There was a horde of vultures circling the sky. The number seemed impressive, the most I’d seen in a long time. I knew my father must have thought so too, because his mouth snapped closed. He turned down the volume on the stereo, which was playing some loud morning talk show.
It must be something big, I said, trying to make out the shape. It was hard to see with the sun coming up hot and red orange, a bloody contusion welling up over the lip of the earth.
Slowing to a crawl, we approached the animal. It was covered in flapping, writhing vultures. So many we couldn’t make out the lumped shape of the body. My father got out of the truck and pulled the shovel from the back before approaching the mass of birds. He brandished the tip like a blade. They flapped up and then landed again, too eager to pay much attention to anything that wasn’t carrion.
My father pinged one with the shovel, smacking at it the way he would a golf ball. It made a deep, guttural squawk and flapped awkwardly to the side. The rest of the birds dispersed, settling down into the patchy weeds five feet from where my father crouched.
His arm went up, waving at me.
Bring me one of those blankets. When I didn’t move right away, his head snapped around and he shouted my name.
I stumbled over my own legs as I jumped down from the cab. The smell outside was all wet, trampled grass and the funky odor of birds. Some were still circling overhead, but others were perched along the roadway. They reminded me of those cartoon vultures from that Disney movie. Those ones had been funny; these just looked menacing. Their necks and faces were ugly and wattled. They moved jaggedly, as if they didn’t know how to operate their bodies.
My father kept a small pile of furniture blankets in the tool compartment. They smelled strongly of metal and oil. I hurried one over to my father, who was talking to the animal, making crooning noises, soft words I couldn’t quite make out.
It was a black dog, maybe a Labrador. A deep gash ran along his neck, and a red collar that had once been bright tugged dirtily along the matted fur. Kneeling down beside my father, I put my hand out to try to touch the dog’s side.
Don’t, my father said, voice very sharp. It might hurt him.
He’s alive? The animal looked dead to me. He was twisted up, body contorted in the way that I always associated with the bagged animals we carted back to our shop. There were already so many open wounds in the dog’s torso. Blood dripped onto the asphalt.
My father shook his head, spread out the blanket. Mostly dead, Jessa. Not all the way gone yet.
The dog made a high whimper, a hurt sound that made me want to plug my ears. My father lifted him carefully onto the blanket, but still the animal cried.
My knee stung horribly. I looked down to see a wide trail of fire ants leading over from a huge pile next to the fence. They were crawling up my legs. I jumped up and smacked them off, sweeping them from my pants and my shoes. Ants! I yelled stupidly.
They’re on me too. They’re all over the goddamn dog.
And they were. Everywhere there was wet blood, there were ants. Scores of them. I tried to brush them off his leg, but it was so twisted up and bent that it only brushed them farther into his fur.
Move out of the way, I’m going to put him in the front seat. Hold his head, okay?
My father picked up the blanket, carrying the dog like a small child. He wasn’t making noises anymore, or maybe he was and I just couldn’t hear them over the sound of the vultures. They’d started shrieking, flapping around where the body had lain. Angry at the deprivation, they smacked into each other and pecked the earth.
I wanted to throw something at them. I looked around for a rock, anything to make them pay for putting that awful look on my father’s face, but there was nothing. Aside from the birds, the ground was nearly swept clean.
My father called my name again, and I hurried back to the truck. It smelled heavy inside the closed cab, like iron, like the shed full of my father’s tools.
We drove fast, my father pulling a U-turn so precise that we barely even drove over the grass. Vultures scattered, flocking outward in a dark mass. I couldn’t see much of the dog, just the tip of his nose poking out from the blanket. It was very dry and cracked. I wondered whose dog he was. Who’d abandoned him, left him when he’d needed someone the most.
I held my fingers cupped in front of that nose, feeling for breath. Little puffs of air against my palm reassured me that he was still with us. My father reached over, across the dog’s still body, and gripped my shoulder with his hand. He held on to me for the rest of the drive down the highway, not letting go, not even when we turned onto the state road leading back into town.
13
I spent most days in the rubble as we deconstructed the restaurant next door. Since it had been abandoned, we talked the rental agency into letting us keep the restaurant equipment as long as we took care of disposal ourselves. Some stuff we put on Craigslist. Booths, tables, countertops, stools—all older, but in pretty fair condition. Other items we sold to Winnie’s: the large bank of commercial fridges, the glass pie counters. One of the new craft bars downtown took the taps and the vintage bar top. I let Bastien have the neon beer sign from the back wall, but told him he couldn’t keep it in the shop.
“Grandma’s porch,” Bastien said, holding it in front of him. The lights were a clear, vivid blue. “That’s where I’ve been keeping most of my stuff.”
“At least it’s cooler out now. Too hot during the summer.”
“It’s not so bad. Got a beer fridge.” He set the sign carefully in the front seat of the truck. “She’s gonna let me put a new shed out back so I can store things.”
I thought of the old one, leaning rickety for so many years before it had finally collapsed on itself in a rusty heap. We’d barely been able to excavate the lawn mower from the pile.
“Maybe get a plastic one this time. Something squirrels won’t nest in.”
My mother was rebuilding her creations, but this time she and I both used the back of the workshop. Bastien had stopped procuring living creatures after I’d told him if he didn’t knock it off, I’d start dumping the remains in his bed. I could tell he was relieved, but that didn’t stop him from outsourcing labor to one of his seedier associates. There was a slew of new animals to take out of the freezer: an ocelot, a couple more peacocks, two otters, and a capybara with a face so much like an enormous hamster that Lolee screamed bloody murder when we unpacked it from the tarp. She climbed on top of the metal worktable to get away from it, shrieking.
“What, you can scrape the insides out of a deer, but you can’t deal with an oversized rodent?” Bastien got down on the floor and flopped the thing’s monstrous head back and forth while Lolee screeched. I unsuccessfully tried to hide my smile. She scowled and put out her arms, the way she’d done when she was little.
I couldn’t lift her anymore, but I kicked off the brakes on the table and rolled her over to the other side of the room. She hopped down through the open doorway, middle fingers blazing.
“I’m going to Kaitlyn’s. Call me when that thing is gone.”
She walked to the front door with her purse strapped over her chest. I thought she looked older since her haircut. She’d shaved it underneath and cut the hair on top into a wedge. My mother had done it for her, and then Lolee had buzzed my mother’s. I’d never realized how similar they looked. Looking at Lolee was like staring into a fuzzy picture coated over with the filmy residue of Brynn: shadows of it in her walk, the tilt of her hips, her long, slender arms, nearly disproportionate to her body.