Stay

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Well . . . with one notable exception. But I hadn’t met her yet.

  There wasn’t much of anything like a trail, I guess because nobody but me was interested in walking back there. But the place was overrun with deer, and they beat down little paths back and forth to the river. Wherever they lived, they still had to drink. So I walked where they walked.

  The trees mostly formed a canopy over my head, so whatever sunlight came through was dappled. I liked that. I was really into the dapples. On a windy day, the light came through as moving dapples. If it was really windy, I could hear trees creak, and sometimes one would break with a noise like the crack of a rifle, then tumble down. On quiet days I walked as softly as possible to sneak up on the deer. Not because I wanted to hurt one. I just liked being able to get that close. When they finally heard me, they would take off crashing through the brush, sounding like they were fleeing on pogo sticks.

  It was a quiet day that day—my tipping day. No wind. Hardly any birds. The leaves on the trees didn’t so much as shudder.

  The only sound I could hear was the sound I was making by crunching old pine needles and small branches under my feet. So I stopped. And I just listened to all that silence.

  It was like Connor’s house, except this silence couldn’t hurt anybody.

  I hadn’t realized until that moment why I walked back here. But it was painfully obvious once I stopped to listen.

  I got lost that day for the first time.

  It made me think of my mom, who had told me over and over that I was never to go out into those woods. It was a warning that had started when I was barely in kindergarten.

  “You’ll get lost,” she’d say. “Maybe nobody will ever hear from you again.”

  It had sounded pretty silly. At the time.

  Eventually I crossed the paved River Road and hit the river, which helped me get my bearings.

  At first I just stood there and watched it flow. It was wide and muddy, with a current I could see. Not beautiful or inviting in any way. The banks were perpetually slippery. Now and then, when the rainy season got out of hand, it had been known to overflow and flood the town. It hadn’t recently—not in more than fourteen years—so I’d never seen that with my own eyes. Still, I knew it had. There was an unmistakable sense that it cared nothing for people at best, and sided against us at worst. I guess all of nature is like that.

  I turned back into the woods, more sure now that I knew how to get home. But it was past lunchtime, and I was starving, so I took a shortcut that I knew might only get me into more trouble.

  If I hadn’t, none of the rest of this would have happened.

  I was crossing the metal bar that supported the middle of the teeter-totter, figuratively speaking. The tipping place would be right in front of me, and at any minute I would put my weight on it. Only this time I didn’t know.

  I looked up and saw the cabin.

  It startled me, because I thought it was a given that there was nothing and no one back there. I just stood a moment, staring at it. Then I moved a little closer. Quietly, like I was trying not to tip off a deer.

  It was a genuine log cabin, made with rough-hewn logs, cut unevenly at the ends. No big power tools had been involved in its building—that much was obvious. It was unpainted. But it was good work, too. Everything fit together just right. It had what looked like a good, solid roof of blue metal shingles. A plain pipe chimney rose out of it, probably to accommodate a woodstove inside.

  I moved around the cabin to try to get a better look at the front.

  There was a pickup truck parked near it. Which seemed odd, since there wasn’t exactly what you might call a road. But I did see a strip of tire tracks that had worn down the forest floor into what I supposed could double as one. In a pinch.

  There was a porch made of wood boards, well crafted and neat. No stairs up to it. You just stepped up once to get onto the porch and one more time at the threshold of the door.

  Beside the porch was a small outbuilding that I couldn’t quite figure out. It was whitewashed, and too small to be any kind of decent shed. If you stepped into it, you wouldn’t even be able to straighten up. It was too small.

  I moved a little farther toward the front of the place, still working hard to be silent, and looked at the entrance to the tiny outbuilding. And it struck me, in that moment, what it was. It hit my belly like a fast softball made of ice. The entryway was just an open arch.

  It wasn’t a small shed. It was a massive doghouse.

  I shivered slightly, and I remember thinking, I never want to meet the dog who lives in that thing.

  I turned to get myself out of there. But in my hurry I forgot to be perfectly quiet. I stepped on a small branch and snapped it.

  Just as I was thinking, Please let the dog be inside the cabin, I saw him. And then, a second later, it wasn’t a him. It was a them. Two dogs came spilling out. Pouring out like water. In my shock over the size of them, and even as my blood felt like it was turning to ice, I still observed that about them. They seemed to flow like some kind of thick, smooth liquid. Like the current of that muddy river.

  They were huge. Easily a hundred pounds each. Their coats were short and flat, a color like silver. Or maybe more of a gunmetal gray. They stood high on their paws, as though their paw pads were thick and lifted them up—like those wedge inserts men put in their shoes to appear taller. They looked exactly alike—carbon copies of each other—except that one stood a couple of inches higher at the shoulder. I would have found them beautiful if I hadn’t been busy fearing for my very existence.

  They stopped flowing halfway between the doghouse and me.

  They dropped their heads at almost exactly the same time. Synchronized menacing. I could see the outlines of their shoulder blades. Their eyes were a spooky light blue.

  For a moment—and I could not have told you how long a moment—we just stood frozen, staring at each other.

  I had a flash of a memory.

  When I was very little, maybe five, my dad and I were walking along our street at dusk and saw two neighborhood dogs circling to fight. They looked into each other’s eyes and never broke off that direct gaze. My father told me that the first dog who looked away would be attacked by the other. It was a sign of submission to look away. Plus it gave the enemy an opening.

  For another eternity that might have been only a second, I held their terrifying gazes.

  Then I turned and ran like my life depended on it. Because I figured it probably did. It was the wrong move and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop myself. It had been utterly instinctive.

  Now my gut was filled with the sickening realization that I could not possibly outrun them. They would catch me, and . . . I had no firm idea, and I couldn’t bring myself to imagine. But of course I did know the kinds of things dogs tended to do.

  I put on a burst of speed.

  I could hear them right behind me. Not even a full step behind me. Once, I saw one of the heads in my peripheral vision as a dog drew even with me. Why he hadn’t taken the opportunity to bite, I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything in that moment. The panic had flipped a switch in my brain to off.

  I just kept running.

  My only hope was that they would be satisfied when I got far enough away from their property, and would turn for home.

  Still I heard their paws crashing in the brush just a step behind me, no matter how far and fast I ran. My chest began to catch fire. I developed a stitch in my side, but I didn’t dare stop running.

  I have no idea how long I ran that way. At least half a mile. It might even have been more. Time played tricks on my brain.

  Then the whole thing came to a crashing halt.

  I caught the toe of my sneaker on a root.

  I flew forward, still trying to rebalance myself. But the root was still holding my toe back behind me, so there was no way to recover. I slammed onto my belly on a bed of old leaves and pine needles, scratching the heels of my hands as I tried to brace my f
all.

  It was over. I felt lifted outside my body by the fear. Disconnected from myself. I honestly thought it might be the end for me. I covered my head with my arms and waited for them to do their worst.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  Finally I peered out from under my arms. I had to know.

  I saw one dog clearly. His mouth was open, long tongue curled out and dripping. It bounced as he panted. It looked almost as though he was smiling.

  I sat up and looked at both dogs, one after the other. Each returned a faint tail wag.

  “What the hell?” I asked out loud.

  I dropped onto my back. Stared up through the trees for a moment at a perfect cloudless blue sky, absorbing the new reality that I was not about to die.

  Then I sat up and looked at the dogs again.

  The larger one made a move that I could only interpret as an invitation. He bounded two steps, bouncing much higher than necessary, then stopped and looked over his shoulder at me with that same lolling-tongued grin.

  The message was strikingly clear: I’ll run more if you will.

  I took a few minutes, just sitting on the ground like that, to get over feeling incredibly stupid. To adjust my reality completely from my assumption that they were dangerous dogs to the simple truth that they had never meant any harm to anyone—that being huge didn’t automatically make them killers.

  I got to my feet and ran again, back toward their home. But it was different this time. It was exhilarating.

  I paced myself, but I was still fast. Frankly, I was amazed how fast. I honestly hadn’t known I could run like that. Now suddenly I couldn’t imagine how the talent could have escaped me, lived so dormant in me for so long. I’d also had no idea how much of the turmoil inside me running could solve.

  I put on bursts of speed, then smoothed out, then put on the gas again. I placed my feet as if I were running through a giant game of chess, always strategizing three or four moves ahead. The dogs ran one behind me, one in front where I could see him. Now and then he turned his head and glanced over his shoulder at me, his light blue eyes gleaming. He was having so much fun that he had to check and make sure I was, too.

  And, oh, I was having fun!

  I felt free for the first time in as long as I could remember. Everything that had weighed me down every day of my life seemed to have been put behind me. I had left it all in the dirt. I was too fast for my troubles. The crap of my life was eating my dust for the first time ever. I felt light, as though running could turn into flying. Then I felt as though I was flying, despite the fact that my feet never stopped hitting down.

  When the cabin came into view again, I forced myself to halt. I leaned forward onto my own knees and panted. I felt as though somebody had hosed out the inside of me, leaving everything empty and clean.

  The dogs went home. Reluctantly.

  So did I. Also reluctantly.

  It might sound trite to say I knew something important had changed in that moment. Also, it’s not entirely true. I knew something felt changed. What I did not yet know is that I had placed the first domino in a stack of events that would literally alter the world as I’d known it.

  That night before bed I wrote a letter back to Roy.

  I told him the truth. That the army censors had gone so hard at his letter that I still had no idea what it was he’d seen. And that if he tried to tell me again, they’d likely do the same again. But that he’d come home, given time, and that we’d go off somewhere private and I could hear about it straight from the horse’s mouth.

  As I wrote those words, “You’ll come home . . . ,” I knew I was reaching. Sure, Roy might come home. He also might not. I was stating something as a given, even as I knew in my heart it was anything but.

  I wondered if he’d have the same thought as he read it.

  Probably. If anybody could grasp the big picture of the danger Roy was in, it was Roy.

  Chapter Two

  Also a Day of Big Changes

  It was about two weeks later when things began to shift further.

  It was the second-to-last day of school. I was about to get my life back for the summer. And the last day was a half day anyway, so I was nearly free.

  I got up an hour early, as I’d done every weekday since I met the dogs, so I’d have time to run with them before school.

  I had a pattern, which I followed to the letter that morning. I’d set off at a light jog down my street. Pick up a faint deer trail into the woods. It took me up to the cabin from a different direction, so that when I finally saw it, I’d be coming over a rise. Just as I crested it, I would see the back of the cabin, and that’s when I would step on the gas.

  I kept to a slow pace on the street, to save my energy for the big sprint. But I was already starting to feel it—that tingly, delicious sense of anticipation you get when your brain and your gut know you’re about to do something good. Something that can actually change the crappy way you feel.

  When I finally saw the rise in front of me, I could barely contain myself. The feeling ricocheted around in my stomach like a case of the shivers. I crested the rise and floored it, barreling past the cabin as fast as my legs could carry me. Of course the dogs came spilling out.

  They never barked. They never whimpered in their excitement, though they were clearly excited to hear and then see me. They were always mute. Absolutely silent.

  I loved that about them.

  We ran.

  We ran around in a big arc, so we wouldn’t have to stop at the edge of the woods. So we wouldn’t have to face the prospect of civilization. We ran past the cabin again, but on a path too far away or too heavily wooded to see it flash by.

  We ran all the way across the River Road and stopped at the bank of the river. I squatted on my haunches, panting, and pulled a sandwich out of my pocket. I’d had breakfast, but I always needed more after all that running, and a sandwich was the only thing I knew to make on my own that I could put in a plastic bag and stick in my pocket.

  Nobody noticed the missing food. Nobody noticed me getting up earlier. Nobody asked why I was leaving the house more than an hour too early for school. I was like a ghost in that house. Unless I was interrupting their warfare, I might as well not have existed at all.

  The dogs crowded close, whacking me with their swinging tails, and I fed them each a bite of sandwich and watched the pull of the muddy water.

  Then I got nervous.

  They were not my dogs. I had no idea whose dogs they were. I wasn’t really supposed to have them away from their home with me. What if one of them stepped too close to the river and slid down the muddy, slippery bank? What if they darted back into the road? Cars didn’t come along it often, but when they did, their drivers almost always took the straightaway much too fast because there was no one around to notice.

  “Come on,” I said to them, and they lifted their ears and turned them to face me to show they were listening. “Let’s go back.”

  I looked both ways at the road. From that spot you could see just about forever in each direction. There was nobody coming, so I took a chance. I wanted to try an experiment.

  I ran with them down the dirt shoulder of the road for a tenth of a mile or so. I wanted to see how much faster I could go without having to play chess with the trees. But the experiment was a bust. Maybe I went faster. Who knows? But it wasn’t fun. There was nothing to it. It was just slapping my feet down.

  I missed the constant dodging. The blur of tree trunks racing past in my peripheral vision. More to the point, my brain was so disengaged that I started thinking, though after all these years I don’t claim to remember what about. I needed the absolute concentration of the on-the-fly route finding, but I hadn’t known it. It required every ounce of my concentration. It left me unable to entertain any thoughts.

  “Come on,” I said to the dogs. “We’re turning around.”

  I’m sure they had no idea what that meant. But I stopped and turned, and tha
t they understood.

  Just then something caught my eye.

  I was jogging along past the graveyard. I’d run by it once, but I must’ve been looking away. What made me look, made me stop my feet, was a spray of bright yellow flowers. What kind of flowers, I don’t know. I wasn’t good with that, and I’m still not. But they were the kind that bloomed in long stalks.

  Now, at face value, there was nothing so strange about it. Just two things made me wonder, and drew me in closer.

  One, nobody had died in this town for a really long time. Maybe six or seven years, with the exception of old Mr. Walker, whose body was shipped back to Michigan to be buried with his family. Granted, you can still miss a family member six or seven years later. You can still be thinking of them and want to go visit their grave. But then there was the other odd thing. Those same flowers had been laid on two graves. And the graves were much too far apart to be members of the same family.

  I walked through the gate, the dogs wagging behind me. Up to the first grave.

  The stone read, “Wanda Jean Paulston, November 10, 1945–December 18, 1952.”

  Only seven years old. That must have been a heartbreak for the family. Part of me wondered why I hadn’t heard about it. But people don’t like to tell their kids about stuff like that. Besides, it all happened before I was born.

  I walked to the second grave. It said, “Frederick Peter Smith, April 11, 1946–December 18, 1952.”

  I stood a minute processing it in my brain. Both died young. Both died on the same day. Somebody missed them both.

  But it seemed like a mystery that I didn’t have the clues to solve, and not a very pressing one at that. So they had a mutual friend. So what?

  Besides, I’d been in a hurry to get the dogs home.

  “Come on,” I said to them. “We’re going.”

  And they both gave me this look like it was about time.

  We sprinted back to the approximate spot where we’d burst out of the woods, and we burst back in. I ran them home. For every second of those few glorious minutes, I thought about nothing at all.