“I should have figured you wouldn’t let her out by herself,” Silver stammered on. “I don’t know nothing about children.” She hesitated again, shaking her head. “Gracie didn’t want me to take him. Said Rusty was her dog. I knew I shouldn’t take him without telling you, but I thought I had to get it over with.” It had felt too late somehow to abandon her course, so she’d turned her back to Gracie and unchained the dog. Once the rope was around his neck she’d set out pulling him across the field, wind rippling the weeds. When she’d looked over her shoulder Gracie was behind her, watching with a somber face. “She followed me as far as the apple tree. I stopped and told her to get to the house but she wouldn’t.” Silver paused once more, gathering herself to finish. “I looked back when I got to the woods and she was still there. I figured she’d be all right in her own yard. I never dreamed anything would happen to her.” What Silver didn’t tell Annie Clyde was how she had waved to the child with her left hand as she stood at the verge of the pines, grappling with the rope in her right. How she had said good-bye to Gracie knowing it was the last time she would ever see her, but not that it might be the last time anybody ever saw her again.
“You have Rusty?” Annie Clyde asked. Her forehead was clammy. Her fever had broken.
Silver blew out a breath. “If I gave him back to you yesterday I would have had to tell on myself and Amos both. Just because he was hanging around don’t mean he’s to blame. Gracie wouldn’t have wandered off if I’d knocked on the door. Or made sure she went back to the house before I took the dog home with me. I put him in the shed, up at the still where Granddaddy used to keep his watchdogs. It was nighttime before anybody came and told me Gracie was gone.”
“Gracie,” Annie Clyde whispered, tears dropping from her reddened lids.
Silver reached to thumb the wetness from her niece’s cheek. “I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to look you in the face again after this, Annie Clyde,” she said. “As much as I care for you. I’ll turn your dog loose, but I won’t be bringing him back. I know that dog can find his way.”
Annie Clyde tried to push up on her elbows and they gave out. “But where’s Gracie?”
“No,” Silver said. “I don’t know where Gracie’s at. You’re mixed up, Annie Clyde.” She was selfishly glad for the medicine muddling her niece’s head. She didn’t want to hear what the girl might say if she had her faculties. She captured Annie Clyde’s hand, the delicate fingers so much like her sister’s. So much like her own. Then she heard a creak and leapt up like she’d been caught stealing. She turned to see James Dodson leaning against the wall, the room filled with a reek of moonshine but not from the jar by the bed. His hair was mussed, his clothes disheveled.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Silver was startled by her own anger. “Your wife’s sick. How come you had to leave her?”
“I didn’t leave her,” James said. “I was in the barn.”
“Where’s your aunt and uncle?”
James squinted down at Annie Clyde. “I asked you what’s going on.”
“She’s got blood poisoning,” Silver snapped. “She stepped on a locust thorn. Her fever’s broke, but if it comes back don’t you wait until morning to get her to the doctor. That medicine is bitter, but make her drink some more if she wakes up hurting. And don’t let her get out of the bed, either.” When Silver stopped her mouth was dry, having talked more on this night than she had in a decade. A weariness came over her. She couldn’t tell it again, what she had told Annie Clyde. Not to this man who had sought to take what remained of her sister away from her again. They stood across from each other in the lamplight, James blinking at her with bloodshot eyes. Then she pushed past him, the whiskey fumes enough to sting her nose, and ran down the stairs.
She escaped out the wide-open door into the endless rain and went around the side of the house, splashing up darts of water. Thistles lashed her legs as she cut through the hayfield, as she tripped over what had blown down on her way to the foot of the mountain. Once again she followed the familiar ridges up to the still. She was shaking as she approached the shed and paused under its eave, burrs falling from the chinquapin onto the roof. She reached to touch the splintery boards, drew close to press her ear against the side of the building. After a second there came a whimpering. Then scratching where the warped boards met the packed dirt. She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the rough wood. There was nothing left to do but let him go.
AUGUST 2, 1936
By the first light of morning the rain had stopped. When the sun rose it twinkled on the surface of the water standing everywhere like thousands of eyes coming open. It was dawn of the third day, but Rusty had come down the mountain when it was still dark. For a long time he had been pent up, lying shivering on the packed earth. Nosing at blankets that still held the scent of other dogs, faint but present enough to vex him. He had been left a pone of burnt bread but he wouldn’t eat or drink. Whenever he heard movement he had barked to be let out. He had paced and scratched but nobody came. When the shed door opened at last he wasted no time. As lonely as he’d been he didn’t greet the one who turned him loose. He ran down the ridges on his way back home. But when he came to the woods behind the Walker farm he slowed down. He could tell Gracie had been there. So had others with blood like hers, left in flecks on the ferns and briars. He was sidetracked by the blackbirds that had reemerged after the storm to forage, rustling in multitudes as if the dark lake had already come to fill the woods. After he flushed them away he went on looking for Gracie with his nose to the ground. He missed her. She fed him biscuits and clover and sometimes sticks. She let him lick her eyes and mouth. She rolled with him on the ground. She tried to ride on his back. They knew each other’s smells and tastes and sounds.
In the night his keen ears had heard, apart from the rain, a distant crying. It might have been the gobble of wild turkeys or the chitter of weasels but it might have been otherwise. He went on through the pines with his broad head lowered, moving toward the source of the sound.
In a dream she heard Rusty whining and digging, crumbs of red clay sifting down on her eyes. She couldn’t open them anymore. There were pictures in her hurting head of the dog and the woman going into the pines where she couldn’t see them. She had waited near the apple tree, hanging back because she knew she shouldn’t follow. She thought the woman might scold her. But she wanted to see what they were doing in the woods. Spore caps of moss sprouted on rotten log backs with dotted tips like swarms of green gnats. Pokeberry shed its poisonous seeds like polished black beads. She looked up and tried to make out the high tops of the trees shifting in the wind, their slender trunks and leafy branches moving in a circular motion like dancing. They were too tall, swaying back and forth, creaking in a secretive way that almost scared her. They made her feel like she was up there clinging to their tips. One of the trees had fallen near the foot of the mountain. She had seen it with her mama. She wanted to climb on it like before but she couldn’t without help. She squatted and picked at the bark, skinned in places to reveal the lighter meat of the beech’s insides. Some of the tree’s limbs had broken in the fall, making splinters. There were crumbled chunks of shale and limestone washed white from the rain scattered all around. Gracie picked some up and dropped them in the pockets sewn onto her flour sack dress.