Chapter Three

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We stand over Ranger, he's crumpled on the sidewalk just outside the garage. His eyes are wide-open, his mouth also, partially. His bloody teeth are bared in a snarl frozen by death. His large pink tongue hangs grotesquely out of his mouth. A large, darkening pool of blood has oozed from his muzzle, I watch it spread across the sidewalk.

It's not the first time I've seen something dead, but this portrait of Ranger's unyeilding loyalty affects me in an unsuspected way.  It's a selfless love, whether deserved or not. There is something vaguely familiar about it. I clear my throat.

"Lung shot," Jake says. I accept the assessment, I guess it makes sense. I can't tell if he's upset, other than angry. He's hard to read.

There are a series of spatters on the concrete leading up to where Ranger fell. Blood expelled from the dog as he coughed, desperately trying to clear the blood from his lungs. They look like Rorschachs. I don't see butterflies or birds, or anything pleasant. I see death, raw and painful, I see the last moments of a living thing.

"At least he went down fighting," Jake adds. I snap out of my daze and pull my hands out of my pockets.

Ranger is a big dog, a yellow lab. Like our dog, except she's black, half the size and well, not lying in a pool of her own blood.

It's awkward carrying him to the backyard, not only is he heavy and bloody, but sickeningly limp. We place him on the grass and Jake fetches a pair of shovels. We dig in silence for a while until Jake starts swearing up and down about the god awful clay that lies just inches below the thin layer of top soil the builders threw down when they put up the neighbourhood. He leaves again and returns with a pick ax, two beers and a pair of gloves. I'm a bit embarrassed thinking they are to protect my soft hands, I am relieved when he pulls them on and attacks the grave with renewed purpose.

We take turns swinging the pick, while the other takes a break and drinks. We don't talk much, but the silence isn't awkward, there is a job to do and idle chatter has no place. He disappears again while I'm excavating his yard and returns with some kind of dried sausage.

"Try this."

I take a bite. It's salty and smokey and unquestionably delicious. "It's really good."

"Venison and goose." I must look shocked because he adds. "It's perfectly safe. Smoked it myself."

It takes a bit of work, but soon enough we have a suitable grave dug. We place Ranger in the hole, Jake tosses an empty beer can in and follows that with shovels full of clumpy clay. Filling the hole goes much faster in no time we have a mound of dirt at our feet.

We stare at it for a while. I try desperately to think of something appropriate to say, but nothing comes to mind. Instead my mind wanders and I find I'm thinking about cashing out my stocks.

"Well," Jakes says. "That's that." He adds after a pause. "Was a damn good dog though."

I nod my silent agreement.

He invites me back into the garage for more sausage and more beer. Not sure I can handle much more of either. The walls in the garage are plastered with posters, there are two themes - hunting and babes. Some posters feature both.

Next to the word mancave in the dictionary there is a picture of this garage, I'm sure of it.

Half the garage is taken up by his truck. I immediately recognize it, I've seen it driving through the area many times. It's loud and obnoxious, but it suits him. Turns out my initial impression of the truck's driver was spot on. Jake is exactly the guy I pictured behind those tinted windows.

Being overly judgemental is one of my fatal flaws. Surprisingly though, the guy isn't as much of an ass as I thought. His second impression is much better than mine.

His truck is older than mine, bigger and caked with mud. It's jacked up and has large offroad tires. An exhaust pipe sticks out in front of one of the rear tires - looks like something you fire cannon balls out of. I'm not too certain how he manages to even get the beast in the garage.

It is also peppered with stickers, they all seem to have something to do with hunting. It might as well say in block letters "I kill stuff with a bow and eat it." The stickers are only a shade more subtle. Skulls, antlers, and a little boy urinating on another brand's logo. I drive the other brand.

The seat covers are camo, so is the steering wheel cover and no surprise to me, a ladies thong dangles from the rear view mirror. Pink camo. I guess that's the pièce de résistance.

My truck now seems to lack personality. In comparison, it has no identity at all. I suddenly have the urge to put a sticker on it. Something. Somewhere.

Jake pulls out some folding chairs and we sit down the rehash the evenings events.

"I can't believe that asshole pulled a knife on me," Jake says.

"Well, he was pointing a gun at you originally," I point out.

"True. Not really at me though. He was holding it all gangsta style and waving it around. I wasn't too worried about the gun. I had him dead nuts though - even if he did shoot me, my arrow would have sliced right through him."

"Too bad they took your bow."

"No big deal. That was just my garage bow. My good bow is inside, one sec." He returns a moment later with another compound bow. It's clearly expensive, festooned with all manner of gadgets, I can only guess at what they do. I know a bit about guns, bows are entirely alien to me.

He hands it to me. "Check it out."

I hold it up with my left arm. It is surprisingly light. I grasp the string with three fingers - that much I know - and I pull. The string hardly budges. I grimace from the strain. Jake laughs. "Don't dry fire it," he says, as if there is a threat that I will succeed in drawing it fully.

"What is the draw weight on this thing?" I ask, incredulous.

"Eighty pounds." He replies. "I got it cranked all the way up. Most bows only go to seventy, so it took a while to find one I liked that had this much draw weight."

I flush, embarrassed that I cannot draw the bow.

"You gotta work up to that kind of weight," Jake advises. I'm not sure if it's to make me feel better or a basic rule of archery. "If you start with too much weight, your form will suck and you'll probably fuck up your back. That bow the cops took would be a perfect starter bow for you."

"Hmm." I hand the bow back. "That's an awesome bow. I have thought about a bow before, just never pulled the trigger."

"You should get one. The meat is so much better when you take it with a bow."

Hunting with a bow never really crossed my mind. I did a bit of hunting when I was younger - pheasant, rabbit. Shot a duck once, it tasted like shit, my dad made me eat it anyway. Hunting my meat just never really took hold. I was more of a clay pigeon kind of guy.

I look up at the clock on the wall. It's a pin-up girl, her appendages are the arms of the clock and according to her impossible pose, I need to get going. I had no idea it had gotten so late.

I thank Jake for the beer and sausage and once again tell him I'm sorry about Ranger. He says, "Don't worry about it." And slaps me on the back. "I'll drop some sausage off next week, I'm firing up the smoker again tomorrow."

"Okay, catch ya later." I stumble a bit on my way out of the garage. I take the longer way home, around the block. I'm in no shape to scale fences, actually I proved that earlier, now I'm even less so. I hope the fresh air sobers me up some as I zigzag down the middle of the street.

It's a beautiful walk, I feel light and without worry. I'm consumed with the feeling of just being alive. I can't remember the last time I have felt so at peace. It's like someone reached into my head and erased all the junk I had pushed away to the back, all the junk that ate away at me day in and day out. It was all gone, somehow obliterated by the evenings experience.

I get home and find the front door locked. Crap. I circle around and try the garage side door, locked as usual. I then try the garden doors, also locked. All is dark inside, except the light over the stove. Not good.

I tap on the glass, lightly at first then a little harder. Nothing. I knock some more, harder still. A light comes on in the other room and Kate appears in her pyjamas. She's not smiling.

She unlocks the door and turns back toward the bedroom. I come in and flip off my boots. I steady myself against the island to counteract my current lack of balance. I turn off the light over the stove and grab a glass of water. I head for the bedroom too, she is standing in the doorway.

"Where the hell were you?" She demands, her eyebrows knitted together.

"There was a guy... I.. uh.. I was giving a neighbour a hand, someone shot his —"

"I don't care, why the hell didn't you call? I didn't know if you were alive or dead!" Her voice keeps getting louder.

"I didn't —"

"You're drunk!" She slams the door so hard, I'm surprised it doesn't shatter. Guess I'm on the couch tonight. Although I stopped to pee on the way home,  — add indecent exposure to my rap sheet — I need to visit the boys room again.

I take care of business, wash up and stumble my way to the couch downstairs. The dog is on it. I know within minutes of laying down, she will be sneaking up beside me, pawing at my legs. Strike the couch.

I realize I'm not tired at all, drunk yes, sleepy no.

I shuffle to the utility room and flip on the light. I find taking inventory of my little collection of just-in-case items relaxing. I start by dating the items I have picked up at the grocery store earlier and assigning them to their alloted shelves.

A few years back I saw a documentary on doomsday preppers. A full seventy-five percent of what came out of their mouths was pure crazy. However, the other twenty-five percent did make some sense.

Now these folks were burying entire buses or shipping containers in their backyards. They stockpiled everything, dead-set to outlast any TEOTWAWKI scenario you could think of. I'll admit, it got me thinking.

What I have is nothing like that. I have a small room with some shelving, and with that limited space (I don't have a bus or a backhoe) I try to put aside some items that common sense tell me would be good to have. Storable food stuffs, batteries, first aid supplies - I have added to it over the years, but still the length of time we could survive on what I have stocked is likely months, not years.

I have a small gun safe with my trap gun and the guns my Dad passed down to me. I consider those to be antiques, although they work. I have plenty of target loads for trap and lots of rounds for a .22 I use for plinking. They don't even make ammunition for a couple of those old guns, but I have a few boxes for the deer rifles. There is also a well-worn pump gun I bought used with the intent I would hunt turkey with it, but that never happened.

On the top shelf was Dad's favourite, the legendary Colt .45, that was his baby and where I took to trap, Dad was a pistol man. He had placed in the top three in many competitions with that gun. I couldn't shoot a pistol worth crap, I had a horrible flinch and was often lucky just to keep all my rounds on the paper.

I had almost sold it a few years back when I got rid of his other handguns, but I got all sentimental and couldn't let it go.

I pull the guns out one by one and give them all a quick wipe down - no use to me if they rust up.

Overall, I figured we were in much better shape than most people but that only makes me feel slightly better about my ability to take care of Kate and Heath if all goes to Hell. I need to reconsider those chickens.

I return upstairs and slip in next to Heath, he's making little purring snores and he's sleeping mostly sideways.

I straighten him out and lay down beside him. His room is full of night lights, one of them projects constellations on the ceiling. I stare at the stars, I can't sleep, I'm still all wound up. I close my eyes, I see Ranger, dead on the sidewalk. I open my eyes and stare at the stars. I close my eyes, I see Ranger's dead doll eyes. I open my eyes. Sleep shouldn't be this difficult.

I stare at the stars, I listen to Heath breath. I am not free of my worries. I am not without fear. It all rushes back and presses down on me. I'm pinned beneath its weight. I can't breathe. I close my eyes, I see stars. I open them - same stars. I stare at the stars and I realize, I am staring at Orion.

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