Fiction: Dog’s Run

This story appears in my out-of-print collection All By Our Lonesome. I still have a few copies on hand; email [email protected] to buy one.

Dog has smelled coyote before, at the edges of his lost homes—a stringy, cloying musk at the bottom of narrow paw prints, speckled with the blood of stolen chickens. He associates the scent with a crescendo of yipping howls and the subsequent crack of a shotgun. His humans always kept him well away from the skinny carcasses.

But these coyotes smell of decay setting in before the life has even left their bodies, a whiff of mange that Dog remembers from his time in a shelter. Huddled beneath the moon at dusk, standing still and silent, their scabrous ears prick forward at the sound of Dog’s approach. Before the droughts, Dog would have gone unmolested. But they are starving, desperate, and there are five of them. Bigger by half than the alpha male, he would be a difficult kill. Dog’s ribs have only just begun to show the hunger underneath his thick fur, now clotted with brambles and clay. He will be a good meal for the coyotes, sustaining them for days. They fan out from their den, surrounding him, one for each leg and one for his head. Dog stands firm and unmoving, tail tucked low and hackles raised, a low snarl forming in his throat. He has fought before, against strays and bobcats and drunken men. The coyotes circle, slow and cautious.

•••

Dog has had names, collections of syllables applied in tones ranging from harsh to lilting, chosen and drilled and reinforced with promises of affection and small treats. Dog learned how to please quickly and eagerly, coming to understand his attendant syllables in exchange for scratches behind the ears, kicks in the ribs, scraps from the table, a long day spent chained in the too-hot sun. Somethings and nothings.
But Dog was Dog first. A hard, tall man pulled him from his mother’s tit and he grew to ungainly adolescence in an outdoor kennel, trained with a quick, calloused hand to retrieve rubber balls, then pinecones that tore at his gums if he bit down. Dog slept beneath the moon—so small then, so often clouded-over—on a concrete pad, skin rubbed raw where his sharp bones met the ground, the mockingbirds’ calls and the coyotes’ answers for company. He shuddered at the sudden, reverberating sound of the shotgun, his legs willing him to run—under the house, into the woods, wherever—but the metal links of his enclosure compelled him to remain.

Dog received the occasional treat in exchange for fetched objects, so long as he left them unmarred. More often, though, the hard man treated Dog like a car or a gun, goading him toward mechanical perfection with the steel toe of his boot or a stiff club of rolled newspaper. Dog learned to carry lightly, jaw open just enough to hold his quarry—rather, the man’s quarry. Dog had nothing, kept nothing, and when he sought affection from the man he received only aggressive distance: a shove, a slap, a kick, a sharp bark of disapproval. Early on, he mistook these actions as invitations to play and would bound around the man, jumping and pawing, biting at boot leather. He learned better after he was thrust back into the kennel, left with a limp and without dinner.

Within weeks he had become adept enough at fetching, at dropping and waiting patiently, to be taken to a field scattered with the skeletons of cornstalks. He bounded out of the truck bed into the autumn air, sending birds flying in feathery scatters. The shotgun cracked again, and this time Dog ran fast and hard, no chain to keep him from the horizon.
He would not be followed, gun-shyness reason enough to abandon him to the woods. They were lush then, leaves just beginning to turn. Dog dug moles out of their holes, outran small rabbits with his long, loping strides, found his way into backyards and trashcans and steaming carrion on highway shoulders. His awkward puppy’s frame grew to fill his oversized feet, his jaw large and powerful, his muscles lean and rippling. He shed his grey fluff for coarse black and tan, which quickly became matted with mud and flea-dirt and blood. Eventually he found himself in the back of a van, windows gridded with steel mesh.

In the shelter they put him under and took his balls, shot vaccines into the loose skin around his neck, trimmed his claws, cut the mats from his coat, chased his fleas away with suds and water. They named him Mister and he learned it fast, motivated by food more than anything else. He learned to fight, too, after getting licked a few times. It wasn’t the big, loud dogs he needed to watch out for—they wanted only to dominate and be done with it—it was the silent ones, the mangy scrappers that went straight for the throat without so much as a growl of warning. But Dog was strong and wary and he stood his ground and he suffered a few puncture wounds but not much else. He found his place in the pecking order and made peace with all but the deranged—and they never stayed long.

Then there was the wiry young woman with light, close-cropped hair and a voice that sounded like digging through soft loam. She smelled clean and safe and as soon as she got him home she changed his name to Harris, the new syllables coming with treats and toys and belly rubs and baby talk. She held his face in her hands and repeated his name over and over and he licked any part of her that got within range of his long, pink tongue. He spent his days wallowing on an overstuffed couch and running in the field that surrounded the woman’s house.

A man would come around—first for short stretches, then longer ones, then he never left—and though he was not tall and did not smell of discharged shotgun shells, Dog avoided him for weeks, leaving rooms when he entered, eyeing the leather around his toes. The man earned Dog’s trust by sharing his food eagerly and often, dropping bits and pieces of his meals when he knew the woman wasn’t looking. Dog loved the salty scraps, and would soon share his couch with the new man, a slouched and narrow figure that emitted thick smoke and grumbled affably at the glowing television.

It was a good life, for the most part: long, lazy days punctuated with generous meals, bouts of chasing small rodents through the field, an occasional chorus of coyote laughter. Sometimes the clouds would roll in and erupt, soaking the red dirt in sheets. Dog didn’t mind the rain, didn’t mind being stuck indoors with his new humans, but the thunder would crack, loud and low, and Dog would bolt for the nearest hideaway he could find, cowering his bulky frame into the smallest spaces—underneath a bed, the back of a cluttered closet, the space between the couch and the wall. He would whimper until the storm passed, the woman asleep on the floor next to him, one safe-smelling hand outstretched.

Seasons passed and the space between storms lengthened; the grass in the field kept growing through a warm winter, but browned and died in the cloudless spring. Dog nearly forgot the terror of thunder and gunshots, until an evening he spent in the dry grass with the woman and the man, scouring the ground for scant signs of quarry while the humans sat on a blanket and ate off paper plates. When the sun had fully descended, the man stood and held a flame to a small bundle at the end of a long, thin stick, the woman making low sounds of dissent as the flame caught. The man let the bundle sizzle for a few seconds before tossing the stick into the air; at its apex the bundle spewed sparks and shot into the sky with a whistle, resolving with a loud pop. Dog hunkered down beside the woman, who threw her arms around his neck and directed scolding syllables toward the man. The man shrugged, waved away her protest, and set a cardboard tube on the ground, dropped a round something into it, and lit a long string. He retreated to the blanket and all three of them waited, watching. When the air exploded Dog let out a long whine and the woman held on too tightly for him to run. Sparks fell into the grass to smoke and smolder.

•••

For a while the man disappeared, his departure marked by little more than some extra legroom on the couch. He eventually returned, reeking of smoke—not the sticky redolence he used to exhale, but the acrid reek of things burnt and burning. Dog sniffed at his sooty hands and recoiled, the harsh smell overriding everything else. Things were different, then; the man no longer went to bed in the woman’s room, instead spending his nights on the couch, Dog relegated to the rug. During the day the woman would leave and the man would take Dog on long, aimless walks.

Before the harsh waves of the huge sound hit him, Dog smelled something coming, felt it in the raised hairs along his spine, heard the whistling of an object falling from miles away. And even before the impact, before the shockwave, before the smoke and the fire, he was ready to run. With the first boom, he ran down the road toward the woman’s house, the cool safety of the crawlspace beneath it. With the second, he changed course and sprinted for the trees. Nothing was safe anymore.

He travelled for a long time, chased by the overwhelming thunder and fire at his back, unable to smell his way home through the smoke—like the smell of the man’s hands, but tougher and lingering, stinging Dog’s nose into uselessness. He crossed dry riverbeds and licked dewdrops from the undersides of a few stubborn ferns. He ate whatever he could find—brown grasses, dried-up grubs, long-dead mammals picked over and sun-baked into long, tough fibers. The woods were beyond dry, crackling underfoot and devoid of prey. He licked his muzzle, remembering the rusty taste of blood there, sticky in the humid air. There were no moles, no rabbits. Even the birds and squirrels—always too fast, too elevated for him to catch—were silent, and the brown leaves in the trees ahead waved dully in the hot breeze. The sun set long and slow, its heat remaining in the air and dirt through the night. Dog scratched a trough in the earth, digging through the warm topsoil to the red clay underneath, cool enough against his belly. He tried to sleep with his eyes open, head resting on an upraised root.

Dog had never been the type to howl at the moon, but still felt its pull in his bones as it soared across the night sky. Recently the cycles had grown more frequent, the moon showing its face in broad daylight more often than not, growing larger with each pass. In its fullness it seemed too large to hide behind any tree’s branches, filling the sky, and the dog began to feel—for the first time—a lonesome cry rising from his chest, a question for the celestial object he did not understand. He sang a dirge for his vanished prey, for the moisture in the air, for the home he could not find his way back to. The moonlit landscape answered with deafening silence; even the cicadas had left, the absence of their once-incessant chatter felt as keenly as a shotgun blast.

•••

Dog does not wait for the coyotes to attack, instead runs headlong at the largest of them—young and rangy, with a grey coat and some bush still left in his tail—snarling as he bares his long teeth, searching for his opponent’s throat. The grey rears back, striking at Dog’s face with his clawed feet, and Dog responds in kind, reaching outward and catching the grey in a grappler’s embrace, big paws swinging and jaws wide open. The other coyotes move in fast, snapping at his legs and whining as they circle him, watching for chances to pull him over onto his side, exposing soft belly and days of food. But Dog stands steady, hind legs planted in the dusty soil as he attempts to force the grey into submission, throwing his forelegs up to the coyote’s ears and pulling down, locking his jaws around the narrow muzzle. The coyote yelps in pain as Dog’s teeth break skin, tearing at the papery, malnourished flesh. The grey cannot maintain its balance, and quickly falls to the ground with the weight and force of a bundle of sticks. It snaps upward and kicks out hard with its hind legs, digging its claws into Dog’s belly, but Dog bites, twists, and tears at the coyote’s throat, warm blood spouting from between his white teeth. The coyote thrashes feebly and dies, its life dribbling from it like a dried-up stream.

The remaining coyotes redouble their efforts, tearing at Dog’s ears and tail as he spins to meet their attacks, blood and slaver streaming from his black lips. But the warm blood of their fallen brother draws one away, then another. The coyotes surround the carcass and tear in. Dog stands just feet away, heart racing. He tastes the blood on his snout, feels the emptiness that comes with starvation. He inches toward the feast, smelling the stink of lacerated bowel. The alpha coyote turns to him, muzzle black and wet, and snarls. Dog raises his hackles once more, then bolts.

•••

Dog limps past the treeline into a field of long, dry grasses. His belly shudders blood, a sticky black shadow stretching back into the dark woods. The moon—so close, so gleaming—pulls at his body, lightening his frame just enough for his weary paws to take the weight. Ahead: a house. Not the home where he had been Harris; that was gone, lost in a haze of smoke. But a house all the same, small and white in the moonlight, a single window warm. Dog makes it to the edge of a cracked brick patio, ringed by a few persistent shrubs ridged with spines. He drags himself underneath a bush and collapses, breath coming shallow and fast.

In the early hours of the morning, between moonrises and before sunrise, a human will come striding through the dark—a teenage girl smelling of sweat and lilac, pale skin over sharp bones, eyes and hair dark as the dried blood she spots streaking toward her mother’s house. She will follow Dog’s shadow and find him near the brink of death, eyes rimed with rheum and a few expectant insects, long tongue lolling on the dry dirt. She will clean and bandage his wounds according to the instructions she finds in books; she will feed him thin gruel. He will live, and she will give him a new name, intoned in soft twangs beneath the encroaching moon.