The wagon's wheel catches her hindquarters and she goes down hard, muzzle in the dirt, tasting dust and her own blood. She sees it coming for a good half-second, long enough to know her stiff hips won't turn, that her body has finally, decisively, failed to be fast enough.
The wagon doesn't slow.
She drags herself away from the rutted street, from the boots and hooves and voices, the morning bustle of the town carrying on around her like water around a stone. Nobody stops. Someone curses and it might be at the wagon or at her. Her back legs don't work right. She pulls with her front paws, claws in the dust, away from the noise, away from the town, toward the grass and the long empty beyond it.
The pain is white-hot, then red, then a dull throb that seems to come from everywhere, yet nowhere she can chew at. She makes a hundred yards before she has to stop, panting, flies finding the blood on her back. She snaps at them once, weakly, then doesn't bother again. She sighs at nobody.
The sun is climbing. The day will be hot.
She rests her muzzle on her front paws and looks out across the prairie grass, rippling in the wind like water. In the distance, maybe two miles off, she can see the dark line of buildings that used to be the ranch. The territory that meant pack and home.
Walk on into town now, and be smart.
The father's palm firm on her chest, that last morning, pressing once. Not rough, not gentle, just deliberate. His voice matter-of-fact, no room for argument, no room for her to follow. The wagon already loaded, the younger children crying, the mother's face set hard against something. They left the door open. Put out cornmeal in a sack. She waited on the porch watching the track for three weeks, eating the cornmeal, then the rats, then nothing, before she understood they weren't coming back.
Before she walked half-starved into the town and became nobody's.
The flies are in her eyes now. She blinks them away, but they return. The pain is fading, which should be good, but something else fades with it. It is a strange feeling. She is calm.
She is thirsty.
The sky is the colour of old bruises, air so still it feels dangerous to breathe, and then: the sound.
It comes to her suddenly, the memory six years old but sharp as thorny tumbleweed: the twister. The way the whole sky had turned green-black like meat gone bad, and the air pressed down on everything until even the chickens hushed. Her hackles were up without her choosing it, every hair on her body standing alert to something massive and predatory moving just out of sight.
The father had seen it on the horizon and started shouting. The neighbour-family came running across the field, the woman carrying the smallest child, the older girl stumbling behind. Everyone down into the root cellar, now, no time, get DOWN.
Ten bodies in the dark. Adults standing because there wasn't room to sit, children on the dirt floor, someone's elbow in someone else's ribs, everyone breathing hard, the smell of fear so thick she could taste it. And the sound building above them: a roar like nothing she'd ever heard, like the sky itself had grown teeth. Claws. Ragged breath.
The neighbour's girl was pressed against the wall, panting too shallow and too fast, eyes too wide. The dog had pushed in next to her without thinking, just body to body, warm and solid and together. The small hands had grabbed her fur, tight enough to hurt, tight enough that she could feel the girl's pulse through her fingertips, bird-fast and thready against the dog's ribs.
She'd pressed in harder. Stayed absolutely still. Let the girl's fists clench and unclench in her fur, let the girl's face bury itself in her neck, let her weight be an anchor while the world and the sky tried to tear themselves apart overhead.
The roar lasted through a forever of small heartbeats, time taking strange shapes in the dark. The whole cellar shaking, dirt sifting down from the ceiling. Children crying, adults silent. Through it all: the girl's hands in her fur, loosening gradually as exhaustion overtook terror, until finally the grip went slack and the girl slumped against her, asleep or passed out, and the dog had stayed perfectly still, barely breathing, doing the only job that mattered: be here, be steady, be pack.
When they'd finally climbed out, the ranch house was missing its roof and half the barn was gone, but everyone was alive. The father had touched her head, briefly, and said "Good dog," his voice rough with something like gratitude. The neighbour-father brought her a bone.
That was the moment. In the cellar, in the dark, with the world ending overhead and the girl's hands knotted in her fur; with the sweat and breath and fear and heartbeats of the human animals thick around her… that was when she'd known with absolute certainty the rightness of pack. Long after the good gnawing was gone from it, she'd slept with the bone nearby.
The town never needed her like that.
The butcher had fed her for a while: scraps, bones with some meat still on them, a place to sleep behind his shop. She'd kept other dogs away, killed rats, been useful in the small ways she could fathom for him. One day a customer in fine clothes pointed, shouted. The butcher stopped leaving food.
She'd learned the rhythms of the busy little town: the schoolteacher who sometimes had bread, the blacksmith's wife who'd leave scraps in a tin, the saloon owner who'd whistle his sad tunes and seemed to see her when he looked. She slept behind the general store where the wind didn't cut as sharp. She answered to the names they called her— Yeller, Dog, Hey You. Learned which names announced a boot and which a hunk of bread in bacon grease.
One afternoon the schoolteacher had found some children throwing rocks. The dog retreated, turned, stood still as a stone hit the ground with a puff of dust, as another hit her flank. What else was there to do. Run and they chase. Fight and they'll kick. But the teacher had come out sharp and sudden: Stop that. She's doing no harm. Maybe she's known children and wants to play. Cruelty is the arrow that turns.
She had known children. The shrieks and running and bright eyes. She found them feral and felt them pack.
The sun is overhead now. The pain is distant like the scent of town. She can't feel her back legs at all and is calm. The flies have given up on her eyes and are working on the wound, but she's too tired to care.
A scent drifts past on the wind: something small and alive, moving in the grass nearby. Rabbit maybe, or prairie dog. The old shiver runs along her spine. Prey, hunt, chase. It's a reflex so deep it bypasses thought. Her muscles twitch with the ghost of intent.
But she doesn't move. Just lies still, breathing shallow, the instinct fading as quickly as it came.
The sky above her is big in a way her mind cannot hold. She thinks of running across it. It is a long way and would take forever. It is a good thought, huge and alive. Her hackles would be up if they had the strength for it. But instead there's just: that pull. The same electric aliveness she'd felt in the air before the storm, but softer now, gentler… an invitation instead of a threat.
She feels again the girl's hands in her fur. The butcher's palm, broad and warm, resting on her side when she'd been sick and he'd checked to see if she was breathing. The father's hand on her chest that last morning.
She'd been smart, like he said. Smart enough to survive. Smart enough to know when humans meant stay and when they meant go and when closeness was too much of a risk. Smart enough to read a whole town's rhythms, to take what was offered and not ask for more.
Smart enough to know, finally, that no one was coming.
The sky is pulling harder now. It does not frighten her. It is vast and open and full of something she aches for. Her breaths are coming slower and shallower, and yet each one a little more work than the last. If she had more she would use it to howl.
The grass moves around her, rippling in waves. Somewhere in the distance, a hawk keens. The sun is warm on her fur. She is still thirsty, thinks of good clear water and smacks her tongue once.
She keeps her eyes on the sky. There has been much in her life that has been hard to understand. This sky feels right. It is here now pressing into her, as she pressed into the girl in the cellar.
Her breath catches.
A mile away or a hundred, thunder calls.
She stops trying to hold on.
