Aminatta Forna - The Hired Man

After Kos was hit by Krešimir in his car, I had carried her into the house and examined her. Her hip was dislocated and although I had tried twice to push it back into place, it wouldn’t take. I had to muzzle her to stop her biting me in the madness of the pain. After the failure of the second attempt I sat back against the wall, then I released the muzzle and wiped the flecks of foam from the corner of her mouth. A third attempt would have been useless: at her age her chances of healing were already poor.

Now I put my lips to the top of her head, stood up and walked to where I’d set the rifle up an hour before. I could feel myself beginning to sweat, my palms were moist. I wiped them on my trousers. I didn’t want Kos to catch the scent of my fear, I wanted her to die taking the trust with her. My father had put an end to our dogs, when the need arose, with a shotgun in the long field. He did it alone, solemnly, and never spoke to any of us about it. Sometimes, with a favoured dog, he would never mention the dog’s name again. I’d thought through all the ways to kill Kos, to smother her perhaps. She would have let me put the pillow over her face, would only have started to kick when her instincts overcame her and died knowing she’d been betrayed.

As it was Kos was lying in the sun, in a place she knew. I’d positioned her with her back turned to me, not so that she couldn’t see me of course, she was blind anyway, but because it made it harder for her to catch the smell of my fear and also because it presented me with the top of her head, which she raised briefly as I walked away. She was listening and waiting for me to come back to her. The sounds of the rifle — of the bullet dropping into the breech, of the bolt sliding into place, the click of the safety catch coming off — were sounds she had heard all her life, maybe they even brought back the memory of a hunt, if those were the last sounds she heard then that was OK.

She was lying on her side, one ear to the wind, the cross hair was lined on the centre of her skull. My hands shook and I was glad I’d set the gun on a tripod. I’d taken care to fit the silencer, too. Nothing left to wait for and so I released the safety catch with my thumb, took a breath and slowly exhaled, I pressed the trigger and shot Kos through the head. Then I buried her in the hole I’d dug on the edge of the pine plantation. I went back to the house and let Zeka out. He circled the yard twice with his nose in the air and came back inside. I took a chair and sat at the table. For the first time in many years I didn’t know what to do.

Fifteen, twenty minutes might have passed. I don’t know. A knock on the door. I sat up, rubbed my face and went to answer it. Grace. She stood in the road, some distance from the door. She held out her hand with the palm up, a strip of braided thread lay across it. The events of the day, Kos, my mind wasn’t working. ‘What is it? What do you want?’

Grace smiled, maybe a little uncertainly because I’d spoken more sharply than I ever did; she raised her hand a little further. ‘What is it?’ I asked again, differently.

‘A friendship band. I made it for you. To say thank you for helping me with the fountain.’

I took it from her. ‘Thank you, Grace,’ I said. I wanted her to go.

‘Can I come in?’

‘Not today,’ I said. ‘I’m busy.’

Grace’s smile faltered.

I said, ‘Thanks for this. ’ I wasn’t really sure what it was. Before I could shut the door Zeka had appeared and pushed Grace’s hand roughly with his nose, demanding to be stroked.

‘Maybe I can take the dogs for a walk. If it would help you. Where’s Kos?’ She looked past me through the door and began to call Kos.

‘Kos is gone.’

‘What do you mean Kos is gone?’

‘Kos is dead.’

Grace looked up as though I’d hit her. ‘Kos is dead? How come? What happened?’ With every word her eyes grew brighter.

‘It was an accident. A car.’

‘Poor Kos. Duro, I’m so sorry.’ Without warning Grace stepped forward and embraced me, an awkward embrace, I was standing on the step and she was several inches below me, she put her arms around my waist and pressed her ear against my chest. We stood like that for some seconds. I didn’t know what to do, what I wanted was to be left alone. I patted her shoulder, I think. Grace sniffed and stepped back. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. I said, ‘Thank you, Grace, very much for this.’ I held up the coloured strip, stepped back inside and shut the door in her face.

The next morning I was up early. I made coffee and exercised, adding an extra ten press-ups, pull-ups and so on. I felt drained and heavy. I took Zeka for a walk in the hills. Dogs are slower to realise the fact of death than humans; of course Zeka didn’t know Kos was dead, he only knew she wasn’t there and he’d taken advantage of this by occupying all the best places to lie in the yard and in the house. But as we walked it became obvious to me that he was beginning to miss her presence. All his life they had moved and thought as a pair: running, trailing, routing. He’d been used to taking the lead in unfamiliar places and following her in familiar ones. Zeka bounded out of the house and across into the long field, but then all the rhythm was lost. He charged off once or twice at the scent of something, but lost interest. Again and again he circled back to me; by the end he had given up and trotted quietly by my side.

One thing I know, I have always been able to lose myself in work, so as early as was reasonable, I walked over to the blue house. As I turned the corner where the house comes into view I stopped to look at it. I was proud of my work: the gutters were cleared, the broken tiles of the roof fixed, the woodwork, windows and doors painted their original shade, the dead tree was gone, the stonework at the front was whitewashed. And of course there, restored, the mosaic of the bird. I’d never paid it much attention when I first saw it so many years ago. I thought it was just a bird, a whim of Anka’s, maybe her way of making the house more her own, the fountain too. Now it seemed brighter, more splendid than ever before: you half expected it to take flight like a mythical creature out of the pages of a children’s book that comes to life and flies over the hills and the roofs of the houses, breathing fire upon the townspeople.

Inside the house Grace was washing up the breakfast things. When she saw me she stopped what she was doing to come over and give me a hug. I sat at the table with the coffee she made for me, answered her questions and avoided her puddled eyes. Instead I talked about my plan for the day: to trim the trees at the front of the house and the hawthorn hedge at the back for which I’d brought the chainsaw along. Some sizeable branches needed to come down. I looked around the room. The interior had hardly been touched, though I’d fixed the roof which would prevent the patch of wall getting any worse. I could do that later today or tomorrow. As for the rest, Laura talked about getting rid of the pine cladding and tearing up the floor tiles, she also wanted an entirely new kitchen and that was just downstairs. But I was in no hurry now, this was the house as I had known it and as I liked it, I could make sure the work was never done, especially if we began other projects, it would all go on the back burner.

Matthew walked in. As ever he appeared half-asleep and shuffled over to the fridge. He took a carton of milk and drank straight from the spout, then he slumped onto the table opposite me, his back to Grace, who, when she thought I wasn’t looking, gave him a kick. Matthew looked up in confusion, first at Grace and then at me. He put the milk carton down on the table. ‘Shit, man!’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about your dog. Jesus.’