Other dogs, they pack together to stay warm. The dogs that survive. The pack runs down rabbits and mule deer. Come winter, the farm dogs hear the packs howling over a fresh kill down in the trees along the river at night, and the farm dogs take off.
A pet dog hears that howl, and, no matter how much you call, even the nicest dog forgets his name. Except for their howling, all winter, they're as gone as dead. Snow starts to fall and your pet dog, your best friend, is nothing but the wolf-man sound of far-off howling in the dark. Sound carries forever when the air turns cold.
Wintertime, a kid's worst nightmare was walking home after dark and hearing a dog pack, all that howling and snapping, coming closer and louder in the dark. Something with a zillion teeth and claws. Folks come across a mule deer caught by a pack, and the skull might be the biggest chunk left. The rest of any hide or skeleton you'd find in bites, tugged apart by teeth and scattered all over. With a rabbit, you might find one little foot in a mess of fur, spread everywhere. Blood everywhere. The rabbit's foot, with a little wet, soft fur, just like folks carry for luck.
The Caseys' dog, it ran with the packs every winter up until it disappeared. Used to jump on the sofa, look out the windows at night, ears up to listen, when the packs were roaming. Hunting. Those packs, more rumor than anything real you ever saw. Half legend. The only monster we have hereabouts. More than half. The idea those dogs, maybe even your own dogs, would go crazy and hunt you. Your own dogs might track you home after school. Trail you through the brush alongside the road. Stalk you. Your own dog would run you down and yank you apart, bite by bite. No matter how much you might call out «Fido» or tell him "Stay," tell him, "Sit!" the dog you housetrained from a pup, spanked with a newspaper, that dog will snap his teeth together on your windpipe and rip out your throat. Fido would howl over your dying and drink the blood still pumping hot out of your own loving heart.
Sheriff Bacon Carlyle (Childhood Enemy): Don't ask me to feel sorry for him. Even in grade school, Rant Casey was begging to get killed some terrible way. Snakes or rabies. The Caseys, their dog, they named it "Fetch." Some sort of half-hound, half-beagle, half-Rottweiler, half—bull terrier, half-everything mongrel. That's the name Chester Casey gived the dog: Fetch.
Edna Perry (Childhood Neighbor): If you'd care to know, the three of them Caseys called each other by different names. Irene Casey called her husband "Chet." He called her "Reen," short for "Irene," and only to her face. Nobody else called Irene Casey that. Rant called Chester "Dad." Irene called her son "Buddy," but his father called him "Buster." Never "Rant." Only Bodie Carlyle called him Rant.
History is, Rant called Bodie "Toad." No lie.
Everyone gave a different name to everyone else. Buster was Rant was Buddy. Chester was Chet was Dad. Irene was Mom was Reen. How folks lay claim to a loved one is they give you a name of their own. They figure to label you as their property.
Sheriff Bacon Carlyle: Same as dumping a dog, the worst thing a man can do is turn himself loose.
Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): Listen up. Rant would tell people: "You're a different human being to everybody you meet."
Sometimes Rant said, "You only ever is in the eyes of other folks."
If you were going to carve a quote on his grave, his favorite saying was: "The future you have tomorrow won't be the same future you had yesterday."
Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): That's bullshit. Rant's favorite saying was: "Some people are just born human. The rest of us, we take a lifetime to get there."
Bodie Carlyle: I remember Rant used-to saying, "We won't never be as young as we is tonight."
Irene Casey (Rant's Mother): Used to be, Buddy walked with his Grandma Esther to church on Sundays. Good weather, Chet and I would drive Buddy to Esther's place and drop him off. Little Buddy made it a habit, seeing how she didn't have nobody to walk in with. She only lived a glance down the road from Middleton Christian. An old lady in her little church hat, and a little boy wearing a clip-on bow tie, holding hands and walking along a dirt road, they made a picture to touch your heart.
One Sunday, we're through the opening hymn, through the first Gospel reading, and halfway into the sermon, but Buddy and Esther still ain't arrived at the church. We're passing the basket for the collection offering, and the church door busts open. A pounding comes up the steps outside, pounds across the church porch boards, and the big door swings open so hard the inside knob punches a hole in the vestibule wall. With all the heads turning, craning to look, little Buddy stumbles inside, panting. Leaning forward with a hand braced on each knee, the door still open behind him and sunlight bright around him, Buddy's panting, his hair hanging over his eyes, trying to get his breath. No bow tie. His white shirt tails hanging out.
The Reverend Curtis Dean Fields says, "Would you kindly close the door."
And Buddy gasps and says, "She's bit."
He catches enough breath to say, "Grandma Esther. She's sick, bad."
Being cold weather, I figure a dog pack, could be a dog bit her. Wild dogs.
Sheriff Bacon Carlyle: Don't hate me for saying, but no Casey never paid to fix that hole Rant punched with the doorknob in the church wall. Even accepting he done it by accident.
Irene Casey: Buddy says a spider done bit Esther. From the look of it, a black widow spider. Buddy and his grandma was walking, halfway done, and she stopped, stood still, dropped his hand. Esther shouts, "Lord!" and uses both hands to rip the hat off her head, the pins pulling out ribbons of her gray hair. A sound, Buddy says, same as tearing newspaper in half. Her black church hat, round and black, about the size of a bath-powder box. One swing of her hand pitches that hat at the dirt ground. Both Esther's church shoes stomp that black satin in the dust. Her black shoes, gray with the dust. Dust stomped up in a cloud around her black coat. Her purse swings in her other hand, and she waves Buddy back, saying, "Don't you touch it."
Still pinned to the hat, tore out at the roots, thick hanks of Esther's gray hair.
With one church shoe, Esther toe-kicks the hat over, and the two of them squat down to look.
Mixed up in the dust and gravel, the mashed-up veil, and the crumpled satin, just barely bending one leg, flexing one leg, is a spider. A dusty black spider with a red hourglass on its belly.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (Historian): Cousin to the shoe-button spider of South Africa, of the genus Latrodectus of the comb-footed spider family, the black widow nests in isolated places such as unused clothing or outdoor latrines. Until indoor plumbing became prevalent, bites from the black widow were most commonly inflicted on the buttocks or genitals of the victim. More recently, the spider is more likely to bite when trapped between clothing and the victim's skin—for example, when a spider nests in a seldom-worn shoe or glove.
Irene Casey: Granny Esther touches the top of her hair, two fingertips feeling between the strands of her hair, stepping the curls one way, then the other, until she touches a spot that makes her mouth drop open and her eyes clamp shut. When she opens them, Buddy says, his grandma's eyes, they're blinking with tears.