The Dog Stars

by Peter Heller

Goddamn, Hig. Old man and a scrawny girl got you all in a bundle. So far you got more firepower on your right hip than he’s got by a factor of ten.

  Yeah but what if there’s more of them? Or if he’s got more than the shotgun?

  You see any sign of more? Stools in the yard, clothes hanging, bedding, old shoes?

  Huh.

  Good you’re thinking like that, Hig, can’t take that away. Ticking off the exigencies. Hig is an old dog but he learns shit little by little. But you gotta look at the intel staring you in the face. I’m not saying there aren’t three more guys with weapons hidden in the trees. Good to plan for that, too. But you gotta act on what you believe. Plus you also got the rifle, you got the grenades. You got the grenades, right?

  Yeah, two.

  Hig?

  Yeah?

  What are you doing here?

  Silence.

  I mean what do you want? What the fuck do you want?

  Silence.

  You can’t form a plan unless you got a mission. You can’t have a mission if you don’t know what the fuck you want. First rule. Have a clear mission, have an exit strategy.

  I thought the first rule was Never Negotiate. Negotiate, Hig, and you are negotiating your own life …

  That’s the first principle. Anyway what the fuck does it matter? You got a bigger problem to solve first. Which is: What the fuck, Hig, do you hope to accomplish?

  The canyon darkened and I shivered. A cloud, a swollen cumulus tugged its shadow across the cut. Bearing away the last chill of a long winter. The shadow smelled like ponderosas. It passed over and the sun on the arms of my jacket smoothed out the goosebumps. It was comfortable snugged like this in the rocks. I could hear the buzz of a deerfly but it didn’t bother me. In the moment I realized I could lay my head on my suntoasted arms and go to sleep no problem. My nose was inches from the ground. I watched an ant climb the stem of a small purple aster. Smelled good here. Like flinty dirt and new grass, mesquite.

  Hig!

  Uh, yeah. What?

  Focus, goddammit. Get your dick outta your hand. Every minute you are lying out here not knowing what the fuck you are up to, you are vulnerable. So is the plane. Whoever was down there may be working their way to the rim to scout your sorry ass. Planning right now how to neutralize the threat that is Hig. What we would be doing and fast. Stead of just lying down there vulnerable, exposed, the way you are doing right now.

  Huh.

  Fuck. Hadn’t thought of that. I blew out, nearly whistled. What is up with you? Are you completely out of it? Have you so totally lost your edge?

  Did you ever have an edge?

  Hig!

  Uh what?

  Know why you are sleepy? Why suddenly you could just stretch out and snooze til sundown?

  Why?

  Because you don’t know what the fuck to do! I don’t mean you wouldn’t know what to do if you had a purpose. I’ve seen you, Hig. When you have a purpose like getting away from nine marauding motherfuckers and dusting their ass you’re pretty goddamn good. Hig on wheels. But you don’t have a clue what you’re doing here. You’re acting like a goddamn lost puppy. One look at a tall girl who maybe doesn’t have the sickness and you’re goddamn gaga.

  That’s not it.

  Why’d you risk the plane then? I saw that little maneuver. Pretty fucking dicey. Risk everything for a closer look at a crack. What if she hates men? Ever think of that?

  Bad enough to risk it all for Something Known is what you’re saying.

  Then I thought: We’re more likely to risk it all for something unknown. For some perverse reason.

  I told you, Hig: Get all philosophical in a tactical situation and you’re toast.

  Toast.

  That sounded good. Two pieces of lightly browned toast with butter and jam. Hadn’t had butter in nine years hadn’t had milk. I bet those cows gave sweet warm milk every day. One or two. I shifted the scope down into the meadow to scan for a swollen udder and I saw them. Pure dumb luck. He must have had at least two guns, which made sense to have a hunting rifle as well as a shotgun, because this was the flashing glint off his scope. A bare instant. Enough to let me place him in a thicket of cattails, at the edge of the creek, on the meadow side, away from the house. A large sandstone block about the size of a car had tumbled there and he was hard against it. Right where I would’ve sat. Same basic strategy as we used at the airport: the house would be the draw. He sat where he, or they, could sight the open ground between the creek and the little stone house. All of that within shotgun range. Could take care of most passing threats with the two shots from the double barrel. And he, they, had the rifle too for long shots, or for after. They. Once I placed him I could just see the barrel of his rifle, darker, straighter than the reeds, and I could see her shift a mass of dark hair. She had the other gun. Shotgun. And he was not looking across the yard he was sighting straight up at me. Fuck.

  The blast blew chips of sandstone from my snug rock all over the right side of my face. I jerked back. The second twanged in air just over my head. Fuck.

  Blinked. Stone dust in my eyes. Right side of my face now stinging too. Hand to temple. No blood this time. Fucking Gramps. That’s twice. Old bastard had my head bracketed. If I wasn’t more goddamn careful the next shot would be dead center.

  I could hear Bangley laughing. As if he were three feet away. Laughing out of the ether, like a not totally benign ghost.

  Pickle, huh Hig? A quandary. All you want to do is make friends and now you might have to shoot somebody. Laughter loud and long.

  Had a point, old Bangley, my tactical superego. The old bastard down below was a wicked good shot. Like professional good, like Bangley. He had nearly taken me out with a shotgun, like the Beast and I were just one big blue winged teal. Pretty good.

  Why was I so giddy? Somehow the pickle I was in made me very glad. I mean, it wasn’t a pickle. I could walk away. But. I had an image of a white rag tied at the end of a stick stuck over the edge of that cliff. Waving it like some Hollywood cliché. No one ever tried that with us back at the airport because A) it was always night, and B) we, mostly Bangley, shot them dead before they knew what was happening. If someone had tried that back there, then what? Never negotiate. Bangley would have gained maximum tactical advantage, called to them, Okay come out in peace and then he would’ve blown their heads off. Good old Bangley.

  Yup, that was going to take some depth of faith and trust and even then it was a flip of a coin, and plus I didn’t have anything white.

  I scrambled back a bit, stood up, stretched. Refreshed almost like I’d had a nap. Then I trotted back to the Beast. I kept a stack of Xerox paper in the back seat pocket and a couple of crayons. Also a few palm sized stones and rubber bands. This so if I needed to drop a note mostly to the families I could. But a couple of times I dropped notes on wanderers camped out on the roads too close to the airport who didn’t seem to understand my catchy NorthSouthEastWest song: Turn back north or die etc. Nor a stick of dynamite. These messages, the ones wrapped around the stones and dropped from the Beast, were very succinct and graphic and they always worked. Power of the pen. I was always very proud of myself when I crafted four lines that got a refractory band of pirates to pack up and scurry back up a road. I picked up half a dozen sheets and a black crayon and gathered up Jasper’s quilt and trotted back across the park.

  I was grinning. I could feel it stretching my smarting cheeks. I hunkered back down by the edge of the canyon and wrote on one sheet vertically as big as it would go: I

  The satisfaction of composing. Remembered that Dylan Thomas sometimes would set down one word of a new poem then walk down to the pub and get shitfaced in celebration. For breaking the void of silence.

  Well. Let’s see how this goes over before I waste any more sheets.

  Crept, wriggled to the edge of the clifftop which for my purposes was auspiciously formed in a real lip, sharp and dropping to a vertical, if not overhanging, face of sandstone. Keeping my
precious splintered head well back, I reached out pushed and shook the quilt off the edge, unfurling it like a flag. Made sure the hunter and the flushing pheasant and the dog were right side up from the bottom’s point of view and made sure my fingers did not go past the lip.

  Most fun I’d had in years except maybe fishing and I think it’s because it was a lot like fishing, except there were people at the other end of this line. Catch and release.

  Soon as the quilt reached air another shot. Creased air right over my hands, head.

  You hear bullets make the sound they always do in Westerns and war stories and guess what? They do. They make a phhhht like someone opening a poisonous can of soda. The Soda of Death. Like a vacuum following itself at the speed of a diving duck. Followed almost simultaneously by a little hum, a musical exclamation point.

  Okay shoot at my quilt if you want. I have needle and thread.

  Then silence. Quizzical. That’s what it felt like.

  Often fishing you can feel right away the spirit of the fish on the other end of the line. That connection. I mean you know right away: is it fierce, scared, experienced, young and dumb, wily, panicked, resigned, confident, mischievous. Any of it in a rapid tugging and zing of line. I often thought of the silence between people in the same way.

  I unfurled the quilt and the shot blasted at nearly the same instant and then silence. A puzzled silence. I grinned. I knew Gramps was scoping the blanket, studying the repeating pattern, thinking, What the fuck? I knew from that distance with his scope he would be able to make out the scene. I scrabbled the ground for two heavy stones and weighted the top of the quilt and let it hang.

  I let him puzzle it out, maybe discuss it. Then I took the paper, stuck it on the point of a four foot broken limb and pushed it over the edge: I. BANG! Swish. Complete miss. Ha! Not going for the paper going for my head, where it would be if I was just a little tiny bit closer.

  Silence. I hung the paper on the stick vertically so he could read it. He could. They were really fucking close. I mean if I wanted to be really mean I could maybe just shove a boulder over the edge. Or spit.

  I pulled the stick back. If I was chuckling it was the first time in maybe nine years. Chuckling—that word. It’s not a word for the End of Times. I unpeeled the paper off the crayon with my teeth and wrote on the second paper again vertically, AM.

  Why didn’t I just shout down there? Well, conversations can get so crosswise so quick. What I’ve found. First time I met Melissa was in a coffee shop and I was too shy to speak so I wooed her with a note. Works. One wrong tone of voice and that’s it. Nah, this was better. Plus the creek was pouring, plus wind, plus there was no way on earth I was going to stick my mouth over that edge.

  Stuck AM on the stick hung it over. Now no shot. Silence. Sonofabitch was getting the hang of it. I AM. Existential enough. Shit, I could stop right there, just let them chew on that a while. Picked up the crayon, wrote NOT. Pulled in my stick, stuck it on. Let that flap in the wind.

  The philosophical implications of going from the penultimate assertion to the last were profound. I mean Hamlet had nothing on this. The unfolding dialectic. Dang.

  Then A. I wrote A covering one whole page stuck it out. A. A. Flap, rustle.

  Then I sharpened the crayon on the rock turned the page sideways and wrote as big as I could fit: PHEASANT.

  Hung it out there. Weighted the stick down with another rock and lay back face to the sun, arms crossed under my poor abused head, and let the warmth cover me and the sun work on the cuts.

  They weren’t going anywhere, neither was I.

  If this were a Western I would now put my hat on a stick. I was wearing a hat. A sweatstained fraybrimmed baseball cap that said Cherry Hills Golf Club. I took it off a visitor one night and I liked it maybe because it carried a message of consolation: the End of Everything meant the End maybe for all time, maybe in all the universe, of Golf.

  I had nothing against golf.

  Anyway there were probably Scotsmen in Scotland who somehow survived the pandemic and after and were now strolling over the heath playing the old game—no irrigation but mist and rain, no lawnmowers but herds of wild sheep. Thwacking their drives into the fog. That was a nice idea.

  Maybe Gramps hated golf. Doubt if he could read lettering that small but if he had say a ten power scope, well, he might. I put it on the stick anyway, for fun, shoved it out there to the edge. Nothing. The old crust wasn’t buying it. He was gonna wait til he saw an eye, an ear. Hmph. Now what? I could just stand up, walk to the edge and shout. Hey! I come in peace! In friendship! And. If they subscribed to the First Principles of Bruce Bangley I was a dead man. Curiously, for the first time it seemed in a while I wasn’t ready to die. Not just this minute. I mean I had more than a casual interest in staying alive. For some reason.

  Okay. I had an idea.

  I walked back to the Beast got another stack of paper. Had all the time in the world: none of us seemed to be going anywhere. Unless they bolted for the tree ladder which they wouldn’t as I could pot them as easy as the German officers in that awful Hemingway vignette that I loved. It was absolutely topping. They tried to get over it, and we potted them from forty yards. They rushed it, and officers came out alone and worked on it. It was an absolutely perfect obstacle. I mean if that’s what I had been here to do.

  I hunkered down by my rock in the sun, well behind it, and wrote out more words. Put them on the stick one after the other and held them over the lip as before. Deep silence while the fish on the other end thought about it.

  I-COULD-BLOW-YOU-TO-SMITHER-EENS-BUT-I-WON’T—PEACE

  Lucky I had half a ream of paper.

  Then I took an Egg of Death out of my pocket pulled the pin which was pretty stiff and tossed it over the edge.

  I threw it well upstream into what in my mind’s eye I saw as the top of the meadow—well away from the cows and the cobwebbed sonofabitch and his girl.

  The explosion was deeply satisfying. Thank you Bangley. I had the other pages ready and while they were still rattled and pinching their limbs to see if they weren’t dead I pushed them out:

  SEE?-NEXT-ONE-MIGHT-HURT

  Long pause.

  DON’T-MAKE-ME-RUN-OUT-OF-PAPER

  Pause.

  STAND-UP

  I can admit I was really enjoying myself. For the first time in what seemed years my head seemed clear. Not like the thoughts were standing out in a meadow like those shaggy Norwegian horses and wondering what they were doing here. Not like one might wander off into the trees.

  Just for good measure I crept the cap out to the edge again. Nothing. Maybe we were coming to an understanding. I crawled to the edge and peered over. They were both standing up in the cattails holding their guns out to the side. He was tall, fit, not that old, maybe early sixties, in a ratty fawn cowboy hat. She was taller than he and I’d have to say handsome. Skinny but strong jawed, high cheeked, dark eyebrows, long dark hair twisted into a braid. Can’t say why but she looked smart from three hundred feet. I reached back for the AR and put the scope on them. If a man can spark he was sparking: mouth compressed in rage and his eyes which were gray were throwing off glints of fury. His face had the deep lines of a man who had earned them out in the elements. Her eyes were wideset and what? Violet? Something between blue and black. Her cheeks were inflamed scarlet and she looked scared but also something else: mildly amused. Was that it? She looked to be about thirty five.

  Can you fall in love through a rifle scope? Damn. I pulled my head away and looked down with naked eye. Well proportioned, wide hipped, tall. Maybe too skinny. I brought my eye to the gun again and nudged the barrel and let the scope travel down. I admit. Her legs were scratched and inflamed and maybe too thin but they were long and tapered.

  Breathe Hig. Say 10-4. Ten four.

  Came up to one knee, still aiming, both eyes open. I yelled.

  Hi!

  He blinked. I nudged the scope over to her face and they both looked like they might be
crazy or maybe in a bad dream.

  Hi!

  Kept the scope on her. She smiled. Actually smiled. It was subtle, small, but at ten power I could see the damn thing.

  How should we do this? Yelling.

  Silence.

  Gramps! Relax! If I wanted to kill and rape and plunder you’d be dead by now!

  Pause while he took that in.

  I forgive you! I yelled.

  I mean for trying to kill me more than twice! Nearly wrecking my plane. Nothing personal. I know. Would’ve done the same thing myself.

  My shouts trailed off on the breeze. But I could see that they could hear me. I mean something was registering. I could also see when I lifted my head back and looked downcanyon that all the cows and a few sheep were huddling terrified against a tall woven brush fence across the bottom of the box.

  Sorry for scaring your cows!

  They stood there, arms out. I played the scope over both of them. He was chewing his cheek trying to make out what the hell was going on. And her. I wasn’t sure. I could see gears turning and I thought something not unpleasant was dawning on her. That was my fantasy. I knew, I knew that I was addled somehow, but also that I was as clear as I had been in my adult life.

  Okay you can keep your guns. I’m coming down.

  Okay?

  Okay?

  He nodded. Finally. Pulled the gun back in to his body and stood again like a man in command of his world. I’ll say this: there was something about the codger that was dignified and proud. He was a fucking good shot, I knew that. I got the feeling that everything the prickly bastard did he did with that amount of confidence. Just an impression from the bleachers.

  If you decide to kill me you’ll feel really bad later! I promise you’ll deprive yourself of the best part of your day!

  She smiled. Oh man. I was gone. I thought Maybe, maybe he is her dad. What a fool.

  In purgatory there is really nothing else to be. I lowered the gun, stepped back fast and walked back to the Beast.

  Just for luck and respect I put another grenade in my jacket pocket to make two and grabbed some venison jerky for a peace offering, then I slung the AR over my shoulder and trotted across the sage meadow. I worked myself upcanyon through the piñons until the cleft shallowed out and I found a game trail down to the creek.