Daniel’s a head taller than me, and he refuses to wear a shirt if he’s got the slightest excuse. Always showing off those new muscles of his, especially when they’re glistening with sweat. He’s carrying his BB gun and a wooden bench. We had been pitching a slimy ball for Rufus, and it’d gotten pretty old, so I said, “How ’bout some plinking?”
Rufus moaned when I said it, gave me the evil eye. Rufus understands everything we say. He’s a strange one, that dog, if that’s even what he is. I mean, he’s a dog all right. Definitely a dog. But something else too. He’s always staring at you like he sees everything you’re hiding. If he sniffs out you’re sad, he’ll climb into your lap and lay his big old head on your shoulder. He’ll make this whimpering sound in his throat like he’s doing the crying for you.
But right now, he’s pissed, and while he doesn’t hate guns enough to just up and leave—I mean, we aren’t forcing him to stay—he wants it known he doesn’t approve. He keeps nudging Daniel’s gun with his nose, giving off a low growl like he’s warning that gun it better watch itself. Finally Daniel yells at him to stop, and he drops to the ground sulking, plops that anvil head onto his paws with a sigh.
I’m coming across the field with my own BB gun and a paper bag of cans. Rufus jumps up, runs to me, and sticks his head in the bag, rooting around, tearing it a little. He probably smells tuna, but the cans are all empty, and he gives me another hateful look. I’m definitely on his shit list today. Daniel sets his gun down and goes to the back of the lot. I put mine next to his and take the cans to where he’s setting up. I start lining the targets on the bench, but Daniel follows behind, knocking them off faster than I can get them in place.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I say.
And he says, “Whatever the fuck I want. You gonna do something about it?”
I’m supposed to take a swing at him now, and he’s supposed to grab my arm and pull me to the ground, and we’ll roll around awhile, his body hot and sticky against mine in that summer heat. And so I play my part and he plays his. Only this time, when I make to get up, he keeps me pinned to the ground, his full weight on me, our faces close.
“Get off me, you fucker,” I say.
He’s got forty pounds of muscle on me, and if he wants me pinned there, that’s where I’ll be. He doesn’t say anything but grinds his hips into me a little, and the look on his face is some concoction of malice and gloat and giddy dominance. There’s something else there too, a sort of violent tenderness, and for a second I think he’s going to kiss me, stick his tongue down my throat. I try bucking him off, but I’m getting nowhere when Rufus piles on like this is a fun new game, and that gets Daniel laughing, and I start laughing too and we all scramble to standing, set up the cans, and go back to our weapons as if this were all part of the fun.
Daniel and I are both decent shots, and we make those cans leap. Rufus shakes his head, walks halfway back to the house and lies down, keeps an eye on us from there. After a while, we grow wild, laughing and taking random shots at trees and distant birds, as if all the animals and plants of the world are targets we can make jump at our command. Long shadows cross the field, and the wind picks up, the dead grass in motion. Daniel lays down his gun and leans against the old oak, the one with the rotting clubhouse in its branches. I’m about to join him when an animal darts in the shadows near the bench.
“Rabbit!” I draw my gun and shoot. The shadow within the shadow stops.
Rufus leaps up and tears across the field. “Get it, Rufus!” I yell. “Get it, boy! Bring that sad little bunny over here.”
Rufus finds the animal easily enough, but he doesn’t carry it back. He tears into it, then shakes it like he’s trying to pop apart its bones. The rabbit doesn’t look quite right, like maybe it has a long tail. Before I can move, Daniel is halfway across the field shouting at Rufus. “Leave it! Leave it!” When he doesn’t, Daniel hauls off and kicks the dog hard in the ribs, yells, “Bad boy! Bad boy!” Rufus yelps and drops the prey, slinking away, his thin tail limp.
When I get there, Daniel is kneeling next to the thing with the shredded throat. He reaches over and turns the collar so we can read the tag. “Jingles,” he says. It’s the Wileys’ gray cat.
I see myself in that field now, crazed, hopping up and down, flicking my hands as if wet with what I’d done. “Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Every part of me is shaking, and from this distance it’s hard to remember why I freaked out like that. Must have been about my dad. He was always teetering on some kind of brink, and his son killing a neighbor’s cat might be the thing that would send him flying.
“Calm down. You didn’t kill the cat,” Daniel says. “You stunned the sucker. Messed it up some. But you didn’t kill it. Rufus killed it.”
I could kiss him for saying that. We both look around for Rufus. Daniel spots him hiding in the bushes by the house, his rear hanging out. Daniel stands, pissed, and I know he’s planning on kicking the dog’s ass some more.
“No!” I say. Something about defending the dog makes me calmer. I’m not shaking now. “I shot it. I told him to get it. He was just doing what dogs do.”
“You didn’t tell him to kill it,” Daniel says, but he doesn’t sound so angry anymore.
“Might as well have.”
We squat back down, watching the cat, like its throat might miraculously heal, like it might rouse and lumber off. Finally Daniel says, “I’ll get a shovel.”
I stay with the dead thing and watch the muscles of Daniel’s back on his way to the shed, his skin still bare despite the breeze and afternoon shadows. Rufus is nowhere to be seen, not even his butt.
When Daniel returns, he hands me the shovel, lies back on the ground, and stares at the sky unblinking. I hack at the hard earth, digging the animal’s grave. My arms tire, lose their muscular control, but I don’t stop. I keep hacking, that shovel’s edge plunging into the dirt again and again.
13
As the girl showered, I purified the kitchen. That’s the word that came to me: “purify.” The filth and decay that had comforted me a few hours before suddenly seemed a form of sacrilege. And though “sacrilege” is a strong word for something as common as unwashed dishes, the girl carried with her, despite her own filth and dishevelment, a light that flashed about the room, that revealed the grimy counters and foul sink for what they were: a refusal. I couldn’t say what was being refused, only that something had been offered, was still being offered, and was being wrongly rebuffed.
I gathered foul-smelling dishrags and overflowing trash, papers and junk mail, empty yogurt containers and aluminum cans then ventured into the dark again and again, rain pelting as I made my way to the garbage and recycle bins. Back in the kitchen, I piled slime-covered dishes on the counter, refilled the sink, and got to work. When every dish was dried and put away, I polished the old counters and mopped the sticky floor.
I kept thinking of the girl, how she too had wanted cleansing, had gone to the sink to plunge in her filthy hands, couldn’t wait to take a shower. She’d stood in the guest room, uneasy and shifting, as if she believed herself too foul for the house. Whatever she’d been doing these past weeks or months, she was trying to clear herself of it.