by Galen Holley

Johnny Cote’ thumped a cigarette out the window of his pickup, and the air rushing in was like a hot slap in the face. It blew back his fine, black hair and dried his dark eyes. Nothing stirred along the straight stretch of unshaded road, and in the distance, mirages shimmered like ghostly water. Waves of heat rippled upward toward a clear blue, merciless sky.

The heat was unbearable so Coat, the nickname his step daddy Fletcher had given him, thought nothing of it when he didn’t see the preacher or his fat wife as he drove by their house. Sunday evenings they were usually out scratching around in the dirt.

Fletcher had a deep well of scorn for the preacher.

Occasionally, the preacher and his wife would show up at the trailer with a plate of brownies and big, unnatural smiles. One Sunday morning, while changing the oil in his truck, Coat was startled to look up and see the pastor standing directly over him. The old man asked if he and his stepsister, A.J., would like to come to church.

Today, Coat saw no sign of them. In the distance, about a quarter mile up the road, he spotted something strange. Drawing near, Coat saw that it was the preacher’s mutt, the car-chasing bastard that he always cussed and swerved to avoid hitting. The dog was hunkered in the middle of the road, and even as Coat bore down on it, it didn’t move. Coat pulled over and right away he saw that the dog had defecated all over itself. Blood trickled out the corner of its mouth and congealed on the hot pavement. The poor creature’s hips were slung at an unnatural angle.

Coat stood on the gravel shoulder. The sun screamed down and made him nauseous. He approached the dog slowly. Coat went back to his truck and let down the tailgate. Returning to the dying animal, he lifted it and heard it moan like a sick man. The dog gurgled as its lungs filled with blood. Coat slid the dog gently into the bed of the truck. He wiped his hands on his jeans so the steering wheel wouldn’t be slick in his hands. He fished his cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, lit one, and eased up the preacher’s driveway.

***

Coat knocked on the door and rang the bell. Nobody answered. He stepped around to the front, trying, as best he could, to tread only on the chipped-up pine bark. A television flickered soundlessly. Coat knocked on the window and spoke his name loudly and finally a woman’s voice answered. It sounded hoarse and weak. Coat hollered as politely as he could that the dog was in his truck. The woman didn’t answer right off, but after a few seconds, she said to enter through the door under the carport.

The kitchen was dark and hot. It smelled of old cooking grease and buttermilk and it reminded Coat of his grandmother’s house on the reservation.

On the wall hung a clock made from an irregularly shaped, cross-cut section from the trunk of a big oak, the age rings visible. The wood was sanded smooth and varnished and shined like a polished penny. The preacher’s wife hollered and told Coat to come into the back bedroom and he followed her voice. He could see light in the doorway down the hall. Hanging in the hall were pictures of the preacher and his wife. The old man was dressed in a cowboy shirt.

She was wearing a blue dress. The preacher’s hair was oiled and combed up on the sides. He wore thick sideburns and tinted eyeglasses. In another picture, the preacher was sitting by himself, a Bible in his lap. When Coat reached the end of the hall he saw the preacher’s wife had been hollering from a bed.

The woman used a remote she held in her left hand to raise the top part of the bed so she could sit up and talk. Coat wondered if this was the same preacher’s wife, the one he’d seen waddling around the yard all these years, the one whose neck looked like a turkey’s and jiggled when she walked.

This woman was half the size of the one he knew. This one was gray and the loose skin hung on her arms like an oversized sweater. Most of her hair was gone. An oxygen machine sat on the right side of her bed. Knobs and dials were lit up and tubes ran up to her nostrils. A tall table on wheels was cantilevered over the bed. On it, the woman had two cans of Sprite, a television remote, a box of Kleenex, and a cell phone. The air in the room was hot and still and it smelled like sweat.

***

“I hate to say, Mrs. Steward, but I believe your dog’s been hit,” Coat said. “He’s in bad shape. He’s in the bed of my truck.”

The preacher’s wife didn’t say anything, only closed her eyes and shook her head. Coat waited a long time, neither he nor the woman saying a word. The preacher’s wife raised her head and opened her eyes.

“Lord, that dog,” she said. “That old dog. Lord, have mercy. That dang, poor, old dog.”

Coat paused. “I believe he’s about dead,” he said. “Maybe you should call your husband.” Coat waited for the woman to speak, but she didn’t.

“I could wait in the truck till he gets here,” Coat said. “Give the dog some water, see to it.” The woman still didn’t say anything. With the bed control in her left hand, she raised herself higher, so that she was sitting up straight.

Coat looked at the clock. The hands were set against a picture of two kids, a boy and a girl, crossing a bridge in a storm. A pretty, female angel looked down on the kids from the clouds.

“My nurse left a while ago and won’t be back till tomorrow,” the woman said, but her voice was so hoarse that Coat hardly understood her. “How’s that little stepsister of yours?” she asked.

The woman hacked and spit into a Kleenex, then wadded it up and laid it on the table and asked Coat to please excuse her.

“She always was a pretty little thing,” the woman said. “She doing alright, since her daddy passed?”

“A.J. is fine, ma’m,” Coat said. “She quit school, but she’s ok.”

The woman lifted a can of Sprite and put the straw between her lips and sipped it.

“Maybe she’s too young to know,” the woman said, and she waited several seconds for Coat to say something. “Maybe you should try to steer her right.”

The skin on the woman’s face sagged like a wax mask melting off her. Her eyes were sunken and dark and Coat could tell that breathing wasn’t easy for her. He remembered how, when his sister, Alameda, was little, Mama Pokni would sit her down and show her how to make cornbread, how she’d put the oil in the iron skillet and let it run all over so it wouldn’t stick. He thought about Pokni showing Alameda how to braid hair.

“I know a thing or two,” Coat said to the woman, in a polite voice. “But I don’t presume to know what’s best for A.J., or for women in general.”

He looked at the floor.

“I take care of her, in a way,” he said. “I see no harm comes to her. That’s enough. I don’t boss her.”

The preacher’s wife didn’t say anything. She started coughing and hacking. She took a second to catch her breath, and Coat could see tears in her eyes. He wasn’t sure if the tears were from coughing or sadness.

When she was composed, the woman said, “Young man, you’d be helping a sick old woman if you’d take that dog and shoot it.”

The woman took the bed control in her left hand and lowered herself back and it opened her airway. “Ain’t right to let an animal suffer,” she said. “I love that old dog, but I can’t do anything to help it. My husband don’t care a thing in the world for it.” She let out a long, low moan.

“I figure you have guns down there,” the woman said. “I’d be obliged if you’d go on, now, and shoot my dog and bury him before he suffers anymore.” The woman raised her eyes and looked at Coat. He nodded. “I thank you for it,” she said. “Now go on, son. God bless you.”

Coat turned and walked out of the room without speaking. The sun hurt his eyes as he stepped from under the porch. He expected to hear the dog moaning and gurgling, but he didn’t. Its mouth was open and its tongue lay still. Coat nudged at the dog’s back quarter, afraid it might try to bite. The dog didn’t move and Coat laid his hand on its ribcage—no breath. The dog’s blood had seeped into the plastic grooves of the bed liner. Coat thought to go back in the house and tell the old woman, but then thought better of it.

***

Coat decided to go by the truck stop and check on A.J. Rather than dig a hole, he figured he’d fill up his diesel can at the store and burn the dog in a pile of old limbs, stumps, and busted-up pallets he had a mind to get rid of at the trailer.

It was hot but it was clear and pretty and Coat figured he’d see A.J. out with the gypsies. He didn’t.

Three women were washing clothes in the coin-op, but A.J. wasn’t there, either. Coat entered through the side of the store that sold hardware and fishing tackle. He picked up one of the long, butane lighters with the nozzle and trigger.

Then he went over to the food side to look for A.J. It took him a second to find her, but there she was, sitting in the very back booth, closest to the drink cooler. She was talking to somebody. Coat figured any second A.J. would look up and see him, but she didn’t. She was focused on the person across from her.

Coat eased down the canned food aisle, past the Viennas and sardines. He looked over just enough to see A.J’s face. He kept quiet, his head low.

A.J. looked pretty. She wore a pink tube-top with her delicate, tan, shoulders exposed, untanned strips stretching over her shoulders from her swimsuit top,  her small breasts firm and erect under the thin cloth. Her face was playful and her hands were out on the table, palms down, as if telling the punchline of a joke.

A.J. looked perfectly happy. Coat stared for a moment, then regained his composure. He walked further down the aisle, not taking his eyes off her.

Two barefoot men with jailhouse tats walked past Coat and each took a case of beer out the cooler. They glanced at A.J. in the booth and shoved each other and laughed. One stuck out his tongue and winked. A.J. glanced up for a second and disdainfully disregarded them.

Coat carried the lighter up to the counter to Big Spin and gestured over his shoulder.

“Been here about an hour,” Spin said.

Coat nodded silently.

“Ain’t my business, but you need to get hold of her,” Spin said. “These cons and bikers come in here, headed to the lake. She’s gonna come up missing.”

Coat nodded again, a bit sadly, and he held up his finger for Spin to wait. Coat walked back to the sporting goods section, picked up a box of 12 gauge shells, and put them on the counter next to the lighter. He pointed toward a pack of cigarettes.

Spin laughed silently, shook his head, and rang up the items. Coat eased out the door, looked in through the plate glass window at A.J., then went home to burn the dog.

Image by TeeFarm via Pixabay