by Bill Gaston
Ray keeps getting worse. Honey has become sick again, true, but it doesn’t mean you take off work. Honey’s pain pills seem to keep him comfortable. All he does is sleep. This morning she found out Ray has taken a leave of absence. They have yet to talk about this. They haven’t talked much about anything lately. Ray doesn’t listen to a word she says. Asking herself when this began, Marta sees it’s tricky to notice a lack of something, especially when it has disappeared over time.
Ray has gone to the car and come back with his fancy bottle of wine. He opens it with the corkscrew he bought too. During the drive he told her the wine had cost thirteen dollars, probably thinking that given the circumstances she would say nothing about the extravagance. He pours it into a yellow plastic cup and takes a taste. He offers it around by lifting the bottle and raising his eyebrows, even to the kids. Marta is glad that no one moves to get any.
This family gathering at the cottage is odd in almost every way, as she predicted it would be. One filet mignon the size of a cupcake is sizzling on the gas barbecue. And everyone brought some sort of mood along. Jeff is supposed to be studying for his Grade 12s, exams that might get him scholarship money. Alison is sulking to find herself out of town away from her boyfriend, Kyle, even for an evening, even though they’d had no plans to be together. During the hour’s drive Marta saw the panic under Alison’s sulk and realized that her daughter doesn’t trust Kyle, and that the breakup would be ugly for everybody.
Ray had insisted. Normally a quiet man, a man you wouldn’t notice in a crowd, even this crowd of four, Ray was sarcastic when Jeff tried to beg off due to exams, asking Jeff if he also planned to study the night he, his father, died.
“Can’t you wait two weeks?” Jeff asked, with the thin tune of one who’s already lost the argument. Ray, a high school teacher, knew the importance of these exams.
“Jeff, I can wait two weeks. But Honey’s in pain. You want to make him wait two weeks? We’re talking one evening.” Then the final, “Jeff, his love for us is absolute.”
Marta knew the questions on the tip of Jeff’s tongue — Isn’t Honey on painkillers? Can’t the vet just do it? — but Ray had answers just as ready. Marta couldn’t get a word in either. Maybe Ray hoped that, since he wasn’t normally a demanding man, all the years of bending to his family’s whims earned him this one stubbornness. But Marta had wanted more of a conversation about it. In the days following his announcement that he wanted to kill their dog himself, explaining that “Honey would want it that way,” Marta wanted at least to tell him that Honey couldn’t desire any such thing. True, a dog might be more distracted having its family around when it died, but pretending it had human feelings about death was only silly. She wanted Ray at least to admit that this had more to do with what Ray wanted. Same with the filet mignon. Why did Ray think a dog contained within it a human version of “the best thing to eat”? How did Ray know Honey’s favourite thing wasn’t a can of ravioli? She didn’t say it, but in her view Honey’s favourite food had always been leftover turkey and stuffing.
With a finger, Marta checks the potato salad for coolness. They should be eating it now. She hopes nobody asks for pepper because there isn’t any.
Ray leans the rifle — borrowed from one of his firemen friends — against the porch rail, barrel aiming arrogantly at the sky. Marta hopes there’s a safety catch of some sort and that it’s on. Though what grown child is going to accidently stumble into a rifle? She sees her worry as habit born of the cottage itself and all her summers here, the natural dangers for her babies, then toddlers, then young mischief-makers, who each year ventured farther off this porch. She remembers the first year Honey came here as a pup. She can easily conjure scenes that might bring her to tears. Honey with floppy legs, learning to fetch a pig’s ear. A well-skunked Honey sheepish at the door, then the drive to Fatty’s Convenience for all their tomato juice. Honey on his blanket in the living room in the deep of night, growling at something outside, warning it away. She can even remember them naming him here, Jeffy scandalized, squealing, “That’s a girl’s name!” and Ray explaining the honey-colour of the dog’s fur and then, pointing at Marta, telling Jeffy, “Mommy calls Daddy ‘honey’ all the time and is your daddy a girl?” Marta remembers thinking at the time that, since they did often call each other “honey,” how odd it was to call their dog that too.
Watching Honey comfortable on the porch, dozing, and flatulent, which has been a problem for them lately, Marta decides to agree with Ray on at least this one, that if they are going to do this themselves then why not here, where Honey had his best times. What better place for a dog? A forest to explore, down the road a lake to swim and frogs to chase and pin; at night a warm cabin and a family to protect. And Marta’s always loved it that here at the cabin she didn’t have to pick up his messes, except when he uses the badminton area.
Ray passes her without a word and kneels at the dog. He looks close to tears as he attempts a last romp with Honey, teasing him up into a sit with an old tennis ball, asking him if he wants to fetch it. By way of answering, showing what he really wants, one of Honey’s eyebrows goes up and he glances at the food table. In the end Ray just pets him briskly. Ray seems much thinner to her, and his hands are too quick in Honey’s fur. He looks selfish in what he’s doing, like he wants something Honey isn’t giving. Marta thinks he wants to cry, is trying to cry but can’t. He’s using the old baby talk — “Such a good puppers. This yer nose? This yer nose?” — which she finds hard to listen to. As is Jeff, glowering on the porch step. She hears him whisper, “Fucking hate this,” and he pivots to stare off into the woods, then just as impatiently turns back to catch the rest of his father’s performance. More and more, Jeff has his father’s cheekbones and dark eyes. She remembers she used to call them bedroom eyes.
Since he’s been getting lots of babying lately, Honey is a little bored and he won’t let Ray hug and kiss him for long without pulling his head away to give the food table another sniff.
Ray stops caressing him when Alison emerges from the cabin, where she’s probably been on the phone with her boyfriend, and from her downcast anger Marta can see that they’ve had some kind of fight. For whatever reason, Ray decides it’s time. He gets off his knees and goes to the rifle. He stands with his fingers lightly on its barrel.
“Anyone wants to watch, come on behind. If not, say your goodbyes. Jeff, I need your help. Bring the steak.” He points his chin at the barbecue implements. “Just on that long fork is fine.”
Jeff drops his head, hisses “Jesus” to himself, and strides to the barbecue. Marta knows how desperately Jeff wants this to be over. Earlier he had refused to dig the hole for Honey’s burial, claiming it was too weird doing it when his dog was still alive and might even limp over to watch. Ray had nodded and apologized, agreeing that it would have been a mistake.
“Bye, Honey,” Alison says, sounding like a small girl. Honey turns at his name, tail wagging, but then he sees the steak in the air. Holding the stabbed meat aloft, Jeff says a clipped “Honey” and the dog comes as close to running as he has in weeks, a grotesque hop-and-drag, his front legs being fine, while his back end, which grows both cancer and arthritis, is not.
Alison says “Bye” once more and then she begins to sob. She makes for the cabin but stops and turns back and rushes to hug Marta.
Marta hugs her back firmly. She will not “say her goodbyes.” Honey is a dog and does not understand “goodbye,” so why say it? But she loves Honey and can barely give him a final glance. When she does watch the dog follow Ray and Jeff behind the cabin, Marta is stricken with the clear sight of his short life span, birth to death, and she can feel it whole in her stomach, which swells sweetly and painfully. She knows it’s also the truth of her own death, and her children’s too. Oh, poor Honey. Poor all of them.
She decides to try not to blame Ray any more on this subject, no matter how strange he’s grown lately, frustrated it seems, maybe what’s called mid-life. Lately he’s j
oked about quitting his job and moving to the cabin to be a hermit. Usually he acts up only with his firemen friends — for some reason, three men on their block are firemen — and Ray, falling in with them though they are a decade younger, probably feels he has to prove himself. Last year he herniated a disc skiing behind one of their boats. He has got himself drunk at their parties. He bought a kayak, which he has strapped absurdly to the side of the house, under the eves, to keep dry. To keep a kayak dry! He’s been reading books on primitive people and, while she’s trying to work at the sink, he tells her about roots that are poisonous unless beaten and soaked in three changes of water. How did these people learn how to do this? he asks her. He’s told her that lately he has suffered depression at “what I’ve done with my life,” meaning his teaching career, which admittedly is modest, but doesn’t he know he’s insulting her job too — she’s a receptionist at Sears — as well as insulting her as his wife and this family as his family? Maybe all that time ago she should have let him go back to law school, except she simply had not wanted to raise Ally, then Jeff right after, in starving-student style. But now here’s Ray behind the cabin with their Honey and she will dutifully try to change her opinion — a gunshot makes her jump, Alison shouts “Ow,” and then wails — that Ray has found some old farmer shirt and borrowed a gun to shoot his dog for show.
A second gunshot startles her as much as the first. She hopes it means Ray is just making sure, taking no chances on Honey suffering, and not that he botched the first shot. She heard no yelp or sounds of struggle. She won’t ask, she doesn’t want to hear.
Jeff comes round the corner crying silently. Marta hasn’t seen her son’s face contorted like this in years, it’s her baby’s face on a man’s big body. It affects her such that she goes to him. Jeff lets her hug him and murmur, “Poor, poor Honey,” before he pulls away.
“He hit him right in the eye,” Jeff says, then hunches up and cries into his hands.
Ray comes carrying the rifle. Wanting to shout that this is a strange thing he has done, Marta searches his face, which is blank. Perhaps not wanting to be in his father’s presence, Jeff goes to the station wagon, for the shovel. His red eyes hate the world.
Ray sits heavily in a white plastic chair. He stares out past his feet.
“That wasn’t easy,” he says.
Marta doesn’t speak. She wishes that what he had just said hadn’t sounded so much like a ploy for sympathy. Beside her, Alison doesn’t speak either.
He adds in the same monotone, “Well, he’s not suffering any more.”
Marta sees that Ray, having failed to cry, is taking a different tack.
“Suffering is for the living,” he says.
Marta refuses even to nod her head for him. Alison stands aimlessly, then turns to shuffle into the cabin.
“Ally?” Ray says. “Don’t phone him quite yet. Let’s be a family for a while, okay?”
“I have to go get some Kleenex,” she says and goes inside.
“There’s just toilet paper,” Marta calls after her. “Under the sink.”
From below, Jeff shouts, “Here?” Shovel in hand, he is past the old badminton clearing a few steps into the forest, under the big poplar.
Ray points and shouts back, “Way farther away. You’ll hit roots there. Ten feet away.”
“Here?”
“Yes. Good.”
Jeff digs. Alison doesn’t return from inside the cabin and Marta suspects she is calling Kyle. Alison should not be disobeying her father, but really how can you blame her?
Ray’s fierce clapping of both palms onto both knees startles her.
“Marta. I’m sorry. But I have to.”
Marta waits for him to continue and when all he does is shake his head at the floor, she asks, “Have to what?”
“Don’t be upset, okay? But I’m going to. See it as — It’s honouring Honey. An animal would understand exactly this.”
“What, Ray?” Something in the shakiness of his manner makes her stomach hollow.
“Well, I’m — Please, just listen. You never listen to me. Just listen, okay? And I’m not sure I want the kids to know, but I want you to know — I’m going to eat Honey. I’m going to eat some of him.” Ray opens his nostrils in taking a big gulp of wine. He takes another one, finishing the yellow cup, tilting his head back and looking up into the sky.
Marta wants to say “Are you serious?” when it’s plain to her that serious is all he is.
“I want to eat his — Don’t be upset, it’s really not that strange, but I think I’m going to eat his heart. If I can find it.” He smiles like this last bit is a joke she would want to enjoy with him.
“Ray, not that you’re serious, but no.”
“Marta? In other cultures, it’s the biggest honour. Honey would —”
“Stop.” Marta thrusts one hand out, blocking sight of him. “Don’t joke about it, Ray.”
“Not joking about it.” Ray gently shakes his head while gazing at his feet, as though afraid to look at her. “It’s the best thing anybody can do. Other cultures, they eat the heart of their, their enemies, it’s how — it’s a way of, of taking in the best — it’s ultimate respect, it —”
“I’m not listening, Ray.” For some reason, Marta puts her hands over her eyes.
“Well, you never do listen, Marta. I want you to listen now. Honey was — Honey was the best thing that —”
“Ray, you’re scaring me now.”
“It’s how much I love Honey. I want to show it.”
“Ray, to who? Who do you want to show it to?”
“I mean, even just a piece, just a taste. It’s symbolic, Marta.”
“What, you going to barbecue him?” She glares at the barbecue, which is still ticking from the filet mignon, a few shreds of dark meat stuck to the grill.
“Just a piece. If I can’t find the heart right away. The kids don’t have to know.”
“Ray. I’m serious now. I know you’ve felt frustrated but this isn’t funny.”
Ray almost growls, “Who says it’s funny?” and Marta has to look at him. “Honey is dead. He’s been —” Now Ray’s eyes are showing something to her, it’s a cruel light he knows is there. “He’s the closest thing to love I’ve had in eleven years, Marta.”
“Ray? Please? Listen to me?”
“I always listen to you. You never listen to me. Still aren’t.”
“Well, Ray? I don’t even know who you think you’re talking to right now.”
“Honey kept this family together for eleven years, you know that? He was the only one who cared about anything except himself.”
“How much have you had to drink?” Marta stares at the bottle she can see is nearly full.
“I want to eat him, Marta!”
“No you don’t.”
“Honey would want me to!”
“Honey is a dog! Honey is a dead dog! Honey doesn’t want anything!”
Ray begins to cry now in a shocking way, eyes open, looking straight at her. Marta’s hair rises when she understands that he is crying not for Honey but because he isn’t getting his way.
Ray coughs, softens, and looks over at their son. He sighs deeply, glances back at Marta, and shrugs. He lurches to his feet and announces, “Well, Alison’s talking to her boyfriend and Jeff’s digging a hole, so I better get a knife.”
He steps soberly into the cabin. Marta watches the doorway for a moment, half-hoping Ray will pop out grinning, slap his knee, and point at her, but she knows he won’t. When he reappears he will have that same blank face, and a knife. Marta even knows what knife.
Marta goes for the rifle, grabbing it by the barrel. Though it’s heavy this way she holds it out from herself, disgusted. She walks it down the porch steps. On her way to the car, a hand cupping one side of her mouth, shielding her words from the cabin, she calls, “Jeff!”
“What.” Jeff wipes his brow with a forearm. He has been digging in a huff and a blister on his palm is bleeding. He d
oesn’t look at her.
“Come here, now. We’re going.”
“Dad wanted it four feet. It’s only two. It’s not even two.”
“Leave it. We’re going. Right now.”
“I have to finish Honey’s hole.”
“Your father wants you to leave. Right now.”
“But we can’t just —”
“Now.”
Marta hears Jeff swear as she wrenches up the station wagon’s trunk and lays the gun on the dog blanket. She realizes that what she is smelling is burnt gunpowder, from the bullets that shot Honey. Jeff said Ray fired one right into Honey’s eye. What kind of love is that? Now Jeff is beside her, trying to angle the shovel in. Ray had somehow got it to fit for the drive out.
“Fine,” says Jeff, trying to force the shovel in. Marta is afraid he might clunk a window.
“Leave it. Leave it here for your father.” Marta points at the ground, but Jeff doesn’t drop it. He looks at her cautiously.
“Your father and I have had a fight, Jeff. He’s going to stay here. I want you to go get Alison and tell her that your father and I have had a fight and that I am driving away in this car in no more than thirty seconds. Otherwise, she is staying here with your father. And —”
“But why isn’t —”
“— And I want you to run.”
Jeff shakes his head, mumbling, as he half-runs to the cabin. Very likely, Marta knows, Jeff thinks she’s crazy too. She gets in and starts the car. She backs onto the badminton area, puts the car in drive, and edges out so it points at the road. What will she do if Ray comes after them, waving his hands for her to stop? Apologizing in front of the children. If that happens she doesn’t know what she’ll do. But she doubts they’ll see any of that. When she gets home, what she will do is phone one of those firemen of his, tell him what Ray has done. Firemen know emergencies, they might have some advice. They might agree that it was just showing off, which is what men do. Honouring Honey? Shooting her like he’s some farmer? Ray teaches high school. Ray is nothing but the most ordinary of men. But now he’s showing off, he’s walking on his hands, and she is not going to watch.
