Roddy followed the soft bank of the road past Clyde Benson’s place and then the Holbrook Dairy, with its flat barn parlor where the milking was being done, all lit up with fluorescent lights as though there was a fire within. 430 wound on and they followed it obediently.
“What would you say to a drink?” Roddy asked. “We could stop at Chippers.”
Chippers was nothing more than a cinder block roadhouse with a dirt parking lot in back, but there wasn’t another bar around for miles.
“How about another night?” Linda said. “Couldn’t we stop another night?”
“Alright. We’ll save it for another time,” Roddy said, and he hoped that they would.
What Roddy loved most about Linda was her unpredictability. Early in their courtship she surprised him at work with a picnic lunch. They found a spot in the pasture that bordered the lumber yard, and when they finished eating Linda pushed him down and climbed above him. She held his head to the earth with her kisses, and they made love there for the first time, hidden in the tall grass not one hundred yards from where he worked. Roddy felt then and for months after, that the stagnant normalcy of his life had been suddenly and intoxicatingly disrupted by a force much stronger than himself. Linda, who took him to meet her friends at a bar and serenaded him with karaoke while he beamed, his cheeks turning as bright red as currants. Linda, who called him one afternoon to help her move, and once the bed of his truck was full, when he asked where he was taking her, gave him directions to his house. Linda, who wore a sun dress and no shoes on their wedding day, whose every arrival and movement was as unexpected as lightning from a clear sky, who in three years never ceased to surprise him. Linda, whose thoughts were as mysterious to him now as a foreign tongue, who somewhere along the way stopped loving him or this place or both since they were the same, and who left him alone for six weeks without so much as a phone call.
430 dipped down between two low-lying pastures where the fog was thicker yet. Roddy followed it cautiously. Soon they would reach the turn off for West Mina Lane, and from there it was a straight shot to the farmhouse, hidden from the road by a stand of hemlocks. Roddy thought of how the rest of the night would go, the ritual of preparing for bed, slowly undressing and then climbing beneath the covers where he would lie next to Linda, perfectly still and silent, aware even of the sound of his own breathing. Thinking of it emptied him out.
They came to a thick pocket of fog, but Roddy knew the road ran straight here and he kept the wheel steady. He turned toward Linda, saw her profile silhouetted against the field that stretched beyond the window. He thought of how arriving home had become the worst part of his day, the uncertainty of walking in and wondering if he would find her there. He wanted to tell her how every moment felt like waiting. “Linda,” he said, but she kept staring straight ahead, her eyes focused on something outside.
“Roddy,” she said, and when she did the sound of it struck him. It had been so long since she’d said his name. He saw a dark flash from the corner of his eye, then felt a solid thump as the front end of the truck collided with something on the road’s shoulder. He hit the brakes and heard the high-pitched squeal of rubber sliding over asphalt. When the truck ground to a halt, Roddy pulled over until the driver’s side was clear of the road.
“What the hell was that?” he asked. The bitter odor of burnt rubber filled the truck. Roddy switched on the hazards.
“It came out of the field,” Linda said. The startled expression on her face turned angry. “You weren’t watching the road.”
“I didn’t see anything,” Roddy said, and Linda turned away.
Cornfields stretched away on either side of the road and the fog had thinned out some. In the distance Roddy could make out the silhouette of a grain silo against the dark night sky. He checked the rearview and saw the road was empty. He put the Chevy in drive and pulled around in a U-turn until they faced the direction they came from. Driving slowly along the shoulder, they went on that way until they saw a dark figure lying on the opposite side of the road. The truck’s headlights illuminated the form. It was too small to be a deer. With the headlights still on, Roddy opened the truck’s door and stepped out. The cold air bit at his skin. He’d forgotten his fleece at home. He crossed his arms over his chest and walked with his head down against the wind. He heard the passenger door open and then shut and then the sound of Linda walking behind him.
Roddy saw that it was a dog. It lay on the shoulder of the road dying. It was a large brown animal, a male dog, but not of any one distinguishable breed. It was lying on its side, a thick stream of viscous blood running from its mouth. It kept trying to lift its head and when it did, Roddy saw that the ear closest to the pavement had been scraped off. Its front legs were immobile, but its back legs kicked at the air slowly, mechanically, as though they were no longer under the animal’s control. The dog’s midsection was caved in, the ribs giving way where the truck’s bumper struck. The dog did not belong to any of Roddy’s neighbors. He’d never seen it before.
“My God,” Linda said, startling Roddy. He forgot she was standing behind him. “You weren’t looking,” she said. “You should have been paying attention.”
Roddy knelt down and reached toward the dog and when he did it tried to snap at him, but it was hardly a threat, the animal’s jaws opening and closing slowly as it labored for breath. “Easy,” Roddy said and laid his hand softly on the dog’s side. The animal whined and Roddy lifted his hand. Slowly, and with as much care as he could muster, he parted the matted hair that covered the dog’s neck. There was no collar. Blood continued to leak from the dog’s mouth, from some injury deep within that Roddy knew could not be mended. He stood and looked at Linda who was crying silently, hugging her chest as she swayed. Even crying she was beautiful, her skin nearly luminescent under the night sky. He looked back at the dying animal.
“You have to do something,” Linda said. “We can’t just leave him like this. He’s in agony.”
Roddy looked at her. Agony. In all the time they’d been together, he never heard her use the word, and it sounded strange now. He understood that it existed for her only as an idea, an approximation of pain.
Roddy walked slowly across the road. When he reached the truck he opened the door and the interior light snapped on. Across the roof of the cab, near the rear window, was the gun rack which held the Browning bolt action. Roddy stepped onto the running board, pulled the driver’s seat forward and carefully unfastened the rifle from the rack. Once he had it down he laid it across the rear seats. He took a loaded box magazine from his hunting pack and slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans.
Roddy had gone hunting for as long as he could remember. He started as a kid, shooting squirrels and other small game using a hand-me-down .22. For years he went to the camp in Kane where his father and uncles stayed during deer season. Linda never approved and asked only that he not talk about it around her. It became one more thing they did not discuss.
Roddy took the rifle carefully from the rear seats and shut the truck door. He pulled the bolt upward and back and checked the breech which was clear. He lowered the rifle and ran the fingers of his free hand over the smooth finish of the walnut stock. He removed the magazine from his back pocket and clicked it into place below the breech. He pushed the bolt forward and closed it, then slung the worn leather strap over his shoulder and walked back across the road.
The dog was still trying to lift its head. Its eyes rolled loosely and then locked upon Roddy, though the dog seemed not to be staring at him, but at something beyond him. With every breath the dog took, Roddy heard the gurgling of blood. For a moment he stood there looking down, measuring his breaths slowly until they matched those of the dying animal. Linda was still crying. She’d taken a step back from the dog when he returned.