Not this one. Huge with its yellow fur all hackled up along its spine, and it already had its teeth bared at me from fifty yards away. I made eye contact with it and nearly lost it myself. I could practically feel the testosterone rising. My vision hazed in and out.
eyes down eyes down don’t look right at him
I crossed over, thinking it would be fine. A golden retriever isn’t the same as a pit bull, and I’d dealt with plenty of those. Thing is, most people who own pit bulls keep them chained up or locked in a pen. They know a pit bull would just as soon eat a baby as their kibble.
I’m sure the owners of this retriever had some kind of precaution in place. One of those underground electric fences, because I could see it didn’t have a leash. The house itself was huge. A big yellow monstrosity you’d have to be rolling in money to afford.
Not like the little peeling ranch house I called home
These people had probably bought the dog to match the house. I crossed in front of it feeling cornered, even though there was room to run. Fences all around every yard. My eyes were scanning for ways out already. Walls everywhere. I felt trapped.
I was directly in front of the house when the dog made this strangled growling sound and launched itself at me.
A yellow blur, flying at me. I ran like hell down the street. Whatever electric piece of crap was supposed to keep that dog in was a distant memory.
“Tessa! Come back!” shouted a little girl’s voice.
I ran and ran, the soles of my worn down sneakers slapping the pavement.
run keep running don’t stop
blackness
don’t stop keep running
The blackness pulsed in and out. I couldn’t tell if it was because of my exhaustion or if I was going to have one of my blackouts. I made it to the end of the street and ducked into a blessed patch of trees before it happened.
When I came to, it was twilight and the forest sang to me. I felt my face slick with blood and gritty with short, yellow hairs. Nausea flooded my senses but I managed not to succumb. I wiped myself as best I could with the sleeve of my flannel shirt, staggered off to the cool scentless aura of running water. It was a long cold night waiting for my clothes to dry and fearing the call of the trees. I wasn’t hungry anymore.
* * *
Now this.
Some mutt trotting along behind me like I’m the pied piper of dogs, thrilled to have found some company on the road. I refuse to look at it or otherwise acknowledge its presence. Doesn’t it smell me? Is it so desperate?
I throw the tomato rinds and corn cobs on the ground, and listen as the dog happily gulps them up in her teeth.
I can smell that she’s female.
I walk on.
-6-
The patter of rain starts up in those dim hours before nightfall. It’s so dark on this country road. No streetlights. Only a few dots in the distance, lamps burning in farmhouse windows.
I pull the hood of my sweatshirt up over my head and start looking out for a place to stay.
Farmlands are much easier than towns to find shelter. Town residents want to keep out the riffraff. They don’t want kids sleeping in doorways, and they don’t like abandoned eyesores so they tear them down. I’ve slept in sheds, crouched between bicycles and lawnmowers, in open garages, in tree houses.
Here in open country there are buildings everywhere that people don’t sleep in. Up ahead, off in a grassy field, a three-sided shelter provides shade from the sun and a place to put the feed bins so they don’t get wet.
The dog still follows behind me as I step through a white washed rail fence and head up to the shelter.
The grass is wet and soon my pants are soaked up to the knees. I don’t see any cattle in this field, though I can smell their stink like I’ve been smelling all day. It’s gotten so dark I can’t tell if I’m stepping in mud or cow shit.
Rain patters faster against my head. It’s soaked through now, wetting my hair, dripping down my face. The shelter didn’t look so far from the road, but I wasn’t thinking about the hill. Or how tired I am. How hungry.
Finally I reach the top and collapse under the wooden roof of the shelter. It’s poorly built, and rain leaks down between the boards. I suppose the cows couldn’t complain, right? Still, it’s better than being rained on directly. I can avoid the leaky spots. Plus there’s a big tub of water. There are chunks of grass, hay, and a frothy substance that’s probably cud or something floating on top, but I still dunk my face in and drink.
The dog imitates me, lapping it up. I almost smile when I realize that both our chins are dripping with water. Almost.
I sit into the corner, curling my knees to my chest, and pull from my pocket the last tomato. If only I could have some warm food, maybe this shivering would stop. At least the tomato is sort of warm from being in my pocket.
The dog sits and watches me eat. I don’t know what normal dogs act like, but this one can’t be normal. She’s just watching, not even licking her chops like she’s waiting for the table scraps. She’s an interesting-looking mutt to be sure, her fur all marbled and toffee colored under the mud. She’s got pointy ears like one of those Alaskan sled dogs but her fur isn’t as bushy.
I stare back at her as rudely as I can, but she doesn’t get the hint. “Oh, hell,” I say. My throat is raspy from not talking for so long. “Isn’t staring at dogs supposed to be some way of intimidating them? Ain’t it supposed to show how I’m the boss, the alpha whatever?” I ask her, but she doesn’t answer. Just stares at me.
“Dumb dog,” I say, trying to beat back that surge running through me, saying,
Show that bitch who’s the alpha now
“Just a dumb dog. Don’t need to get all upset over some stupid dog.”
I give the dog one last rude stare before I turn my face toward the rough wall and close my eyes. It’s a long while before I can relax my fingers out of their fist shapes.
-7-
“Get offa me!” I yell.
I shove the mutt away from where she’d curled up against my side, her head under my sleeping hand. She moves away but not far enough.
“What are you, stupid? Get away from me!”
My foot kicks and connects with her belly, and she makes this awful whine and trots away. Out of reach of my foot, a few feet. Still sitting there watching me.
“You’d keep away from me if you knew what was good for you,” I threaten.
She did survive the night near me. I can’t tell when I’m sleeping or blacking out anymore, but it’s been a good long while since I slept near any living thing that was still alive when I woke up. I stand there in the dewy grass and low morning fog looking at her.
My stomach rumbles.
The cattle are lowing, lumbering out into the fields. Must be middle of the morning, then, if the farmers are all done with the milking. Time for me to get a move on before they catch me on their property.
I head off down the hill, slipping a bit in the wet grass. Behind me I hear the rustling sounds of the dog following me. She races ahead to the road and waits for me, her ears perked forward.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.”
* * *
Though it looked like there was farmland stretched as far as I could see, I end up in the middle of town by noontime.
I’m pretty thrilled. All day long there have been tractors rumbling by on the dirt roads, people out in the fields working. No chances to grab something to eat. No trucks to hitch a ride on. No shade from the sun beating down through the haze. My legs feel worn down to the last thread of muscle. When they finally hit paved roads a couple miles back, it only got worse.
The town center is a general store, a post office, and a gas station, combined into one, across from a clapboard building which the sign in front proclaims as “Town Hall.” No indication of what town.
The dog seems skittish with the vehicles rolling by on Main Street, staying so close to my heels that I keep on kicking her. Sometimes
I kick her on purpose. “Get outta my way,” I mutter.
Warped windows, some prize from the pioneer days, don’t help much showing me what I look like, so I head into the general store, damp and dusty, probably with blood in my hair or something. The dog tries to follow me in, but I close the door quick behind me. “No animals,” I say, pointing to the sign. “Can’t you read?”
Inside smells like heaven.
You’d think pre-packaged food wouldn’t have a smell, but it does when you’re hungry enough. I could smell chocolate and pork rinds and milk, bacon and Slim Jims. There were plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit out, but it was the meat I smelled most.
The cashier, a dowdy middle-aged woman reading a Harlequin novel behind the counter, glances up at me, and keeps glancing. She thinks I’m going to steal stuff.
I pull out the wad of bills I stole from the man with the white truck, after I covered his body with a blanket, and meet her eyes. She pointedly returns to her book, but as soon as I head down to where the food aisles are, I can feel her watching me again.
The man didn’t have much on him, twenty-three dollars to be exact. There’s a lot I can buy for that much. I load up on meats, bags of pepperoni and wrapped salami, some bread and cheese, plus a liter bottle of Coke and a bag of peaches. Then my gaze catches on a newspaper.
YOUNGSTOWN COUPLE KILLED IN FIRE
A photograph is obscured by the center fold of the paper, though I know what I will see when I unfold it. The house is burned to the ground, unrecognizable, with a white truck parked out in front. That man’s truck.
Someone came along behind me and cleaned up my mess.
With all the rain, there was no way this was a natural fire. I certainly had nothing to do with it. A little part of me is disappointed
(I wanted to get caught)
and I can’t help but wonder if this is the first time a fire has obliterated the evidence of the murders I committed. Being on the run, I don’t often stop to read the paper. Even when I do, I’m usually far, far away by the time the local papers might report a death.
I imagine someone following along behind me, seeing what I’ve done, and thinking they’re helping me by burning it all. It’s so sick it makes me shudder. I shove the newspaper back under its wire holder and head to the front of the store.
The lady at the cash register gives me a long look as I pile everything onto the counter. Looking at all the stuff I can’t afford, the magazines, candy, handy little gadgets, I try to ignore the way she looks at me between every item she scans through.
“That’ll be twenty-three seventy-six,” she said.
I look down at the bills in my hands. I don’t want to make a scene. “Shouldn’t it be twenty-two eighty?” I ask.
“There’s tax,” she tells me.
Right. I should have known that. I swallow and look everything over. What can I let go? My hand hesitates over the pepperoni.
“Is your mom outside? Maybe she’s got a couple more dollars?” the woman asks.
It sounds caring, like the lady’s trying to give me a break, but I can hear the nosiness under it. She wants to know if I’m here by myself, a young kid, a truant. She wants to know if she ought to call the cops as soon as I walk out the door.
I pick up the pepperoni and hand it to her. “I guess I won’t get this.” I won’t answer her questions. I won’t give her any trouble or a reason to call.
“Sure.” She punches the void into the cash register. “Twenty-one fifty.”
As I’m headed for the door with my bag of food smelling so good I’m salivating, almost unable to wait until I get outside to rip into it, she calls after me, “There are leash laws in this town, you know.”
Through the glass, the stray is sitting, watching and waiting for me to come out.
I sigh and push open the door.
-8-
I eat in a barren little park that is sun-bleached grass, a sandbox, and a rusty swing set enclosed by a chain link fence. The emptiness allows me to eat the salami straight from the wrapper, to rip hunks of bread off with my teeth, and to burp so loud it echoes after washing it all down with the Coke.
At some point I had a dim thought about sharing with the dog, but all she gets is one of the Slim Jims before I am completely consumed by the eating.
When everything is gone save the wrappers, which go back into the bag to throw away, I lie down on the now-dry ground and close my eyes to the scorching sun. My stomach pushes out against my t-shirt. It’s a good feeling.
I think about trying to hitch another ride south. I think about moving to somewhere less out in the open, where cops won’t see me and my leash-less dog. But it’s been so long since I’ve been full and sleepy and warm, and I can’t convince myself to get up.
Even when the dog pushes her nose under my arm and wriggles up close to me. She whuffs out a spicy meat-smelling breath and kisses my cheek with her tongue before closing her eyes. I can feel her heartbeat against my arm.
Our breathing syncs up and slows until I drift into sleep.
-9-
“Hey, kid.”
A foot nudging in my side, a shadow across my face. My other side cold – no furry pillow.
I crack my eyes open.
“Hmm?” I ask the silhouetted man looming over me. One of my arms flops up to shade my eyes, but I still can’t see his face.
Instead of an answer I get more of his boot in my ribs. “Ow.”
“Come on, get up, kid.”
I roll over and push myself up.
Dizziness.
I swallow thickly and I’m kneeling. Blinking to keep back those black spots dancing in my vision.
“You can’t sleep here,” the man states.
Now I can see he’s a cop, the blue uniform, the black boots, his arms crossed.
“’Kay.” I use the fence to help me get up - my legs are so tired - grab my bag of trash and my coat. Head out.
Pray that damn cop doesn’t say anything else to me.
He doesn’t.
-10-
I thought the dog was gone, but she was only hiding. Popping out from some bushes behind a house further down the road, she rejoins me like nothing happened.
“You think you’re so smart, huh? Hiding from the cops?”
Her tongue lolls out of her mouth as she smiles up at me.
“Nice of you to let me get the brunt of it,” I complain, but when she nudges my hand I absently scratch her ear.
A faded white sign with an upward pointing arrow indicates the way to the state highway. The sun is near to setting, though I’ll be awake for a while yet. Might as well get closer to the highway, then tomorrow I might be able to hitch a ride.
“You won’t be able to come if I can get a ride,” I say to the animal beside me. “You might as well cut out now.”
Her ears prick forward while I talk, like she understands, but she doesn’t understand, because she keeps on walking beside me.
* * *
It’s long past sunset before I find a good place to sleep: in some lilac bushes near a small cottage-y house. The yard is neat and clean, which means there’s no little kids to scatter their toys around, or indifferent teenagers half-mowing the lawn and parking their cars on the grass. There’s one small red car in the driveway with a handicapped license plate. From the road I can hear the television blaring, the light shining through the closed curtains.
The bushes are taller than I am, and I crawl inside
we’re giggling and pretending to be bears or wolves crawling into a cave
The smell is so overpowering it immediately gives me a headache. The space underneath isn’t quite as big as I remember. When the stray crawls in after me we’re on top of each other, but at least I feel warmer in this small hidden space
it’s our secret place
no one can see us
no one can smell us
I curl up with my fist under my chin, roots for a pillow, a furry blanket warming me.
/> “Let’s pretend I’m the bride and you’re the husband.”
“What do husbands and wives do?”
“Kiss each other.”
Accompanied by these bittersweet memories, I drift into sleep.
* * *
When I wake into the still darkness, something is different.
Beneath my hand I feel smooth hair instead of fur. Smell woods and heat and earth instead of wet dog. I crack open my eyelids and peer around.
The girl looks back at me with wide brown eyes, her golden brown hair falling into her face. She looks like my cousin Kayla, not like what Kayla looked like when I took off three years ago, but what Kayla might look like now, if the round softness of Kayla’s face became sharper, her eyes further apart, that untamable hair of hers grown long and flowing.
“Daniel,” she says. Her voice is low and musical.
“Kayla?”
“You have to come back, Daniel. We need you.”
“I can’t go back. I don’t want to get arrested.”
“It will all be okay. We need you. You can’t run forever.”
You have to come back.
With a start I wake up.
Sunlight is burning through the lilacs in a purple haze. Though I’m sweating, the stray is right there, where Kayla was lying just moments before.
My hand remembers her warm skin.
Did I just dream about my cousin being naked?
* * *
All day long the dream lingers in my thoughts. “There’s no way I can go back,” I tell the dog. “No reason, really.”
(although I would like to see my mother and Kayla again)
“The cops would be waiting for me. They would arrest me for sure.”
(isn’t that what I want?)
“What I want isn’t important.” I’m a monster. A killer. Things would be better if I just disappeared.
I have disappeared. No one knows who I am. I wander like a ghost.
(that’s not good enough)
I’m a danger to everyone. Maybe I want food and someplace warm, but it doesn’t matter. I need to be locked up.
“I’m going south,” I tell the dog. “I’ll find some deserted town in Texas and live like a hermit. I’ll grow a garden and trap my own food. Lots of people have done it, become self-sufficient. I won’t need to go near other people then.”