Dog Run Moon (14 page)

Maybe some people wouldn't think something like that was possible, that such a small event could precipitate so great a fall—everything in a man's life hanging on a hoop, a net, the soft spin of the pebbled leather kissing the fingertips goodbye on the release. Rand was not one of those people.

Summer. From his desk, in the mornings, he could see sandhill cranes stalking the fallow field across the road. Rand watched their stilted movements against the rimrock hills. The dentist's office job was coming to an end. A month or so more of loose ends and then they'd come and haul the trailer away, and Rand would be embarking on a whole new project. He wasn't sure exactly what yet, the company had put an aggressive bid in on a small, high-end, ski chalet–style strip mall in Bozeman. He was having a hard time drumming up enthusiasm for a new job.

The site was in a small wooded area just off the freeway, and Rand took his lunch out into a thicket of pines and immature aspens and ate his sandwich sitting on the ground in the shade. He brought his pup with him most days. He was a small block-headed black lab mix whose existence revolved around food, searching it out, devouring it as quickly as possible, and retrieving sticks. On his lunch break Rand would let the dog out of the trailer to run around cadging treats from the guys.

On the weekends, he ran his boat upriver. He was fishing again. One day he caught his limit of walleye in an hour. The puppy hadn't been fond of the water at first. Eventually Rand caught him by the collar and tossed him off the dock. After a few moments of thrashing, he figured it out.

Mostly things were going okay, and it seemed that the events of the winter would eventually fade—the sharp edges ground away by the simple everyday adherence to routine. He walked the dog in the early-morning dark. Made coffee and went to work. Put in a full day. And then he went home, walked the dog, and made dinner, watched TV—his dog on the floor next to him. He could hang his hand over the edge of the couch and rub the dog's ears.

Occasionally, something would come to him. Sitting out in the thicket on his lunch break maybe, chewing his dry sandwich while the dog sat impatiently waiting for the crusts. He'd remember a simple thing, like the way Angel's crew used to cook their lunch outside. They'd bring an electric skillet and set it up on an overturned bucket. Someone would have a plastic bag of marinating beef and someone would have tortillas, and they'd throw together simple tacos, filling the air with the scent of seared meat.

Once, Angel had called him over and offered him some. Rand had ended up eating three, juice running down his chin, wiping his hands on his jeans like the other guys. They were good tacos.

“Better than a sandwich?” Angel had said. And Rand had nodded, his mouth full, thinking that not all food cultures were created equal, that maybe he should bring a hot plate into the trailer and cook his lunch. He never did, but at the time it seemed like Angel's guys were onto something. They had a knack for enjoyment. All the other workers were sitting in their trucks, eating fast food or choking down the same ham-and-cheese their wife had been making for them for years—and here these men were, cooking in the open air, talking, laughing, eating a real meal.

Remembering this wasn't much, just enough to make his sandwich stick in the back of his throat.

In late August, Sam called to tell Rand that Stella was pregnant, and to invite Sam to another tribal ceremony. This time it was something called Crow Fair, specifically the culminating event—a sun dance.

“This is the real one, man. I really hope you'll come.”

“What do you mean, ‘the real one'?”

“Yeah, they have a dance that's open to the public—concession stands, moccasins for sale, Winnebagos full of lost South Dakotans looking for the Little Bighorn Battlefield—and then this one, tribal members and close friends only. I'm going to be dancing.”

“You? Why?”

“For my unborn child. To show my gratitude. For good luck.”

“I didn't know you were a dancer. I mean, how do you know what to do?”

“I will be fasting, meditating. Other things I can't reveal to you. It's a whole weeklong process. The dance is just part of it. Anyway, it's not a goddamn tango competition or something. Everyone dances their own way. Some of the guys who really feel it stick bone skewers through the skin on their chests and lean back against ropes and dance until they rip out. Stella says that if I try to get macho and do that she'll divorce me. So, are you going to come?”

“Jesus. Okay. Sure.”

“Great. Really great. And, just so you know, this kid is going to grow up calling you Uncle Rand. You ready for that? I mean, if something happens to me, I like to think of you stepping in and taking care of business.”

“I don't really know anything about kids.”

“I don't either. That's irrelevant. This is about you taking care of my family if I kick it for some reason. This isn't something you argue about. You just say, ‘Right, sure thing, Sam, you can count on me.' I've already talked to Stella about it. She thinks it's a great idea. You're the godfather, man. She said she's always thought you were pretty good-looking and would do a decent job as fill-in husband.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah. I'm making a will, just in case. I'm going to include a special letter to you. In this letter will be several pointers, suggestions, an instruction manual, basically, that should be useful to you as you undertake the care and fulfillment of my wife. I mean, you're an F-150 driving man. She's a Ferrari. You could get hurt, that's all I'm saying.”

“Christ. Are you serious?”

Rand could hear him slapping his desk. “Hell, no. I'm not serious. About Stella, anyway. If I die you better keep your grubby hands off her. But about the kid, I'm dead serious.” He stopped laughing. “If you ever have a pregnant wife, you'll understand. You have to promise me you'll take care of them as best as you can. I know if you say you will, you will, not to get lame here but that's the kind of guy you are. You're the only one I can trust with this.”

“All right. Fine. If you die, I'll take care of business.”

“There, that's what I'm talking about. Okay, then, I'll see you at the dance. Wish me luck.”

The afternoon of the ceremony was a hot one, approaching one hundred degrees on the sun-baked field. Grasshoppers clattered away in droves as Rand walked through the dead grass. There were wildfires burning in the western mountains, the air hazy with smoke.

A single cottonwood tree rose in the middle of the empty meadow, and its branches had been adorned. String, strips of colored cloth, feathers, twisting and flapping. Around the tree, the dancers shuffled, their bare feet stirring small clouds of red dust. There was drumming, shrill piping, and chanting. People milled around, and Rand had a hard time discerning who were participants and who were spectators, if such a distinction existed. He tried to pick Sam out of the crowd. He stood near his truck feeling conspicuous, out of place, unwanted. He had made up his mind to leave when he spotted Stella making her way toward him.

“I'm glad you came,” she said.

“Maybe I shouldn't be here.”

“Nonsense.” She grabbed his wrist, and he was relieved, as if being attached to her might lend his existence there some credence. She led him through the throngs of people to a place near the edge of the dance circle. Up close, he spotted Sam immediately, dancing slowly, his pale torso streaked where the sweat had run rivulets through the dust.

Standing next to Stella, he watched her as she watched Sam dance. She was wearing a light-blue sundress and had one hand on her just-beginning-to-swell belly, looking serene and beautiful despite the heat. He was going to be a godfather.

She caught him staring at her, and she smiled and reached out to squeeze his arm.

The dancers—twenty or thirty of them, mostly men—rotated slowly, around the decorated cottonwood tree. The sun beat down, the wildfire smoke turning it an angry red as it neared the horizon line. Rand had no idea how long this thing lasted. Was there a halftime? Was there a finish line? Already several of the older dancers had collapsed or stumbled off. Sam kept going, the circular shuffle, eyes squinting out at some point far above their heads. Then, Rand spotted Nolan. The fallen basketball star was dancing too. His bare feet slapped the dirt, and his calf muscles were like knotted brown rope, his head thrown back, eyes closed against the sun. Most of the other dancers looked as if they were just trying to survive, slow foot stomping, plodding. Nolan, though, was dancing like he wanted to die—quick jerky movements, chest ballooning and caving. It was a hard thing to watch, a man giving birth to something that might kill him.

At a certain point, the sun sank, and still the dance continued. Bonfires were lit on the edges of the circle. The drums had taken up residence in Rand's chest. They were the echo that threatened to overtake his heart. Stella had drifted off. Sam had fallen out of the dance, and she had gone to take care of him. But Nolan still carried on, if anything, his movements had increased their desperate tempo.

Then Nolan danced his way to the center of the circle and took hold of a long rope that had been dangling from the center tree. He resumed his place in the circle and his grandfather emerged from the crowd. He came to Nolan and helped him do something with the rope. Rand couldn't see what. Nolan's back was to him. And then the old man retreated, and Nolan was dancing again. The firelight cast its glow, and Rand could see the purple streaks of blood on Nolan's torso. He was leaning back against the rope, his skin stretched taut at the points where the bone skewers ran through his chest.

As Nolan danced past him—close enough that Rand could have reached out to touch him—he searched Nolan's face for any sign of pain. He found just ecstatic blankness.

By now, many of the other dancers had filtered off. Two other men were attached to the center tree in the same manner as Nolan. Rand didn't want to be there any longer but he couldn't leave. He was so close, he could smell the sweat of the dancers, see the way their muscles trembled on the verge of collapse.

What was a basketball championship in the face of this? How could anything compare? This was absolution. This man had poured his whole life out on the ground to make room for vodka, and then, in one moment, he'd gotten everything back. Possibly fleeting, but no less real.

What do I have?
Rand thought.
What is available to me?
Rand was aware that he was now the only stationary person in the crowd. Painted figures were moving on all sides of him. There was the clicking of beads and bone and jangling bells and shrill whistling, and he knew that dancing himself, or leaving, were the only two easy options. He tried, did one slow, heavy, foot-stomping revolution, and then he stopped, feeling ridiculous. He was an impostor. Maybe someone else could have done it, danced it away, but not him. In the end he just stood, stock-still, looking straight ahead so that the circle of dancers were forced to part around him, their eyes flashing as they went by.

Someone was pointing at him from across the fire, and then there was a hand on his shoulder. They were going to drag him out, he thought, and that was fair. That was their right. But he would make them do just that, drag him. He wasn't going to move an inch on his own. The hand was on his back now, patting it, trying to get his attention. He turned. It was Stella's grandfather, bare chested, his braids swinging like silver ropes over his shoulders.

The old man was dancing, a strange flapping motion, elbows out, rising on his toes, doing something with his hands. Dancing, but not quite. There was a post up, a pump fake, a pivot, and finally, the fade-away jump shot, his wrist crooked in perfect follow-through form, a wide, toothless smile on his face.

T
he day before Terry had to report to Saginaw to start his sentence, he went fishing with his grandpa. It was late summer and the lake was choked with lily pads, the surface a near-solid mat of rubbery green. Terry rowed, and with each stroke his oars churned and uprooted the plants, the pads slapping the aluminum hull with a sound like a clapping crowd heard from a distance. It was hot and everything was shades of green—the pad-covered lake, the Russian olives and willows that crowded the bank, the flat, manicured carpet of his grandfather's lawn sloping up to his house. Terry tried to get it all in his memory, each degree of green, the pitch and drone of the cicadas, the roughness of the oar grips, the sweat running into his eyes, the fetid smell of the lake. He tried to save it all up for a time not too far distant when he might need it. Terry rowed and he thought about two years, all the ways it could be figured—twenty-four months, seven hundred and thirty days, two trips around the sun, one-eighth of the total time he'd been present on the earth. Terry stared at his bobber and he was scared.

Terry's grandpa had taught him when he was just a kid that the best way to catch bass—truly large bass—was to use a shiner minnow under a bobber. He showed Terry the proper way to rig the minnow, sliding the hook point just under the dorsal fin below the spine.

“Too deep you kill the minnow,” he said, “not deep enough and the minnow flies off when you cast. Now, you try it.”

Terry could still remember his first minnow-rigging experience, the shiner struggling in his hand, the slight crunch as the hook point scraped through the tiny ribs and passed under the spine. That crunch, something more felt than heard, gritty and uncomfortable, like chewing a piece of eggshell in your omelet.

Terry's grandpa had taught him that when fishing for bass with shiners, you can tell if you are about to get a strike by watching the movements of the bobber. The shiner minnows were big, some of them five inches long, and although they couldn't quite pull the bobber under, their movements would set the bobber bouncing. No movement meant you had a dead shiner; slight bouncing or jiggling meant the shiner was doing its thing, alive and swimming around calmly; violent jerks and dragging from side to side meant a bass had appeared and the minnow was agitated. This was when you had to get ready.

“A bass likes to inspect his meal,” Terry's grandpa said. “He'll sit underneath a minnow and just wait. The minnow will be up there going crazy and the bass will be sitting there trying to figure it out. He's used to minnows fleeing. A minnow that stays put and just swims in circles is unfamiliar to him. So he waits and watches until either his predatory impulse overwhelms him or his innate caution sends him swimming off in search of food that acts the way it should. That's all there is to it, really. You just present the bass with a choice, and he either takes it or he doesn't.”

With fewer than twenty-four hours before his incarceration, Terry couldn't concentrate on the fishing. The small rowboat was confining, and he found himself moving constantly, shifting his weight, repositioning his feet, making the boat lurch from side to side. They hadn't caught anything. Terry's grandpa said it might be because it was so hot. The bass, he said, had retreated to the deepest part of the lake and hunkered down until dusk, when things would cool off a little. Terry had sweat running down his back. He had to press down on his knees to make his legs stop jigging up and down.

“Pretty hot,” he said, squinting at his bobber.

His grandpa nodded and reeled in his rig. His minnow had died. He removed it from the hook and pitched it out to the lake where it landed on a lily pad with a wet slap.

“Let's call it a day,” he said, “it's hotter than two rats fucking in a wool sock out here.”

This made Terry laugh, and when he pulled up the anchor and began rowing back to the house, he felt a little better.

In the kitchen, Terry's grandpa made tomato sandwiches, the tomatoes heavy and warm, fresh from his garden, liberally salted between two slices of soft white bread. There was a Tigers game on the radio. They ate and half-listened to Ernie Harwell's gravelly play-by-play. When it started to cool down, they went out on the back porch to watch the nighthawks skim mosquitos as dusk came down over the lake.

“I didn't mean for it to happen that way,” Terry said, eventually. “That counts for something, doesn't it?”

Terry's grandpa sucked in his cheeks as he worked at a piece of soft bread stuck to a molar.

“Going into a place like that, you are accepting a certain amount of risk. That's how I feel. No one is a complete innocent or complete victim in a place like that. That guy had a wife and a kid. What was he doing there in the first place? It's over and done now, of course, beating a dead horse here, but that bitch judge thought you needed saving, and she was the one to do it. Would have been better if it had been a man.”

“I think if my dad was the judge I'd have gotten the chair.”

“Fathers are always the harshest judges. That's the way it's always been. But still, there's something in me and you that's not in your dad. Sometimes these things skip generations. And I'm not saying it's a good thing or it's a bad thing, probably life's a whole lot easier without it, whatever it is. But, how do I say this? Your father was a good boy and is a good man, but he could never fathom a situation such as the one you got yourself involved in. Something like that is as foreign to him as breathing underwater. Your dad can't understand what you got yourself into and he can't understand what going inside that place for two years is going to be like for you. I think I got an inkling and I know it ain't going to be a trip to Candyland for damn sure. But you'll do it, and you'll get out, and you'll find that there is a lot of life for you left, and you'll have learned some things at a young age that take many men a hell of a long time to get figured out.”

It got dark and Terry's grandpa went inside. Terry stayed out on the porch. He pulled two chairs together and stretched out on his back. Mosquitoes gathered around him in a droning chorus, and when Terry raised his bare arm a half a dozen clung to his forearm in a line, like pigs lining up at a feed trough. He swatted at them, creating a smear of blood, a process he would repeat innumerable times until the sun came up and his grandpa came out to get him for the three-hour drive down to Saginaw.

Terry had always been big for his age. That had probably worked against him in court. The judge looked at him and saw the broad shoulders, the large hands, the deep-voiced
yes ma'am
s and
no sir
s, the stubble on the cheeks that Terry had begun shaving when he was barely through middle school. Terry looked like a man, and he would have been judged like a man if it weren't for laws about prosecuting minors. As it was, he got two years in the Saginaw juvenile detention center. Some said that was too much. Some said it wasn't near enough. After all, there was a man who wasn't ever going to return to his family—a woman without a husband and a boy without a father.

According to the police report read during the trial, Terry showed up alone at Hiphuggers Gentleman's Club with a fake ID. He played three games of nine-ball and won all three. He had six shots of Ezra Brooks whiskey and chased each one with a draft beer. Some time before last call there was a scuffle and the patrons of the bar streamed out into the parking lot. The ones slow to get off their stools saw nothing but the aftermath. By the time they made it outside all there was to see was Terry standing—another man, on the ground, bloody, his body racked with seizures.

Denise, Terry's kid sister, cried for two whole days after he went away. She cried, aware for the very first time in her life that something had passed and things would never again be exactly how they were before. That is adulthood and it comes in many forms. For Terry it came in the parking lot of that topless bar, two counties over, where no one knew his name—his breath coming hard, blood leaking into the gravel, a longneck bottle broken and clenched in his fist. Or, if not there, then some time after, in his bunk after lights-out, looking up at the mattress above him, the exposed box springs like the skeleton of honeycomb, the rusted spring coils groaning under the strain of his bunkmate's masturbatory vigor.

While Terry was away, his grandfather died. They found him sprawled in the grass next to his backyard lake, his torso and legs still on the ground, his head and arms and hands trailing out into the stagnant water like pale, moisture-seeking roots.

“I already talked to the people there,” Terry's father said when he called. “They're not going to let you come to the funeral. I told them it was your grandpa and that you were close but they said it doesn't matter. No releases of any kind for the first year. It's bullcrap, Terry, I know. But, maybe it doesn't matter. It'll just be a body there, at the service. Your grandpa has passed on to his heavenly reward, and that is something in which we should rejoice. He lived a full life, and that's what we need to remember. Anyway, it's going to be a closed casket. They said he had a stroke and the way he fell, in the water like that, well, it wasn't pretty. There were a lot of turtles in that lake, you know that. Remember you and your sister catching those little baby snappers and trying to get them to race? Anyway, he was in the water for a couple of days like that, and the turtles had been at him a little bit. Your mother took that pretty hard. She was the one who found him. She went over there to trade him some rhubarb from her garden for tomatoes from his. He was overrun with them this year, you know, couldn't give them away fast enough. Anyway, I told her it was just his earthly vessel, and it doesn't matter because his eternal soul is sitting at the right hand of Christ, our Father in heaven. Well, son, I have to go be with your mother now. It seems that God has given us many trials this year. It is important to keep the knowledge of your faith at the forefront of your consciousness. We pray for you every Sunday.”

A year ago Terry might have cried at the news of his grandfather's death. But now—holding the phone in the sweat-and-mashed-potato-smelling common area in Saginaw—he did not. He just listened to his father speak, heard his newly discovered God-love dripping from his every word like a self-righteous accent. He hung up and went to his room and lay on his bed and stared at the bunk above him until the box springs swam before his eyes.

Later, when his bunkmate came in, and, predictably, the mattress started to shift and squeak, Terry rose without a word and grabbed him by his neck and leg, pitched him from the bunk onto the concrete floor, and gave him one silent, sharp, vicious kick to the face. He was a skinny kid, about half Terry's size. He had an explosion of zits across his scrawny back, and he was lying facedown, whining, one of his hands still jammed down the waistband of his boxer shorts.

That kick got Terry a new bunkmate and an additional month's time. Sometimes, he had dreams where he was fishing with his grandpa. He would turn to him in the boat and see half the flesh stripped from his face—leaking, gaping chunks missing from his neck.

While Terry was away Denise had her thirteenth birthday. He called her and told her he was sorry that he couldn't get her a present and she said it was okay. Mom and Dad were finally letting her get her ears pierced and she was going to the mall today to get it done.

“They make you get studs, at first,” she said. “And you have to wait two weeks before you can change them.”

“Why's that?” Terry said.

“It's so the hole doesn't close up. After two weeks, though, it's permanent and the holes will be there forever. Did you know that Grandma never got her ears pierced? She used to wear clip-on earrings. That's what Mom said.”

“No, I never knew that.”

“Mom said that Grandma always wanted to, but that Grandpa didn't let her. So, she got clip-ons and only wore them when she went to the store and stuff. Anyway, I'm going to get some blue ones with gold studs. I already picked them out. But when the two weeks are up I'm going to get some that have feathers on them.”

“Feathers?”

“Yeah, dangly ones. They sell them at the mall. All different types of feathers. From real birds. They come with a little card that tells you what kind of bird the feather is from, and also about the Indian tribe.”

“Indian tribe?”

“They're made by Indian women from somewhere out west. They pick the feathers up off the ground and then they attach them with pretty gold and silver wire to earring hooks. My friend Kristy has some made from heron feathers and they are so pretty. They are so light. They just float around her ears, like, well, feathers. I can't wait.”

“That sounds great. I can almost picture them. How's school?”

“It's fine.”

“Do people talk about me?”

Denise was silent for a moment. Terry could hear the sound of her phone cord hitting the receiver as she twisted and untwisted it absentmindedly.

“A little. Not too much.”

“Yeah? Anyone giving you a hard time?”

“No, not really. But, Kristy says that you're hot, and that she would totally make out with you, if you weren't in there. I told her she is a slut.”

Denise laughed and then Terry's time was up on the phone.

“You tell Kristy that in about four years I might take her up on that offer, and you, missy, better not be making out with anyone, you hear me?”

“Eww. Gross, Terry.”

“I'm serious.”

“I don't like any boys. And I'm not going to date or get married until I find one that's exactly like you, you know that.”

“Okay. I have to hang up now, Den. Happy Birthday. I miss you.”