by Lisa Wingate
I was walking barefoot along a dock, the day quiet and peaceful, the weathered decking radiating the leftover warmth of a waning afternoon. In the distance, eagles flew against the sun, their shadows sailing over the water, larger than it seemed they should be.
A sundress swished softly around my knees, caught the breeze and flipped upward. I stopped to smooth it. High overhead, the eagles locked talons and spiraled downward, their bodies whirling toward the water.
I stood frozen where I was, holding my breath, watching the spectacle with fear and awe.
The eagles spun faster and faster, bound in their dizzying embrace, the water’s surface rushing closer.
“No!” I screamed. “Stop!” But the wind whipped my voice away.
In a fury of movement and sound, the birds disappeared below the edge of the dock, struck the water and plunged in. The surface turned placid and silent. I moved forward slowly, one step, then another, another, trying to gain a view.
Were they there? Were they alive?
Suddenly I was running toward the doors—the white ones that led to the chapel room of the funeral home. The ladies were filing through, crowding the entrance in their dark dresses and matching gloves. I stretched upward to see over the wall of hats and hair and mesh.
“Who is it?” I asked. “Whose funeral?” But the organ was playing so loudly that no one seemed to hear.
“Who?” I yelled louder, reaching for the woman in front of me. My hand was clothed in a black kid-leather glove, a floral pattern of beads at the wrist. I drew it back slightly, surprised, then realized I was looking through a mourner’s netted veil. I shook the woman’s shoulder, but she only continued moving along with the crowd, her wrist raising her veil slightly as she wiped her eyes. Amy?
“Amy? Amy, whose funeral?” I begged, but the crowd was pulling her away. Her shoulder slipped from my hand, a length of her veil trailing through my fingers. I tried to cling to it, but I couldn’t. The ladies were pressing all around me now, squeezing past, pulling me into the chapel room. I didn’t want to go. I remembered my father’s body in the casket, my mother sitting numbly in the front pew, Clay in a black suit that was a miniature of the ones my father wore to church on Sunday. Clay’s blond hair had been carefully combed by Ruth. Tears slowly streaked his sunburned cheeks.
The crowd was forcing me in, lifting me from my feet as I tried to turn and run. Behind me, I saw Ruth’s family coming in the door, their heads bowed, the women’s faces unveiled, sober beneath their tightly-bound hair, mesh prayer caps, and scarves. They were carrying food—heaping platters filled with fleischballe and apfelsalat. They stopped in the entry hall, seeming unwilling to enter the chapel area.
“Ruth!” Twisting, I reached for her, but she didn’t respond. “Ruth!”
I was in the chamber then. The crowd parted and the doors began closing behind me, people fanning into the room, the old oak pews groaning softly as mourners selected seats. I tried for the door, but my body was heavy, filled with stone. The sundress from the dock had turned to thick, black wool, binding my legs so that I could barely move. The latch clicked into place as I grabbed the ornate brass handles and tried in vain to return to the vestibule. Outside, the Mennonite women sang a hymn, silverware clinking and plates rattling.
Inside the chapel there was silence, utter and complete—absent of coughing, sniffling, or the comforting words of a service. I turned slowly and realized the crowd was waiting for me, everyone motionless, expectant. In the front row my mother lifted a hand, palm up, indicating that I should file past the casket. I remembered the day of my father’s funeral, when they’d forced me to stand beside his body as the mourners moved through. I’d felt sick. I couldn’t look at him in that box, pale and gray, artificially painted with life. It seemed so impossible that he could be gone. Forever. That there was nothing I could do to bring him back.
I was angry with him for leaving us behind. I was angry with my mother for fighting with him, for making him so upset that he walked away from her and headed down to the basement to decompress. I’d heard the fight, but I didn’t know what it was about. Was it worth his life?
I felt myself moving toward the casket now, not willingly but as if the floor were shifting under my feet to bring me to the front of the room, past the pulpit, where Reverend Hay stood silent and stoic, scarecrow-thin. His long face turned my way as I moved up the steps to the coffin.
Every eye in the room focused on me, following me to the casket, forcing me to gaze downward at the dark, freshly-polished shoes, the black slacks, the suit coat, the blue tie, the broad, muscular shoulders, and then the face.
“Clay?” I whispered, and in the gallery, a single mourner let out a long, animal-like wail. I collapsed on the floor, my legs suddenly uncooperative, refusing to keep me by Clay’s side. I wanted to shake him from his slumber, tell him this wasn’t funny. This was a twisted, sick joke.
Uncle Herbert and Uncle Charley, dressed in dark jackets, moved forward, slowly closing the casket. I crawled to the base, reached upward, clawed the wood, tried to scratch my way through. Another mourner put forth a long, loud wail, piercing the silence. . . .
Snapping upright, I took in a gush of air, felt my heart pounding as the chapel room, the mourners, and the image of my Clay in the coffin disappeared like a whiff of smoke. Only the scratching and the keening remained. I realized that Roger was outside the cottage, trying to get in.
For once I was thankful for Clay’s hapless dog. Anything that could vanquish such a horrible dream had to be a gift. How could my mind come up with such terrible things—the eagles dead in the lake? Clay in my father’s place, in the coffin? What kind of twisted, subconscious conjuring could create that?
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I scooted to the edge of the bed. The chill in the cottage slid over my skin, raising gooseflesh. Poor Roger was probably freezing out there. It was colder again tonight, and apparently I’d set the damper on the wood stove too low. My slippers were like ice on my feet. Frigid slices of air pressed through the pine floorboards, knifing at my legs as I moved through the interior of the cottage, dim except for the glow of the moon and the yard light, drifting through the windows. On the kitchen clock, the hour hand ticked into place with an electronic click. Four in the morning? Clay had left his poor dog outside overnight again, apparently.
On the porch, Roger heard me coming. He yipped, then furiously clawed the stoop, trying to dig his way through. The door rattled on its hinges as I reached for the latch. “Hang on, Roger.” I pushed, then pulled the door, performing the magic combination that had always caused the latch to release. A blast of frigid night wind slipped through the opening, and I stood back, expecting the dog to barrel through in a flurry of hair and movement, but nothing happened.
“Come on, Roger,” I called, impatient with the cold air rushing in. “Roger, come on!”
His toenails clattered on the frosty wood outside as he scampered down the steps. Apparently, he didn’t want to come in; he wanted to play. At four in the morning.
When I poked my head around the door and looked out, he was standing in the glow of the yard light, watching me expectantly. Leave it to Clay’s dog to decide the middle of the night was an opportune time for a game of catch-me-if-you-can.
“Roger, get in here.” The sleepy voice had been replaced by the parental voice—the one employed only on rare occasions when I acted as an emergency babysitter for Trish’s kids. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be working on Roger. He stood his ground on the lawn. “All right, then. Stay there, if that’s what you want.” That always worked with Trish’s kids. Once they knew that not all adults will chase you around the house with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and beg you to eat it, the game was up. I got along really well with Lila, Laura, and little Nat. We had fun, even.
Roger needed to learn the Lila, Laura, and Nat lesson.
“Closing the door now,” I warned, then followed through, and just as I’d expected, Roger returned to
the porch and repeated the whimpering and scratching. After leaving the door shut long enough to make my point, I opened it again. “See, Aunt Heather really will leave you out there in the cold.”
Once again, no Roger. I leaned out, poking my face into the chilly air. Roger was back on the lawn, barking and looking excited.
It occurred to me that I was playing mind games with a dog, and losing . . . at four in the morning. Which made it doubly stupid. Clearly, Roger wasn’t in danger of freezing to death. He was too busy having fun. “All right, you’re on your own.” After closing and latching the door, I trundled back across the living room, adjusting the stove damper on the way. With a contented sigh, I was back in my bed, burrowing beneath the quilts by the time Roger clattered onto the porch again. Tomorrow, I’d have to tell Clay in no uncertain terms not to leave his dog outside at night. It was just cruel, irresponsible, and the dog was bothering other . . .
He was scratching at the door again, ready to continue our fun little game.
“Go away, Roger! Bad dog!” I nuzzled in deeper and pulled the covers around my ears. He’d give up in a minute or two. If I could outlast Lila and Laura, I could outlast Roger.
Roger scratched, whined, yipped, then knocked something over on the porch. Something heavy. It clattered down the steps.
“Stop it, Roger!” I yelled.
Another object tumbled off the porch. Firewood. Roger was unstacking my firewood. Ohhh, I was going to have something to say to Clay about this in the morning. In fact, if that dog didn’t vacate my porch pretty soon, we weren’t even going to make it until morning. I wouldn’t be responsible for what happened if I had to go out there again. I really wouldn’t.
Even the pillow mashed against my ears was no match for Roger’s canine determination. The cottage walls were paper-thin. He might as well have been scratching at my bedpost.
“All right, that’s it!” The covers flew off and I staggered from the bed, feeling fairly certain that, had anyone gotten in my way, I could have done the Medusa thing and created a pillar of stone. Stalking to the front door, I clumsily put on my coat, then staggered around while trying to cram my feet into the nearest available footwear—my suede boots. I was going to hunt that dog down, grab him by the collar, take him up to the house, and dump him on Clay’s bed. I . . .
For the first time, I noticed that Roger’s bark was different somehow—not the playful squeaky yip I’d become accustomed to, but a low, demanding sound. Barking, then silence, then barking again—as if he were pausing to see whether anyone was listening. What if he wasn’t playing? What if something was wrong? What if he was actually delivering a warning? Every once in a while, there was a story on the news about some trusted pet awakening a family, saving them from a house fire or carbon monoxide poisoning.
I sniffed the air. No smoky smell . . .
Could you get carbon monoxide poisoning from a wood stove? Probably. Maybe Roger had detected something. I didn’t feel sick. Didn’t people have headaches or other symptoms if they were breathing carbon monoxide?
Roger barked again, this time from somewhere near the corner of the cottage on the side that faced the main house. Was something wrong up there?
My mind conjured horrible images of Harmony House engulfed in flames, and I hurried to the kitchen window to check. Everything seemed normal, but my heart was fluttering unsteadily in my chest, my nerves on edge—such a far cry from the comfortable, sated feeling I’d had after visiting the eagle’s nest and then going to the Waterbird to have a sandwich with Blaine. We’d sat there talking forever—not about anything particular or anything important. We’d talked about high school, my life, his life. I’d tried again to bring up Clay. Let’s not hash over family stuff tonight, he’d said.
He’d walked me down to the cottage after he brought me home. Smiling, he lamented the fact that he couldn’t take me out for another dancing lesson. He had a school board meeting at eight o’clock. He’d invited me to the big Valentine’s soiree tomorrow night at the school, then kissed me, and I’d walked inside, floating on air. The lights were off in the big house, so I’d stayed in the cottage reading old copies of Field and Stream and watching for Clay to return. In spite of Blaine’s vague reassurances, I wanted Clay to explain what I’d seen in Gnadenfeld and what I’d found in the truck. Unfortunately, my brother seemed to be making himself scarce. I’d finally fallen asleep on the sofa. Clay’s truck still wasn’t in the driveway later, when I moved to my bed.
Maybe that was why I’d had the dream. I was worried about him.
Maybe my dream was a warning. If Clay was mixed up in something, he could be keeping Blaine in the dark, just like all the rest of us. . . .
Stop, I told myself as I stumbled back to the door, my legs clumsy and uncooperative. Stop letting your imagination get the best of you. Just go make sure everything’s okay up at the house. It’s probably fine.
While I was up there, I’d leave a note in my brother’s room, tell him we needed to talk before he left in the morning. Period.
An icy, watery wind slipped in the door as I opened it, the sharp sensation slicing away the last remnants of sleep with one quick stroke. Roger was standing between the cottage and the barn. He remained motionless, silent as I walked out.
“Roger?” My voice was hoarse, but the sound rebounded against the buildings and the frost-tipped woods.
Roger glanced my way, growled, then walked toward the center of the yard, out of view. Tugging my coat tighter around myself, I crossed the porch, moved down the steps, and instantly felt the cold ground penetrating my shoes. “Roger?” I called again. “Roger?”
A chill pressed over me, but it had nothing to do with the temperature outside. A branch crackled in the woods, and I had that eerie feeling again—the one that told me someone was nearby, watching. Fine hairs rose on my skin as Roger’s barking drew me around the end of the cottage, until I could see the lower half of the yard. Roger was waiting halfway down the hill, near the ring of light from a gas lamp. He looked at me, barked, then turned toward the big house, barking twice more. A gust of wind whipped off the lake, driving me backward a step before I moved into the open, checked the main house, and then began a slow, visual sweep of the yard. Nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe Roger had spotted a possum or a raccoon marauding in the trash cans or . . .
Near the center of the gas lamp’s glow, I saw what Roger wanted me to see: Clay’s truck was there in the yard, not more than a hundred feet from the lakeshore. It rested at an odd angle, high-centered on the fig tree, the driver’s side door hanging slightly ajar, the dome light giving the branches an eerie luminosity. I looked back and forth toward the house, scanned the set of tire tracks in the frost.
No wonder Roger was barking. Apparently Clay’s truck had somehow rolled off the edge of the driveway and gone rogue. It seemed to be empty, and there was no sign of activity around it—no tracks other than Roger’s. Maybe the impact had caused the door to pop open on its own?
Roger followed me to the truck and around the back of it, stood waiting as I checked the cab, then leaned over to look underneath. The Ladybug was beached like a whale on a sand bar, and it didn’t look like it was going any farther without the help of a tow truck or maybe a crane to extricate it from the remains of the scraggly fig tree. Closing the door, I looked up the hill again. The windows in the house were dark, everyone apparently having slept right through the Ladybug’s midnight rampage. Really, it was pure luck that it hadn’t ended up in the lake.
Catching Roger’s collar, I rubbed between his ears, feeling like I owed him an apology. He’d actually had a good reason for rousing me. Nothing could be done about this mess tonight, but it would be quite the source of family conversation in the morning. The uncs would have an exciting tale to share with all their buddies at the Waterbird. “Good boy,” I told Roger. “You’re a good boy. C’mon, let’s go back inside now.” Giving the Ladybug one last perplexed glance, I started toward the cottage.
&nb
sp; Roger twisted against my grip, pulling backward and shaking his head, trying to wiggle out of the collar.
“Roger, stop!” I dragged him a little farther.
He yipped and fought like an animal possessed, squealing and gagging when the collar twisted tight. The chain pinched my finger, and I let go out of reflex. Roger was gone in an instant, bolting through the dim circle of light and disappearing on the other side of the truck. His insistent barking beckoned me to follow, and as I circumvented the vehicle my mind flashed back to the dream, to the chapel steps, each one bringing me closer to knowing what was inside the coffin, to seeing something I didn’t want to see.
In front of the truck, Roger was sniffing the ground, digging at a mound of dirt, or trash, or . . . something . . . No, not trash . . . clothing . . . a coat . . .
I squinted, trying to make out the mass in shadow. Someone was lying face down in the frosty grass. . . .
My heart flipped unevenly. “Clay?” I ran the last few steps. A soft moan stirred the frosty air as I dropped to my knees.
“Clay!” I gasped, rolling him over, supporting his head. My fingers touched something warm and wet . . . blood?
“Clay, what happened?” Leaning closer, I searched for answers, thinking of the day I’d found him on the settee in the parlor, crashed after his all-nighter with Amy. Maybe he wasn’t just tired that day, either. Maybe he’d passed out. Had he come home tonight not fully within his faculties, passed out in his truck, and let it roll down the hill? Had he hit his head when the truck crashed, or afterward when he was trying to get out? “Oh, Clay,” I whispered. If not for the fig tree, he could have ended up in the lake. He would have ended up in the lake. I’d be calling the police right now, watching them pull my brother’s body from the frigid water. . . .
“I’ll go get help.” I moved the hood of his jacket so that I could lay his head on it. His hand flailed clumsily, catching my arm just above the wrist. His fingers were as cold as the frost-tipped grass, barely able to cling.
