Blue Willow by Deborah Smith

neighborhoods. There were more and more cars on the main streets, and they went too fast, but Mama said those cars were driven by fools, not local folks.
    “Here you go,” she told Sassy, scattering the round chunks on the sidewalk. Sassy went over to them and neatly swallowed each one. A few had rolled off the curb. She ambled into the street and began picking them from the gutter, her yellow tail wagging contentedly.
    The car’s engine became a powerful rumble. The vehicle had turned onto Aunt Maude’s street.
    Lily propped her elbows on her knees and idly watched Sassy roll the last piece of dog food out of the gutter with her nose and catch it on her tongue. Suddenly the car swooped by. The front bumper caught Sassy in theside and tossed her. Sassy gave a high-pitched yelp, like a scream.
    Lily leaped to her feet, staring in openmouthed horror as Sassy landed in a heap in the road. The car angled around her and slid to a stop. It was a big red mirror-shiny car with dark windows. Lily ran to Sassy, who raised her head and tried to drag herself with her front legs.
    Falling to her knees beside her, Lily stroked her muzzle and called her name. She heard the car’s door open. “You oughta keep your dog out of the road!” a man yelled. Lily looked over at him. He had on a red coat with a patch sewn over the breast pocket. She knew what he was, then, because Daddy had pointed out people like him lots of times. He was a real-estate man with one of the big Atlanta companies, the ones Aunt Maude and Daddy blamed for coming up here and making the land cost more because they sold it to rich people, the kind who came into the grocery store asking for some kind of French water in bottles.
    “Your dog shouldn’t have been in the road,” the man said again, with a nasty look on his face. “It’s not my fault I hit the thing.”
    “She’s not a thing, she’s Sassy. ” Lily yelled. “And you’re a damned reeler-state agent!”
    He snorted and got back in his car, slamming the door. Lily looked around furiously, grabbed a rock from the gutter, vaulted to her feet, and threw it with an aim much respected in MacKenzie’s girls’ softball league.
    It struck the passenger door on her side of the car. The man bolted out and began yelling at her. Sassy writhed and whimpered on the pavement. Lily got another rock and hurled it. It caught the man on one cheek.
    Aunt Maude and the sisters came running out of the house. “This goddamned brat almost put my eye out!” the man bellowed. Lily sat down in the road and, her hands shaking, cuddled Sassy’s head. It felt heavy and limp. Sassy’s eyes looked empty. Looking into them was like staring into a windowpane and seeing only yourself. She wasn’t moving anymore. Her bad ear, the one the bobcat hadchewed on, hung the way the flag at school did when there wasn’t any wind.
    Aunt Maude clamped a hand on Lily’s shoulder. “What happened?”
    “He hit Sassy. And then he said it was her fault, for being in the street. He called her a thing. ”
    “This wild little white-trash kid ought to be in a cage!” the man said, jabbing a finger at Lily.
    Big Sis hawked a stream of tobacco juice on the car’s hood. Little Sis bolted over to the car, grabbed the radio antenna, and bent it double. Aunt Maude advanced around the car with a deadly look on her face. “You get your fat, red-coated, piss-headed self into that car before I call the sheriff,” she said. “Because he’s a cousin of mine, and he doesn’t think much of shit-birds like you.”
    “You’re all crazy, you hillbilly bitches!”
    Little Sis lifted a foot clad in hard platform shoes and began kicking dents in the shiny front fender. “Your karma is bad,” she said, still kicking. Big Sis opened the passenger door and spit onto the seat.
    “The longer you stay,” Aunt Maude said evenly, “the more hell you’ll catch.”
    The man clamped his mouth shut, got into his car, and roared away.
    The street was