Rube stood and stared past the bar, then walked out into the night.
The dog stumbled up to all fours, tongue lolling.
“So we meet again,” Rube said in a whisper.
The dog whimpered, then shut his mouth and followed Rube down the sidewalk.
Every time Rube stopped, the dog stopped behind him. Rube finally turned and pointed back down the street. “Go home, Buddy. Do you hear me?”
Rube realized the stupidity of his words. The dog no longer had a home. His owners were dead.
The knowledge haunted Rube as he walked toward his house. The street forked here, the left tongue of the fork slanting off at a steep angle that rose to Saint Anne’s Cemetery. Up there, above the town, was a small wooden chapel painted white, its stark crucifix like some Celtic dagger that hung askew above the double doors. A big spotlight lit the front of the chapel. Like a used car lot, Rube thought painfully.
Rube was staying to the right, trying to shake off the night’s bad feelings, when the dog growled behind him. The growl was sinister, and Rube tensed, thinking perhaps the dog was going to run up his heels and take away some hide. Instead, the dog blew past Rube so fast his pants cuffs rose in the breeze. Rube watched as the snarling Labrador streaked up the hill.
On top of the hill the shadow of a man danced down the road, the shadow thrown long and sticklike from the large spotlight. Buddy was almost invisible in the night, blending with the yellow bushes on the side of the road, but his shadow too was finally caught and projected, until both shadows came together.
Then the shadows broke, the man’s shorter as he turned and ran off. Down the other side? Rube found his feet turning to the left fork, starting up the hill of their own accord.
Buddy had paused at the crest, dropping his haunches to the asphalt. His leonine head went back, and he wailed.
The man’s stick-figure came back, the shadow growing from nowhere, and the dog rose on his haunches, head lowered, the growl almost a hiss.
Rube tried to hurry, but the hill was steep and his legs wobbled.
Shadows crashed together, then disappeared over the crest of the hill.
Rube’s heart pounded. The big spotlight caught him, and he stopped and shaded his eyes and stared up at the crucifix. Shadows played there, a halo formed from insects buzzing the light. “Give me strength,” he muttered. He stopped for just a moment to rest his palms on his thighs, fighting for air. Past the light he could see the edge of a steel fence. There was a gap there, where someone had slid back a gate. Beyond, in the dim slice of moon, he could make out tombstones. Like huge teeth they curved away and down. The air felt colder suddenly, as if a door had opened on some Nordic hell. Rube shivered and rubbed himself. What was he looking for — besides the dog and the sticklike shadow of a man? Then he saw the dog. Buddy lay sprawled across the length of a grave. The earth was freshly turned, and there was no headstone yet. But there were stones on either side.
Rube moved gingerly, muttering to Buddy as he went. “Easy, boy. It’s okay.”
The words echoed.
Buddy sniffed and shuffled to his feet. He moved off the grave, just a few paces, and sniffed at the ground.
Darker here, the spotlight pointing the other way, down the long hill.
Rube fumbled in his jacket pocket for a book of matches.
The wind blew out the first.
“Damn.” His voice sounded hollow and old.
He cupped the next and held it to the nearest tombstone.
Before he could read what it said, he noticed a fresh bouquet of flowers by the head of the mound. Buddy had half crushed them, and now the wind threatened to blow them away.
Rube stared at the tombstone next to the fresh mound. “In Loving Memory of Maria, Mother of Jesse, Husband of Walter. May all your seas be fair.”
He died a week ago. The bartender’s words, still fresh in Rube’s memory. They were engaged.
The dog whined.
The few facts Rube knew gnawed at his mind. What were the odds, he wondered, of such a coincidence? Dying within a week of each other? And how had Jesse died?
The match almost burned his fingers then, and he lost his concentration. He closed his eyes tightly for a time, balancing himself with one hand on the tombstone of Jesse’s mother. When he opened his eyes again, he could see better. With age, he’d noticed, everything took longer, even his night vision. Now, as he looked around on the ground, he noticed the new grave was scuffed and tom, as though a pitched battle had taken place.
“Buddy? Are you all right?”
He slowly moved toward the dog, who put his head between his paws and looked mournful.
Rube felt the big dog’s head. Wet! His first thought was blood, and he lifted his hand to his face, expecting the worst. But it was just water with a slight floral scent. He knelt down and searched around the head of the new grave. A shard of pottery caught the moonlight. A larger shard lay a few feet away. And another.
“He hit you with the vase, didn’t he?”
Buddy sniffed.
Rube picked up the bouquet of flowers now loosely strewn across the mounded earth. Pretty little things with pointy petals. Early poinsettias, he realized. From someone’s garden. And something else. At first he thought it was another flower, a stray, very dark red petal. But then he felt it between his fingers. It didn’t shred like the flesh of a plant. Cloth. And the red was blood. He was sure of it even before he brought it to his nose and sniffed. Fresh blood. Just a hint of metal there — copper or iron. Blood had a smell. He had worked in enough labs to know that.
“You got a piece of him, huh, boy?”
Buddy whined, then lifted his head. Rube dangled the piece of cloth in front of the dog’s nose. The dog rose unsteadily, back legs wobbling. He leaned forward, though, and sniffed the cloth. Then he let out a yowl that made Rube jump.
“Easy, you’ll wake the—”
Then Rube remembered where he was.
Go home and go to bed, he told himself. In the morning he would take the cloth down and give it to Boggert, a gift from the town’s newest resident. Hell, it wasn’t his job.
And he almost had himself convinced. He made it to the bottom of the hill with Buddy trailing him. A little dazed, but the dog was starting to get his legs beneath him again. At the bottom, Rube started to turn left, toward home, but Buddy’s growl stopped him.
Worse, his old habit of noticing details kicked in. Like a bad habit.
Rube turned to see the dog sniffing at spots on the walkway. Could be anything, Rube told himself. Some kid dripped his milk nickel in the heat of the day. Some tourist had a leaky beach bucket. But he knew better, even before the dog started to seriously sniff and follow the spots. Whoever had hit Buddy on the head had gotten past him in the dark. Wouldn’t be hard to do. And Buddy had gotten a piece of him before whoever it was conked the old dog on the head. Now Buddy smelled his blood on the sidewalk.
Buddy started to trot, an ungainly thing seen from Rube’s perspective. But the big dog ate the distance like a racehorse, even trotting.
“Buddy!”
No use.
Go home and go to bed.
But he couldn’t.
Wait and tell Boggert tomorrow.
But he couldn’t. He felt responsible somehow.
Rube turned and started after the dog, running a little.
The saloon was almost empty as Rube trotted by. He craned his neck and saw the big bartender leaning over to jaw with a lady holding a pool stick. Even the old fishermen in back had left.
Call me a tourist, huh?
At the end of the street the sheriff’s office sat dark and closed. The Jeep was missing from the lot. Rube knew too little about the town or sheriff. His landlord had said the sheriff was new, that they shared him with Morro Bay and another tiny town along the coast. This wasn’t New York, he reminded himself.