Down River by John Hart Page A

mother, only that the light had died out of her. She’d always been warm and fun, a friend on the long days that my father worked the land. We played games, told stories. Laughed all the time. Then something changed. She went dark. I’d lost count of the times I’d heard her crying, and was scared by the many times that my words to her had fallen into a blank-eyed silence. She’d wasted down to nothing, her skin stretched tight, and I feared that one day I might see her bones if she passed before an undraped window.

It was scary stuff, and I knew what none of it meant.

I entered the quiet house, smelled the coffee my mother liked. I poured a cup, and was careful on the stairs. I spilled none of it.

Until I opened her door.

The gun was already against her temple, her face hopeless and white above the pale pink robe she wore.

She pulled the trigger as the door swung wide.

My father and I never talked about it. We buried the woman we loved, and it was like I’d always known: death and blood was part of what it took to go from boy to man.

I killed a lot of deer after that.
     
     
     

CHAPTER 10
     
     
       I found Dolf on the porch, rolling a cigarette. “Morning,” I said, and stood against the rail, watching his deft and busy fingers. He studied me as he licked the paper and ran the cigarette between his fingers one last time. He took a match from his shirt pocket, struck it with a thumbnail. His eyes settled on the pistol still tucked under my belt. He blew out the match.
    “That mine?” he asked.
    I pulled out the pistol and set it on the table. The sweet tobacco smell surrounded me as I bent, and his face looked etched in the sharp light. “Sorry,” I said.
    He picked up the gun and sniffed the barrel; then he laid it back down. “No harm done.” He leaned back in the chair and it creaked beneath him. “Five years is a long time,” he said casually.
    “Yep.”
    “Guess you came home for a reason. Want to tell me about it?”
    “No.”
    “Maybe I can help you.”
    It was a good offer. He meant it. “Not this time, Dolf.”
    He gestured downriver. “I smelled the fire. Thought maybe I could see the glow, too.”
    He wanted to talk about it, wanted to know, and I didn’t blame him.
    “Sound travels down the river.” He took a drag. “I can smell the smoke on you.”
    I sat in the rocker next to his and put my feet up on the rail. I looked once again at the gun and then at Dolf’s coffee cup. I thought of my mother and of the white deer.
    “Somebody’s hunting the property,” I said.
    He rocked slowly. “It’s your father.”
    “He’s hunting again? I thought that he’d sworn it off.”
    “Sort of.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “There’s a pack of wild dogs hanging around. They showed up after the first of the cattle was shot. They smell blood from miles off. Find the carcasses at night. They’ve got a taste for it now. We can’t seem to drive them off. Your father is determined to kill every last one of them. It’s his new religion.”
    “I thought that cattle had been shot at only once.”
    “That’s all we reported to the sheriff. It’s more like seven or eight times now.”
    “What kind of dogs?” I asked.
    “Hell, I don’t know. Big ones. Little ones. Dirty, skulking bastards. They’re all mean as hell. But the leader—damn—now he’s something else. Looks like a cross between a German shepherd and a Doberman. Hundred pounds, maybe. Black. Fast. Smart as hell. Doesn’t matter where your father comes from, how quiet he is, that black one always sees him first. Fades away. Your old man can’t get a shot. Says that dog’s the devil himself.”
    “How many in the pack?”
    “Maybe a dozen at first. Your old man killed two or three. It’s down to five or six now.”
    “Who killed the others?”
    “That black one, I think. We found ’em with their throats torn out. All males. Rivals, I guess.”
    “Jesus.”
    “Yep.”
    “Why aren’t you reporting the