Fire Solves All Problems Perfectly pt 50

You reach the pens just before your brother, surprised at how fast he is getting, slowing down as the odor hits you, making you gag. The shacks are faced with chicken wire; the dogs have their noses pressed into it, barking and scrabbling at it with their paws, biting the air and whining and salivating and snapping at one another; their eyes are red and crusted in the corners with pus. Some of them are dead, flyblown lumps in the hay.

What are you doing to them dogs? I’ll smack your ass if you’re teasing them. He stops when the stink reaches him, and one look into the pens and he waves you back. Get away from there. God dammit, get away.

We didn’t do anything, cousin Jamie tells him. I swear we didn’t.

Your father appears at the trailhead; he leans close to his own father, saying words you can’t hear, and your grandfather takes Jamie and cousin Tony’s hands, dragging them after him out of sight, ignoring their demands for information. Your father takes a seat on a nearby stump, pulling you and your brother to him; you watch the dogs, who are still attacking the fence with fever, their growls sick with mucus, dragging their heads on the ground. When your grandfather returns, his rifle is cocked over one arm; he fishes bullets out of his pocket and slides them into the chamber.

You want them to see this? he says to your father.

You made me kill my dog when I was ten, your father replies. Remember?

Your grandfather cocks his rifle and advances on the pen. Your father tells you to put your hands over your brother’s ears and then cups his own over yours. Don’t be afraid, he says, and you repeat it to your brother as your grandfather raises his gun and fires and fires and fires and fires, filling the air with momentary red puffs of spray. When it is done, you shrugs out of your father’s hands, walking to your grandfather’s side to see. Your brother is crying; your father allows it for a moment, then roughly wipes his cheeks and tells him that they have to get this taken care of, and all together you drag the dogs to the edge of the island’s banks, leaving smears of red grass behind, hauling the dead dogs to the downriver side of the dock and pushing them over into the water one at a time, where they land in red splashes and are carried away in the crawling current. The last dog’s tongue brushes your hand as you send it into the water.

Your father joins you at the handpump where you are scrubbing with Lava soap.

Where’s Grandpa? you ask.

He went inside, your father says, nodding towards the cabin. He liked his dogs. They were sick. Do you know what rabies is?

Yes, you say. You read it in the dictionary, something you used to do all the time but your father said it was weird. They must have gotten bitten by something, you say, like a coon or a squirrel, and then they bit each other. Rabies affects the brain.

Your father is drying his hands on paper towels, watching his brothers hack away at the garden so they can plant and water after lunch; by the end of summer there will be fresh peas and corn. You know we had to do that, don’t you? your father says. There isn’t any kind of medicine that could have made them better.

I know, you say, I just wish we didn’t have to.

The sun’s rays reach the bloody grass and flies are beginning to land; your father tells you to get a bucket and wash it away before the girls arrive – you order your cousins to do it, and though they complain, you’re the oldest son and they do like they are told.