Lydia Millet: How the Dead Dream

T. tried to take his leave with a handshake, but Fulton insisted on a high-five.

He spent his evenings and his sleep alone and was satisfied: what he loved was to ride in after these quiet nights, these black nights of deaf and solitary thought, into the world of day, where sound enfolded him and he could scramble over chaos to order again. He liked to be away from people and then suddenly face-to-face: all in a rush they would converge, burning with self-interest like pillars of fire. He listened to them and learned to know the difference between what was said and what was meant, and-save with men like Fulton, who had no interest in concealing themselves-this was the key to all lesser insights. What people valued and professed to value were quite different objects, and he made constant note of this, always refining his study.

There was variation, of course, but there were many common replacements. When they said they wanted passion, they meant the feeling of novelty; instead of what was beautiful, they wanted what affirmed; instead of a challenge, an easy victory that others believed to be hard-won. Instead of God, a father who showed his love; instead of Jesus, a friend who proved his love; instead of faith, a mother who loved them with a love that never changed.

He killed her driving to Las Vegas, after a truck stop and a few bites of a turkey club served by a waitress with lurid curling fingernails; after a dingy restroom whose yellow urinal mints made him turn away in disgust. He was still in a state of repulsion when he emerged from the diner into twilight. Then the feeling fled: there was a dusky earthshadow in the east, a dim violet light that made even the asphalt look soft.

Driving up the freeway on-ramp he turned the radio on and knew the smoothness of his buttery seat leather against the backs of his thighs. He was satisfied; he was easing in. Then a shape, blurred and fast from the right, and he hit it. The car bumped over it and veered off the road onto the shoulder. He jammed the brake pedal to the floor and sat shaking.

Dust rose behind and beside him, and his two right wheels were off the shoulder pavement. He looked out the window behind him to see if there were other cars coming. What was that on the road? What was hit?

He could see a mound on its side, legs outstretched. His own legs shook with delayed fear but there was already a stream of headlights behind the animal. No time. He pushed his door open and ran back toward it, stomach weak and face hot. He tasted dust and iron on his tongue.

A coyote. People said they were pests. They took pets out of yards in the suburbs, ran off with children's kittens.

He was briefly relieved: no one to be angry at him, no owner. But everything was too fast. The cars were closer, the headlights brighter, and the whine of a horn made him lurch sideways in alarm. A truck swerved around him. He closed his eyes and slowed his breath. Its back legs were pulp. Jesus! He winced looking at them. But he had to move it. It could not stay in the road. It could cause another accident.

He leaned down and put his arms around the front, picked up the body with its head lolling against his chest, the rear half sagging. It was curiously light for its size and left a sweep of blood on the blacktop when he dragged it.

He let it go as quickly as he could, safely out of traffic. He stood there gazing down, his chest clutching. But then he saw its flank moving. It breathed. It was still alive. It could have bitten him. Did coyotes bite people? They were always shrinking away; they slunk along the roadside and veered off into brush as the headlights swept over them. He looked into its face, the muzzle sharp at the nose like a fox but somehow humble-mouthed like a dog; the light eyes, which were open and seemed to see him.

"Oh," he said, and knelt down. It would not bite. It was dying. And if it did, he thought, that meant it was planning to live.

It made a sound from its throat-a growl, maybe. If he had a gun he could shoot it. Because Jesus: the legs! Nothing should have to bear that.

"Good boy. Quiet there, boy," he said uncertainly. It probably did not want him near; he should back off. Better to die alone if you were an animal like this one, a loner that avoided any contact with humans. He looked past the flank to the underbelly; nothing there. The poor thing was a bitch. "Steady, girl," he said. "It's OK."

He stood creakily and stepped back, but somehow he could not leave. He went to sit in his car. He waited, listening to a country music station.

But he was restless and anxious and soon he got out again to see if she was dead yet. He had an idea he should move her, once she was gone; he should carry her into the brush, where she could go to ground.

He willed himself not to look at her legs, to by to ignore what was back there bleeding, the cracked bone tapering into nothing. He looked only at her face and her side to see if she was still breathing. But despite the fact that he was not looking, as he sat beside her, he imagined the shock from the mined legs coursing though her body, what must be the blind surge of the pain as the end closed in. A loud end-the lush of cars still distant punctuated by the searing noise and glare of those approaching, bearing down viciously and then fading again. She was dying in the smells of asphalt, exhaust, and gasoline, no doubt also the smell of her own blood, and him, and other smells he could not know himself.

The fullness, the terrible sympathy!

Had he felt this before, he wondered? Maybe when he was a boy? Animals died by the road and you saw that all the time, everyone did. You saw them lying there, so obvious in their deadness, sad lumps of dirty meat; you saw their limp furry masses thrown up like flowers along the yellow stripes, the tumbly asphalt edges. You saw the red insides all exposed. You thought: that is the difference between them and me. My insides are firmly contained.

And were Ito lie on the side of the road dying, it would be nothing like that. No one would drive around me: the cars would stop, tens upon hundreds of them; there would be lines of stopped traffic for miles as they removed my body, flashing their red and blue lights of crisis and competence.

Presently he realized her flank had ceased to rise and fall. He was relieved but oddly disoriented. Where was the ambulance? No: he was all that she had. All her lights, all her rescue workers.

It was just a coyote. No one would fault him for leaving.

And yet he felt confused.

"Good girl," he whispered.

Back in Los Angeles he traded in the S-Class, chose a modest 190 to replace it and drove off the lot quickly. Irrational, but he had to get rid of it.

We all kill sooner or later, he said to himself, fine. Was she maybe half-blind? Maybe when they got old they went blind and could not hunt anymore, as birds died by starving. Maybe she had been feeble and exhausted and thought, trotting onto the blacktop for the last time: welcome, friend. All the times she must have seen the cars fly by, in their hundreds and hundreds of thousands.

But no. A coyote might want relief from suffering, but to plan for her own end seemed human.

Still a particular moment recurred within him, the sense of a rising pity he could not repress, in which he sank like a stone and could not get to the surface again. He saw the coyote's face as she lay in the dirt of the road, eyes half-closed, the long humble line of her mouth. He thought of the crushed legs. He asked the pain if it was sharp or dull and throbbing; he asked pain, he asked the coyote, he was left in silence.

Any animal could be gentle while it was busy dying, he told himself. That was hardly a mark of distinction. But the sorrow persisted, as though he was worrying an open cut.