding that had served as a roof over our kennels had blown away within the first hour, exposing Bit and me to the January misery. At least if we had been housed in the same kennel, Bit and I could have huddled together for warmth. As it was, we had only our cold dog houses and a compacted bed of straw. If not for the windbreak afforded us by the fact that our kennels sat on the east side of the barn’s outer wall, we might have frozen to death.

In those two days since the storm, Estelle had emerged from her house only once, forgetting to feed us or bring us thawed water. We knew she was in there. We saw the lights — or
a
light, at least. A very dim light that floated from the kitchen, to the living room, and then to the upper bedroom as night came on fully.

Yesterday morning, we had heard the crack of ice as the kitchen door was hammered open. Bit and I stretched our frozen limbs and braved the cold to stare at the back porch. Estelle snatched three logs from the woodpile stacked against the house and went back inside, never once looking our way. I let out a bark as the door clicked shut, then several more. Bit gave me a cynical look. Yes, I knew my efforts were futile, that I was probably just wasting energy, but I had to try.

A minute later, Bit had walked stiffly back to her doghouse and crawled inside. I barked for an hour, pacing back and forth, jumping against the kennel door, anything to warm my blood, until my throat gave out from the strain and my muscles grew weak and shaky. And then I watched and waited for a long, long while, while my mouth went dry and my toes numb and my belly cramped with hunger.

Through it all, I kept wondering when Lise would come back to get us. Or if she ever would.

Ned smashed the shovel against the kennel door’s bottom. The ice that had locked it in place chimed as it fell to the ground, shattering into a hundred glassy shards. He yanked the door open, grabbed the handle of the bucket sitting in the corner and grunted.

“Well, shit. Frozen solid.” He hauled it out, then smacked a metal bowl down beside my dog house. Kibble rattled in the bottom.

I hung back, wary.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he said. “Come here if you wanna eat. I ain’t gonna hurt you.” He nudged the food dish forward an inch with his foot.

Hunger overruled my sensibility. I dove for it. But before I could vacuum up the first piece, Ned swung his boot at the bowl. It skidded across the crusty ice, slammed into the door with a bang, and overturned. Half the kibble fell in a loose pile. The rest of it scattered beyond the outside of the kennel. Before I could react, he landed another kick between my ribs and stomach. Yelping, I scurried into the corner. He guffawed as he went out through the door and then swung it shut. Not until he was out of sight and I had my breath back did I go for the food. I gobbled up every nugget within reach, rooting with my nose beneath the bowl to flip it over and find a few more.

Returning, Ned removed Bit’s bucket and placed her bowl down. She was wise enough to stay inside her dog house and wait for him to leave. I hid while he took mine. As he tromped away, blocks of ice swinging from each gloved hand, he made a point of grinding the food scattered on the ground outside into the snow. He disappeared into the barn.

I reached a paw through one of the kennel links nearest the bottom, but I could only get my leg through partway. In the end, I managed to pull just two nuggets inside. The rest were either too far away or had been crushed to dust beneath his heel.

A pale sun climbed high in a watery sky laced with pastel clouds. Its brightness, what little there was, was deceptive, for it shed no warmth on the frozen earth below. The snot had frozen at the edge of my nostrils. The leather of my nose was dry and cracked. My pads were split and bleeding. Pea-sized balls of ice clung to my feathers and britches on the backs of my legs and rear, making little clacking sounds whenever I moved about, which wasn’t often anymore. My attempts to get someone’s attention from inside the house had fallen on deaf ears and sapped all my strength.

In the next kennel, Bit groaned. We were both still hungry and might have been thirsty as well if we hadn’t learned to bite at the ice and let it melt in our mouths.

Finally, I gave up watching and went inside my doghouse, rooting around in the straw until I had dug a deep nest. There I hunkered down, able to see most of Ned’s comings and goings as he went from the barn, to the shed, to the house, and back out to the barn. He didn’t return to our kennels with fresh water.

I must have dozed off, because the sun was sliding low when I heard the garage door go up and Estelle’s big blue Buick back out. Rolls of white exhaust billowed from the tailpipe. It was Ned who got out of the car. He shut the door and went inside. A few minutes later he reappeared with two suitcases, which he tossed in the trunk. The moment he slammed the trunk closed, Estelle stepped out the kitchen door.

“You sure about this, ma’am?” Ned said, in a suspiciously polite tone.

“Never been more.” Estelle hoisted her oversized purse on her shoulder and clung to the handrail as she descended the stairs. “I thought maybe if I unloaded the farm animals and just let you lease the land, I could handle things. But being here by myself ... the loneliness is just eating me up, Ned. This ice storm is what did me in. Going on three days now without power. Roads so bad I didn’t dare go out on them. What if I fell and broke my hip? Nobody’d ever know. I’d just rot in the big old house until the mail piled up.”

“I’d check on you, Mrs. McHugh. D’you need me to run some errands for you? Do some more chores around the house?”

Estelle put her hand out, and Ned laid the car keys in them. “I can’t even get you to show up regularly, as it is. Your mama and me, we go way back, God bless her soul, but you got enough on your plate with your own place.” She opened the passenger side door, tossed her purse inside and waddled around the back of the car. “I’ll be back in the spring for the rest of my things — and to help Sheridan Bexley get the place ready for auction. Breaks my heart, leaving this place, but my sister has a great condo down in Naples, Florida and —”

“Ain’t you gonna miss seeing your grandkids?” Ned stood before the driver’s side door, blocking her path, like he didn’t want to let her leave.

Her chin sank. She tugged at the lapel of her coat. “Haven’t seen my dear little Hunter since Lise took off for Covington. My friend Marcella is a friend of Lise’s friend Grace’s mother, if you follow that. Said Lise was having some trouble with her pregnancy. Minor stuff, she swore, but the doctor told Lise to stick close to home — meaning up north, not here. Poor Hunter has his own problems. Her mother’s not been well, either, I hear. Had one of those mini-strokes. And her father’s in a home with Alzheimer’s.” She looked around, her eyes skipping past the kennels to the barn, then over the fields. “Lord, and here I am going south. Never thought I’d see the day. Tears my heart right out of my chest, it does.”

Awkwardly, Estelle shifted to her right, trying to wedge past Ned, but he stood firm, his fists crammed deep in his coverall pockets.

“For crying out loud, Ned, I need to get in my car and go. Is there something you need?”

He drew his hands from his pockets, looked down at his palms. His gaze flitted my way. “Just that ... the dogs need some more food and, well, I hafta come out here every day. They ain’t like cows. Cows you can just throw down some hay and let ‘em drink out of the creek and they’ll be fine for days, or even weeks, but them dogs, they —”

“There’s a check on the kitchen table. Should cover things for a while. In the meantime, I think Mr. Penewit is gonna come take a look at the girls this weekend. Ray had promised him a pup once for helping out when we had that big flood, but the timing was never right. I told him he might as well take those dogs off my hands. Heaven knows Lise hasn’t taken enough interest in them to come and get them. I think that whole bit about not being able to have dogs where she is is a lot of nonsense, but what do I know?”

She shuffled past him, got in her car and backed into the turnaround. Ned barely scooted out of the way in time to avoid having his boots crushed beneath her tires — which would have served him right. Estelle wasn’t fifty feet down the driveway when she threw the car into reverse, stopped next to Ned, and rolled down the window.

“Thanks for warming up the car for me, and bringing my suitcases down from the attic and all.”

He shrugged. “Weren’t nothin’.”

She started to roll the window back up, then paused it halfway. “Almost forgot. I think there are mice or something in the garage. I moved an old bucket in there a week ago and found a pile of shredded newspaper. Ray always kept too much junk around. I warned him it would attract varmints.”

“Yeah, I saw a hole in the drywall in there the size of my fist. Rats, more likely.”

Even from a distance I could see her eyes get huge. “Rats, really? You think so?”

“I’d bet on it.”

“You’ll take care of them? I don’t want any damage to the property before it goes up for auction.”

“First thing tomorrow.”

“Good. You have my number if anything comes up, right?”

“Sure do.”

“And don’t forget to water the dogs. I was just too afraid to go all the way out there with the ice, but I could see from the kitchen window that they were all right.”

See us? Could she see us shivering and hungry? If she had noticed one of us frozen to the ground, would she have bothered to venture out even then?

At least wild coyotes could dig dens to wait out the winter. Our kennels were on a pad of concrete. The only way out was through the door. Why not bring us in before the storm ever came? Bit and I had been used to being in the house. Even the barn or the garage would have been better than being stuck out here.

“Don’t worry,” Ned reassured her. “I got it all under control here. Enjoy Florida.”

“Too darn hot for me, but it’ll be good to be with my sister. Haven’t seen her since the reunion three years ago. Bye now, Ned.”

As Estelle rolled away in her big car, on her way south, Bit came up and leaned against the kennel panel next to me. If I pressed myself really close, I could almost feel the heat from my mother’s body. Almost.

N
ed Hanson never brought our water buckets out that day. I might have been thankful for the snow, but the snow was cold and eating it only made me colder. Even when the wind died down and the sun came out, it became harder and harder to stay warm. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to lie over the register in Lise and Cam’s old house, the hot air tickling my belly and heating me to the core. Those days seemed so long ago — even to me, a dog not yet a year old. But, a lot can happen in a year. Sometimes, even more can happen in a day.

Three more days went by again before Ned came back. By then, I could sense that my belly had shrunk, the skin pulling tight up into my ribs. I hadn’t felt my toes for over a week. Sometimes I had to look down, just to check that they were still on the ends of my legs. The first day after Estelle left, I paced in circles, trying to warm my bones. But that only made me more tired. I’d barked and barked the first two days, hoping to alert a distant neighbor or passerby on the road, but now even that was too much effort.

When a truck clanged down the driveway, I emerged from my doghouse, hopeful it was the other man Estelle had spoken of. But it was only Ned. I almost went back inside my flimsy shelter, when it occurred to me I ought to pee while I was out. I hadn’t peed in ... I couldn’t remember. I squatted, straining to empty my bladder, but only a few drops came out, staining the dirty snow a dark orange. Layers of my excrement were frozen beneath the ice. I was ashamed of the filth, my fur even smelled of urine and poop, but what could I do? If I had been allowed out, I would have done my business in a corner of the yard, like Lise had taught me. Ned could seldom be bothered to clean up after us, so it had piled up until there was hardly any place I could step that hadn’t been soiled. At least in the last few days I hadn’t had much inside me to get rid of. Like now.