Peter Heller - The Dog Stars

Like us.

So when I picked the fat torso up in two hands and thwacked the head on a rock I said Thanks bud knowing just what it feels like not to be ready.

I whistled. Jasper may be near deaf but something in the whistle tickles something in his head deeper than hearing and he uncurled and stood a little shakily and shook himself off and came trotting happily upstream and I gave him the first fish which could have weighed seven pounds. I filleted it, gave him the two slabs of gray meat, the head and the tail, and threw the bones back in the creek. The next one I caught I split and cleaned and the stomach was full of midges and a few big crawdads.

Already late. I’d been wading all afternoon and the current was cold where it pushed up against my knees and thighs but my feet were long numb with that kind of dead warmth. Starting to get chilled. I caught a fifth fish, smaller, cleaned it and pushed the butt end of a hooked stick through its gills and slid it down to the others on the stringer. Lay it in the sled. Rubbed my naked legs to get the blood going. The sun was gone, the creek now luminous in early dusk. I felt what? Happy. We were thinking of nothing but the creek, but dinner, but making a camp just upstream on a sandy bar I liked to visit. I slipped my pants back on, sat on a rock and put on my boots. Jasper was revived after the fish, watching me with his mouth open, smiling because he knew we weren’t going far and there would be another fish or two, this time cooked and salted.

Okay, let’s go.

We walked around a thicket of willow and alder not yet leafed out and found the path through a stand of green and living and venerable fir trees, the bark, the almost pumpkin orange they get when very old, and we found our fire pit in the sand a few rocky yards from the water and the smooth sleeping place beneath one of the big old trees.

I pulled some fallen limbs out of the denser woods that backed the camp and broke them up and lay them over a pillow of dried Spanish moss and quickly made a fire. So we could warm up. The wood was dry and full of resin and popped and cracked which was a domestic song above the syllabic murmur of the creek and the wind in the high boughs. Darkness was already in the forest, it filled the little canyon like a slow tide, and the flames deepened it but the sky was still bright with the thinnest blue and I could see two stars.

Jasper was happy too. He curled up close to the fire upwind and out of the smoke and lay his head on his paws and watched me cook our fish on a light long handled mountain frying pan which must have been made a hundred years ago. The handle was wrapped in a sheath of shiny tin to disperse heat and stamped with Simpson and Sons Ranchware. A hundred years ago when the ranchers ran their herds up in the mountains in summer on Forest Service leases and camped for days, rounding them up in the fall like a cowboy song. Those hardbitten riders squatting at just such a fire. What they could never have imagined. What we can’t, cooking our fish here in the pan heavy with carp and spitting salvaged olive oil. Spit and sizzle, pop of branches, the flutter of flames in a shifting wind, the same wind downstream carrying cold from the higher slopes and rushing in the limbs of the trees like the ghost of long ago surf.

Jasper is sitting up like a Sphinx now watching me closely. His moment. I salt the biggest fish, lay it on a flat stone and pull out the skeleton from the tail up, unzipping the bones.

Provecho .

He is up, tail wagging, first time today, and gobbles his dinner with quiet grunts.

I tie a taut line from the big tree standing sentinel on our camp back to a young alder and string up the tarp just to keep the dew off.

I cook a fish for me and kneel by the water on the rocks and drink and splash my face. In the smooth dark between stones with barely a current a waterskater slides away and a handful of stars shimmer.

I spread out our bed under the tree and lie down. Get up again, untie two corners of the tarp and slide it back to the tree. We’ll get dewed on a little but I don’t care, we can dry everything out by the fire in the morning. Tonight I want to see the sky. Lie down again and Jasper walks stiff to me almost a hobble, the hike today long, and licks my face all over until I am laughing and turn away. Then he curls against my side with his customary collapse and huff. We listen to wind high, water low. I tuck my arms under my head and watch the Dipper brighten. I feel clean. Clean and good.

In the morning I wake stiff. The sleeping bag and Jasper are covered in frost. So is my wool hat. Maybe not the best idea to sleep uncovered. It’s okay, we’ll start a fire in a minute.

You must be cold, boy. C’mere. I pull at his Whoville quilt to fold it over him. He is heavy, unmoving. Getting stiffer, the morning’s harder.

C’mon, bud, this’ll be better. Til I start a fire. C’mon.

He ignores me. I tug at the quilt and lay it over him brush his ear.

My hand stops. His ear is frozen. I run my hand around to his muzzle, rub his eyes.

Jasper, you alright? Rub and rub. Rub and tug his ruff.

Hey, hey.

Pull on the scruff of his neck. Hey, wake up.

I push up to sitting and roll over, chest on his back, and cover him.

Hey, it’s okay. Sleep for a while.

Sleep.

I pull him, stiff and curled, closer to me and lay the quilt over him and lie back. I breathe. I should have noticed. What a hard time he was having on the walk. The tears that weren’t there yesterday flood. Break the dam and flood.

Now what am I going to do? Start a fire in a few minutes.

Jasper. Little brother. My heart.

I’ll start a fire. Put sticks over moss and start. I’ll cook the last two fish. I’ll eat one. I’ll.

For the day I don’t move. I keep adding wood to the fire. I leave him in his quilt wrapped and cozy just his nose sticking out. It is the sight of him there I don’t want to leave.

He is the only one now. The only sight. Which. Tomorrow I’ll. I don’t know.

I don’t. Don’t do anything all day. Don’t start the fire. Don’t cook the fish. Leave them on the stringer hanging from a bough. Attractant to bear and cougar. Don’t care. Get up to pee, drink a little water from the creek running colder from the icy night. Lower in its bed, the fallen tree propped on rocks upstream higher off the water. So. Retreat. Heart like the stream contracted too.

Go back to the sleeping bag and lie down next to him. Doze. Shove my leg over so I can feel his weight. Different now, wooden, but it is him. Drink in the afternoon. The day cool. The sun full on the creek, on the two of us, maybe three four hours then gone. Can smell the fish now. So.

Keep the tarp rolled back and wait for night. What was that song? If I die before I wake, feed Jake, he’s been a good dog … Maybe better. But then he would have had to be the one to die of heartbreak. Better like this. Like the darkness pouring back into the canyon covering the stream covering us in a black shroud. Still. No resolution ever. None. Nothing decided, nothing finished. The Dipper wheels back into place. Just one turn. One turn of the wheel and we are different, never the same. Not ever. Not even those stars. Even they, they decay, collapse, coalesce, break apart. Close my eyes. It’s what’s inside. What’s inside moving, swimming in the pain like a blind fish forever swimming. Is what lives what remains. Renews, renews the love and the pain. The love is the creek bed and the pain fills it. Fills it every day with tears.