A Stray

The dog crosses the gravel road and lays under the three sweet-gum trees that mark the corner of the yard where the weeds begin. The summer air pulls enough water out of the bayou to make anyone ill. I focus on the dog. From a distance it looks like a Rottweiler: muscled heavily in the shoulders, a little over two feet tall at the withers, coat probably black but currently the color of shale flakes and dust. Four legs, two eyes, no collar. I am fate: press the charge, wear the wig, swing the axe.

I sigh and walk up the cinderblock stairs to the front door, open it, and walk inside. My father is at work. My mother sits on our couch, comforting an infant that is wailing while simultaneously preventing a little blonde girl and a smaller brown-haired girl from coming to blows as they argue regarding a mostly-forgotten dispute. I say, “Pat’s not home, is he?”

She replies, “No. On a camping trip I think.”

“Oh. That’s right. Well there’s a stray, I’m going to take care of it.”

I open the coat closet, grab the .22, point the barrel down and slide the action to make sure it’s unloaded. I feel the gun in my hands and consider the size of the dog. “Mom, it’s a big dog. I think I’ll need a real rifle.” She does not respond. She probably did not hear.

 I walk down the hall to my room, then down the three stairs into the master bedroom. It had been converted from a porch a year earlier, and still had concrete floors that wept the humidity we breathed. I walk into their closet and turn left, pushing aside a series of grey and blue suit jackets. The false wall is never securely fastened and the panel is light as I move it aside. I have several options: I heft the Remington .308 that my brother favors, but decide on the .30-30 I use for hunting whitetail. It’s a Winchester, model 1894, lever action- if a dreamed cowboy has a rifle, this is the rifle he carries. I work the lever to make sure the gun isn’t hot and move around a stack of cartridge boxes until I find the label that matches the weapon. I pull three rounds from the box, put them in my pocket, and make my way to the living room.

“Be careful, now,” she says. Because this is not my normal chore, my mother often forgets that I have done this many times before.

After a few minutes indoors the air is a punch in the liver- it humbles the strong, it buries the foolish or unfortunate. The dog is still underneath our trees. It rests precisely atop a mound that once marked a yellow-jacket hive (three years ago I wrecked it with a lawnmower blade and earned twenty stings). I walk the thick gravel of our driveway, past the flowering yucca, to the road and the sassafras and every sunrise. I work the angles in my head.

I walk ten feet away from the road and hone my vision: the goats are all in the southeast portion of their pasture, but Buttercup is a little close to the line of fire for comfort. (Can’t kill her, can I? I milk her twice every day, don’t I?) The stray does me a favor and walks a few steps closer to the house.

I thumb the ammunition into the magazine and rack a round. Head? No, skull has got to be thick and it makes a mess anyway. I’ll take the shoulder shot and get a lung or two, maybe the heart. The safety turns from white to red and I eye the scope; I am teleported to where my quarry waits in ignorance. His coat (I can see now that it is male) bears fairly recent puncture wounds from fights lost or won, from barbed wire or blackberry thorns. The crosshairs blur and disappear. I take a breath for a moment, then squeeze the trigger.

It looks like it just got shot. The front right shoulder fails and it falls to the grass. It tries repeatedly to stand. I flick my hand forward and back on the lever, ejecting the spent casing and loading another round. I am not in a particular hurry, but soon enough I arrive at what I have done. The chest no longer moves. There is no need for mercy and I am not forced to hear pitiable sounds.

I clear the magazine and replace the rifle in my parent’s closet. I go to the backyard, get the wheelbarrow and a shovel, and bring the tools to the body. Damn dog must weigh as much as me. I try to drag it by the hind legs but I don’t have the strength to. I go inside again and interrupt my little brother as he plays. “Bob. Help me a minute.”

We try to lift it and don't get very far. Damn dog must weigh as much as both of us. We tip the mouth of the barrow to the ground in a salute and half-roll, half-lift the corpse into its hearse. "Thanks," I say, "now hose that blood off of you before you go inside or momma’s gonna scream at me."

I lift the handles and walk. I pass the rows of wild onions and the plum tree and now I dodge the hardwoods. During this time of year, they pretend to be immortal. When the old do not possess memory, the young are wise. I walk past trees with X’s rough-hewn through the bark and into the sapwood. There are few things worse than digging a grave and hitting a corpse, so years ago we began marking the trees.

My shovel bites the ground. It chews moss and roots and old footprints. Soon I am panting and wishing for a water bottle. I sit down and look up to see the face angled at mine. The eyes ask a complex riddle and I do not answer. I begin to laugh. “Well my friend,” I say, “At least we have the shade.” I dig for a few more minutes. Now the hole is deep enough to enter, so I hop down and continue my labor.

Time passes and I’ve gouged out four feet before I realize I have finished. I jump and use my elbows to crawl out of the pit, take the barrow’s handles in my hands, and lift. The body falls in with a dull sound, very much like hitting clay with a hammer. Half an inch of blood goes to the last place it can remember. It pools on black paint and rust. I glance down, and still the glassy stare is fixed upon me. I smile and narrow my gaze.

“Must have had a name. Probably loved the first people that fed you. Don’t blame me because you got dumped at the bayou. I didn’t choose to be here either. Why stare as if I owe you coins for your eyes? At least you are soulless and can find peace in death. Sleep. Never hunger again.”

All of my life I have lived on this land. I always imagined that one day I would grow into Ajax or Heracles but I should have read to the end of the stories.