“Miz Helms! You here?” How unnerving it was to hear my own voice tainted by the coward that is in me. It caused me to take stock. I am an oversized woman, fitter and stronger than most. Poor, tiny Mrs. Helms was in her seventies, had survived family tragedies and cancer yet continued to live her life with a woman’s energy, still fussing over clothes and her looks. If an intruder was in this house, Mrs. Helms was the one who had a right to be frightened, not me!
I picked up the shovel, noticing the pamphlets when I knelt. Dozens of the things on glossy paper, all the same:
PRESERVE OUR HERITAGE
JOIN FISHERFOLK of SOUTH FLORIDA, Inc.
The words were printed in white over an old-timey photo of a pioneer woman stirring a cauldron. Below it was an architect’s drawing of a modern building-it appeared to be a museum.
A charity project, I thought. Had I seen the same pamphlet among my mother’s magazines? If not, there was something similar, which was no surprise. Elderly women were easy targets for solicitors seeking donations. Loretta, because she was lonely, took every automated phone call just to hear a human voice. Same when a solicitor came to the door. Pinky Helms would have been no different. I dropped the pamphlet and continued on through the house, flicking on lights as I went.
In the hallway was a heavy metal floor lamp with twin globes, milky white, that came on when I hit the wall switch. The staircase to the second floor was there: wood beneath carpet worn bare by the passage of children and time. Crystal’s room was up there. Mica’s, too. Mica was three years younger but already taller than me when he entered middle school, and already smoking cigarettes and weed. By then, Crystal and I were strangers, separated by interests and school districts, since the village of Sulfur Wells was on the line that separated Sematee County from Lee County. I hadn’t been up those stairs in twenty years. I didn’t want to go up them now. Wasn’t it smarter to search Mrs. Helms’s bedroom first? A woman in her seventies, even if fleeing for her life, wasn’t likely to charge up the stairs.
There was a door, though, that separated the stairs from the rest of the house-typical of old houses that had been pieced together before air-conditioning. I knew the woman’s bedroom was somewhere off the kitchen, which meant I would have to open the door before continuing: a cheap door, painted green, with a white ceramic knob. I stood staring at it for several seconds, aware that the dread I felt was irrational. A man with an axe would have bashed the thing to pieces; at the very least, would not have closed a door behind him. But an elderly woman on the run might have.
A competent investigator searches buildings systematically, always clearing one room before proceeding to the next.
Textbook training from the degree I had failed to complete. Competence, I realized, could also be a handy excuse for cowardice.
I turned away from the door and went up the stairs, wood creaking beneath my weight with every slow step, my eyes focused on lace curtains white with sunlight at the top of the landing. They streamed with dust beams that pulled me forward as if on a tightrope while I used the shovel for balance. Even so, it was a clumsy weapon to carry. Halfway up, when I turned to glance behind me, the blade clunked against the banister so loudly, it startled me and I almost fell. Then I dropped the shovel, which made even more noise when it sledded down the stairs, banging each step like a cymbal.
To steady myself, I leaned against the wall, my heart pounding again. Should I retrieve the shovel? Or continue without it?
To postpone the decision, I used my voice again. “Anyone up there?” Then added a lie in case I had cornered an intruder. “The police are here! We’re worried about you, Miz Helms.”
The silence I expected was jolted by a new sound coming from outside the house; a distant noise that touched my ears as the random snaring of a drum. Then the sound deepened and took form, and I thought, Barking dogs! Dogs coming toward the house at a run; a slathering chorus I recognized from hunting with my Uncle Jake in the Everglades as a girl. It was the bellow of catch dogs that had picked up the scent and were on the heels of game.
Pit bulls. The Helms dogs had returned.
Dear god, I thought, remembering: You left the front door open!
The oversight had left me unprotected. Nothing at all to slow those animals if they struck my scent and came after me-me, a stranger, not only on their property but inside their owner’s home.
Run!
Because I panicked, that’s what I did. Hand on the banister, I vaulted down the steps, but then hesitated, the green door to my right, the living room to the left. The door offered protection, but only temporary. The living room exited to the porch, then my truck, which was the only sure means of escape. Drive half a mile on Pay Day Road, I would have a cell signal again and could call the police. But the wild barking of the dogs was so close now-would they catch me as I crossed the yard?
Not if I hurried! So I turned left. Stumbled over the shovel, hesitated again before picking it up, then sprinted down the hall toward the living room. The pine floor was slick. A shovel is also an awkward tool to run with. I had to slap a hand on the wall to make my final turn, skidded on the broken glass, and then continued more cautiously. I kept my eyes on the open doorway. It was a beacon, an airy rectangle bright with daylight and freedom, that, oddly, had muted my own hearing as abruptly as the wide-screen TV, where, on the game show, a young woman was weeping, whether for joy or in despair I neither knew nor cared. Three strides from the door, though, I stopped, my head tilted, straining to hear.
The dogs-they had stopped barking. Why?
I wasn’t deaf. I banged the shovel on the floor to prove it to myself. The thunk of metal on wood registered in my ears, but my attention was already riveted to a more chilling sound: claws clattering on gravel; a heavy, wolfish breathing so close that the slap of a panting tongue was unmistakable. I took a step back when the panting stopped. It was replaced by the rumble of a dog growling.
No… two dogs. Their silhouettes trotted across the lighted doorway. Both pit bulls, their heads the size of concrete blocks, stubby horns for ears, on dwarfed bodies of brindle-yellow fur and muscle, drifted past unaware of my presence. I pressed my back against a wall and didn’t move, didn’t breathe. It didn’t save me. The odor of my skin, my clothing, the odor of my fear, was in the air, and one dog stopped, lifted his nose to taste my scent, then returned to the doorway and looked inside. Soon, he was joined by the other dog, both animals alert, intense, their tiny eyes now so focused on me that the flooring vibrated when they began to growl in unison.
6
I have been charged by dogs while jogging and know it’s best to take the offensive. I’ve backed down collies and retrievers and even a pit bull, who was so instantly sweet that he had begged me to scratch his ears, then followed me home.
It was a strategy worth trying. “Get out of here!” I yelled, and banged the shovel hard on the floor. I took a step toward the door and did it again. “Get!”
These dogs, however, were not sweet-natured. They looked half starved, all jaws and instinct, and they came at me when I moved. The lead dog-there’s always an alpha dog-came first, trotting toward me, then lunged, stiff-legged, and roared when I jabbed the shovel at it. She was female, judging from the absence of the testicles that hung so prominently from the second dog, who was larger and also slyer. He slunk into the room without barking, teeth bared, and disappeared behind the overturned recliner. When he reappeared, he was to my left, and moving toward the hall, an attempt to corner me, I realized-two dogs who hunted as a pack. I began to sidestep toward the bigger male because the hallway was my only escape.