Monstrous Affections

The Webley

Wallace Gleason walked alone that day.

Some days past, he and Rupert Storey had fought a hot, angry storm of a battle that ended in tears and blood. Wallace had come out on top; for at the end, it was he standing, fists clenched at his side, eye-whites standing out like flecks of ivory against his tanned, dusty flesh. His best friend Rupert was on the ground, red ribbons of snot strung down his chin and into the dirt. Rupert bled; Rupert cried. Wallace did neither.

The dog hunkered low in the grass. And it took note of Wallace walking past the quiet, broken-down shacks that every so often emerged from the woods along this stretch of road.

It was a stretch that one time might have had some life to it. When the Evers Brothers sawmill was up and running, the little houses were full of men and their wives and their children, come to Fenlan to make a good wage. A dog would take note of no one boy more than any other. But this was 1933. The passages of boys were few and far between these days.

Wallace thought he took the road slow and victorious, more man now than ever before. But the dog thought differently. It had not seen Wallace’s prowess in the sand pit, what a beating he had been able to inflict upon his foe. The dog only saw the boy, unsmiling, head down, shuffling along the route that he had taken many times in the company of his best friend Rupert.

The dog launched itself.

It was a big boy of a dog, a German shepherd. Maybe some wolf in it. Wallace was not much bigger. When the dog bounded across the overgrown lawn of its house, snarling, barking — Wallace screamed.

The dog reared up on its hind legs, its front paws on Wallace’s shoulders. Their eyes locked. Wallace dropped his grammar textbook. He stepped back and fell, and scrambled up before the dog could set upon him.

The dog gave only a short chase. It bounded after Wallace as he bolted along the dirt road to the crossing where it met the main road into town. There he stopped, barking twice more, as Wallace ran off to his school, alone, his grammar text left fanned open in the road by the dog’s house.

It was only when the boy was out of sight that the dog turned back.

Rupert Storey walked alone too, and had each morning since his ignoble defeat at the hands of his best friend Wallace.

On his own, the trip to school went quicker. Having some brothers meant fewer chores. No longer waiting around at Wallace’s house each morning this past week meant Rupert had arrived at school fully a quarter hour earlier.

Wallace found him, leaned against the tall maple tree at the back of the schoolyard. Rupert was keeping an eye on the Waite sisters, themselves engrossed in a game of hopscotch with some others in the Grade Four section of their class… none half as beautiful as those two: Joan Waite, at twelve, a year older than Rupert — dark hair falling in curls to her shoulders, framing her wide Waite face, cheekbones that came up in the shape of a heart. Nancy, a year Rupert’s junior, somehow born with straw-blonde hair, grown to the middle of her back and braided into a long plait. She had the same upturned nose, though, the same heart-face, the same golden freckles, as her sister.

They all played on, not one noting Rupert’s steady gaze. Rupert turned that gaze on Wallace.

“What?” he said.

“You can come to dinner tonight,” said Wallace.

“Who says I even want to?” said Rupert.

But of course he did want to. Mrs. Gleason put on a fine spread for Wallace, his father the Captain and sister Helen — each night, not just Sundays. Rupert could sit by Helen, he reasoned, and not even talk to Wallace if Wallace didn’t apologize with more than a dinner invitation. So when Wallace asked him if he did want to, Rupert said, “Sure, I guess.” And at the end of day, he waited around until Wallace got out of detention for leaving his grammar text, and the two of them headed back together, on a longer route than usual, to the Gleason farm.

Wallace did say he was sorry but took his sweet time, finally mumbling it as they started up the long drive to the farmhouse. The scope of the apology didn’t exactly cover the sins involved.

“Sorry your lip got cut. I don’t know my own strength sometimes.”

But Rupert figured it for as good as he’d get. “All right,” he said. “It wasn’t bad as that.”

Wallace half-grinned then and almost undid it. “You cried like a little baby,” he said.

But when Rupert pushed him, starting something all over again, Wallace put his hands up. “No fighting today, brother. Today, we got to stick together.”

“All right.” Rupert let his hands dangle at his sides. They trudged up the drive to the house and climbed up on the porch. The Captain was there, sitting on an old cane chair, sipping well-water from a tin ladle. One suspender dangled off his shoulder; his white shirt was stained with sweat, which beaded on his sunburned forehead. Seeing Rupert, he lifted the ladle to him as if in a toast.

“Good afternoon, Captain Gleason,” said Rupert.

“Afternoon, Lieutenant Storey. Corporal Gleason.” The Captain winked and finished the ladle of water. He dipped it into the bucket beside his chair and offered it to the boys. It had been a hot walk; Wallace took it and gulped down half of it, and Rupert grabbed it away and finished it.

“Can Rupert stay for supper?” asked Wallace when they handed the ladle back.

“Can Rupert stay for supper? I don’t know. Depends on whether our Helen’s up to fending off the attentions of her young suitor tonight.”

Wallace glared, Rupert blushed, and the Captain laughed. “You’re always welcome at our table, Rupert.” He sniffed the air and said to Wallace: “Your mother’s roasting pork tonight. With apple. Ought to be plenty.” Then back to Rupert: “Go on inside. Say hello to Mrs. Gleason. Keep your hands to yourself with my daughter. Think you can say Grace?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I think so too. Now scoot.”

They went inside and through the sitting room. Rupert always liked spending time here. Captain Gleason had become a captain serving with the Perth County Fusiliers in the Great War. It was a rare ascent, so said the Captain, to go from enlisted man to officer in the course of a war. For the Gleason farm, it brought prizes: a decommissioned German Maxim gun, mounted in the corner; and a helmet from a Hun, a bullet hole in it right at the crown, hung on the wall beside family photographs. By the west-facing window perched a small metal sculpture of an angel, polished black, which Rupert and Wallace understood had been lifted from the bombed-out ruins of a French church, brought back as hidden booty in a soldier’s duffel.

Rupert went through there to the kitchen, where he found Mrs. Gleason and Helen, tending supper on the woodstove. Helen was a woman of fifteen — black hair cut to her shoulders — a small mouth with full red lips — brown eyes that laughed…

Skin like silk, like gold.

She and the Waite sisters… they were in the same league, as far as beauty went. Rupert put his hands in his pockets and said hello.

There was some fussing. Rupert was unsure about whether the Captain and Mrs. Gleason knew about the battle between him and their son last week in any particulars. But Mrs. Gleason at least must have intuited that something had been wrong, she being so relieved now that things seemed right. Helen, smile plastered on her face, asked Rupert some questions — mostly about how his brothers were keeping, and he answered as best he could. He would have kept talking ’til dinner was served, but Wallace motioned him back to the sitting room so he excused himself and left the women to their work.

“I got something to show you,” said Wallace. He beckoned Rupert over to a dark cherry-wood cabinet, on top of which was a case with medals and decorations that Captain Gleason had earned, all arranged on a bed of red velvet. He pulled open the top drawer, which was as high as their chests. He looked around apprehensively, then lifted it out.

It was a holster of dark, oiled leather, with straps wrapped tight around it. Wallace held it in both hands like it was treasure, which, Rupert supposed, was exactly what it was.

“It’s Father’s Webley revolver,” said Wallace. He held it out. “You can hold it.”

Rupert touched it, but pulled back before Wallace could put the weight of it in his hands. The revolver was for officers; Rupert didn’t feel right about holding it, not unless an officer said he could, and even then… Wallace shrugged and took it back in his own arms. He cradled it like it was a baby.

“There’s no bullets in it,” he said. “I know where they are, though.”

“Put it back,” said Rupert. “Come on.”

Wallace shook his head. “Remember how I said we have to stick together, brother?”

Rupert swallowed, and nodded.

Carefully, Wallace unwrapped the straps from the holster, and with one hand pulled the revolver out. It was huge in his hand, butt curved like the blade of a scythe. The barrel was short, but wide.

“Good,” he said, holding the gun so it pointed out the window, toward town. He closed one eye and sighted down the barrel. But the gun was heavy enough he couldn’t hold it that way for long. “’Cause tomorrow, we’re going to have to.”

“Put it back,” said Rupert again.

“Yeah.” Wallace slipped it back into the holster and set it back in the drawer. “Don’t worry, brother. We’ll be safe.”

“Safe from what?”

Wallace slid the drawer shut, and walked over to the Maxim.

“There’s—” Wallace hesitated. A dog, is how he should have finished, but the word dog wasn’t the word he was looking for to describe the dog that had assailed him that morning. “There’s a beast,” he said. “We can’t let it be.”

“What do you mean to do? And what do you mean ‘we’?”

Wallace took hold of the grip of the Maxim. He sighted down it.

“I mean we,” he said. “And you know what happens if we’re not?”

Rupert didn’t have to say. He knew. “Tell me about this beast,” he said instead, and listened, as Wallace described the thing, and what he meant them to do about it.

Rupert said the Grace at supper. Mrs. Gleason said he did fine, but Rupert knew he hadn’t; he’d mumbled and stuttered through the whole blessing, and when he sat down he was sweating. Helen poured him a tall glass of water at the end of it. She even said, “You’re very welcome, Rupert,” and smiled at him after he thanked her.

Meantime, Wallace brooded. He had wanted to get his father to tell the story of the Webley again, but Rupert had said that wouldn’t be a good idea, given everything he had in mind. Wallace didn’t see what the problem was. His father told the story often enough, whether to the family, or to pals over draft beer at the tavern. He had been in transit, promoted to lieutenant after his lieutenant had taken a bullet, on his way back to the war.

Well, you must understand, an army officer doesn’t come from places like Fenlan, where we work with our hands and our backs. Officers are fancy fellows. Gentry. They ought to have a sidearm. They bloody well ought to provide it themselves.

And for officers commissioned on the home front, that’s an easy thing. For those of us who send our pay home… something else again. So. (And he rubbed his hands together, and got a wicked look to his eyes.) There I am, on a troop transport crossing the channel. Back to action. And there are a band of officers, young fellows. From the Imperial army. They stick together — even sleeping together, lying like spokes of a wagon wheel, heads at the rim, feet in the middle. And in the middle of that: they stack their pistols.

And so I wait… I wait until the last of them starts snoring. And everso-quiet, I step between them, and snatch one of their pistols — a Webley revolver, short-barrelled like they carry in the Royal Navy. And creep back to where I’m billeted with the Canadians — tuck the gun away with my kit — and under the bright stars of Heaven, sleep the sleep of the just.

And the next day, sure enough, we’re sitting at breakfast, and isn’t one of those fellows complaining at me: how blimey an’ dash it, you can’t trust an enlisted man. “They’ll steal your sidearm, fast as look at you!”

“What,” I say back, “is the world coming to?”

And Father would chuckle. The same chuckle, every time he told the tale, at the same time in it. The chuckle was part of the story. And it was a great story.

But Rupert had been clear. “You want to do this thing, don’t go letting anyone think you’re thinking about it. Not that I think you should do it.”

So Wallace sat and ate his supper and Rupert held himself in check, and at the end of it, Wallace saw Rupert to the end of the driveway and bade him good night.

Wallace Gleason rose early. It was easy, he told Rupert when they met at the foot of the Gleason driveway. He had not truly gone to sleep.

“I didn’t want to let anything happen to the gun,” he said, yawning, stretching. The butt of the Webley appeared as his shirt stretched past it. The casual gesture made Rupert nervous, and he looked around quickly. But they were alone on the road.

“Is it loaded?” he asked, and Wallace nodded.

“But there’s no bullet in the chamber,” explained Wallace. “So we’re safe.”

“Just stop stretching,” said Rupert, and they headed into town, to school.

Rupert had not slept much either, and when he did sleep, his rest was troubled by dreams: of a huge, black-pelted wolf lurking atop the hay bales of Rupert’s barn… watching his brothers as they flung open the doors, as they came into the great, dark space, unwitting… the flash of its red eyes, the only hint that it was there, hunting.

He knew, in the light of morning, that this nightmare hound was not Wallace’s beast. The same as he knew that taking the Captain’s revolver to the dog that had troubled Wallace so was a dangerous game.

It was a game, however, that he couldn’t quit. There was more at stake than friendship.

They started to school — along the route that Wallace and Rupert always took. First, a mile along the concession road. They passed three other farms before getting to the road between the farms, and the town. Another mile or perhaps a bit more, on this road. The dog’s road.

Along here, the properties were smaller, and farther from one another. Anyone farming what soil there was, would be doing it to feed themselves rather than for market. Most of the houses along here were not even managing that. Roofs needed shingling; fences, a coat of paint. There were no lawns, few gardens. Neither Rupert nor Wallace knew anyone who lived here. As far as they knew, no one did.

They slowed past one. Rupert peered up the driveway — a short ribbon of dirt and gravel, dressed in low flowering weed. The house at the end of it was one floor, with a small porch on the front. The wood had been painted a pale green. The shingles were green with moss. An apple tree bent close to the south side. Looking close, Rupert could see the bruised red curves of fruit that had fallen into the high grass.

Wallace stood on the balls of his feet, craning his neck as though there were a fence to look over. The house was quiet.

“This is the place,” Wallace said gravely. He worked the Webley’s grip where it protruded over his belt, kept peering at the house. Rupert stood there with him, and looked.

This wasn’t how the plan was supposed to go. Wallace had gone over it just minutes before.

Okay, so this dog (he’d started to call it a dog by that morning)… it comes down the driveway. Fast. So fast you have to run. It’s like you don’t have a choice. The dog knows this. And it gets on you. On your tail. And then you’re done for. Except this time, when the dog comes… we’ll trick it. It’ll start coming at us, and then I’ll take the Webley. And I’ll sight down the barrel (he checked around, then pulled the gun out, and sighted down the barrel). And then: I’ll let fly (and he made a quiet sound like a pistol report through his teeth). And that’ll be the end of that damn dog.

“Maybe it only sees you when you’re moving,” said Wallace. “We should go back, and walk by the driveway again.”

“We should just go to school,” said Rupert. “Maybe on the way home…”

But Wallace was already doubling back, beckoning him to follow. Rupert sighed and walked back one house, and then they both turned around and crossed the driveway again.

It was the same this time as the last: nothing.

Wallace stood as he had before, staring at the house. A pickup truck rolled past them on the road into town. It kicked up a small cloud of dirt around them; the morning sun through the leaves gave it a glow like magic dust.

Wallace’s mouth turned down at the corner, and he glared through it at the house. He swore under his breath, and then at volume: “Goddamn.” Rupert, liking the look of the dust in the light, kicked up more dust with his feet. And looking down, he spied Wallace’s grammar text. He picked it up.

“Hey,” he said. “You drop this?”

“Goddamn!” Wallace’s face went red, and his shirt went up, and the Webley drew across his white belly, and it was pointing right at Rupert.

The gun barrel wavered in Rupert’s face, and as the dust settled around them, Rupert thought about their battle a week ago in the dust, the sickening feeling of Wallace’s fist in his face, the taste of dirt, and wondered: Should I have apologized?

The book fell from his hands. And after a long moment, Wallace lowered the gun.

“I won’t shoot you,” he said flatly. “We got to stick together.”

“Don’t point that at me again,” said Rupert.

“I already said I won’t shoot you.” Wallace bent down and picked up the book. Tucked it into his bag one-handed, while the Webley dangled from the other.

“The dog—” Rupert was about to say that it wasn’t coming. But as he spoke, he glanced at the house. The screen door rattled, and through the slats in the porch railing, he could see the flank of an animal. Wallace saw it too.

“Goddamn,” he said, and crouched down.

Rupert looked some more, and finished the thought. “The dog isn’t coming.”

The dog had settled on the porch, at the end near the apple tree. Squinting, they could make out his eyes — unblinking, peering through the slats and the high grass at them.

“Should we walk past again?” asked Rupert. Wallace hushed him.

“I’m gonna see if I can hit him.”

“Not from here you can’t.”

“I bet I could.”

Rupert shook his head. “Best luck, you’ll just wound him. Then he’ll be angry, like a bear.”

Wallace considered this — and, Rupert hoped, considered the wisdom of retreat — just putting the Webley away, dumping the bullets first, and going on to school, grammar text retrieved and calling the game even. But Wallace was considering something else. His lips set thin against his teeth, and he nodded briskly. “You’re right,” he said, and pulled off his book bag, and set it down in the slope of the ditch. Then, keeping low, Webley held in both hands, he made his way up the driveway.

Rupert didn’t follow. It felt like the dream, him watching his brothers file into the barn — the wolf, hiding in wait. He couldn’t do anything then. He couldn’t — wouldn’t — couldn’t do anything that morning. Not anything but watch, as Wallace walked down the driveway, gun held in front of him.

The dog shifted, and Rupert could no longer see its eyes. Wallace could, and he lifted the gun. “Here, doggy,” he said. His voice sounded higher. The gun wavered in front of him, as Wallace tried to sight down the barrel.

A low growl came from the porch. Even as far as the end of the driveway, it raised hackles on Rupert’s neck. Wallace moved his finger behind the trigger guard — touched the curve of the trigger. Peered through the grass and the slats, looking for the eyes.

And then, as he watched — the dog vanished. There was nothing but the peeling green paint on the porch; the screen door, half-ajar.

Wallace didn’t see the dog leap. Rupert did. It was the first time he saw the dog in full, in morning light. It was a beast.

It came up over the railing of the porch fast — touching it with front paw, then pushing off a second time with its hindquarters. The old wood of the railing protested at the launch, and the animal flew, a twisting, dark missile. It came down hard amid the high grass. Then it came up. And down again, lost in a swirl of weed. Up once more, lunging high and throwing off barks like punches — as Wallace raised the gun.

Rupert shut his eyes, expecting thunder from the Webley’s short barrel, and the barking to turn into a short yelp, and a thump! Then maybe another shot, to finish the kill. He shut his eyes and then held his breath.

There was no shot. Rupert opened his eyes. He looked out at the empty yard. Held in perfect silence, for a perfect instant — long enough, just, to let him think: Wallace is gone.

Then the dog’s back, curved and shaking, emerged over the grass. And the scream came. It was a bleat — a baby scream. It was, a deep part of Rupert knew, how he’d sounded, pressed into the dirt, crying out under the flurry of Wallace’s fists.

The grass rustled and the dog’s head came up, eyes turning to show thin crescents of white. It dropped again and another cry came, and Rupert, a shameful grin seeding his face, thought:

Wallace is gone.

He couldn’t even pull a trigger, thought Rupert. He couldn’t even manage that.

Rupert bent down, and reached into the scrub. His hand closed around a rock. And he stood straight, and without aiming, he pitched it. The rock went too far, clattering onto the porch and falling just short of a window. He picked up two rocks next time, one in each hand, and he threw them fast, one after another.

The second rock hit home and the next fell short. The dog yelped and its muzzle flashed up as the third rock thumped into the ground. Rupert and the dog met eyes an instant. Its eyes were not red but black, as unreadable as a bug’s. Its teeth flashed. It growled.

Rupert reached down again. His hand closed around sand and pebbles, and by reflex, he flung them, not even standing up to do so. They made a rushing sound as they cascaded off the leaves of a shrub.

The dog snapped its jaw. It barked twice. Rupert reached down again. This time his hand found a bigger rock, rounded at the edges but flattened, like the wing of an aeroplane. It was wedged in hard-packed dirt. Sand tore at the flesh on Rupert’s knuckles as he wedged his fingers underneath to pry it up. The dog barked again. It started toward him.

Rupert strained. The rock came up. It was the size of a lunch plate, and heavy. Half of it was dark with soil. A centipede fell from it as Rupert drew back. The dog came up again, and he could see its tongue, lolling behind fangs that were long and yellow, sharp as a snake’s.

Wallace appeared over the grass — rising up on one knee. His face was filthy, and one arm was red with his blood. His eyes were wide and wet. He didn’t have the gun. He wouldn’t look at Rupert.

Rupert threw the rock overhand. So hard his shoulder wrenched. He would not be able to throw again with that shoulder, it hurt so badly. The rock spun through the air. It hit the dog in the head with a crack!, glanced off it and thumped to the ground. The dog yelped and turned.

Wallace ran, parallel to the road, across the yard. He stumbled in the grass before sobbing, and righting himself, and for a moment, Rupert thought the dog was going to take off after Wallace. Rupert didn’t care. He turned too, running as fast as he could, heading to town, the school.

They met up half a mile on, out front of the Baptist church. Even then, the two didn’t speak until they neared the school. Wallace had rolled his shirtsleeve around so the blood didn’t show, at least not much. Rupert jammed his scraped hand into the pocket of his trousers. Both kept their faces still, eyes on the road ahead — and that was all it took for two battered boys to make their way through town unremarked.

As they sighted the school’s red brick walls at the end of Grissom Road, peeking through the dying leaves of the oak in back, Wallace finally spoke.

“The Webley,” he said, and Rupert said, “I know. You left it.”

They walked more slowly now. It was only half-past eight, and they wouldn’t be missed at their desks until five minutes before nine.

“I left your book bag too,” said Rupert, and Wallace said, “Fool.” It was early, but the school yard was nearly full. A group of younger boys were tossing sticks in the air, watching them whirl and spin. Leaping out of the way as they fell.

“There was a smell there,” said Wallace. “Did you smell it?” Rupert shrugged; he didn’t know if he had or not.

“Smelled like a slaughter,” said Wallace. “Like the trenches in France.”

“Maybe I did smell that,” said Rupert. The smell was all the Captain would talk about, when pressed on how it was to fight the Hun in the trenches. It smelled of slaughter, he’d said. It is a stink you never forget.

“Did you get a look?” said Wallace.

“What do you mean?”

Wallace was quiet a moment.

“We have to go back,” said Wallace.

Had they come any nearer to the school, it would have been too late; the teacher on yard duty would have seen them, and attendance would have been unavoidable. As it was, Wallace and Rupert didn’t entirely escape notice as they veered away from the schoolyard, and without another word made for a ditch behind the White Rose filling station, beneath a stretch of pine trees. It was a place where they had hid before and thought to be safe now.

“Where’s Wallace Gleason going?” said Nancy Waite, as she started the two ends of her jump-ropes twirling and she and her big sister Joan began to skip. “I think I know,” said Joan.

The lot in back of the filling station smelled of oil and gasoline and privy: this last, because the station’s toilet was an outdoor model, hiding in a cloud of bushes and flies that also hid the ditch from easy view. It was here in the ditch that Wallace and Rupert settled in, to rest up and devise their plan.

“Dog’s hurt,” said Wallace. “From the rock. That’s going to make him worse. Like a bear.”

“I just wanted to scare it,” said Rupert.

“We came to kill it,” said Wallace, glaring as he clutched his arm. As though his injury were Rupert’s fault and not his own.

Rupert just nodded. He didn’t ask why Wallace hadn’t pulled the trigger after he’d gone to the trouble of bringing a gun — why he hadn’t killed the dog, which he’d planned to do. But Wallace knew the question was in the air; something in Rupert’s nod made that clear. Wallace tried to explain it.

The first time was just to Rupert. And he didn’t get to the nub of the matter.

“It wasn’t just the smell,” said Wallace. “That was bad. But the dog. It was like hypnosis. Like when an owl spots a mouse. Under its nest. Where it’s got bones of other mice piled up.”

Rupert didn’t think that made any sense, and Wallace was inclined to agree as soon as he said the words. He had the gun. All he had to do was pull the trigger. The two sat quietly for a span.

“How’s your arm?” Rupert asked finally, and when Wallace said, “Hurts.”

Rupert said, “We should see a doctor.”

Wallace shut his eyes, and clutched his wounded arm jealously.

“We should go back, anyway,” said Rupert. “Soon. Someone might find it if we just leave it there. The Webley.”

Wallace’s eyes cracked open, and he looked at Rupert, and he said, “I can’t yet.” Rupert thought Wallace might be ready to cry. But — to his disappointment — Wallace just looked away.

“I think that dog’s a killer,” he said. “It’s a devil.”

The second time Wallace had cause to explain himself came middle morning. Wallace insisted that they keep resting. He had shut his eyes and was dozing — not dangerously, not like he might die — when Rupert shook his friend’s shoulder, Wallace mumbled that he just needed to rest up and ordered Rupert to keep a watch. This Rupert did. He lay on his belly so his eyes peered over the edge of the ditch, through the bramble — like barbed wire along a trench in the War, except that Rupert was watching the brick wall at the back of the White Rose station and not no-man’s land. When the gravel bit into his knees, he shifted to his side. Twice, when he judged things quiet enough, he got up and walked in small circles at the bottom of the ditch to stretch the cramps out of his legs, pinwheeling the soreness from his arm while his thoughts about Wallace and the Webley and the dog circled each other.

Rupert was back on his belly when Nancy Waite appeared around the side of the station. The sight of her stopped his breath.

Nancy was wearing a pale yellow dress. Her hair was combed back from her forehead, held there close to her scalp with a white ribbon. The rest fell golden and, today, unbraided down her back. She clutched a brown paper bag in front of her. She moved with great, guilty care, checking over her shoulder, peering through bushes. Rupert willed himself still, until she finally turned around and vanished around the corner of the garage.

Rupert let his breath out. He looked back and Wallace looked up at him. His friend’s eyes were pasty, and dull, and it was clear: Wallace had no idea what Rupert had seen. Rupert himself wasn’t sure — what he’d seen, who he’d seen, if he’d seen anything at all.

“Hey! What’re you doing in there?”

“Wallace?”

“Are you in there?”

Rupert turned back. It wasn’t just Nancy; Joan Waite was beside her, standing right behind the garage, in full view. Nancy giggled as she and Joan peered through the brush. Wallace rolled onto his knees and, grunting, stood up. Joan was wearing her pink sweater and the pale blue dress. Her hair was tied back. Rupert swallowed, his mouth dry as sand.

“Shhh!” said Wallace. He planted himself beside Rupert, and motioned with his good hand for the two to come over.

They bent down around the shrubbery and lowered themselves into the ditch — beside Wallace, Rupert noted.

“We saw you heading off from school,” Joan explained as she flattened out her skirts in front of her, and added: “I remembered this place.” Rupert looked at his hands, which had drawn closed into fists.

Nancy looked at his sleeve, which was now brown with old blood.

“Holy cow!” she said. “What’d you do?”

“Were you fighting again?” Joan, for the first time, looked at Rupert — a little accusingly, he thought.

“No,” said Wallace. “We—”

And Wallace paused, and thought about it for a few seconds, and he explained himself to the Waite sisters.

First, he described the dog, in such a way that Nancy made fists herself, and held them to her mouth, and even elder sister Joan gasped and looked away. He related the encounter of the day before so that Joan declared his survival a miracle. Then he got to the battle.

“Me and the dog sized each other up. It wasn’t like before, where the dog figured it could just take me. It knew I came ready. So it kept back — in behind the railings of the porch, where I couldn’t get a clear shot.”

“Did you shoot it?” asked Nancy, aghast. She seemed to relax when he shook his head.

“I couldn’t get a shot. I just kept looking at it, sitting there in front of the door. And then I saw it.”

“What’d you see?” asked Joan.

Wallace had developed dark rings around his eyes. The effect was chilling when he opened them wide. “There was a dead man,” he said, and added — before Rupert could say anything — “I was trying to figure it out. That was the smell. Death.”

The Waite sisters sat rapt, staring at Wallace. Joan’s lips parted and she clutched at her skirts in her lap. Nancy held her sister’s shoulder.

“I didn’t see a dead man,” said Rupert quietly. Nancy spared him a glance; Wallace and Joan ignored him, and Wallace continued:

“You could see his legs through the door. They were skinny. Like a skeleton’s. He was lying on the floor of the living room, where he died.”

“Do you think the dog killed him?”

Joan asked it softly. Wallace shrugged, and winced.

“You should get a bandage,” said Nancy. “And go see a doctor. Maybe you got rabies.”

“We can’t do that,” said Rupert, his voice louder than he intended. “Wallace lost the Webley when he got scared and dropped it without even shooting.”

“I was bit!” said Wallace, and Rupert said, “… after you dropped the gun,” and Joan said, “That’s enough,” and they all sat quiet a moment.

“We have to get the gun back,” said Rupert finally. “Wallace’ll get a beating if we don’t. So we’re resting up.”

“When are you going to go?” asked Nancy.

Rupert started to say, When Wallace is good and ready, but Wallace cut him off. “Right now,” he said. “Wanna come?”

“We’ve only got ten minutes until recess is finished,” said Joan. But she sounded uncertain.

“Someone might pick up the gun if we wait,” said Wallace. Silently, Rupert admitted that he was right.

Nancy opened up the bag she was clutching, reached in, and handed Wallace a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper. She gave Rupert another one. The smell of peanut butter was thick.

“We thought you must be hungry,” explained Nancy, and Joan said, “That’s why we came.”

“We can eat on the way,” said Wallace. Taking the sandwich in his bad hand, he used his good arm to push himself up, and stumbling barely at all, he headed along the ditch, in the direction of home, of the dog’s house.

The Waite girls looked at one another; Rupert looked at both of them.

“We have to get the gun,” said Rupert.

Nancy nodded; Joan shrugged. “Might as well,” she said, and Rupert felt his heart race.

They walked in a line down the ditch: Wallace first, the Waite sisters following, first Joan and then Nancy, hanging close. At the back, Rupert. The ditch was excellent for their purpose, running deeper as it left the town, so that by the time they were past the business section and behind houses it was almost a gully. They bent low as they passed a lady hanging sheets in her back garden. But they needn’t have; she hummed around a mouthful of clothes-pegs as though she were alone in the world. When they were past, Nancy Waite giggled, and Wallace shot a glare back over his shoulder.

“Sorry, Wallace,” said Joan, drawing out his name like it was “Mother,” and laughing. Rupert laughed too, but he made a point of keeping it down.

There came a point where the walls were nearly cliffs, huge round rocks covered in slick moss; long pools of green-slicked water spread still in the shade of bent willow trees that towered at the edge, dangled roots in the air above their heads. Somewhere in the shadows, something splashed.

Had the Waite girls ever been down here? Rupert thought not; they both stayed quiet as they walked along this section. Because Rupert had been here before, he knew where they were: just a dozen yards from the main road to town, maybe a quarter mile from the concession road that would take him and Wallace home. Where the dog and its house were.

But the Waites lived in town — on Ruggles Street, in a red brick house that climbed up two storeys with awnings painted white — on the other side of town. They were going into strange territory. Rupert’s territory. Wallace’s. They didn’t become talkative until the trees spread, and they came back into the hot light of morning.

Nancy slowed, so she and Rupert walked side by side. “There’s not a dead body there, is there?” She asked the question as they climbed up a slide of sharp gravel, around a steel culvert and onto the concession road. Rupert’s breath was hot and dry in his throat; he had a hard time getting out what should have been a simple answer.

“I — I didn’t see one,” he said, then — afraid if he said no, Wallace made that up, she and Joan would just leave them and go back to school — added: “But there could have been.”

“Wallace wouldn’t lie.”

She reached the top just before him, and skipped off to join her sister, who was walking beside Wallace now. A scent, of soap and sweat and something else, lingered in his nostrils. Rupert crested the top and ran to catch up with the three of them.

“It’s not far now,” said Wallace, and that at least was true.

But they dawdled, so it took longer than it should have to reach the house where the dog lived. By the time they got to the top of the driveway, there was no getting around it: they were all four truant now.

Joan peered at the house. It was still, and very bright now that the sun was high. The front door was a rectangle of perfect black.

“It looks like nobody lives there,” she said. “It looks abandoned.”

“We should just get the gun,” said Rupert. “You remember where you dropped it?”

Wallace pointed in a general way to the left of the house. “Over there.”

“Where was the body?” asked Nancy.

“Inside.”

Rupert studied the yard. A breeze came up, carrying a sweet smell of fresh hay from somewhere beyond this place. It tickled the high grass. “I saw it fall,” said Rupert finally. He headed up the driveway a few steps and pointed to a spot. “Maybe here.”

“What about the dog?”

The question barely registered; Rupert couldn’t even say who asked it. As he moved closer to the house, it seemed as though he were moving in his own quiet world — as though he were following a thread of raw instinct, some part of his mind that didn’t think in words or even pictures, but just compelled. He almost could have closed his eyes as he stepped off the driveway into the grass, and kept on his course. Eyes open, eyes closed: the memory of the gun tumbling through the air just here, just so — landing in this place, not that or that — was just as vivid one way or the other.

Just as true — true as any other memory, like the silk touch of golden skin in the early, cool hours of a late-August Sunday…

…the hard impact of fist in gut…

…the hot memory of accusation…

…the trajectory of a gun, set loose from sweat-slicked hand — through sky —

—to dirt.

The gun lay nested in the grass at his feet. Rupert let his breath out and bent down — behind him, someone said: “You found it?” — and wrapped his fingers around the barrel. He lifted it first, like a hammer or an axe, then took the handle in his other hand — wonderingly put his finger through the trigger guard — and turned around.

The three of them stood close together — Wallace next to Joan, who held his arm. Nancy, clutching Joan’s skirt hem. The gun was heavy, and big for his hands — but finally, words returned to him, and he thought:

I could almost hit him. Miss the sisters. But hit him. Almost.

“I’ve got it,” said Rupert, and lifted the gun above his head. Wallace nodded, and held out his hand: “Give it here.”

Rupert took a breath, and looked at Wallace. “Not yet,” he said.

Wallace looked back at Rupert. “What do you mean? Come on.”

Rupert shook his head. “You said there was a body in there,” he said. “I want to see.” He beckoned with the gun and turned away from them, to face the house.

“What about the dog?” said a Waite sister — which one, Rupert could not say. He took hold of the gun by its stock, holding it in both hands and climbed the steps to the porch.

The house consumed Rupert.

That was how it looked to Wallace, watching from the property’s edge with the Waite sisters at his side. The brilliant morning sunlight shone off the roof of the house, making dark shade under the eaves of the porch. Rupert stepped beneath them, and he faded in shadow. One step further, and he vanished into the black.

“What about the dog?” said Joan Waite.

“It’s got to be there,” said Wallace, and Nancy said, “I don’t hear anything.”

The house was indeed silent. Wallace thought this strange. There should be barking and shouting — a gunshot, maybe, as Rupert tried to shoot the thing coming at him in the dark sitting room, up from the cellar…

What was Rupert getting up to in there? Wallace held his hurt arm close to him. He thought about the other door… across the hall from his room at the house…

Rupert had stepped through that one too, just as sure of himself.

“That house looks haunted,” said Nancy, finally.

“Is there really a body?” asked Joan.

“Wallace saw it,” said Nancy.

“I saw it,” said Wallace, but he didn’t look at either of them as he spoke. Wallace had not seen a body when he looked through the door of that house — not then, not the day before either. He thought he might have seen something. But as he thought about it, the thing he saw twisted and bent into all sorts of things.

“Rupert’s really brave,” said Nancy, “to go in there by himself.”

“Not that brave,” said Wallace.

“He fought you,” said Joan. “Even though you’re stronger.”

Wallace looked at both of them now — first Joan, then Nancy — and he tried to make a fist using his hurt arm, but the fingers wouldn’t close. Joan had a little smile; Nancy was shading her eyes with her hands as she peered at the quiet house.

“He touches girls when they’re sleeping,” Wallace said. “How brave is that?”

Nancy’s hand came down and she looked at Wallace. Joan’s smile broadened and she laughed, and her voice went high. “He what?” she asked.

“That’s why we fought.”

“Who—”

“My sister.”

“Helen?”

“She’s really pretty.”

“Helen.”

“When?”

“Last Saturday of the summer,” said Wallace. “I let him sleep over at my house. We talked about stuff and went to sleep. And in the middle of the night — when he thinks I’m asleep — he gets up from the floor and sneaks out the door into the hall. So I followed him. He went across the hall to my sister’s room. And that’s where I found him.”

“Touching her?” Joan’s voice stayed high, but her smile turned into a grimace, and Nancy said: “Ewww!”

“Yeah,” said Wallace. “She was sleeping. He put his hands all over her leg. All up and down. While she slept.” Wallace paused, and looked at each Waite girl in turn.

“He likes you two, you know. Can’t decide which one he likes best.”

“Eww!” said Joan, and Nancy’s eyes went wide.

“Rupert Storey ain’t brave.” Wallace winced, and pushed, and his swollen fingers closed into a fist.

“He’s just a degenerate. He had it coming.”

Rupert pinched his nose, but it didn’t do much good. The stench in here was foul enough to taste: of piss and shit, and something sweet, and of smoke.

It was dark. The windows in the front room had blinds drawn down, and they glowed a sick yellow with the sunlight. There were three things that could have been the dog — a body — but as Rupert’s eyes adjusted, he fathomed that none of them were, that he was pointing the Webley at a rocking chair on its side… a barrel… a stuffed sitting chair, now bleeding its straw onto the floor.

And there was a sound. Of breathing.

Rupert uncovered his nose and lifted the Webley with both hands. The breathing was slow and wheezing. There was no rhythm to it; each breath was its own task. As Rupert moved further into the house, it seemed to grow louder, as if the house itself were a great lung drawing those unsteady breaths. Like Rupert was a bone, caught in its throat.

There were two rooms at the back of the house — a door on either side of a woodstove. The first was filled with rags and a broken bed frame. A pane of its window was broken, but the glass wasn’t cleared. A cloud of flies tickled against Rupert’s face, and drove him back. He let them. The breathing was quieter in this room. The cause of it was in the second room if anywhere.

If the dog was anywhere in here, that’s where he would be.

And as for Wallace’s dead body—

The door was half-open. Rupert stepped around the woodstove, and pushed it the rest of the way. This room was darker still. There was a bed underneath the window. Someone was in it.

Rupert stumbled — the floor here was wet with something — and he gagged. The smell here was terrible — it was like stepping inside a shallow privy.

The breathing stopped, and there came a hard wet cough.

“Let me stay!”

The voice was reedy and high, straining as though shouting but not much louder than a whisper. Something in it made Rupert decide it was a man’s. As he stepped further into the room, his eyes confirmed it — a long beard like nettles trembled against the pale light of the blind, as the fellow tried to sit up.

“I won’t be here long,” the man continued. “I ain’t well.”

Rupert kept the gun up, all the same. There were other things in this room. At the foot of the bed was what looked like a long duffel bag. On the floor, scattered here and there, were empty cans; along the windowsill, the silhouette of three more cans.

It was dark on the floor beside the bed. The man looked down there, and the darkness moved.

“My dog,” said the man. “Jack. Named him after my brother. Jack’s been on the road with me five year now.” A cough. “He ain’t doing well either. Came in hurt today.” The man shifted onto his side. “That a gun you have?”

Rupert squinted. The dog began to resolve itself from the shadow. It was lying on its side. It was breathing fast and shallow — as he looked, Rupert could make out the twitching of its rib cage. Its head was down, and there was a little shine from its eyes — and a bloody glistening, on the raw side of its head. Where, Rupert was sure, the rock he’d thrown had hit it this morning.

“You come here to drive me out, boy?”

Rupert looked up at the man, and shook his head.

The man covered his mouth with a shaking hand and coughed. Now that he was closer, Rupert could see more of him. His hair and beard were dark, but he looked very old.

“But you got a gun.”

“A Webley,” said Rupert, and the old man nodded.

“That’s a kind of gun,” he said. “You know how to use it?” When Rupert didn’t answer, the old man said, “Thought not.”

Rupert bent to get a better look at the dog. The floor was covered with a fair bit of blood. The dog’s fur around its head was matted with more blood. Its tongue lolled. It looked back at Rupert, and a soft whimper came out, a sound like a leak in a tire.

“If you ain’t here to drive me out,” said the man, “could you do me a favour?”

“What?”

“Shoot my dog.” The man in the bed coughed, and made a sound like a whimper himself. “Jack don’t deserve to suffer, watchin’ over me like he has.”

Rupert looked at the gun in his hands. It was heavy, and slippery with sweat. He thought about the noise it would make if it went off. A noise like that would draw the neighbours, the police. Even if it didn’t… the Captain would see a bullet had been fired.

“Give it to me, if you won’t. It won’t…” he coughed “… it won’t take a moment. And I’ll give it right back.”

Rupert looked at the dog. Back at the old man. “The gun doesn’t belong to me,” he said. “I can’t.”

“Please, kid.”

Rupert stood straight, lowering the gun to his side, and stepped out of the room.

“I can’t,” he said.

The Waite sisters and Wallace had made it as far as the porch. When Rupert came out, Nancy commented on the smell and Joan said, “Well?”

“There’s no body,” said Rupert.

“I knew it!” said Nancy. Wallace looked at his feet.

“But there’s a fellow in there,” said Rupert. “That’s maybe what Wallace saw.”

“Someone lives in there?” said Joan.

“He’s not well,” said Rupert. “He told me to get off his property.”

“What about the dog?” said Wallace.

“Here’s the gun,” said Rupert, and handed the Webley over, butt first. “Take it back home. I won’t tell the Captain you took it.”

Wallace snatched the gun back and held it close to his chest. He looked over Rupert’s shoulder, and back at Rupert. “What about the dog?” he said again.

Rupert just shook his head. Wallace took a step toward the house and stopped and turned around.

Joan Waite put her arm over Nancy’s shoulder and held her close. “I can hear it,” said Joan, and Nancy said she could too: “It’s everywhere.” But Rupert couldn’t hear anything — and neither could Wallace, although he strained to.

On 24^th September, 1939, the town had a dance for Wallace Gleason and some others, at the Fenlan Rotary Hall. That summer, Wallace had signed up in the 1^st Canadian Infantry Brigade. He was to ship out to Belleville for his training — and from there, perhaps a boat down the St. Lawrence and all the way to England.

Rupert attended reluctantly. He had not yet made up his mind to enlist and had been seeing less of Wallace and the Gleasons the past few years in any event. But his brothers were going — Paul, the second-eldest, had shipped out in the summer, and the whole family had gone to his party — so Rupert relented. He put on a jacket and tied his tie, slicked down his hair and perched on the wheel-well in the back of the Ford.

It was a warm night for September, and they threw the doors to the hall open, so the fiddle music wafted through the twilit streets almost to the edge of town. Autos were parked two deep along the sidewalk, and everything was bathed in the orange glow of electric lanterns strung along the sides of the hall, and over the main entry hung a banner: “IN THE ARMY NOW.”

“Paul should have waited,” said Leonard as they passed beneath it and into the dance. “What a send-off!”

The Storey boys split up after that: Leonard, to lift a glass of beer with some fellows he knew from the reopened sawmill; Philip, to get a closer look at the fiddler. Rupert spotted the Captain, a widower two years now, so sitting by himself, watching as his son Wallace and a town girl raised dust on the dance floor.

“Why, Rupert Storey!” said the Captain. “It’s been some time! How’ve you been keeping?”

Rupert sat down and brought the Captain up to date. He had been accepted at the University of Western Ontario, and expected to be starting classes in a week, and hoped to gain admittance to the medical school there eventually. He allowed as he might also enlist, as Wallace had, but wanted to see how higher learning suited him first. The Captain stopped him before he could be accused of babbling.

“One way or another, you’re leaving town,” he said. “Good, though we’ll miss you. But you’ll find your way. That’s what young men do.”

The conversation cut short when Helen and her husband arrived. She being six months with child, Rupert offered her his chair immediately. She smiled hello and patted his hand and told him he was a gentleman. Rupert thanked her and excused himself.

It seemed as though the whole town was crowding into the Rotary Hall. Rupert wasn’t fond of crowds, and kept to the periphery. He was too young for beer and not much of a dancer, so he set up near the punch bowl. Wallace greeted him briefly there between dances — clapped him hard on the shoulder and produced a steel hip flask of rum. Rupert took a dutiful swig and Wallace took one too. Then he nodded, hit Rupert’s shoulder once more and headed back to the dance floor where his girl was waiting.

It wasn’t long after that that Rupert spotted Nancy Waite approaching the punch bowl. She was wearing a long green frock, and her blonde hair was pushed back with a white ribbon, holding an unlit cigarette high as she danced and shimmied through the crowd. Rupert found a box of matches in his pocket, and by the time she arrived he had one lit and ready to offer her. She blinked and laughed and leaned into the flame.

“I was coming for the punch,” she said, and Rupert poured her one of those too. They clinked glasses and sipped their punch and Rupert told Nancy about his university plans. “I’m going to school too,” she said, “in Kingston. With Joan. In a year. I hope.” She set down her glass and crossed her fingers.

“Are you going to ask me to dance?” she asked.

He smiled and dipped his head. “I’m not very good at dancing,” he said.

But she didn’t give up, and finally he did ask her.

They didn’t dance for very long, just barely a song, before Nancy admitted defeat. “I’ll never doubt you again,” she said. And as they left the dance floor, Rupert thought: That’s it. But Nancy surprised him.

“It’s hot in here,” she said and she was right.

Ducking through the thinning edge of the crowd, they made their way through one of the side doors and into the parking lot that backed onto a stand of trees. The music grew quieter — quiet enough that Rupert could make out the chirping of crickets. He pulled the matchbox from his pocket, but Nancy shook her head and took his hand instead.

“Do you remember,” she said, turning to face him, her eyes themselves seeming to dance, “what we did that day?”

Rupert felt a small twist in his gut, and his nostrils flared at a half-remembered smell, and he started to look away.

But with her free hand, Nancy touched the nape of Rupert’s neck — and she stood on her toes — and she drew his mouth close to hers — and Rupert just said, “Yes.”

When he kissed her, she tasted of everything.