“Just the two of us?”
“You said he wears a collar and you got a leash and he’ll come to you when we finally find him?”
“Maybe,” Kevin confessed.
“I’ll need to think about some trappin’ gear, too. I
know you want to keep this quiet, Doc, and for now I’ll go along with this worry about spies and all, but we’re goin’ to have to do it right. This is a real challenge. This animal knows we’re comin’. Maybe you’ll tell me a little more as we go along, huh?”
“Maybe,” Kevin said. He smiled. Despite his initial feelings, he felt he could come to like this man. There was a refreshing forthrightness about him. Perhaps the simplicity of the natural world gave him more insight, even about people. He felt he could trust him and he knew that before it was all over, he would probably end up telling him everything, as wild and incredible as the story might sound. “We’ll do what you say,” Kevin said. “Take us back.”
Ken Strasser paused at the kitchen sink and looked out the window at the barn. Maybe his old eyes were playing tricks on him, but he thought he saw something slip in through the partially opened door. He expected there would be all sorts of small wildlife in there by now: snakes, field mice, rabbits, and skunks. Maybe a raccoon and a possum would go in and out, but he didn’t expect to see anything that big make its way inside. This looked big—as big as a large dog. A damn stray, he thought. A damn stray.
He debated whether or not to let the animal stay the night and then thought, if I give him an inch, the animal won’t go. He’d seen it too many times before. When Ethel was alive, it was different. She took pity on anything. Every time he reached for the rifle to shoot a pesky skunk or drive off a coon, she pleaded for mercy. He always gave in, and even if he did shoot, he made sure to shoot too high or too low. It was because of Ethel that he hadn’t gone deer hunting since he was eighteen. He stopped when they started courting, and after they were married, there was no chance. Of course, he could have resumed it after she
died, but somehow that wouldn’t have seemed right. He couldn’t do anything she wouldn’t have wanted him to do.
He even kept the house cleaner than she had kept it. The moment he finished a meal, he was up and about clearing off the table, scraping off the dishes, wiping and washing everywhere. God forbid there was a crumb on the floor. Charley would come and laugh at him, but he knew that his son was quietly pleased.
“Mom always said you could eat off her floor.”
“You could. What can I do . . . she left me with bad habits.”
“Bad habits.” They both laughed about it. His son was fifty-one years old, and in some ways he looked older than his father. Didn’t have the same good life, Ken thought. You can’t compare the women. I was blessed with Ethel, he was cursed with Paula. Why his son had married such a woman, he’d never know. A home-cooked meal was always an ordeal, and to think, they lived in a six-room apartment and she needed a maid twice a week. No wonder Charley came here twice a week to eat and spend time.
Well, in a way Ken was happy about that. At least he had his son’s company regularly. How many people his age could say the same thing? Oh, they had their share of arguments, most of them about whether or not he should keep the farm. It was a big house for one man, but it didn’t seem right to even think about selling it. It was the only home he had ever known; it had been in the family back to his great-great grandfather. He hoped Charley would take it when he was gone; he had even hoped Charley and Paula and the girls would move in with him, but Paula hadn’t gone for that. She wouldn’t go for it after he died, either; she thought the place was too old and unattractive. The condo was more like it. Condo, he thought. Sounded like some kind of Latin music, not a home;
and how could you say that you owned an apartment? It didn’t make sense. Right through the wall was another family who supposedly owned their apartment. There wasn’t any land to speak of, and privacy was nonexistent as far as he was concerned. Bees in a hive, he thought. Bees in a hive.
Charley tried to make it sound like something. “We got a pool and a tennis court and a health club, all on the grounds.”
“Hell, you coulda had your own right here. We got nearly eighty acres. A pool woulda fit in right nice over near the stone wall, and with the slate ground behind the house . . . you could probably lay out a helluva tennis court.”
“Paula thinks this is the boondocks, Pop. She likes people around her.”
“Citified.”
“It’s the way most people are nowadays. They feel more secure.”
“Never felt insecure out here. You don’t have people running about muggin’ one another. A rapist would freeze to death waitin’ for a woman.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right about that.”
“Look, I ain’t one to interfere. Your mother wasn’t that way and I sure as hell ain’t. Do what makes you happy. Seems a shame though, all this bein’ unused.”
“It’s too much for you, Pop.”
“Well... I ain’t doin’ anything with the land . . . just the small garden is all. I think about gettin’ a cow or two, just for the helluva it.”
“Pop!”
“But I don’t give it a second thought,” he said. Charley smiled and nodded. “I’m eigthy-one years old, boy.”
“I know, Pop.”
“Ten years without your mother.”
“I know.”
“Been the saddest ten years of my life. Worse trick she ever played on me—dyin’ before me.”
“Just like her to upstage you, Pop.”
The old man nodded. Deep in the back of his mind, rooted forever in his thoughts, was the permanent image of Ethel Marie Houseman, the anchor of his existence, her light brown hair brushed down softly over her bare shoulders, her eighteen-year-old body turned toward him, her arms out. It was right here in this house, with the moonlight tearing through the curtains and the peepers serenading them into the wee hours.
How many times during the past ten years while he moved through this house did he stop to think about her? How many times did he stop to talk to her? He wasn’t alone as long as he was here. Give up this house and living in it? He might as well give it all up.
His attention came back to the barn. Night was falling quickly. Whatever it was, it had come to settle in for the evening. He was sure of it. If he was going to do anything, he would have to do it quickly. Best to drive it off, he thought; best to send it packin’. Sorry, Ethel, but I don’t need no wild thing on the grounds. Got enough to worry about with the garden and all.
He went for his rifle.
He paused in the hallway by the telephone table before leaving and turned Ethel’s picture to the wall. You don’t have to see me doin’ this, he thought. He laughed at himself. Funny, the things an old man livin’ alone all these years would do. But he couldn’t help it. So much in the house and on the land had spiritual qualities for him. Charley had wanted him to give away all her clothes, but he couldn’t do it. What was the rush, he thought, even though he knew very well she would have wanted it that way; she would have
wanted her clothes to go toward helping some poor soul. Forgive me for that one too, Ethel, he thought, and he went out the back door.
The sun had fallen faster than he had expected. It surprised him; he hadn’t thought it was this dim out when he’d peered through the window. Must be my eyesight, he thought. Or maybe the world always looks brighter to me from the inside of the house. The idea made him laugh. He paused on the back porch, checked to be sure the rifle was loaded, and started down the short wooden steps.
If it was a dog, he didn’t think he would have to shoot it. What he expected and hoped to do was scare the animal off so that it would never come back. It would run off and follow the road into town where maybe the police would pick it up or someone would take it in, some store owner who’d feed it scraps and keep it in the back of a store.
If it was a dog, he could call the dogcatcher, but as usual the stray wouldn’t be around when he arrived and then he would take his time returning. Naw, there was no better way than handling your own problems yourself. That was the difference between men like him and men like . . . men like his son Charley. It made him sad to think it. He walked on toward the barn.
Somewhere from one of the shadowy corridors of his mind, he could hear Ethel saying, “You be careful, Ken Strasser. You’re no young bull anymore. Don’t go around acting like you are. You’re foolin’ nobody, least of all me.”
“Right, right,” he muttered. He shook his head. Didn’t the shadow cast by the silhouette of the barn look long and dark, though. He almost wished he’d brought his flashlight along. Goin’ to need it inside there, he realized. Probably will have to go back to
fetch it anyway. Oh well, he thought, might just shake him out of there without much trouble.
He crossed into the shadow and moved like a shadow himself.
He heard the man coming even before the man emerged from the house. He was keen about any sounds in the rear of the building. Whenever he was in the barn, he was well aware of where the old man was at all times. Either he saw him move about the grounds, or he saw his shadow in the windows, or he heard him in the house. He wasn’t afraid of him as such; he was simply alert and conscious of everything around him, more so than he had ever been. His senses were extraordinarly sharp, his perception far beyond anything he had ever known.
He had created a place for himself near the partially opened barn door. When he first discovered the hideaway, he brought large mouthfuls of hay to this location and created a warm and comfortable bed for himself. From this position, he could look out at the house and the yard and he could see and hear any potentially threatening movement.
As soon as the old man emerged from the house, he got to his feet. He knew that what the old man was carrying could inflict great pain and even death. He wasn’t sure how he knew this. The realization came to him from a pocket of awareness fed by information gathered during some earlier time of his life. The intellectual process was quick and his resultant anger immediate. A low, threatening growl began in the base of his throat; he held it there in check, recognizing the need for silence.
He backed a few steps away when the man drew closer. In these few moments he was carved of stone. He remained outside the small ray of light that entered
the barn, so that even his eyes were unseen. The old man paused a few feet from the door. He swung the rifle from the side of him so that the barrel faced the door.
“Hey,”
the old man yelled,
“Get the hell outta there!”
He didn’t move. He heard the old man curse and then saw him come forward. He backed farther away, rubbing his body against the door, keeping himself close to it. When the old man slid it further open, he moved along with it as though he were attached to it. That made him invisible. He hoped that was all he would have to do. Attacking the old man wasn’t part of his plan . . . not yet. But the old man entered the barn, rifle up and ready.
“Where are ya?” he shouted. “I know you’re in here somewhere,” he muttered to himself. He started to turn.
Before this, anything he attacked had been forewarned. His growl served as an announcement. The prey or the antagonist had an opportunity to bring up its guard and feign off his first thrust, or at least to block it. But this time he came out of the darkness, a fist of darkness, himself. He was an extension of the black, the air turned into a solid mass of muscle and bone.
He struck the old man in the chest and drove him back out of the barn, where he fell backward, the rifle flying over his head and bouncing somewhere in the yard. Still, he didn’t growl. Once again, he lunged in silence.
Ken Strasser was confused by the blow. He wasn’t sure what had come at him. The force of it was overwhelming, but the silence was shocking. It couldn’t have been a dog, could it? Yet, when he looked up from the ground, that was just what it was . . . a large German shepherd, leaping in the air.
It never touched Ken with its mouth. He didn’t even have to push its head away. This was like some kind of nightmare gone wild. He almost thought he had been attacked by a man dressed as a dog. The animal, or whatever it was, landed over his torso and dropped the center of its weight right over his face.
He pushed up with all his might, but Ethel was right—he was not a young bull anymore. The strength in these arms could serve to dig holes for tomato plants and maybe run the Rototiller over the ground, but even that was getting hard to do; he had to stop so often to rest. Pressing into this animal was like pressing against a solid wall. He couldn’t budge it an inch.
He stopped his effort because the animal wasn’t doing anything else to harm him. He expected it would get off him at any moment and run away, but it didn’t. It rolled its body slightly, just so it could lean more of its weight against his face. Its coat was soft, but the scent of it was definitely dog, and not domesticated dog but dog that had been out in the wilds, dog that had been rained upon, dog that had dried in the sun, that had traveled through the forest, that had slept on the hay in his barn. All these odors were familiar to him. They greeted him like a montage of the natural world he had known and loved so long, only now they presented him with a most extraordinary kind of life-threatening problem. Why was this dog so contented with simply staying this way?
He pushed against it again and he turned his body from side to side to throw if off, but he might as well have tried to move a car. It was as though a decent-sized man had decided to sit on his face. The indignity of it all occurred to him, but that indignation was short because he quickly realized that his breathing was being cut off. As difficult as it was for him to accept, he was being smothered to death by a large German shepherd; what was most frightening about it for him
was the realization that the animal seemed to know exactly what it was doing.
He gasped, closed his eyes, and gave a final push. The results were the same ... failure. His lungs began to ache; his mind reeled. The last thing he thought of was Ethel’s picture on the telephone table in the hallway. Thank God he had turned it to the wall.