The Journal: Ash Fall (24 page)

It was a snug fit, but Kathy sat in the back
seat with Emi between her and Eric for the drive up to the Snake
River Plains, to our favorite mushroom patch.

When we arrived, the four of us adults spread
out some to search for that sometimes elusive orange mushroom, with
Emilee staying close to either me or Eric.

We wandered through the low growth of wild
blueberry bushes, hanging heavy with unripened fruit and the tall,
spindly Juneberry bushes, searching the more open spaces of heavy
ground moss.

When Kathy shouted “Mother lode!” we all
congregated in the one spot under a scraggly jack-pine tree, so
John, Eric and Emi could see what we were all looking for and how
to spot them. The little mushrooms popped up underneath the soft
gray-green moss that grew abundantly in the sandy, acidic soil, and
it was easy to miss them. Even Chivas came to investigate the
excitement. She was being good, not venturing too far from Eric,
enjoying the freedom like only a growing puppy can.

We picked that area clean and wandered away
again, each searching the ground, yet also keeping in visual
contact with everyone else. It was very easy to get disoriented,
even lost, when following the fairy rings in that terrain. Kathy
and I had had that happen in the past, and it was why we always had
a compass and a whistle with us at all times.

The picking was very good after all that rain
we had and the moss was soft underfoot instead of the crunchy soil
we so often find, and we moved about soundlessly. My bucket was
nearly half full of beautiful, large mushrooms after just a half
hour of searching. When I stood to stretch, I saw the stranger who
had approached the area quietly.

“Eric,” I said, alerting him as he harvested
mushrooms only a few yards away.

He gave a whistle for the wandering dog, just
as a shot rang out, and we heard Chivas yelp in pain.

Eric dropped his bucket and sprinted the
hundred yards toward the shooter. Emi started too, until I grabbed
her arm.

“Stay here with Kathy!” I commanded, dropping
my bucket too, running after my son, John close on my heels.

Eric jumped over a fallen log and made a
running tackle just as the guy was raising his rifle again. He
brought him down with a hard and very audible thump; the shot went
high and wild.

I knelt beside the golden retriever puppy,
stroking her nose as I cried with angry tears. Her left rear flank
was bent at an awkward angle and she was bleeding from a small
hole, her golden fur staining red with wet blood. Chivas lifted her
head to lick my hand, her eyes glowing with pain.

Eric had pulled the guy to his feet by his
tattered plaid shirt. “You shot my dog!” he snarled.

“It’s a dog,” the guy stated in calm
contempt, his scraggly hair framing his dirty face, his dark eyes
vacant. “Dogs are animals and all animals are food now.”

I could almost see the waves of anger and
hatred rolling off of my son.

Eric’s lip curled. “Then I guess that applies
to you too, then, Food.” The guy’s black eyes focused and widened,
just as Eric pulled his pistol and shot him. The impact of the .357
ripped his throat out and blasted the body back a dozen feet, now
unmoving and half under a low hanging broken tree limb.

“Nobody hurts my kid, and nobody hurts my
dog!” he spat out, and turned toward us. He holstered his gun with
ease, though he was breathing hard.

I was stunned at what had just happened,
however, it was the way of the new world we lived in and I let it
pass. We left the body where it landed.

“She’s still alive, Eric, hurt but alive. I
don’t think anything vital was hit,” I said. “We need to get her to
Mark.” I pulled off the light jacket I was wearing to hide my
shoulder holster and wrapped it around Chivas’ back legs to contain
the bleeding.

Eric dug his hands down into the spongy gray
ground cover to get underneath Chivas’ body, then lifted her
gently, cradling her against his chest to begin the long walk back
to the car.

John inspected the human body with
disinterest and retrieved the fallen rifle.

Kathy and Emilee were holding all the
partially filled buckets, waiting hand in hand as we made our way
back to them. Emilee started crying when she saw the injured puppy
and the blood seeping through my jacket.

I took Emilee aside as the others kept
walking, Kathy in the lead.

“Emi, listen to me. Chivas is hurt, but she’s
alive and we will do everything we can to keep her that way, you
understand? I know you’re very upset, we all are. You need to be
brave for your dad and for Chivas. Chivas knows when you’re sad and
that makes her sad. We don’t want that right now, okay?” Emi
nodded, and wiped her tears with the back of her small hand, and we
both hurried to catch up with the long strides of the others.

“Where did that guy come from?” John
bellowed. “I didn’t hear any vehicles.”

“During one of our wanderings last year,
Allexa and I kind of got lost,” Kathy said. “While trying to get
back to the road, we came across two separate camps. We gave them a
wide berth when it was obvious someone was living there. Maybe he
was from one of those.”

“Maybe he felt we were the trespassers,” I
commented.

With her great sense of direction, Kathy had
us back to the car in five minutes.

Eric sat in the hatch so he would have enough
room to cradle the dog comfortably and to keep Emi from seeing how
much pain Chivas was in.

John eased the car over the dirt and gravel
two-track, and once back on the newly paved main road, he took the
curves easy and the straight stretches fast. Within twenty minutes
we were pulling into Dr. Robbins’ parking lot. I jumped out first
and went inside, while John helped Eric out of the back of the
car.

“Mark! I’m so glad you’re here. There’s been
a shooting accident,” I panted, the adrenaline coursing through my
veins.

Mark grabbed my hands to steady them. “Deep
breath now. Tell me what happened.” He searched my pain-filled
eyes. “Not one of the children …?” he choked out.

Just then Eric came in holding a very still
Chivas.

“I’m not a veterinarian!” Mark protested.
Eric laid the dog on the metal examining table anyway.

“Mark, please!” I pleaded. “Bleeding is
bleeding! Can you stop it?”

He looked from me to Eric to John to Chivas
and back to me. “She’s your dog, Eric?” Eric nodded. “Then you stay
to keep her calm. Allexa, I need you to assist me.” Mark looked at
John and said nothing. John slipped out the door to wait with Emi
and Kathy.

Mark listened to various points along Chivas’
body with his stethoscope, determining that the dog was indeed
still alive and breathing. He handed surgical masks and gloves to
us and after he pulled on his own sterile gloves and mask, lined up
alcohol, sutures, gauze, other instruments and some needles on a
sterile tray. Removing my jacket from the dog, he surveyed the
damaged leg and muttered a curse under his breath, then starting to
clean the area.

“I hope you caught who did this,” he said
gravely.

In a very calm and stoic tone, Eric repeated,
“No one hurts my kid and no one hurts my dog.”

Mark’s hands stilled for a second and he
shared a knowing glance with me, recalling the last person that had
tried to hurt Eric’s kid, and the messy results.

“I’m going to give her a shot for the pain
and to numb the area so I can probe for the bullet,” he said.
“About how much does she weigh?” he asked, then calculated the dose
for a small child.

“I’ll need at least one x-ray to see how far
the bullet went in. We’ll have to shave her first.” When he turned
on the electric shears, nothing happened.

“Today is an off day for the power,” I stated
flatly and proceeded to clip Chivas’ silky fur as short as possible
with a pair of scissors. “Did you know that the scissors were
invented by Leonardo da Vinci?” I said as a matter of conversation,
which got incredulous looks from both men standing there. “Just a
piece of trivia,” I commented from behind my mask, “Although there
is some evidence to support the idea that the ancient Egyptians had
scissors centuries earlier.”

Mark angled the portable x-ray machine and
scanned the area, watching the results from the attached digital
screen, thankful it had its own battery backup.

“It appears that the bullet went clean
through. That’s the good news. The bad news is it looks like an
artery has been nicked and that’s why the bleeding won’t stop.”

He swabbed the area again, and asked for a
retractor, which I laid in his hand. He stretched the wound open,
and I handed him a sponge to soak up the blood. We worked silently
for perhaps twenty minutes. He put tiny dissolving stitches in to
close the hole in the small canine artery, while I kept the area
visible by cleaning the pooling blood. When he removed the original
retractor, I handed him the remaining suture for him to close the
ragged wound.

Eric just stood by Chivas’ head, stroking her
soft fur, crooning softly to her.

I used some of the alcohol to clean up the
drying blood on Chivas’ fur, more for my granddaughter’s sake. Mark
bandaged and then wrapped the leg immobile after checking to make
sure the fragile bone wasn’t broken or dislocated. The odd angle I
saw it at was apparently an illusion of the odd shape of a dog’s
hind leg.

“My first non-human surgery and I think the
patient is going to be just fine,” Mark said, breathing a sigh of
relief. “Last thing to do is a shot of antibiotic, and you can take
her home,” he said, giving her the hypo. The entire process took
just over an hour and I was exhausted!

When we each removed the mask and gloves we
were wearing, Eric broke into the biggest grin I’ve seen on him in
a long time.

“Thank you, Dr. Robbins.” He gave Mark a
handshake and a surprise hug. Eric turned to me and smiled, then
his face collapsed and he started to sob. I put my arms around him
and just held on.

“Okay, I didn’t expect that,” Eric said after
his crying jag. He sniffed, and gave his tear streaked face a
splash of cold water from the sink in the exam room before going to
face his daughter.

Eric gently lifted Chivas, who was now
sleeping, from the table and walked out, holding her carefully in
his strong and loving arms.

“Thank you so much, Mark. I know this wasn’t
something that you would normally do, but—”

“But these aren’t normal times, are they,
Allexa?” He smiled back. “Someday we need to discuss your medical
career; you did exceptionally well.”

* * *

Kathy lived only a few minutes from the
clinic, so she walked home after she reassured John that her and
Bob would be over later for dinner.

John drove up Eric’s drive and got as close
to the house as possible. While John unlocked the house door with
Eric’s keys, Eric carried Chivas up the stairs with Emilee trailing
behind.

“I’ll be back soon with the garden cart,
Eric. You can use it to bring Chivas over tonight,” John offered.
It went without saying that the dog would come to the
celebration.

“I can do that, Grandpa John!” Emilee jumped
up. Sensing she needed to contribute, we had her come back with us
to get the green metal cart.

I got one of the disposable emergency
blankets from the box on top of the outside refrigerator and laid
it in the wagon. Emilee said it wasn’t soft enough for her dog, so
I found an old blanket too. We walked across the street together,
but she insisted on pulling the heavy wagon by herself.

* * *

“I’ve got a quick errand to run,” John
announced when I got back home. I saw that he had pulled one of the
still wrapped steaks out of the refrigerator, and one of the small
bottles of ice I was using to keep things cold and then placed them
in one of my cloth shopping bags. I’d learned not to question him,
especially not over this, since it was his generosity that bought
those steaks in the first place. I also had a feeling I knew what
his errand was.

It had been a long, hot and emotional day,
and I desperately needed a shower. I started up the generator to
power the well pump and stepped into a cascade of hot, pulsating
water. I washed my hair, finding bits of gray moss and wondered how
it got there, then remembered many of the jack-pine tree branches
we all had to duck under had lacey moss growing on them. I scrubbed
my face hoping to rid myself of the cloying stench of blood that
clung to my every pore. Satisfied that I didn’t stink anymore, I
rinsed and stepped out of the shower. I decided on a cream colored
short-sleeved top and a long brown printed skirt for the occasion
and stepped into my well-worn sandals.

I had just pulled the four large sirloin
steaks out of the cooler to cut them in half as John and I had
discussed we would do, when he pulled into the driveway. All of the
steaks were thick cut and half of any one of the steaks would be
ample meat for one person. I set them on a platter, sprinkling them
with garlic salt and fresh ground pepper, and then put them back in
the cooler. The day was still very warm.

“I hear the generator running,” John said,
smiling at me. “Good, I need a shower, too.” He kissed me on the
nose and headed for the bathroom before our guests started to
arrive.

* * *

It was around six o’clock when I heard Bob
and Kathy pull in. They both were still sparkling from a recent dip
in the lake, an advantage of living right on Lake Meade.

“I brought a dish to share for dinner,” Kathy
grinned. From that look on her face I knew it had to be something
special.

“Okay, what did you do now?” I teased, and
lifted the cover to expose a Chanterelle Risotto, one of our
favorite dishes to fix with the fresh wild mushrooms. The other
favorite was a white sauce pizza drowned in sautéed orange
mushrooms. Maybe that would be tomorrow night, I thought. I took a
deep sniff of the risotto, and covered the dish back up.