The horse screamed first.

It’s an awful sound. It peeled and cored and quartered me, like new fruit.

I flinched, and dropped the plate I was drying, and it smashed loud against the floor and I flinched again. That’s all I could move, for a moment. Even if I were all grown and wise with a head screwed on good and tight I would have done the same thing, it's only natural, anyone would. Even you know the feeling. Right? When dumb fear bites into your ribs and bloats your heart up with hot mud and hot metal, and the whole mess of it sinks out the bottom of your chest and past your stomach and into your legs and through your feet, and welds you to the floor? You know the feeling, don’t you? It’s a small hell but it’s there.

“That wasn’t..?”

I was still stone by the time Alex got her wits back. She looked a little pale, and was trying to peer out the window over the sink, and then I’m not sure what else, because I was already gone. “Ava!”

The sidedoor gave way for me and I was sprinting towards the stable (the Morgan screamed again, ripe and heavy with anger, and then Dominick screamed too) with absolutely nothing in mind. At least not that I can remember. I might have been thinking How far did he get him out? or Maybe he slipped off in time? or something else like that, trying to piece out what was happening before it had the chance to happen and hurt everything into nothing.

Then I saw them in the field and sweet God, it was horrible to watch. Make no mistake. It was awful. I think mostly because it was almost beautiful too. Or maybe I feel that way now, seeing as I’ve got enough foulness in me to think such a thing at such a time, with the awfulness of it and everything. I didn’t mean to though. Awful things strike you full of awe, and if you’d seen it you may have done the same exact thing. Words defy the sight.

The Morgan - sweet God the Morgan. He was lit up like New Year's. He was a war of himself. All fury and bone and sinew, twisting and braiding in a mangled tangle just under the bourbon gleam of his coat, and still screaming. Varnish and tarnish and tyrant. It would have been a rare treat to watch, and enjoy, if Dominick hadn’t been so crooked and quiet on the grass under him.

From there - well, I’m still not entirely sure what I had planned to do once I got there. Distract the horse? Fight him off? Throw Dominick over my shoulder, and? I don’t know. I didn’t know. Everything was rushing to get through at the same time, like the people in the door of a theater on fire, so I never really knew what everything was. Maybe the way I saw it, was that it wouldn’t really matter what I did once I was there, if I never got there to begin with. It’s what seemed most important I guess is what I mean.

Fifteen or twenty yards off when I was close enough for the Morgan to catch notice and turn towards me, he made a wall of stone with just the look of himself and I hit it and stopped dead. No tripping or stumbling, even. I just stopped dead. Teeth and eyes and firestorm. God, but he was stunning.

The tendons of his legs cinched and clenched and wheeled him around sharp, and powerful, that deep neck and solid body coming at me like a dowsing rod and I stood and watched and thought how awful it would be if Dominick was dead. If he had died. With a skull all caved inward like a bowl or a spine crumbled up into stupid useless lumps in his back. If he was dead I knew it would be the closest to murder that I would ever get.

Awful. Just awful. A nightmare come real.

But when the rifle cracked, and the brass-and-velvet muscle of the Morgan’s chest tore open like taffy, and big ripe gumdrops of blood came down and sprinkled Dominick and the green grass all around him, and the scream shriveled to a squeal and then a gurgle and then nothing, it was every bit as ugly.




I stayed in bed the next few days, so I can only give you the broad strokes of what happened after. One of the stableboys, Brody, a real crackshot if evidence is evidence, he was the one that got the Morgan. All the way from the stable. Pop probably gave him a raise or vacation or something for being so bold and quick to save his youngest daughter. I wasn’t sure what to think of it.

Dominick turned out fine. Just fine. Ripped up like a roadmap with about as many lines, and a broken this and fractured that and a nice big dent in the shelf of bone over one of his eyes, but other than that, he was just roses. I wasn’t sure what to think of that either.

And no, I don’t know if Pop ever compensated Mr. Connelly or what. Was the Morgan getting killed off enough to call it squash? Or maybe Pop forked over whatever horses he’d been eyeing, free of charge? Or I don’t know. Maybe Mr. Connelly wrote him a check for his boy dragging out one of the race animals and getting it shot. I’ve yet to ask. I don’t think I’d be satisfied with any answer.

At some point while I was still in bed, soaking quietly in this sort of thinking, Mama poked her head in and asked if I wanted to come say goodbye.

“No.” I didn’t want to do anything.

The hall-light had turned her into a shadow on the wall, and I watched it think for a moment. Surely, surely she was about to press me. Was about to tell me to get over myself and get some manners, that a little moving-around would do me good. Snap the lightswitch on. Rip my covers off. Something like that. And I got ready for it - I got ready to argue her. But then her shadow shrank away and the door clicked shut and I wasn't ready for that.

Then it was just me and the dopey evening light. I never knew cotton sheets could choke you so bad. They made scraping noises when I curled up against my knees, and I thought for sure, for sure, that I’d never be able to fall asleep this way. That I’d just lie here for a few more days or so, staring at the wall, waiting for it to stop drawing itself into pictures of boys folded up like butcher hats and horses busted up like animal crackers. But I must have eventually drifted off, because then it was morning, and the big glittery dragon racehorse trailer and its owners were all gone.

This was all awhile ago, though, so things have more or less smoothed over. You know. Just evened out. I think on it sometimes when I find myself turning idle, but not much other than that. Mostly I wonder just what it was he was expecting, just how he saw it playing out, I mean. All the in-between. I’m more than certain how he pictured the end of it. Probably something like, him swinging off the Morgan’s warm granite back, smoothly as cream of course, and giving me one last sharp city look. Watching me, on purpose, saying with the polished-up look of himself This is your fear and your fear was nothing. Letting those oily eyes grease up his words and then push them in as deep as they would go. Then rattling off back to California. To Anaheim. To his racetrack, in his glossy foreign car. Instead he rattled off to the doctor in a field truck that could have just as easy ended up a hearse.

What did he make of that? What did he think when he looked back on it? What sort of feeling was it, right then, the one that lit up in the pit of him, in that place where his heart and his throat came together, the moment he saw it was all gone bad? I still wonder. He was a piss-poor gambler, with a chiseled-up face and ugly centipede scars crawling all under his pretty glossy clothes. Can you run a racetrack that way?

This wondering doesn’t do me any favors, though, so I try my best to keep from turning idle and thinking on them. Around mealtimes in particular. There are only so many excuses I can invent for a lost appetite, and it might raise a strange mood at the table to say that everything would turn to blood in my mouth.

I wonder how much of it’s the Anaheim boy’s. And how much I’m to blame. And I know it’s a foul thing, but I can’t help hating him for that.


((I completely forgot about this story until about half an hour ago. It's the last ~1400 words of an ~8000 dealy that I never quite finished about a year back. There's all that development stuff and exposition junk and etc., but it's also like 7000 words, and it's also pretty shoddy, so I'll just have to wait and see how well this trimming right here airs out. Hopefully the story is still there!

The Morgan is a breed of horse that was used specifically by cavalrymen in the Civil War!

I seem to really like horses, but only when presented as lovely vehicles of injury and indifference and the casual chaos of nature!))

O Filthy Pilgrim

"You remember them thoroughbreds at your brother's wedding? Those big glossy bays?"

He looked over, from looking out the window, from watching the naked rows of dirt fail to swell into a garden. His wife was sitting up in bed. For the first time in awhile, which was good. It was good seeing that. He could feel her collecting pieces of him and that was almost good too: The dirt in his jeans, the dirt in his nails.

"We took em down that backroad to your old schoolteacher's. The one you were all sweet on." She smiled, bright and sudden, like a fresh book of matches. "Oh, now, it's alright! Don't you look all shamed, now." He couldn't help looking down at his jeans.

"Don't you look all ashamed. You were a boy, after all. And she was a nice lady when you introduced us. You remember that?"

He nodded.

"You remember?"

"I remember."

"But your brother's wedding-- we had them thoroughbreds. The bays. They were the prettiest color. You remember the color of them?"

He nodded."

"Like clean pennies underwater." She was looking upwards, and licking her lips. Like she had eaten the copper straight out of the thought, like she would have seconds if she could ask. "Like the ones people throw in wishing fountains. You remember? The color of them?"

"I remember." He began peeling the skin and soil from around his nails.

"And we took on down that backroad, the one to your old schoolteacher's, and we just... we just let them bays just go. Just cut em loose. With our heels down and leaned in and they took off with us." She licked her lips again, and looked at him. "You remember that?"

"I remember that."

"We had em wide open, didn't we?"

He nodded, because they had. The bays had gone wide open down that backroad, all thunder and thrash and dirt and dumb impact, lungs dragging whiff and snort and bodies heaving work and jerk, power things, fear things: hot-eyed. Him damn near killing himself on a sycamore branch, and her latenight tobacco hair flying up and away like shaken champagne, laughing, so far up the road, so far way up ahead of him: That laugh high and steamy and anxious like a teakettle snuck into the woodwinds. Porcelain, eggshell, kaleidoscope, just wonderful.

"You remember that?"

He nodded and stood up.

Her glass of water was empty, and with it being 3 o'clock she needed her 3 o'clock medicine. And so he would get her the water to take it. And when he reached for her glass she reached out and touched him on his filthy wrist, and the both of them looked at each other.

"Hey, now..." She licked her lips, and smiled. "You remember them thoroughbreds? At your brother's wedding?"

He was a hooked carp: choking on something small and metal, way back in the grate of his neck. Water filling his nose like something spilled: something warm. "I remember."

"You remember? Them big shiny bays?"

"Sure do."

"We had em wide open, didn't we?"

"Sure did."

Renaissance-Woman

I've taken bites of out the moon and if you don't believe me? Look for yourself. I have written award-winning hymns on the topic.

I have fished in the Euphrates and pissed in the Ganges and painted bowls of fruit, as well as nude women. I was on death row twice. I have hopped freighttrains and snorted blow out of saltshakers and built bridges and then burned them. I have a chameleon tattoo.

I have fucked a one-armed man and no, his wife never found out, at least not that I know of. I've constructed a model of government that is perfect in every conceivable way if only people would listen. I can write backwards. I am triple-jointed. I can capture the attention of an entire business street at 8 o'clock in the morning, on a Monday, with the use of only a silverdollar. I can name everyone who died in 1947.

I have performed roadside surgery with a sewing kit and delivered babies in New York traffic. I have taught old dogs to shake, and young dogs to take out the trash. I have picked the pockets of graverobbers.

I have played Russian Roulette with tigers and with timberwolves, and would you hazard a guess at who won? (Death is nothing to me.)

I am wanted in twelve countries for: courtly love, for: martyrdom, for: drunk-in-public. I make a mean Irish stew.

I once slighted a Mongol soothsayer and was cursed with spinelessness, but succeeded in winning her backbone over a hand of poker. I have a collection of pocketknives.

I've arm-wrestled winter and foot-raced the plague and fist-fought nations and notions and boogeymen. Once, I seduced a succubus. I can play most of the piano.

The Devil went down to Georgia but turned and left once he saw me.

I've dragged priests from burning buildings, I've run gin-joints underground, I've thrown stowaways overboard. I've broken hotel furniture. I've stolen ballpoint pens from the bank and run out on the check. I've scaled a crooked Babel redwood in the Ragnarok cannonheart of an April thunderstorm in order to retrieve a child's kite. I've smoked cigarettes in Guam.

I have made blind men see, and then prescribed them glasses. I am a decorated colonel with a tacklebox of medals. I can track men like a bloodhound. I've killed two birds, from a hundred miles, without any stones at all. I am a deft hand at origami.

I've seen snow leopards in Nepal, and I've operated dowsing rods, and swum the Nile though crippled, and sung sonnets though gagged, and eaten fire. I have married kings and buried kings and reaped the fruits of their decay.

Death is nothing to me. Death is nothing to me. Death is nothing.

(I tell It so, each and every day)

((I don't know either, but GODDAMN this was fun.))

Der Erlkönig

They ask him after lunch and before grammar What do you want to be when you grow up? and Felix isn't sure what they mean. He sees it's a question, and he sees that they are waiting for an answer, but all the things in the middle are limp and useless. Are blank, and oily, and there are no numbers to sink his fingers in.

Well, what do you want for when you're older?

Felix thinks about that.

He would like to ride his bicycle, someday. A sister of his father's had heard about him turning eight that April, and sent him one. Felix had been in love. On sight, instantly: spine-winding world-stealing love. He remembers that it might have been blue. It is hard for him to say for certain, since father had gotten angry, and sent it away, calling it bribery. The next day Felix had asked one of the servants to pull the dictionary from the shelf for him and looked up the definition:

"Corruption," it told him, "esp. of an official of some standing, in the form of money or other valuables."

Well? What do you want to be?

"An official," says Felix, biting his lip.

Okay. What kind?

The dictionary hadn't said.

"I don't know." He bites his lip a little harder.

Well, just be simple with it. What do you want to do? What do you want?

Felix thinks about that.

He wants to be a surgeon like his father. Maybe. He wants to make medicine. A good kind. He wants to heal his mother so she isn't lying in her miles of silky red bed when he leaves for school and still marooned there when he gets back, so she doesn't leave pharaohs' tombs of big glass bottles and circuses of little orange bottles lying on the kitchen counter, so that Felix doesn't knock them over with a noise like an angry zoo when he is making a snack. So that father would stop giving her the little orange bottles. So that he would have no reason to give her them.

So that she could play her music a little more quietly at night, her opera, when Felix should be sleeping, so that she can sit up straight when she tells him things like "The Germans, precious thing-- leave the cooking to the French, and the fighting, the fighting is for the British-- but to the Germans leave the music. N'est-ce pas?" So that she could say other things to him instead.

Felix thinks all these things, but he hasn't said anything, cannot think of anything. They are still waiting for his answer. He wishes he were in math class.

"I would like to fix things." He lowers his chin to look at his books.

That's good. It's good to fix things. You want to be a designer, to fix people's things? Or a vet? To fix their pets?

He lowers his chin and says, quieter, "I would like to fix things."



"Ich liebe dich, mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt;
Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch ich Gewalt." —


((I worked out the other day to a recording of Marian Anderson's contralto "Der Erlkönig," from like 1936 or something. Lifting weights to opera, particularly when it's sandwiched between Bjork and Man Man and Those Poor Bastards = STRAAAAANGE EXPERIENCE, FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS.

One day, I will decipher my fascination with mangled childhoods!))

dopechoked & rumstruck

It's a trap door, I know that now. It took me awhile. Sort of rickety and arthritic but the hinges never squeal when it opens, at least not that I've heard, sneaky bastard. Usually it leads to the attic or the boiler room or just the film noir junkyard backyard but sometimes, ah well, sometimes it goes down to the cellar, and that's when all these things get away from me. They get strange. Things get strange, down there. Or on their way up maybe. I don't know.

There are crows and ravens here, big sprawling licorice emperors, big fleecy wreckingballs, all propped on top of the trees and crawking politics. In between the big issues they make off with the neighborhood cats probably. Probably, anyway. But have I seen any cats around? Come to think of it? Any? I haven't. (see, all of this is pulled out of the attic-- I don't know if you can tell but there's a slow-witted airiness to it-- It's all twisted up and wrung around, but it's kind of soft, at least a little, like a ball of yarn maybe. it's from the attic) I don't think I've seen any cats at all.

It's not even the fact that they're birds that does my nerves wrong, even though that doesn't help either. I don't know. They are not terribly ugly things. Carrion is no sore sight to me, not really, and they wait their turn. I blame mostly my mother's childhood cabin in Hoonah on the Pacific in the unwashed craw of several miles of mudflats. I don't know why we visited. It was too tight for a family of five plus two plus Jesus, plus the rest of the town's Jesus, and there were things that were caked into the wrinkles of the walls that I was too young to give a name or shape to but noticed. Everyone did. We all left, an hour later, for hamburgers at Mary's Diner. We felt confused and crookedly new like we had been thoroughly wiped and scrubbed. I tripped on the way back, in the mud: my cousin had loaned me a pair of brittle but warm rubber boots that had once been red, and even if they were a little too big I liked them, and even while walking through the hungry mud like I had a poor puppeteer I liked them. I didn't like the ravens and crows, though. They are too keen for me. They are flying razorwire. I was too young to put words or sense into what they were, or what it meant, but I knew that looking up and seeing their trainsmoke wheeling and curling over our heads shrank up my insides, and on the way to Mary's Diner when I tripped in the mud in my cousin's rubber boots I somehow knew this is their chance and I covered up my head in the mud and (the boiler room, this is the boiler room, mostly scraping out ashes and letting off steam, this is where most of it comes from) and just waited. Then my uncle pulled me up, and we kept going.

The Tlingit tribe native to Hoonah (the Káawu Kwáan, or the more catchy People from the Direction of the North Wind, or more simple them red folks) see the ravens and the crows as their ancestors or at least the spirits of them. They will drop their still-orange cigarettes and halibut gear and gather together to gather tinder for a witchfire for any one damned tourist who jeers and throws rocks at the birds. They play for keeps on this. The Pacific water is not at all hospitable, and they have few qualms about throwing you in. (the backyard is always a toss-up, a potluck, always a little crueler or maybe just brisker than I like to be, just a little chillier, just more corners and angles, like a domino. I think sometimes the neighbors' things get mixed in with mine) They play for keeps on this.

(the cellar I can't show much of, it comes and goes as it fancies, the trapdoor slinks around and loops back like Bertilak's fox, like a sailor's knot, like a hangman's necklace, and if I can't even get a ball of yarn untumbled then how could you expect me to do it with all that) though at least it's not razorwire (but if the leper smell didn't wring your stomach too bad, and the carousel musicbox eulogy didn't put you to sleep, you could sift through each and every shred of hearsay and shock of heresy, every hit of heroin, layered like a massacre casserole underneath the buttermilk crepe-paper afterbirth of the jackal's wedding, the honeymoon's in Florence but the bride is back in Fresno, and the flowergirl, well, she had somewhere else to be)

I guess it might pay to get out a little more.

((man these things wander like nothing else, also when did I did develop such a phobia of ending sentences))

Since Dogs Been Dogs

Mason was a patient man, or patient enough.

He raised three very fine and very courteous children - alone - and shipped three young adults off to University. He buried his father and his mother. At their funerals he shook hands and took clean bundles of white flowers, and said thank you. His face was smooth when he signed away sixty childhood acres to make room for Ample Valley Condominiums. When the ground was still soiled with April, he moved his dozen cows and his handful of things to a foreign house that was much closer to the highway. All of his pictures in their braidedbronze frames were arranged on a smaller, cleaner, colder fireplace, one that smelled nothing like woodsmoke.

And if his hands shook just slightly on any one of these occasions, Mason was certain that it said nothing against his patience.

But Charles and Danny were getting his hands to shake awfully that morning and it had nothing to do with grief.

"You two wanna save your mouths for breathing?" Mason kept working while he talked. While he puffed. The shovel wanted only to nibble at the ground, only to scratch and shy away, but Mason bent firm and merciless with his knees and back and elbows because like it or not, the fence needed mending.

"I'd sure like to, Mr. Mason." It was Danny that said that. Danny was the grocer's little boy except that he wasn't all that little anymore. His face was all wrapped up in itself, in an ugly look, and when he turned he spat in the wickerbasket of the grass. His wrists were draped up on his shovel draped up on his shoulders, like a scarecrow, and he swung them, back and forth, and left and right. It made the muscles in his chest work. It made them show through his overwashed wifebeater. "If dear mister Charlie here would deign admit that he missed the boat on this whole Korean debacle." Danny was a good boy but he could get that way sometimes.

"'Debacle' he says. Talks awful nice, don't he Mason." Charles was hitching his pants up. Then rolling up his sleeves, casually, then hitching again. In order to free up his hands for this he shuffled his shovel back and forth the entire time. "Those classes over at Etheridge doing you good, then? Huh?" Charles had loaned Danny's daddy some money to help pay for the classes. "Sure sounds like they are." He was a good man but he could get this way sometimes.

"Just admit you're a goddamn racist, and we can get this fence done up."

"You watch your mouth, now. Taking the Lord's name in vain. You watch your mouth." They were only uncle and nephew but they had a sameness to them when they argued. "It's bound to get smacked, in the right company."

Mason couldn't place it, though. The sameness when they argued. It was a strange one. Maybe the same sort of sameness that garbage gets. If you dump it out on the ground then yes, certainly, you can see each different piece of it. The coffee grounds are not the eggshells are not the Virginia Slim filters are not the Hamburger Helper box, but once they you have put them in the garbage you can't help looking at it all the same way.

Mason thought it was sort of like that. "Let's just get this fence done up, fellas."

"That's fine, then. That's alright." Danny seemed to be waiting for something. He was shifting a little more now, was readying himself. "Just admit you can't stand a gook selling you gasoline, and we can get this fence done up."

"I got friends died over there."

There it was.

"It ain't like he's the one that killed em!"

"How do you know?" Charles shrugged and scratched his chin. "Could be his daddy was the one."

Mason took a moment to catch his breath, and wrestle it down. His chest was not cooperating with him. It felt tough and swollen, and stringy, like discount meat. While he rested and waited for air to come back to him he looked all around at the area that was still fresh and unfriendly in his head. Mason had taken it in before, of course, more than once, and should have known what to expect, but still found himself watchful and sad and marveling: yellow grass and road, and brown grass and road, a backwash of tacklebox litter and green grass. Some buildings.

Mason almost went back to work. Something pulled at him, though, and he kept on looking just a little bit longer until something a little ways out there moved, and Charles and Danny shut up and looked over when he asked "What's that, there?" Mason pointed a finger from around his shovel. "By the road."

It was a silly thing to say, but Mason only thought about that once it was out. For a minute he thought his eyes, too, had made a fool of him, that he had only seen a shred of old tire or the ribs of a milkcrate, but then it moved again, and Mason could see that it was something alive or at least mostly.

"Scrap metal." Charles was squinting, pulling his crowsfeet high and tight like reins. "Eighteen-wheeler went off the road awhile back."

"Weeks ago, actually. They still ain't finished cleaning it." Danny looked back at his uncle, taking up his scarecrow posture again, swinging back and forth. "That road's an awful big help for our little town."

"Brings in business from up north."

"Yeah, and it's gonna bring in businesses from the same damn place. You're gonna see less diners and more McDonald's." Danny had passed with a B in an economics class at Etheridge. "It's the same as anywhere else."

Mason did his best to ignore them. He was still looking at whatever it was. "It's something with a little life in it, I think."

"Probably just a coon," said Charles.

Mason disagreed. He picked through the gravel and hamburger wrappers and made his way over to the pile, still carrying his shovel.

"Mason? Mason, c'mon now-- we got work to do!"

A black and white border collie had taken up under the sheet of metal. It was splayed out on its belly, exhausted and small, or at least trying to make itself small, or maybe into a piece of the ground. When Mason had come up with a shovel the thing started taking about forty different angles in defending itself: growling, but also whining, and pulling its ears down, but also pulling back its lips. The whole time it boiled with anxiousness. One of its backlegs was tangled up and around like dirty laundry.

Mason almost reached down to it, but stopped when the dog looked ready to bolt. Instead he leaned on his shovel and they just looked at each other for a minute or so. "How we doin there, chum?"

The collie, tongue rolling and panting like a thirsty engine, tried one more time with the bowlingalley of its teeth.

"How's this, then?" Mason put his shovel off to the side, placing it flat. "I'm not here to dig you a grave. You see there?"

The collie was still watching him hard, but at least put away its teeth.

Charles and Danny had finally stepped over their tools and come over to join Mason, walking close enough to rub shoulders.

"Whoa, there," said Charles.

"Shit." Danny came forward, then choked himself off, then looked at Mason. "Jesus, you see that? Look at that."

"Leg's broke." Charles scratched his chin.

"Some bastard hits a stray and just drives off. Just drives off!"

The collie tried to bolt and fell and cried out hotly in the way that dogs do and Danny said "Oh, god, don't do that. Sorry."

"Ain't a stray, anyway." Charles had a way of saying things that sounded very sturdy. "He eats good enough, looks like. And he's been brushed down before."

Mason nodded.

"But that's a damned good break it's got."

Mason nodded again.

"It's that goddamn highway." Danny's lips were wrinkling like he wanted to spit. "That goddamn highway. They need to shut that shit down."

"Don't you cuss like that. And don't you blame the road, either." Charles scratched his chin. "Dogs been getting killed and crippled since before roads. They'll keep getting killed and crippled til they're done being dogs."

Danny said nothing but was still wrinkling his lips.

"Now, the thing to do here is call the animal shelter." Charles was squinting, pulling his crowsfeet high and tight like reins. "A break that bad, they'd probably just go ahead and put him down."

"Oh, yeah. That's the way to do. Who wants to pay a little money to keep a stinkin' stray around?"

"Oh? You wanna take him in yourself, huh? You got space? You got money for it?"

"Fuck you, Charley." They moved at each other like cavemen.

"I can keep him for a little while," Mason said, still looking down at the collie. The other two stopped and stared over at him.

"What's that you say, Mr. Mason?"

The collie licked its chops and watched Mason squat down, maybe ten feet away. Even from there he could smell the creekbed vinegar of infection, and that was sad. It made a mess of Mason's insides.

"I can take him. I don't mind."

Charles and Danny looked at each other and didn't say anything for a minute.

"Damned decent of you, Mason." Charles laid a hand on his shoulder and patted it strangely. "Damned decent. You need a little help from us, you just let me know." He straightened and rubbed his lower back with his fist. "Let's we all call it in, for the day."

And he and Danny went off. Mason could them talking the whole way back: voices tight and low, and tense, like an acrobat's wire. The collie didn't seem so bad off now. More curious than anything else, but Mason told himself to tell himseld that it was still a dog, and a hurt one at that, and hurt dogs have teeth even if you can't see them all the time.

He gritted himself and started to stand back up. And did, eventually.

Mason went straight to the house and came back with his truck, and moved around some of the cedar planks and red tarp back there that had rotted. What had he been planning to do with all that? He couldn't seem to remember.

After a little sweettalking, the collie was in the bed of the truck with taking Mason's arm off, and maybe even wagging its tail a little bit, maybe, and Mason drove 20 miles an hour all the way down Hillman Highway where the limit was 55, and was passed by seven or eight goofy-looking bastards who shook fists and flipped birds, and when Mason pulled into the gravel driveway by the house he realized that he had not felt so fired-up since that time when he was nineteen and had done 130 past a liquor store.




A few days later and the collie still did not have a name. Everything else, yes: a pillow and a foodbowl and a waterbowl and some newspaper in the corner, a chewtoy: some too-small candycane ballcap that a high school buddy had sent in the mail, and looked just awful on Mason, but no name. Mason had had an Irish setter named Fluke when he was younger, and that was a good name. Mason had buried him when he hit a ripe old fifteen, used his pocketknife to make a little crucifix and carved "FLUKE" in block letters.

Now it was a condominium, though. The thought hit Mason as he was bringing in groceries and it suddenly made them very heavy for him.

He dropped them on the table, louder then he meant, while from the corner the collie started thapapapaping its tail against the linoleum.

"Hey there, chumu." Mason smiled. "How we doin?"

He walked over and leaned in to look: the bone had set alright. Mason had wondered if dog bones would set the same as people bones, and it looked like it had this time at least. It was the closest the collie came to biting him, but it didn't. Mason felt oddly proud at that.

He leaned in a little closer and smelled the wound: the mossy gleam of infection, and old alcohol, and also blood. The color was not so terrible.

Mason took the collie's cnout and turned it to face him, jostling a little, just to tease. "You behavin yourself? Hm?" The collie tried to lick his hand. "Hm? Doin alright?"

The collie panted blankly. Mason got a noseful of the breath, and the smell-- Mason's face went strange. He let go of the collie's snout.

"Oh, well now." Mason patted the fur behind the collie's ear. "Well."

After a moment or so he straightened up, and cleared his throat.

"You ever get a steak, hm?" He rattled the groceries from their bags on the table: mostly cuts of meat and vitamins. "At that old house of yours?"

The collie's ears wrinkled back for a moment.

"Couldn't make em like I do, I bet. How's that sound for supper?"

The dog panted and watched him at the stove.

Mason pulled the steaks from the spongy packaging, threw the bloody gelatin and cellophane in the trashcan.

"Wanna let em set a bit." The collie was watching him with incredible interest from the pillow. "Let em warm up a little. You cook a cold steak, it goes all tough on you."

Mason took a roll of Charmin papertowels out of the cabinet and tore off a handful, and placed the roll back, and began patting the steaks dry. "Want em dry, too. You put em in a pan wet, it's just like steaming." He began setting up the skillet and the garlic and the butter. "Same reason we wait to put on any salt. Salt pulls all the water out of the meat, and then you're right back where you started."

The collie panted and watched.

Once everything was set up, the steaks were still a little too cool for Mason's liking. Another fifteen minutes or so. He turned to the sink, and twisted on the faucet, and almost began washing his hands, but instead he turned and walked back over and eased himself onto the floor next to the collie. It took a minute for his legs to cooperate. The collie's featherduster tail plopped against the floor with a boneless rhythm, and Mason let his hands be licked and nipped at.

"You got steak comin, you know." The collie grinned blankly at Mason's goodnatured growl. "Don't ruin your supper."

Mason sat there a little longer than fifteen minutes. The pan was almost too hot, by the time he got up, but still suitable. He oiled and garliced and salted and peppered the steaks, and the skillet seared them richly with a wonderful, crackling, golden smell and sound. He started counting up to ninety in his head, and looked over to see the collie watching him. He winked as best as he could. "Wonder what the poor folks are having tonight?"

The collie licked his chops, once, and Mason smiled.

"You got a little chill, like I do?" He reached ninety in his head and turned the steaks over with a weak pair of tongs. The meat sizzled like an orchestra. "You don't suppose that fireplace would do us any good?"

The thapapap of the collie's tail was picking up power as the wonderful smell bloomed in the kitchen. The collie's tongue was liquor red and lively. Its eyes were warm and spry and savvy as it watched Mason closely, blankly, not understanding a word.

Hot grease popped and bit Mason on the arm, and he winced. He looked away from the collie quickly, back to the darkening meat in the pan. The smell was wonderful. The smell had Mason's mouth watering near enough to drown him.

"Got a little chill, myself." He put the tongs back on the counter.



May was just warming itself up by the time Charles and Danny came back. It was too late to finish the fence, too hot in the daytime, but they told Mason over the phone that they were damned keen to get out there and try, and once they were in Mason's kitchen and finishing up the last of Mason's Heineken, the fence came back up into conversation. Danny suddenly remembered the collie.

"That little dog we found! I'd forgot. I saw the little pillow and all over there, and completely forgot til now. You take him to the vet, Mr. Mason?

Charles's face brightened. "Well I'll be. You take him in, Mason? They give you a bill?"

"We'll split that bill with you, Mr. Mason."

"You split it if you want. I got mouths to feed."

"Oh don't you start." Danny reached for another can and saw the case was empty. "Mouths to feed. What'd they tell you, Mason?"

Mason licked his lips. Then he took another sip.

"Mason?"

"The collie's dead."

Mason almost left it at that. He wanted to leave it at that. He didn't, though. Danny and Charles looked ripped and tore up, but then Mason said "I put him down."

"You put him down?"

"I took him out back and shot him."

"What the hell you go and do that for, huh?" Danny had stood up and looked ready to tear the kitchen. "You a goddamn loon?"

"What the hell you do that for, Mason?"

"The rot got in his blood." Mason took another sip, looking close at the grain of his table. "I could smell it. Another day or two, maybe, he'd start losing appetite. Start hurtin."

"You cheated him that day or two, then."

"He was comfortable." Mason looked over at them. "He wasn't hurting any."

"You fuckin' cheated him, you wrinkled little whack." Danny had his face wrinkled up like he wanted to spit. "The fuck you do that for?"

"You didn't got the right to make that sort of decision, Mason." Now Charles was standing too. "I think I better go call someone about this."

"The hell did he shoot it for! We got vets! What did he shoot it for, Charley?"

"That's good, then." Mason started to stand. And did, eventually, once his legs cooperated with him. He began collecting the bottles to throw them away. "That's good, to see you two agreein on something."

((I foresee huuuuuge revisions for this bad boy. Classic case of "Oh man, what a cool idea! I need to do that!" which turned to "OH GOD WHAT, THIS EXECUTION COULD BE SO MUCH BETTER"

Mmmm... execution...))

... And There Came a Great Hunger

They stopped for lunch around two o'clock, when it was too warm for the bugs. He unpacked: the baggies of egg salad sandwiches, the bottled lemonade, the box of cherry cordials. She set up: the napkins, the plates, the Easter-checkered afghan. They bumped hands and grabbed for the same things at the same time, her to move them to make room for something else and him to move them back to where they were, but after some careful maneuvering they were seated and looking at their food.

Gorgeous, huh? All this space? he told her. Feels like there's no one else for miles. He rubbed his hands together, crisply, and cleared his throat and reached for one of the sandwiches. Mmm. Looks great. You use your aunt's recipe again? With the honey mustard?

We're on a hill, aren't we? She was watching the sweat run on her bottle of lemonade.

What? He unwrapped the sandwich with a lot of noise, and crushed the plastic in his fist. I don't know. What? A little, maybe.

She carefully placed her bottle of lemonade on the blanket, holding it, trying to keep it flat. The silverdollar top of the liquid was tilted, leftways, and trembling.

Yes, she said. Her voice had a cast-iron bottom to it, and it was drinking in the heat. It was warming whatever was hiding away on top. Some citric accusation, some poisoned patience, sitting heavy and ready like a gargoyle. Do you see, right here? My lemonade is on a slant. It could spill.

We're on a hill, then. He bit into the egg salad sandwich like it had wronged him and hurried to keep talking before swallowing. Where's the harm in a little hill?

You said it was all flat, out here. Bone-flat-- that's what you said.

Where's the harm in a little hill?

She was quiet.

You're gonna like it out here, he said, looking into his egg salad sandwich. He was frowning. From the sunlight, he was sure. It's gonna be great for us. You'll see.

She was quiet. He started to take another bite, but didn't.

The room, she said. Upstairs. The spare bedroo--

My office, he said. I can make it my office.

No. She traced her finger, carefully, all along and around the top of the lemonade bottle, like she was cracking a safe. I think I'll sleep in there for a little while.

He stopped chewing and looked at her.

Just for a little while, she said. Once the movers are done.

He kept on looking at her for a few moments but then went on chewing. Slower, now. She was biting her lip.

You look nervous, he said.

It's the sun, she said. Very bright, she said.

But then something in her face shed the rest of itself, stripped nude and harsh, and she bit down harder, like pitbulls do, and looked at him. The movers, she said. When they came they asked about the Spiderman bedding--

Or, he said. Or. We could talk about something else.

That house is too big for us. There were wars being fought in the lines of her face.

Let's just enjoy the sunshine, he said. Loudly, too loudly, as if she were very far away, and he reached for another sandwich and unwrapped it with a one-handed tangle of static and throat-clearing, and with his other hand he grabbed for his lemonade bottle. She watched him with twenty-four karat hate.

It'll be nicer out here, he said. He was muffled and staring out at all of the nothing. Don't you wanna break into those cordials? I know they're your favorite.

She was quiet. He would have seen her crying, if he had looked.

Well if you don't, I will, he said. He shuffled his sandwich and lemonade aside, with a little maneuvering, and reached for the box.

Love me some cordials, he said, as if there were crowd of people waiting. He slit along the edge of the plastic with a fingernail and stripped it away and lifted the lid, smiling watery down at them. You gonna let me eat these all on my own? Come on and have one.

She was quiet.

Baby? He looked over at her and would have choked if he were chewing something.

All you had to do was buckle his fucking seatbelt. There was soaking hate on her face, a rotting wet menagerie. You dumb son of a bitch. You remembered your own, didn't you?

He stared at her big and sick, and tepid. The box of cordials slid sideways off his lap.

Oh. She dropped the sweating bottle of lemonade and caged her face in her hands. Oh, such a little thing. And for what?

At some point he had begun to cry, too, crying not like he had at the funeral but like he had in Cub Scouts: when he was seven, when he had gotten lost from the rest of his troupe in the woods and felt like the only thing in the world. He had cried awful then. The kind of crying that comes from cellar-deep in a person, from the minerals of them. He was crying that way as he reached out to touch her.

Please, baby. Please just have one. They're your favorite, aren't they? Aren't they baby? I got you a box on our first date. You remember that? I was an hour late picking you up because my car was so shitty? Because of the Chevy? Remember the Shitvrolet? But I made it up to you, didn't I? You gave me another chance didn't you? Didn't you baby? Here.

He took one of the cordials and crawled, an infant again, and brought it to her mouth. Here, baby. Have one. Please. Please. Just one. Just for me.

The lemonade had spilled all over the Easter-checkered afghan and even though he begged her, even though she wanted to, even though she had loved cherry cordials since she was a little girl and had snatched one at her second cousin's wedding recital, and even though she crowbarred open her jaw like a liontamer just long enough to take the candy on her tongue, she could neither chew nor taste it.

((Sort of like the lovechild between "The Hills Like White Elephants" and"A Small, Good Thing"! A lovechild that is THEN MURDERED.

Someday, I might write something happy!))

Her last name was Butcher

til August. She picked up and left off with some concert pianist. A clean-shaved, Roman-nosed, calcium-blond pianist. You know the type. He went on tour over in Europe I think it was, ticking the ivories in 50,000-seat arenas for some charity group, one helping out families of childhood cancer victims. The motherfucker.

Well oops, no - that came out all sideways. Quick, now, call the midwife! This baby got its foot in its mouth somehow!

Hm. Let me think a minute what I'm saying.

Hm.

Well see, we lived on almost the same street when we were younger. Me and the Butcher girl. Well, when that's what she was, I mean. You know. We lived on almost the same street and sometimes I'd ride my sixspeed by her yard and throw pinecones at her chunky vanilla lab Marble, and she'd come running out and chase me off and I'd laugh. I asked her out to prom but she said her grandma was sick and so she was running around taking care of her and all. I said alright, but don't think I'm just asking you out for form, if I can't go with you I can't go period. Trying to put my heart on my sleeve for her, you understand.

But then right before the prom she got better, the grandma that is, and my best friend at the time Jared went on and went to prom with the Butcher girl even though he knew I had it out for her and all. He rented a two hundred dollar white tuxedo and took her out to a steak dinner and as I understand it, was a complete gentleman. I wonder how he's doing sometimes.

Not too long after, she broke it off with him. Real gentle. Then she got on a bus for something with museums that she liked to do, or art galleries I think it was, and what do you know, meets a concert pianist. Motherfucker!

I know I seem a little sore about it. I am sore. I'm sore, and not sorry about it at all. If you knew him you'd know what I mean. A pianist, for the love of Christ! Think about it!

Just think about it. You know how I mean. Let me try and think what to say with it. Hm.

You ever go to one of those school carnivals? The kind run by all the kids to teach teamwork and organization. And that sort of thing? They still have them sometimes. You've been to one.

And there's all these shitty little macaroni art prizes that they made themselves, with about ten pounds of glitter, and all of it flakes off on the drive home and infests your upholstery for weeks. And the funnel cakes are mostly just marked-up Little Debbies with the packaging stashed in the trash, and there's a dunking booth that they nigger-rigged off in the corner doesn't work quite right so the class clown's got to jump off on his own if someone hits the target just right? You've been to one. You know the impressed look you have to wear the whole time you walk around, just to spare the kid's feelings, you know?

This pianist never took off that look. He had it all the time. Talking to parents, talking to preschoolers. Talking to me. Oh, that motherfucker! Talking like he just walked out of Oxford! Chin stuck out, like he's aiming at you! And that piano! That goddamn piano playing! Motherfucker!

Hm. Hm.

And then running her off, like that. That girl. That... oh... what was her name... oh, gosh! You know who I mean.

((Taking complete and shameless liberties with the format of NaNoWriMo, and instead doing a collective 50,000-word abomination of shorts that may or may not be polished and submitted for publication come January?

DON'T YOU KNOW IT.))