Ashes (4 page)

She plunged the toaster lever. The eggs were
done and she arranged the food on the plates. Her timing was
perfect. The edges of the grits had just begun to congeal. She set
Robert’s plate before him. The steam of his coffee carried the
scent of bourbon.

“
Where’s the extra bacon?”
he asked.

“
On the counter.”

“
It’ll get cold.”

“
She’ll eat it.”

“
I reckon it won’t kill her
either way.” Robert sometimes poured leftover bacon or hamburger
grease on Sandy Ann’s dry food even though the vet said it was bad
for her. Robert’s justification was she ate rotted squirrels she
found in the woods, so what difference did a little fat
make?

“
We could do this at the
vet,” Alison said. “Maybe it would be easier for everybody,
especially Sandy Ann.” Though she was really thinking of Robert.
And herself.

“
That’s not honest. I know
you love her, too, but when you get down to it, she’s my dog. I had
her before I had you.”

Sandy Ann had growled at Alison for the first
few weeks, which she found so unsettling that she almost gave up on
Robert. But he convinced her Sandy Ann was just slow to trust and
would come around in time. Once, the dog nipped at her leg, tearing
a hole in a new pair of slacks. Robert bought her a replacement
pair and they spent more time in Alison’s apartment than at the
farm. Alison bought the groceries and let him cook, and they did
the dishes together.

The first time Alison spent the night at the
farm, Sandy Ann curled outside Robert’s door and whined. He had to
put the dog outside so they could make love. They were married four
months later and Robert was prepared to take the dog with them on
their honeymoon, an RV and backpacking trip through the Southwest.
Only a desperate plea from Alison, stopping just short of threat,
had persuaded Robert to leave Sandy Ann at a kennel.

“
You got the eggs right,”
Robert said, chewing with his mouth open.

“
Thank you.”

He powdered his grits with pepper until a
soft black carpet lay atop them. The dust was nearly thick enough
to make Alison sneeze. He worked his fork and moved the grits to
his mouth, washing the bite down with another sip of the laced
coffee.

“
Maybe you can wait until
tomorrow,” Alison said. She didn’t want to wait another day, and
had waited months too long already, but she said what any wife
would. She bit into her own bacon, which had grown cool and
brittle.

“
Tomorrow’s Sunday.” Robert
wasn’t religious but he was peculiar about Sundays. It was a
holdover from his upbringing as the son of a Missionary Baptist.
Though Robert was a house painter by trade, he’d kept up the
farming tradition. The government was buying out his tobacco
allocation and cabbage was more of a hobby than a commercial crop.
Robert raised a few goats and a beef steer, but they were more pets
than anything. She didn’t think Robert would slaughter them even if
they stood between him and starvation. He wasn’t a
killer.

“
Sunday might be a better
day for it,” she said.

“
No.” Robert nibbled a
half-moon into the toast. “It’s been put off long
enough.”

“
Maybe we should let her
in.”

“
Not while we’re eating. No
need to go changing habits now.”

“
She won’t know the
difference.”

“
No, but I will.”

Alison drew her robe tighter across her body.
The eggs had hardened a little, the yellow gone an obscene greenish
shade.

Sandy Ann had been having kidney and liver
problems and had lost fifteen pounds. The vet said they could
perform an operation, which would cost $3,000, and there would
still be no guarantee of recovery. Alison told Robert it would be
tough coming up with the money, especially since she’d given up her
own job, but she would be willing to make the necessary sacrifices.
Robert said they would be selfish to keep the dog alive if it was
suffering.

“
Want some more grits?” she
asked. Robert shook his head and finished the coffee. She looked at
the fork in his hand and saw that it was quivering.

Sandy Ann ran away when Alison moved in.
Robert stayed up until after midnight, going to the door and
calling its name every half-hour. He’d prowled the woods with a
flashlight while Alison dozed on the couch. Sandy Ann turned up
three days later in the next town, and Robert said if he hadn’t
burned his phone number into the leather collar, the dog might have
been lost forever.

Sandy Ann was mostly Lab, with a little husky
mix that gave its eyes a faint gray tint in certain light. The dog
had been spayed before Robert got it at the pound. Robert’s mother
had died that year, joining her husband in their Baptist heaven and
leaving the farm to their sole heir. Sandy Ann had survived
thirty-seven laying hens, two sows, a milk cow, one big mouser
tomcat that haunted the barn, and a Shetland pony.

Until today.

Alison’s appetite was terrible even for her.
Three slices of bacon remained on her plate. She pushed them onto a
soiled paper napkin for the dog.

“
Four’s enough,” Robert
said.

“
I thought you could give
her one piece now.”

“
It’s not like baiting a
fish. A dog will follow bacon into hell if you give it half a
chance.”

Robert finished his plate and took the dishes
to the sink. She thought he was going to enter the cabinet for
another shot of bourbon, but he simply rinsed the dishes and
stacked them on top of the dirty skillet. His hair seemed to have
become grayer at the temples and he hunched a little, like an old
man with calcium deficiency.

“
I’d like to come,” she
said.

“
We’ve been through
that.”

“
We’re supposed to be there
for each other. You remember April eighth?”

“
That was just a wedding.
This is my dog.”

Alison resented Sandy Ann’s having the run of
the house. The carpets were always muddy and no matter how often
she vacuumed, dog hair seemed to snow from the ceiling. The battle
had been long and subtle, but eventually Sandy Ann became an
outdoor dog on all but the coldest days. The dog still had a
favorite spot on the shotgun side of Robert’s pick-up, the vinyl
seat cover scratched and animal-smelling. Alison all but refused to
ride in the truck, and they took her Camry when they were out doing
“couple things.”

“
Do you want to talk about
it?” Alison asked. She had tried to draw him out. In the early
days, Robert had been forthcoming about everything, surprising her
with his honesty and depth of feeling. Despite the initial
attraction, she had thought him a little rough around the edges.
She’d been raised in a trailer park but had attended Wake Forest
University and so thought she had escaped her breeding. But Robert
reveled in his.

“
Nothing left to say. Maybe
later.”

“
We can go down to the
farmer’s market when you get back. Maybe we can get some sweet corn
for dinner. And I’ve been looking for a philodendron for the living
room.”

“
I won’t feel like
it.”

“
Robert, I know it’s hard.
Talk to me.”

“
I am talking.”

“
Really. Don’t shut me
out.”

“
Never have.”

She slammed her fist on the table, causing
her flatware to jump and clatter. “Damn it, don’t be so stoic.
You’re allowed to grieve.”

Robert wiped his hands on the kitchen towel
that hung from the refrigerator handle. “Thanks for breakfast.”

He went past her to the hall. She heard him
open the closet door and rummage on the upper shelf. One of the
snow skis banged against the doorjamb. She had convinced Robert to
try skiing, and they’d spent a weekend at Wintergreen in Virginia.
He’d twisted his ankle on the first run. He said skiing was a rich
kid’s sport and it had served him right to try and escape his
breeding.

Robert came back to the kitchen, the rifle
tucked against his right shoulder. A single bullet made a bulge in
his pocket, the shape long and mean.

“
Have you decided where to
bury her?” Alison had always thought of Sandy Ann as an “it,” and
had to consciously use the feminine pronoun. Alison wanted to show
she cared, whether her husband appreciated it or not.

“
She’s not that heavy, or
I’d do it near where I was going to bury her. I’m figuring behind
the barn. She loved to lay in the shade back there.”

Alison hated the back of the barn. It was
full of barbed wire and blackberry vines, and once she’d seen a
snake slither through the tall weeds. The garden lay beyond it, and
she tended a bed of marigolds there, but she associated shadows
with unseen reptiles. Sandy Ann would sometimes watch from the edge
of the garden while Alison worked, but the two rarely communicated
when Robert wasn’t around, though Alison often left bacon for it by
the back steps.

The grease from breakfast coated Alison’s
throat, and her chest ached. Robert went through the back door onto
the porch. Alison followed him, trading the heavy smells of the
kitchen for the tart, dry October morning. The mountains were
vibrant in their dying glory, umber, burgundy, ochre.

Sandy Ann was sleeping in a hollowed-out
place under the steps. The dog lifted its head at the sound of
their feet. It must have smelled the bacon in Robert’s hand,
because its dusty nose wiggled and Sandy Ann dragged itself into
the yard.

The sun glinted in the tears that ran down
Robert’s cheeks. “Good girl,” he said, giving the dog a piece of
bacon. The dog swallowed it without chewing and ran its rough
tongue over its lips, ears lifting a little in anticipation of
more. Robert moved the bacon to his rifle hand and scratched the
dog on top of the head.

“
Come on, girl, let’s take a
walk.” He headed toward the woods.

Sandy Ann looked back at Alison, eyes dim and
hiding pain, brown crust in their corners. She held out the bacon
in her hand. Unlike the other pieces she had fed it, this one
wasn’t sprinkled with rat poison. The dog licked its lips once
more, exhaled a chuffing sigh, then followed Robert, the yellow
tail swinging gently like a piece of frozen rope.

Robert led the way across the yard, holding
the bacon aloft so the dog could smell it. He and Sandy Ann went
through a crooked gate and Robert leaned the rifle against the
fence while he fastened the latch. He looked back at the porch.
Alison waved and bit into her own bacon.

They started again, both of them stooped and
limping. They reached the trees, Robert’s boots kicking up the
brittle leaves, Sandy Ann laboring by his side. The last she saw of
him was his plaid flannel shirt.

She should chase them. Maybe she could hold
the bacon while Robert loaded the gun. After all, she had cooked
it. And, in a way, she was replacing Sandy Ann. If Robert ever got
another dog, it would be Alison’s home and therefore it would be
the dog that would have to adjust, not the other way around. She
didn’t think they would get another dog, not for a while.

Sandy Ann was just a dog, and Alison wasn’t a
dog person. She was the practical one in the relationship. She
could have driven Sandy Ann to the vet, even at the risk of getting
dog hair in her car. The vet would have drawn out a nice, clean
needle and Sandy Ann could drift off to sleep, dreaming of fast
squirrels and chunks of cooked meat and snacks by the back porch of
home.

Maybe Robert needed the catharsis of
violence. Perhaps that would be his absolution, though surely he
couldn’t view the dog’s infirmity as his fault. After all, it would
have aged no matter the owner. Sandy Ann, like all of them, would
die and go to whatever heaven was nearest. Robert’s way might be
best after all. One split-second and then the pain would end.

Alison went inside and poured herself a half
cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, looking through the
window. The sunlight was soft on the stubbled garden. Some of the
marigolds clung to a defiant life, their edges crinkled and brown.
Collard leaves swayed in the breeze like the ears of small green
puppies. The shovel stood by the barn, waiting.

Her coffee mug was to her lips when the shot
sounded. The report echoed off the rocky slopes and the hard,
knotty trees. Alison didn’t know whether to smile or pout against
the ceramic rim. The house was hers.

When Robert returned, she would have tears in
her eyes. She would hug him and let him sag onto her, and she would
lead him to the couch. She would remind him of all the great
memories, and let him talk for hours about the dog’s life. She
would kneel before him and remove his boots and wipe the mud from
them. He would have no appetite, but she would cook for him anyway,
maybe something sweet, like a pie. If he wanted, he could have some
more of the Jack Daniels. She would turn on the television and they
would sit together, the two of them in their house.

Her house.

Alison finished her coffee. The remaining
bacon was covered with a gray film of grease but she ate it anyway,
her stomach finally unclenching.

She washed dishes, a chore she loathed. She
rinsed the pans with hot water. Later in the evening, she would
vacuum, try to remove the last traces of Sandy Ann from the living
room carpet.

Something clicked on the porch steps. She
wondered if Robert had decided to come back to the house before he
began digging. Either way, Alison would be there for him. She would
shovel until she raised blisters if he would let her. Alison wiped
her hands on her bathrobe and hurried to the door, blinking rapidly
so her eyes would water.