Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

“Her mouth,” Paul said. “It’s a girl.”

“If you get bitten you’ll be in the hospital for days,” Josie said. “And we’re not near any hospitals.”

“Can we feed her?” Paul asked.

“Did you name her yet?” Josie asked.

“Ana did,” Paul said.

“Follow,” she said.

“That’s her name: Follow,” Paul clarified.

“Because she followed us,” Ana said. Last year she named a fish Waterlover.

“I thought you said she scratched at the door,” Josie said.

Paul had a way, when caught even in the whitest of lies, of staring at Josie, unblinking, for a few long seconds before he spoke. It was not done out of any sense of strategy. It was more that he was seized by, inhabited by, a kind of truth spirit that insisted upon full revelation. He took a deep breath and began.

“We went outside. Just to get some sticks,” he said, indicating a small pile of sticks that, with orange duct tape, they’d made into swords. “When we were walking back, she started following us. We closed the door, and she started scratching on it.”

Paul exhaled in a quick burst, as if in punctuation and relief. He was happy to have gotten through it, the unadulterated truth. His posture relaxed and he allowed himself to blink.

“Can we feed it?” he asked again.

—

So they had a dog. They brought Follow inside, and fed her old fried chicken and salad, and she devoured it. Josie knew what a bad idea it was to feed a stray like this, but the animal seemed traumatized, unable to stop shivering. She conjured a narrative whereby she was the ranger’s dog, but had run away, and the ranger, unable to find her, had left without her. Then she’d returned to find him gone, the door locked, and her tiny self surrounded by a murderers’ row of higher carnivores only too happy to lunch on her vibrating flesh. Somehow she’d survived the days since, but was a wreck of nerves and was starving to boot.

Josie examined the dog, looking for cuts or fleas or some sign of disease, and found her to be startlingly clean for a dog that had been out in the wild for days or weeks. “You can pet her,” she told her children, and she sat on the futon, watching them fawn over Follow, as the dog shook and ate, and shortly after eating, fell fast asleep. They continued to pet her black fur as she slept, as she breathed unevenly, her hind legs periodically jabbing at the floor.

Josie had the feeling that with Follow, they had become some kind of frontier family. They broke windows and altered gates. They took in strays. And they hadn’t even been in the cabin one night. The kids would not leave Follow, so they stayed inside as the night came on, and Josie built a fire, and the winds outside whistled an eerie tune. The cardboard they’d taped over the kitchen window inhaled and exhaled but held. She brought her children with her under the covers, and they slept through the night, Paul’s arm hanging to the floor, where he could be sure of Follow’s well-being.

A ringing woke her. It was still dark, the fire weak. Who could be calling? She hadn’t even seen a phone. She slipped out of bed and to the kitchen, hoping the kids would sleep through it. In the dark she swept her hands over the counter, and finally, under a pile of maps, found a landline. It was still ringing. Three rings, four, each one rattling the cabin. She couldn’t pick it up. Finally after six rings, it ended.

Paul and Ana were still asleep, but Josie knew she would be awake for hours. She brought a chair out to the deck and sat, jittery, listening to the night, running through possibilities. She wanted to believe the phone call was random, or simply intended for the ranger who lived there. But then there was the possibility that it was Follow’s owners. Or the process server. Or the police.

No one is looking for us, she told herself. She even manufactured a scoff, meant to put herself at ease.

“Mom?”

It was Ana, alone, on the porch. Josie couldn’t remember Ana ever getting out of bed alone. Usually, when she was out of bed after hours, it was part of a scheme Paul had conceived, a dual attack meant to prove that sleep was impossible for all in the house. Really, though, it meant that Paul hadn’t been able to sleep, had woken up Ana and brought her with him. Only Paul was burdened with the near-death implications of sleep and the night’s invitation to consider mortality and insignificance. Ana was too young to have come to these places.

She was standing in the doorway, her mass of red hair matted on one side, misshapen and a faded shade of orange, like the last pumpkin chosen from the patch. Her hands were stuck to either side of the doorframe, as if she were holding the two sides at bay.

“Are we staying here tomorrow?” she asked.

“I think so. Maybe for a few days,” Josie said.

“Really?” Ana said, and her face and shoulders dropped in one beautifully coordinated collapse.

Ana had similar sentiments last winter, when they were headed back to school after holiday break.

“Do I go to school this week?” she had asked.

“Yes,” Josie had said.

“And the week after that?”

“Of course.”

Ana had been astonished. Winter break had brought something different each day, and now, going back to school, where things did not vary so much day to day, offended her. The repetitive nature of the system assaulted her sense of the heroic possibilities of a day.

“Go to bed,” Josie said, but instead Ana came and crawled on her lap and pretended to suck her thumb.

“Don’t worry, Josie,” Ana said. “I won’t tell Paul.” Now she gave Josie one of her looks, a conspiratorial look that said they could drop all the formalities and role-playing, the silly game of parent and child.

“I don’t like you calling me Josie,” Josie said.

“Okay, Mom, ” Ana said, making the word sound absurd.

“Go to bed,” Josie said, pushing Ana off her lap. Ana fell to the rough porch in a heavy theatrical heap. She crawled back into the house, and though Josie expected to hear from her again, after ten minutes there was no sign that Ana was awake, which meant, for Ana — who usually fell asleep in seconds and stayed that way till morning — that she was actually asleep.

As if in protest at losing Ana for the dark hours, the howl of a coyote spiraled through the night.

—

The ringing again. Josie opened her eyes, saw that her children were already awake, huddled around Follow as she ate beef jerky, her tiny jaws snapping.

“Who’s calling, Mom?” Paul asked.

“Wrong number,” she said.

Josie realized that the presence of a dog did not help their situation. They wanted to be invisible, but wasn’t there a chance Follow’s owners would return for her? She had the thought that perhaps Follow belonged to someone else nearby, and that like many a puppy, she had simply been exploring when she encountered Paul and Ana and followed them to the cabin door. There was a chance the owners knew the ranger, that the dog had come here before, and they were calling to check if he’d seen her. Or there was the possibility that it was simply a telephone, that people made calls, that it rang, and none of it had anything to do with Josie and her children. She could unplug the phone, but what if the ranger called, found out it had been disconnected? She had to leave it be.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she said, not telling Paul and Ana that she thought there was at least some chance that Follow would lead them to her actual owner and real home. And so Josie packed a backpack with crackers and water from the bubbler, they tied a rope to Follow’s flea collar and made their way up through the mine and into the woods beyond. The animal was tentative still, walking ahead, then circling back to the children, then running ahead for a spell before coming back again. She was either a deeply troubled dog or not very bright.