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Across the Water and in the Shade of the Trees

Rod Dixon

    “We’re going to have to put Hermes down,” Samuel Polk told his son one July evening at the family’s supper table. The hordes of cicadas outside sung their song of seven-year sleep and newfound hunger. Their buzz neither waxed nor waned, but was a constant proclamation that that which lay sleeping sometimes rose.
    Brandon Polk blinked. He was seventeen-years-old and baby-faced and had owned Hermes since he was a six-year-old boy. He had few memories of a time when the Border Collie was not a part of the family.
    “I knew he was bad,” Brandon said, “but I didn’t think—”
    “His hips are going out,” Samuel said. “When he takes a squat he’s falling down in his own mess.”
    Brandon winced. “I can hose him off.”
    “I found maggots in his fur,” Samuel said, his voice all patience and certainty. His face was wind worn and his nose latticed with gin blossoms. “The flies must have laid eggs in the shit matted to his fur. He’s in pain,” Samuel added.
    Brandon nodded. The boy had been chubby most of his life, but had shed twenty-five pounds over the course of his senior year. He was now lanky and tan. His recent weight loss had given him an easy going confidence that reminded Samuel of the boy’s mother at that age. He knew his son’s weight loss was partly due to the fact Brandon was smoking half-a-pack of Marlboro’s a day, though he had yet to confront his son about it. He found the remains of a pack in the boy’s car. Samuel recognized the red banner and the golden chargers on their hind-legs immediately—it had been his own brand back when he smoked, after all. Samuel quit when Brandon was four-years-old. He wasn’t sure his son even remembered that he had once smoked. But he found it hard to believe their shared taste was a coincidence and a subtle sense of guilt stilled his tongue.
    “I don’t want a stranger doing it,” Brandon said of putting down the dog. “It wouldn’t be right.”
    Samuel closed his eyes, proud and fearful. He felt the same way.
    The pair drove Hermes to the family farm the next morning. The mid-summer heat was on and the air was humid and boggy. Hermes sat in the bed of the truck, his brown eyes staring upward, his snout to the wind. Gone were the days the dog leapt from one end of the truck to the other, snapping his yellow teeth in excitement. Hermes sat motionless, save from the wind ruffling his sun-bleached fur. Samuel watched him in the mirror, remembering how they got the dog on account of a newspaper ad eleven years before. His wife still kept a photo of that day, of the puppy running through the green grass of the front yard, and Brandon chasing after.
    Samuel drove off road, forded a shallow creek, and parked under a hickory tree. The forest was alive with cicadas and the occasional bark of a fox squirrel. He got out a pint of half-melted chocolate ice cream they brought along in a plastic cooler. He scooped it into a metal bowl and did his best to grind up a handful of Percocets with the safety blade from his tool box.
    “Where did you even get these?” he asked his son.
    “They were left over from when I dislocated my shoulder.”
    Samuel gritted his teeth and worked a way at a pill. “I’m surprised you didn’t keep more of these for slow nights at college,” he said, satisfied he could still get a look of shock out of his seventeen-year-old.
    They took turns digging in the shade of the hickory, while Hermes worked at his bowl of ice cream, which looked more and more like a runny milkshake. The top layer of red clay was easy enough to clear off the ground, but they soon ran into a layer of hardpan dotted with chunks of limestone. Samuel handed off the shovel and wiped at his brow with a handkerchief.
     “I got an email from my dorm roommate the other day,” Brandon said. “I guess Campbellsville gave him my info so we could get to know one another.”
    “He seem nice?”
    “I guess.” Brandon drove his heel down on the edge of the shovel blade. “Kind of hard to tell from one email.”
    “You should put those gloves on,” Samuel told his son. “You’ll get blisters.”
    Brandon ignored him. Samuel watched his son for a while and then walked over and scratched the dog’s ears. Hermes panted in the heat of the day, his spotted tongue lolling out of his mouth. It took the father and son less than an hour to dig the grave. They rested on the ground afterword. The dog sat next to Brandon, stoned and happy.
    “Remember when Hermes used to run off to the ballpark?” Brandon asked.
    Samuel nodded. “He followed the sound of people cheering.”
    “I was watching Tommy Davis pitch a game one time,” Brandon said. “Out of nowhere Hermes runs out onto the field. He must have recognized Tommy from sleepovers, because he ran straight up to the mound. People in the crowd were yelling. The third-base coach had to chase him off.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I ran. Past the field, past the concession stand. I didn’t want anyone to know it was my dog, but Tommy yelled my name and Hermes came chasing after me.”
    Samuel smiled at his son’s cowardice. He studied the husk of a cicada, shrugged off like rags and left clinging to the bark of an ash tree. In his youth he would have flicked the flimsy shell off or crushed it up between his fingers, simply for the blind pleasure of destroying something. But he was content now in his adulthood to meditate on its translucent lines, which induced in him an inexplicable feeling of anxiety. He thought about his son running with Hermes in headlong pursuit.
    “You can smoke if you need to,” Samuel said.
    Brandon stiffened. He looked off into the forest, his jawline tense. Samuel half expected him to ask how long he had known, but the boy said he was good and left it at that.
    “You know we’re going to have to talk about it sometime,” Samuel said.
    “Not today.”
    “You remember that line from The Outlaw Josey Wales? Dying ain’t much of living.”
    “Not today, dad.”
    Samuel relented. “This ain’t ever going to get any easier,” he said and walked over to the truck. He got out his Smith & Wesson, with its blued barrel and heavy wooden grips. Brandon came over, holding out a dirt stained hand.
    “I want to do it,” the son said.
    “I would never let you.” Samuel hated the boy a little for even assuming he would.
    “He’s my dog.”
    “He’s the family’s dog,” Samuel corrected him, “and I’m your father.” He walked past his son to Hermes, who panted obliviously in the shade.
    “I won’t look away,” the boy said.
    Samuel studied his son’s face—the brash eagerness, the sulking courage. In a month the boy would go to college and nothing would be the same. No, Samuel corrected himself, that wasn’t true. Everything had already changed, it was only still playing itself out. Time was the unfolding of forces set in motion long ago, and they had come too far to turn back now.
    “I wish you would,” Samuel said. He lifted the pistol and sighted it on the old dog’s black skull. A spasm of dread gripped his throat and he had to fight with his fingers to keep from dropping the gun. He squeezed his eyes shut. He put his finger to the trigger. Hermes blinked and led the way to where all must eventually follow.

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