Lonesome Animals by Bruce Holbert Page A

on, then,” Hayes shouted. The man whistled and five dogs each weighing nearly as much as Strawl himself broke the
brush from four separate directions. Strawl allowed five minutes more for any stragglers, then hiked from his ridge to the knob that held Hayes’s cabin.
    Hayes sat on the porch with a broken pocketknife, digging Strawl’s bullets from the step. The first lay next to him, a spattering of lead.
    Strawl was surprised to see his face shaved clean as if a barber had serviced him and his now grey hair cut in a style that, if not fashionable, was at least a manageable length. His face held the furrows anyone’s would after twenty years’ passing. Only in his eyes were things amiss; the blue irises were too light, emptied of one thing and filled with another. He squinted at Strawl as if Strawl were a long way off.
    â€œHow are you, Rutherford?” Strawl asked.
    â€œI am,” Hayes told him. “I am that name.”
    â€œRutherford,” Strawl said. “I know you from a long time back. You don’t need to introduce yourself.”
    â€œYou let me keep here,” Hayes said. “They wanted to run me off.” The man’s voice started soft then turned loud, then quieted again, like he was trying to come to the right volume to speak to another.
    Strawl said, “I put you in the penitentiary, too, you recall.”
    Hayes looked at him for a long time, too long, though Strawl garnered nothing rude about his stare.
    â€œI needed jailing,” he said.
    The dogs scratched and whimpered at the door.
    â€œYou care if I let them go?”
    â€œI got no quarrel if they don’t try and tree me.”
    Hayes laughed. “They’ll just figure you’re one of them or one of me. They don’t know much difference.” He gave Strawl a handful of jerked deer. When they boiled out the door, Strawl offered each the treat; they did not scrap or fuss or wolf their food like town
dogs; in fact, they waited turns until each had a stick of meat. Strawl patted one and the others whimpered so he gave them each their share of affection.
    â€œSeems like good company,” Strawl said.
    â€œSafe,” Hayes said.
    â€œSafer than people, you mean,” Strawl asked him.
    It took him ten minutes to collect his thoughts, but Strawl figured he had no need for haste in this place and plenty of time for philosophy.
    â€œOther way around,” Hayes said. “They ain’t people. It makes them safe from me.”
    â€œPeople can be trying,” Strawl agreed.
    Hayes shook his head. “I need things plain. It makes me dangerous company.” He scratched at a mole under his chin. “Dogs. They’re easier to figure, and don’t squawk if you guess wrong.” Hayes nodded at Stick, who nosed the pine needles under the tree where he was tied. “I miss horses,” he said. “I had a ken for them as a boy.”
    â€œCome in handy up here,” Strawl said. “I’m surprised you didn’t add one to your menagerie.”
    Hayes lifted the spent bullet with his fingers. Strawl watched them shift it in the palm opposite. It balanced there a moment until he shut his fingers over it. “Too easy to travel down there. I might get to liking it,” he said. “Or not liking it. Neither one I’m suited to.”
    Strawl sat and tugged his makings from his trouser pocket. He turned a cigarette and offered it to Hayes, then built another for himself. Hayes drew softly, he coughed, then drew again and let the smoke out, then after considering a full minute, threw the remains of it into the dirt and let it smolder.
    Strawl pulled from his own smoke and exhaled. “It’s a tedious vice,” Strawl said. “You’re better off.”

    Hayes said nothing for an hour. The silence was at first clumsy, then plain, then pleasant. Strawl gazed over the hard-packed yard, watching the dogs wrestle, then hunt the