Come Along
Robert Bixby

Jim Crystal lost my father’s hunting rifle, or maybe he broke it, or maybe he just wanted to keep it so he said he broke it, then he said he never borrowed it. The gun cost over a hundred dollars—about what my father earned for a blasting job—at the gun shop in Mecosta. With the county practically clear of stumps and boulders, work was scarce. We were nearly to the point of working the farm. It had been idle since my grandfather’s day.

One night, my father saw Jim Crystal’s dog with the pack that gathered on the back forty, howling at the wind and chasing quail. From that moment, the howling became a public nuisance. And, he pointed out to my mother, the dogs brought down sheep and cattle, and ran mares till they miscarried. They were a threat to lives and property.

Our dog was tied up then, for the first time. He lay in the snow at the end of his rope mournful and apologetic.

After chores, I glimpsed my father hiking back across the hill. When he heard my boots breaking the snow, he stopped to wait for me. He had a plastic bag over his shoulder. Something dark dripped into the snow.

We listened to the dogs yelping. The new detonator stood in the snow. “Can you make out a dark spot on that hillside?” I saw a shape against the snow. It was dark. Everything had turned blue and black. “You take this bag and dump it out with the rest.” I went down the hill under its weight, followed the wires up to the dark spot and dumped the bag. Entrails and organs. The dark spot was the hooves and head of a doe. He’d been dressing her out. The blood was thick, sticky as gum.

When I got back, he waved me down. “Lay low. But watch that spot. My eyes aren’t so good.” I closed my coat and dropped on the snow, staring at the spot. The hunch-shouldered shadow of Jim Crystal’s brindle hound snuffled toward the pile, puzzled by the mixed smells of blood and TNT.

Another dog approached. They fought and snarled over the meat, circling and biting. A third and fourth came, rail thin and hungry. The first two defended the mound. More shadows appeared from behind the hill.

“Wait,” I whispered, flattening myself, plugging my ears. “Just a couple seconds.”

ISBN 1-882983-99-8
237 pages $20