As if to ignore the existence of some ‘easy explanation’ for anything this weird, Danny said, “Sugar? Milk?”
Farrah said, “Both,” and her father said, “Black’s fine.”
Danny went to the fridge to get the milk.
Doug sighed with fatigue. This was his off-season and Farrah knew he was not used to getting called in the middle of the night. It was rarer and rarer during on-season too, but downright ridiculous during the rest of the year, when no tourists were island-side. But the last few years, almost no one came to Dovetail anymore. All but one of the hotels had closed. And no B and Bs were left. Neckline Beach and the hot spring up north were barren and empty, even in the hot months. Only locals visited them.
“Dan,” Doug said.
“Yuh,” Danny said as he returned with the milk. A bit premature. The coffee wouldn’t be brewed for a while yet.
“You’re describing the fellow who bust into the McLeod place. You remember Rebekah McLeod’s wake, back in, uh, October—?”
Danny nodded. Again, he leaned on the counter and listened as patiently as he could.
“The patchwork face and hair—grey and yellow—sounds like the guy who was in there, raiding the pantry. We never did find him. I thought some hiker would have found him by now, but it’s been so cold, no one’s been away from their fireplaces long enough.”
Danny looked like he recalled. “And what of the McLeod brothers?” he asked. “Could we get them on the horn and see if this might sound like the feller they saw?”
“As far as I know,” Doug said, “They went back out to sea once their ma’s affairs were sorted. No one’s talked to them since the wake. House is up for sale, but no takers. Dovetail has more than a few properties with signs on the lawn.”
Danny nodded. Every one of the six pilot homes built on his plot up across the creek from here were empty. Some of them never did see a tenant. The grass grew long up and around the windows of all those homes. Some sat with boarded windows. Others were missing the glass and let the weather come right in. As far as Danny knew, the investors had all skipped off the island and had never come back.
“Only other person it might be is...” Doug started and then trailed off, looking up at the ceiling and crossing his arms as he considered. “Naw, probably not Everett Campbell. He’s been missing since summer a year ago. Usually a guy like him—wife and kids, feeling cooped up—high-tails it off-island. I’m sure he’s holed up with hookers and Tequila down the coast somewhere. Least until his wallet gets thin.”
He sat for a moment, smelling the coffee, looking at the reflection of himself and his daughter in the blackened mirror of the kitchen window. “Those are really the only two unsolved ones in DC these days. The McLeod Brothers and Campbell. There’re some whoddunnits. But the trail ran cold on those years ago. What I can’t figure out—”
“Uh-huh,” Danny said. “Don’t shit a shitter, son,” he said flatly. “I heard about the others.”
“Others,” Doug repeated, eyeing his daughter, then glaring at his father-in-law. “Yes, well, there are a few, aren’t there?” He asked this as he came to grips with what he’d always said a person should never do and he’d just done: teach a fisherman to bait his line.
“You remember ol’ Zeke, hon?” Doug said, turning to Farrah. "The town...handyman. Well, him and Doc Sawbones haven’t been seen most of December. They were both on their own—Doc’s been retired for a while and his wife’s been gone for years—so we don’t really know when or what exactly happened. If anything. I’ve been to both their places. It looks like maybe Doc took a winter holiday down south and didn’t tell a soul. It was locked up tight as a drum and the fridge was empty and unplugged. He’s been going down to Mexico the last three or four winters, so that’s not a stretch. Probably turn up in March. But Zeke, that one’s a mystery. Neither of them said anything to anybody. Half the time, you couldn’t make heads or tails from that feller anyway.” Doug looked back at Danny now, as if to see whether the older man might be satisfied with his version of the whole story.
“Just to confirm, then,” Doug said. “I didn’t mention these two because, hell, Dan, I think you’d have clued me in if the retired town doctor or DC’s resident handyman were out in your back acre messing around with some strays.”
Danny rolled his tongue around in his cheek. “Nuh,” he said. “Neither one.”
“You sure, now?” Doug asked, pushing it with his father-in-law.
Danny only nodded. Because he didn’t make a further fuss, Doug decided to return to his line of thought from a half-minute earlier. “What I can’t figure out—” he said with heavy emphasis, as if to tell Danny that he was simply finished talking about any of these absentees, and everyone was going to follow suit whether they liked it or not. “—Is these damn dogs.”
Danny nodded. It made no sense to either of them, this business with the dogs.
Farrah said, “I heard the rumours as a kid. That there were a couple wild dogs up north. But no one ever saw them. I heard ‘em once. But, really, we just thought it was kids telling stories.”
Doug nodded. “I heard those stories too. And, on occasion, one would find its way to the beach or somewhere on the outskirts. Course there was that one in our backyard—”
Farrah took a shiver remembering it.
“—But the talk was five or six. Dan, how many’d you say were out here tonight?”
“Forty?” Danny said, looking at his granddaughter to confirm. “Maybe even fifty. A lot.”
“You saw them too, Far?” Doug asked.
“I did,” Farrah said, not wanting to think on it. “But the talk of these strays, it goes back years. I guess they could have been breeding.”
Doug considered that a moment. “And you said you shot some,” Doug said to Danny. “Where’d you put them?”
“Three at least. I didn’t put them anywhere,” Danny said. “I wasn’t about to go back out there. Not with that many of them...and that guy just standing out there staring at the house. It’s all we could do to get the hoard of them off Kath and get back inside. They dragged them off on their own.”
Doug leaned forward, making his barstool creak as if to underscore what he was about to ask. “What do you mean, ‘on their own?’”
Danny cocked his head. “The dogs. They dragged the dead away. I didn’t touch ‘em.”
4
“They came back?”
It was Kathy. She stood in the wide kitchen doorway tying the belt on her mom’s pink terry robe. She wore the matching slippers, ratty and thread-bare, but the same pink. She looked from Farrah to Danny to Doug.
“Douglas!” she said and came into the kitchen as Doug turned on his stool. She put her arms out for a hug and Doug obliged, getting up off his seat.
“Kath,” he said as they embraced. “You look good. How are you?”
“I’m…well,” she said, pulling away to get a full look at him. They wouldn’t have seen each other since his early visits to the hospital on the mainland. And the final of those would have been six or seven years ago.
Farrah clenched her teeth. It was amazing to see them in the same room, even being nice to each other. As forcefully cordial as it was. But there was this other feeling too, one she’d be hard-pressed to describe.
“What brings you out?” Kathy asked. “Baz?”
Douglas looked to Danny,who was about to say something. Doug raised one finger as if to say,I’ll explain. Maybe that was best, Danny thought, and stopped short.
“Yeah,” Doug said. “Bazzy. About those wild dogs in the woods yesterday.” Hesitantly, he added, “You remember?”
Kathy crossed her arms. “Course I remember—” She gave a naughty-naughty look.
“Dougie,” she added using a nickname she hadn’t called him in a decade or so. “I’ve been away. Not in the ground.”
That loosened everyone a bit. Everyone except Farrah, but she forced a smile. Kath went over and got onto the third barstool. “
What’s up, Dad? Did they come back?”
Again, Doug cut Danny off. Tenuously, he said, “They did, Kath. They did. And your dad called me to see if I could help. You remember seeing them tonight?”
Kath reached over the tall section of the bar to a bag of cookies that Danny had gotten out, presumably to go with the middle-of-the-night coffee he was brewing in the perk. She fetched one and took a bite. Stale, but edible. “Tonight?” she said. “None tonight. I was sleeping. I saw them yesterday. That’s when it happened.” She looked down, avoiding her dad’s eyes.
“Right,” Doug said, re-taking his own stool between her and Farrah with a squawk. “But they came back in the middle of the night. Tonight. You don’t remember that at all?”
Kathy looked at him blankly. “Why would I?” She laughed. “Hugely bad day. I was exhausted…dead to the world. I only came down because I heard you all talking. Loud enough to wake the dead, I might add.”
Despite everything, Danny chuckled.
Doug looked at Farrah, then back at his estranged wife. “How are you feeling these days? Since you got to town.”
“Great. Tired. But good.” She gave Doug a smile, wan, and ever-so-quick. “We should all go back to bed. No one’s going to figure out the dogs tonight,” she said. “Dad? Are you brewing coffee?”
Danny nodded. He eyed Doug, but didn’t say anything.
Doug said, “Are you still taking your pills, Kath? The ones the doc gave you?”
Still preoccupied, maybe with the idea of caffeine at this hour, Kath looked beyond Danny at the mirrored blackness of the kitchen window. It had begun to snow. Wide, fat flakes fluttered out of the nothingness and hit the window before cascading away to invisibility once more.
“I cut them in half yesterday and before bed,” Kathy said absently. “Took one half. I’ll take halves for a couple weeks, then quarters, then try a day without them. Farrah and me talked about it.”
She looked at her daughter and Farrah nodded at Doug.
Doug kept rolling, his history of asking questions extremely well-known by both his wife and his daughter. “Far says you’ve been having dreams. Walking in your sleep.”
“She said that, yeah. I don’t remember any sleepwalking. But you remember. I did that a time or two before. Mom did too.” Danny remembered. His face said so.
“The dreams I remember.” Her face took a pinkish hue at that.
“Were they about him again?” Doug asked.
She hesitated. She didn’t look her husband in the eyes but said, “Yeah. Same dream.” She paused. Doug waited to see if she’d offer more. She did. “He says my name and I feel like I’m falling. Then I realize I’m not falling. I’m being dragged underground, all the dirt and roots and rocks swallowing me up. Then—” She looked at Doug. “I wake up. Dream over.”
Doug took a deep breath. Kath mirrored his. “Do we have to talk about this now?” she asked, still growing pink on her neck, cheeks, and forehead.
“No,” Doug said and put a hand on her arm. “You told me they stopped when you were getting the shocks.”
“They did,” Kath said quickly. She’d never talked about the shocks, not with Farrah.
At the end of the bar counter, Farrah flushed too. There was a whole world at play here. She had grown up enough to know that her parents had shared an entire universe between them, one that didn’t take her into account. But she had no idea that when Mom said she’d kept in touch with her dad, that there was this much in the exchange.
“But I had another. I suppose it’s just me coming back to Dovetail. It makes sense that memories would surface, too, right?”
As calm as ever, Doug said, “It would.” Turning to Danny, he said, “Dan, we got coffee yet?” He forced a smile and Danny could see that he had tears in his eyes. That was Doug. Patient, yes. Unaffected, no.
As if breaking from a spell, Grandpa Danny—who sucked back a set of tears himself—reached and clanged three porcelain mugs together. He went to the perk, unplugged it, and returned to pour. “Eight minutes,” he said, looking at the clock on the back of the stove. “Best coffee you’ve had all year.” This being the third of January, Farrah wasn’t sure if he’d meant that as a genuine joke or not.
Doug smiled at him and reached for the first cup. Oh, Dad was hurting. Farrah could feel it. He needed his joe. She realized her shoulders, neck, and entire upper body were clenched. She took a heavy, deep breath and reached up to rub the spot where her shoulders met her neck. Seeing Mom and Dad together—after everything she witnessed the last day and a half—it was hard on her.
“None for me,” Kath said. “I’m dozy and I need to stay that way. The pills make me sleep all the time. Even a half sends me to bed. But I need it.”
Danny finished pouring the third cup and said, “I’ll take you up.”
“Dad,” Kath said like a teenager who was unimpressed with some ‘dad joke’ at a dinner party. “Why is everyone treating me like glass? I can go back to bed on my own. I don’t need help.”
Danny pulled off his grease-spotted apron and came around the bar counter. “I want to,” he said, hopefulness in his face. Kath acquiesced and reached out her hand to take her father’s.
“Okay,” she said. And they turned to go, leaving Farrah and her Dad to sip at the scorching hot coffee.
Starting to get fidgety, Doug took his mug, got up from the bar, and went to the foyer where he looked through the curtain to the still-dark outside world. It might be pushing five a.m. Farrah wasn’t sure. At the opening to the kitchen, her breath hitched as she watched Dad look through the curtain.
He didn’t say anything.
Upstairs, Farrah heard the creaking of floorboards.
Finally, agonized to the ends of her short fuse, she said. “Well? Anything out there?”
“Nothing,” he said and looked at her. He had downed half his hot coffee already and put it his mug on the table at the entryway where Danny often stashed his mail or the dog’s leash when he’d bring poochers in through the front door (on temperate days when the lab wouldn’t be bringing mud or moisture in on his paws). Doug unbuttoned his holster and put his hand heel on the butt of his service pistol. He unlatched the door and cracked it a few inches, pausing to look at Farrah, then out through the crack.
In that moment, Farrah didn’t believe him that there was nothing out there.
He swung the door only wide enough to permit him, then went out. Before going, he said, “Lock this,” and pulled it shut behind him.
Again, Farrah’s heart fluttered. She rushed to the door behind her dad’s departure.
She chunked the deadbolt in place and quickly peeped through the crack in the curtains. Outside, Doug stood on the porch with his back to Farrah on this side of the door. The generous porch was empty, save for him, but out past the support posts, those giant flakes drifted to the ground in lazy, slanted paths. The yard had already started to accumulate a fresh, white blanket. The stairs wore it, too. But it ended at the top step which was under cover from the roof above.
Farrah took a breath, and sighed.Dad.
He looked over at her through the glass. “Bring my coffee,” he said. She could hear him through the door.
Farrah put her hand on her chest to try and calm her heart. She picked up Dad’s mug from the entry table and undid the deadbolt. She went out and handed it to him. “Don’t do that,” she said, half-scolding, half-relieved.
“What?” Doug said. “I can’t get soft. I still have to pay attention. So do you.”
He took a swig and looked out at the falling snow and the black night beyond. A chill hit Farrah. She didn’t like being out here. She pulled her own robe closed tighter and clenched it up at her throat.
Doug looked down at the smears of blood starting to crystallize in the cold night air. He set his steaming mug down on the top of the railing and crouched. He reached out into the night and scooped fresh, cold snow from the steps and dumped it on top of the smeared blood.
; Farrah cringed, as though a set of chomping jaws would swoop out of the blackness and bite off her father’s hand when it left the safety of the porch. It didn’t.
He brought several more handfuls of fresh, twinkling snow and covered all the blood. “That’ll help,” he said, retrieving his coffee mug to warm his wet hands. He said it like some snow was going to fix all this. He hadn’t seen all those dogs out here a couple hours ago. He didn’t know. It was easy for him to show up and start putting Band-aids on everything.
Farrah hugged herself and watched her breath float away and join the night. Beside her, Doug looked out across the yard and held his hot mug as it leeched its heat into the air.
Easy for him, Farrah thought again. Until tonight, she had no idea he had ever kept in touch with Mom. Why had he? If you’re going to throw someone away like trash, why keep going back to the garbage dump to check up on them?
Farrah said, “You wrote letters to Mom? I didn’t know.”
Whether Doug could hear the poison in his daughter’s voice, she didn’t know.
He said, “Yuh,” as he continued his quiet survey of the generous front yard. “Every month or so, we’d send a note in one direction or another. I always sent pictures of you.” He looked over at her. His cheeks were beginning to gain some colour. “I had to know how she was doing, what sort of treatments they were trying. I wrote and called her docs, too.”
“Dad,” Farrah said.
“Yeah, doll?” he said.
“I never understood. You told me. But I was a kid. And you never wanted to say much…after. Why’d you send Mom away?”
Doug stared out at one meaningless spot in the yard. There were no wild animals, no leather-skinned stranger who may or may not be real. There was nothing but that silently falling snow.
Finally, he turned a bit. He set his mug back down on the railing in a ring of melted snow, made by the heat from before.
“What do you remember?” Doug asked her. “About that time, when Mom went.”
Farrah looked off at the yard now, maybe at the same inconsequential spot her father had. “I remember coming home from school that day. You were still downtown, I think. And Mom, she was in the tub. There was all that blood.”
Instead Page 8
