Last Days of the Dog-Men by Brad Watson Page B

rabbit.”
    â€œOkay.”
    We gave it to Mary. She trotted back into the livingroom and lay down in front of the fire with the rabbit under her front paws and began to eat it almost delicately, sniffing it and licking it as if it were her pup and she were eating it almost lovingly in maternal wonder. But when she began to crunch on the bones we sent her outside.
    W E GOT UP LATE, WALKED THE FIELDS THE NEXT DAY. O N the evening before we left I went out by myself to walk the fencelines in the fields behind the house. Dusk settled in. I had the little rabbit’s foot in my pocket. The drizzling rain had stopped and things were very quiet. I walked down a narrow corridor made by a row of young pines set out from the edge of a thicket. I could hardly see, with dark advancing, but I spooked a single dove from one of the pines and as he flew away down the corridor against the darkening sky, I took a shot. It must have been low, confusing him, because he turned in a sort of abrupt Immelmann and headed straight back down the corridor at me. I leveled the gun and shot, but missed again—I forgot to aim high—and he darted out of the corridor and across the field.
    I could hear the last shot echo over field after field, and then a great silence. A strange ecstasy sang in my veins like a drug. I raised the gun and fired the last shell into the air, the flame from the barrel against the darkening sky, and the chamber locked open, empty. Then silence. Not even a sifting of wind in the leaves. Not a single wheezy note from a blackbird, or any other kind of bird. I wanted the moment to last forever.

BILL
    W ILHELMINA, EIGHTY-SEVEN, LIVED ALONE IN THE same town as her two children, but she rarely saw them. Her main companion was a trembling poodle she’d had for about fifteen years, named Bill. You never hear of dogs named Bill. Her husband in his decline had bought him, named him after a boy he’d known in the Great War, and then wouldn’t have anything to do with him. He’d always been Wilhelmina’s dog. She could talk to Bill in a way that she couldn’t talk to anyone else, not even her own children.
    Not even her husband, now nearly a vegetable out at King’s Daughters’ Rest Home on the old highway.
    She rose in the blue candlelight morning to go see him about the dog, who was doing poorly. She was afraid of being completely alone.
    There were her children and their children, andeven some great-grandchildren, but that was neither here nor there for Wilhelmina. They were all in different worlds.
    She drove her immaculate ocean-blue Delta 88 out to the home and turned up the long, barren drive. The tall naked trunks of a few old pines lined the way, their sparse tops distant as clouds. Wilhelmina pulled into the parking lot and took two spaces so she’d have plenty of room to back out when she left. She paused for a moment to check herself in the rearview mirror, and adjusted the broad-brimmed hat she wore to hide the thinning spot on top of her head.
    Her husband, Howard, lay propped up and twisted in his old velour robe, his mouth open, watching TV. His thick white hair stood in a matted knot on his head like a child’s.
    â€œWhat?” he said when she walked in. “What did you say?”
    â€œI said, ‘Hello!’ Wilhelmina replied, though she’d said nothing.
    She sat down.
    â€œI came to tell you about Bill, Howard. He’s almost completely blind now and he can’t go to the bathroom properly. The veterinarian says he’s in pain and he’s not going to get better and I should put him to sleep.”
    Her husband had tears in his eyes.
    â€œPoor old Bill,” he said.
    â€œI know,” Wilhelmina said, welling up herself now. “I’ll miss him so.”
    â€œI loved him at Belleau Wood! He was all bloody and walking around,” Howard said. “They shot off his nose in the Meuse-Argonne.” He picked up the remotebox