by Susan Isaak Lolis
The splintered porch steps were mired in mud. He walked outside, around the small shotgun house and looked through the window. His reflection stared back. His lips, a downward slash. The match was in his hand, a red ember. There were things in there that burned his heart. Photographs that lined the walls, his guitar, the piano, a carcass. Dead animals splayed on the snow-crusted wood pile. A breeze flowed through him, and he stood at the doorway. The yard was empty. He remembered when laundry flapped in the breeze, and she took care of him and their son.
He trudged past the shed and walked to the dog pin. Two of his old hound dogs were there shivering in the dog houses. Their fur slick with oil and mud. He would have to shoot them, he thought. They were just taking up space. He knew he couldn’t supply them with enough food for the winter. He knew he didn’t have a warm place for them to stay. He should invite them into the shack, let them take over the small room that had been his wife’s room. The dogs were shells of their former selves, though. He knew that. He knew they knew that about themselves. Their hunting days were over. He imagined that their bones ached.
The fire had burned in the night. Ashes and cinder in the grate. The photograph of his wife still lay on the bureau. She left him. That warmth, that lightness she had around her that created a lemony sunlight was gone. In its place was a coating of dirt; the varnished wood of the staircase was gray with dust. The small house smelled of curdled milk, stained laundry, cigarette smoke.
They had been married two years before the trouble started. Her old boyfriends calling her at odd hours. He wanted her to forget her past. That nothing existed for her except for him. The lemon chiffon nightgown she used to wear on Saturday mornings came to his mind, when they would just stay in bed or have a morning coffee before the day would start. He threw back a shot and shook his head.
He’d tend to the fire later and looked out the window. The watery sun over the Ocmulgee River barely rose from the dark soft waves. He thought it would be good to pick up the pup from the farmhouse over the next hill. As soon as he opened the door, the cold air hit him in the face, burrowed down into his lungs until it hurt for him to breathe. It felt like his lungs were freezing, coated with ice. He remembered days when his ribs ached after a fall in the river, a jarring noise clicked in his memory. That pup was promised to him. It would be a better hunter than those other hound dogs ever were, even in their prime.
The motor sputtered, but he got it to start. The dogs’ ears barely perked up when he sailed across the icy road. He had to hit against the dashboard to get the radio to play. He remembered those days his breath had filled the cab. He drove past near the water’s edge. The pine trees were a smudge in the windows. He liked to imagine that his wife with her cinnamon hair and long black eyelashes was sitting next to him.
Maybe he wouldn’t kill those hunting dogs out there. Nah. Not today anyhow. The crunch of the snow beneath his boots was a satisfying rasp. He couldn’t bring himself to take those dogs out of their misery. They were basically dead, of no use to anyone. He suddenly had to piss and trudged outside to the edge of the shack. Lace curtains grayish yellow tattered in the smudged window.
Every day it seemed to snow; the sliver of moon hung in the sky like a strike of lightning. He’d already dug the double graves. His wife used to cling to him in the mornings before he hunted, when those dogs would be on point. That lemon silkiness was really the only thing he remembered of her.
The hounds hide when he opens the farmhouse door. It’s like they know and find just enough spirit to save themselves. They run. He catches sight of the lemon curtains before the match splinters and flames take hold. And they run.