Abigail

Andrew Hinshaw

The boy sits in the passenger seat of the pickup and looks through its cracked windshield at the thickening clouds. They’ve gone from white to grey, darkening the dirt road ahead as if night may come early. The boy sits back and sighs, knowing they’ll mean another day stuck inside when he finally gets home. He turns to look through the dusty back window behind his seat. A bag of bird feed, a bundle of orange twine and silver welding sticks that look like overgrown sparklers rest in the truck’s bed. He turns his attention to the old man, who steers the truck along the narrow road.

What if they get wet? the boy asks.

They’ll be fine, the old man says.

He speaks in a tired grumble as he presses in the car lighter just below the radio and cranks the handle next to his knee, opening the window a crack. He reaches into the pocket of his flannel shirt and plucks out a crumpled cigarette pack, then brings it to his mouth and pulls out a bent cigarette with his lips. The lighter pops out and he lights the cigarette with it. The humid breeze from the cracked window tussles the boy’s hair and he wrinkles his nose from the sharp smoke. The boy reaches for the window handle on his door and cranks it all the way down. He sticks his hand out of the window and swims it up and down through the air.

Don’t, the old man says. It’s a single word and absolute. His face is bronze, cheeks lined, and grey stubble pokes from his jaw. His eyes are shaded underneath the brim of a sweat-stained, green John Deere hat. To the boy, the man looks as though he has never been young.

The boy rolls the window back up and looks through the dirty glass at the green and yellow corn stalks as they pass. That morning, the boy had been roused by the old woman from a troubling dream he could no longer recall. The old woman wore pink curlers in her gray hair and had on a violet nightgown. She reminded him to eat breakfast before he and the old man went into town.

The springs protest with loud clunks as the truck strikes a pothole. The boy slides a few inches along the cloth seat as the truck fishtails. An empty can of WD-40 rolls on the floor mat and bounces off his tennis shoe, then clanks against a rusty trailer hitch. The boy looks to the old man, but the old man is unconcerned; he stares ahead, taking a long drag of his cigarette that makes its front ember glow orange. The old man’s round belly, tightly contained by his tucked in shirt and protruding over his dark blue jeans, jostles as the truck strikes another pothole. He manages the wheel in a lazy way, gripping it with a thick-skinned and freckled fist. With his other hand, he reaches for the polished black gear shifter and pushes it into a lower gear with the half-smoked cigarette wedged in between two fingers. Ash falls to the floor and the truck's engine growls higher and the boy leans forward as the truck slows to a stop.

The dirt road ends, intersecting with the asphalt of a highway road. The dust and dirt, disturbed from their drive, catches up and passes them, making it hard to see the road ahead for a moment. Through the small opening in the window, the old man flicks his spent cigarette into the diminishing dust storm and looks both ways. He wobbles the gear-shifter back and forth before putting it into gear again. The engine groans and the truck moves forward. The boy sees the distant, fading silhouette of mountains, eclipsed by swathes of white sheets of rain falling over hills of wheat and pasture. The ride is smooth now. A distant bolt of lightning flashes like a crack in the sky, but no thunder follows.

Looks like rain again, the boy says.

Yep, the old man says, more grunting the word than saying it as he leans forward over the steering wheel to look up at the blackening clouds.

Flat farmlands and scattered cattle and other cars pass them by. On the boy’s side of the road, a string of sagging barbed wire fencing on uneven posts goes by, the wood weathered grey by time. They approach a small bridge over a dried up creek bed and pass a green sign that reads population one hundred and ten.

As they enter the town, they pass through a stoplight with no power, by a grocery store that looks like a log cabin and holds the name of the owner who works there, and past an abandoned church missing its windows and doors, its top covered with a crumbling liver brown roof. The old man turns the steering wheel and the truck moves to another dirt road, one of the few that snake through the small town on the way home. The familiar jostle returns, this time less profound as the truck slows. Scattered along the route are dirty-soap white buildings and lackluster barns. They pass a monstrous, green tractor pulling a trailer of yellow bales of hay stacked high. The machine’s large, black tires are scuffed and nicked and speckled with clay. The boy is almost as tall as they are.

The furrowed brown bark of tree trunks and branches and bushes appear with their many shades of green leaves. The plant life is so lush from the recent rains it shrouds a home the boy knows lies within but can barely see. In an alcove lies the round, sad shape of the old woman’s steel colored four-door car, sitting atop a square concrete slab of driveway that is at odds with the overgrowth that surrounds it.

The old man stops the truck and pushes the shifter forward before turning the key, killing the engine. The truck rocks once before settling. He lifts the door’s handle and the door swings open and he steps out. The boy does the same on his side, dropping down onto the brown gravel. He walks to the back of the truck and reaches for the tailgate’s handle.

The old man’s massive frame passes the boy. Get that later, he says. It’s lunch.

The boy turns to follow the old man, who walks atop a stepping-stone path that leads to the front deck of the home. With each step, the worn leather of the old man’s shoes bows at the edges, just above their rubber soles. He hunches as he moves, avoiding the foliage. The air smells of pollen, of earth, of rain to come.

The old man arrives at the deck’s maroon, wooden steps, and starts his way up. The boy follows, passing a petrified tree stump with swirls of white and grey. Atop the deck, the old woman greets the old man. Her voice sounds like a bird call, sharp and crooning. There’s something foreign about it that the boy doesn’t understand. She has changed into a blue blouse and white slacks and the curlers are no longer in her hair. Black lines run over thin bags underneath her eyes and onto her red cheeks.

She fell down the stairs and it burst, she says.

You call the vet?

Yes. They keep saying they’ll come but it’s been two hours.

Where is she?

In the backyard. She’s acting crazy.

The old woman’s eyes are glassy and she does not acknowledge the boy. The old man walks past the old woman and opens the white screen door and enters the home. As the screen door swings shut, the old woman covers up her eyes with one hand, as if she doesn’t want to see something.           

The boy asks the old woman what is wrong, but she doesn’t answer.

The screen door opens and the old man walks through, carrying a rifle with a long black barrel and a redwood stock. The boy recalls the old man calling this a thirty-aught-six. The old woman drops her hand to her mouth and begins to wail as she sees the gun. The old man passes the boy, his footfalls heavy as he walks toward the steps that lead back down the deck and into the front yard.

Come with me, he says.

The boy starts to follow but slips. He looks down and sees a streak of thick, red liquid underneath his shoe and looks around on the peeling deck and sees more. Some are small drops and some are larger than his foot. Some are deep red and others crimson. The boy follows the old man down the stairs and under the shroud of green leaves and brown branches. He turns right to walk alongside the front of the house. The boy swallows and shifts his tongue. It keeps sticking to the roof of his mouth.

The boy rounds the corner of the home and sees the old man opening the tall, chain-link gate that leads to the backyard. His eyes briefly land on a rhubarb plant that grows from the ground, its thick, pink stalks standing out in the otherwise green yard. Its large leaves, something that always reminded the boy of elephant ears, have slices and holes punched through them from a hailstorm earlier that week. The plant sits right underneath the window to the boy’s room, a window he often frequents from the other side, staring out into the dark night to listen to the crickets and frogs and rustle of leaves.

Further back is a red barn with white doors, but halfway to it is the old farm dog, a dog the boy has known since she was a pup. She stands just to the left of the old man. Black fur coats her face down to her tail and her underbelly and legs are tan. Speckles of white and grey hair color her spine and the sides of her nose. Her ears are up and pointed, and her dark brown eyes move in a strange way the boy has never seen. She pants and her tongue hangs from her mouth, covered with pink spittle. She rotates her body, bending back as if she were looking behind her and sinks her white teeth into her left hip, where a large cyst used to be. A year ago the vet had said she was too old to operate but had used the word benign, which the boy took as a good thing. This cyst was gone now, replaced with open flesh, and the dog growls as she bites and pulls at red muscle and skin. The fur on her left leg is wet and red and matted, and the boy smells iron in the air.

Why is she doing that? the boy asks.

The old man doesn’t respond. He slowly steps toward the dog, and pulls the silver bolt back on the rifle and then pushes it forward and down with an open hand. The movement is smooth, second nature. He rests a thick finger along the side of the trigger and pulls the stock of the gun into his shoulder and points the barrel downward at the dog.

The dog looks up at him, as if she just realized he was standing there. Her ears drop and she tucks her tail. Her body bunches up. She attempts to flee, staggering away on her three good legs before running into the side of the house. She moves along the yellow siding, using it to stay upright, and leaves a streak of red along the way until she walks into the other side of the gate, where the chain-link fence connects to the house. The old man keeps the gun trained on her, tracking her movements with slow precision and follows, stepping softer than the boy thought possible. The dog stares at the end of the gun and scrambles into the side of the house and fence. She weaves back and forth, but she’s cornered herself.

She knows what the gun is, the old man says. There is a bite to his words and his voice is loud, louder than it needs to be for the boy to understand. You need to distract her.

What do I do? asks the boy.

Call her name. Ask her to come to you.

The boy takes a few steps toward her. She growls and bends back and bites at her open wound again.

Abby, the boy says. His voice cracks and he worries she won’t recognize him, but she stops chewing on her hip and looks in his direction. Now that the boy is closer to her, he sees that she is trembling. The dog’s eyes remain distant, but searching, as if she is honing in on the sound of his voice, rather than what she sees. She takes a cautious limp forward, then another.

The old man steps behind her. Despite his large size, his movements are slow and graceful. He looms over her and points the barrel down at the top of her head.

The boy tries harder to sound like himself, but his voice still sounds wrong. His hands are shaking. He squats, his face level with the dogs.

Abigail, he says.

Her brown eyes connect with his, going from confusion to recognition. Her head and ears drop, the way they do when she hasn’t seen the boy in a while, in anticipation of a head stroking. She whines. It’s a sad, apologetic sound.

The boy starts to tell her it’s okay when his voice is silenced by a sharp crack, like the sound of a bullwhip. The boy jerks and the dog’s eyes roll back and her front legs give out. She hits the ground and rolls to her side. The boy hears the old woman’s voice cry out from within the home, a sound loud enough he can hear it echoing through the hallway and out of the open window.

The old man pulls back on the bolt of the gun, and a brass shell pops out and lands in the grass. White smoke seeps from the rifle’s chamber. He leaves the chamber open and sets the butt of the gun on the ground and leans the barrel against the house. He turns and walks toward the barn.

The boy looks down at the dog. She’s lying still and there’s a small, red hole in the top of her head. One of her back legs is stretched out straight, but the paw on it is curled. The old man comes out of the barn, carrying a rolled-up, grey blanket and a shovel. He unrolls the blanket by jerking it away from his body and lays it atop the grass next to her.

Grab her front legs, he says.

The boy does as he is told. The pads of the dog’s feet feel rough and warm in his hands and he worries he won’t be able to lift her, but before he can try the old man grabs her back legs and drags her onto the blanket. Her head bounces and her tongue dangles from her half-open jaw.

Let go, the old man says.

The boy, not realizing he was still holding onto her legs, lets her go.

The old man grabs his corners of the blanket, with the shovel still in hand. Grab the other end, he says. And lift.

The boy grabs the other ends of the blanket and lifts. The dog is heavy but the boy gets her just above the ground. Her limp body sags in the middle of the blanket as if she lies in a hammock. The old man nods his head toward the other side of the fence and walks around the boy. The boy rotates then follows the old man as he leads the way, walking backward to the other side of the fence into mostly open pasture. The boy is careful as the ground is uneven, threatening to trip him. Underneath the dog’s head, the boy sees a small area where the blanket has darkened red with blood. The dog’s front leg jerks.

She’s twitching, the boy says.

Yeah, the old man agrees as he looks over his shoulder to see where he is walking. That happens, he says.

They arrive at the top of a small hill, where a large rectangle of black soil is fenced off by wooden planks for compost.

Set her down, he tells the boy.

The boy lowers the dog until she is on the ground next to the squared-off area and then releases the corners of the blanket. Using the shovel, the old man starts moving one mound of dirt to another. The dirt is loose and moves easily. The boy watches the dog as the old man digs. A few minutes later, her right leg twitches again. It’s something he’s seen before when she’s sleeping.

Help me put her in, the old man says as he stares down at the shallow grave. A bead of sweat runs down the side of his cheek and under his chin. He reaches down and grabs his ends of the blanket. The boy does the same on his side but his foot catches in a tangle of tallgrass and he stumbles. He catches himself but struggles to lower the dog gently down into the earth. They both let go and she settles. A pink worm makes spirals in the dirt just next to her open left eye.

The boy sucks in a quick breath. It is involuntary and desperate, as if he’d forgotten to breathe. His cheeks are wet and warm and he wipes his face with the back of his hand.

Knock that shit off, the old man says. His face is a grimace and his words are sharp and make the boy flinch.

Sorry, the boy says. He wipes tears from his face but more tears replace them. He clenches his teeth and refuses to look at the old man. Years ago, the dog chased away a vicious stray that cornered him, not far from where she had just been shot. She was so big and powerful then. She was my protector, the boy wants to say. But doesn’t. He knows the old man wouldn’t understand.

The boy stares down at her. She no longer moves and seems so thin and frail. The old man pulls out another cigarette and lights it. He takes a long drag and exhales smoke with the cigarette still in his mouth. He reaches for the shovel and bends over and jams it into a pile of earth. He looks up at the boy, squinting to keep the smoke from his eyes. He is about to throw a mound of dirt atop the dog’s body, but pauses.

Go find a stick to toss in with her, he says.

The boy nods and turns around to walk down the hill toward a large tree with broken branches scattered around its trunk. A few drops of cold rain begin to fall. Thunder rumbles through the clouds above and he looks up at them. They are dark and swollen and seem closer now. Or the boy seems closer to them.