Callan Wink - Dog Run Moon

“Succubus,” Nolan said, pouring water on his face. “All the women in this family. I believe I warned him before they got hitched.”

“Suck-what?”

“Shit, my ex-wife? On my birthday, if I was lucky. You young guys have it better.”

“MTV. That’s what did it. And, all the hormones in the water. Makes women shameless.”

“And Bill Clinton. It’s not even sex anymore.”

Sam was laughing, shaking his head. Rand watched, not saying anything, sweat stinging his eyes. Sam was part of some sort of unlikely brotherhood — a side effect of marriage that Rand had never before considered. It seemed like a good thing, but he didn’t let himself get too sentimental. In reality, while the Stabs-on-Top men adopting Sam into the fold meant friendship, sweat lodges, manly companionship, it probably also included the occasional jailhouse call for bail money.

Eventually, the heat overwhelmed Rand and he had to stumble out of the lodge before he fainted. He stood outside in his soaked underwear, steam rising from his shoulders and arms, his neck craned back looking at the stars. Out here, town wasn’t even a glow on the horizon. As Rand was trying to find the Big Dipper, there was a soft whistling, a flock of mergansers, up from the river, flying low over his head — dark swimmers, moving in formation upstream against the flow of the Milky Way.

The men were laughing in the lodge, and then he could hear Sam’s voice rising up a little above it and then it was quiet. He knew they had been talking about him and he thought it was ridiculous of Sam to bring him here. He decided he wasn’t going to go back in. He stood shivering, listening to the horses breathing in the corral.

—

“The poor old guy’s got Alzheimer’s,” Sam said in the car on the way home. “It’s an unfortunate thing. Sometimes he’s perfectly clear. Everything is clicking. He tells stories, about his childhood and older ones, you know, legends and stuff, the history of the people. It’s really great. And then sometimes he gets on his basketball kick. He used to be a coach. Just ungodly what it does to a person. Anyway, I’m glad you came with me tonight. Stella and I, you know, we worry about you, man.”

“I’m fine.”

“It was her idea about the sweat lodge. And, she thinks you need a girlfriend.”

“I’ve been thinking about getting a dog.”

“Well, there you go. I’ll tell her that.”

Sam dropped him off back at his truck, and when he drove away Rand walked across the parking lot down to the new job site. They were building a massive ski chalet — style dentist office. They had the floors poured and the walls framed in. The roof was still an empty framework of jutting steel beams. He overturned a bucket and sat with his back to a wall, looking up at the moon coming up a bloody egg-yolk orange. He thought, behind the roof joists like that, it looked like some sort of mottled internal organ, a pulsing lunar heart lodged between the ribs of a giant skeleton.

For some reason he couldn’t stop thinking about Nolan. The basketball star. The great leaper with the quick release. The obviously ruined alcoholic. Had he led the Hardin Tigers to the state championship all those years ago? Maybe in the finals game he’d choked, missed the potentially game-winning free throw, and then started his downward slide — no championship banner, no Gonzaga, no longer any reason to stay in shape, the new dedication to drinking, puking in cold frozen fields, pickup games at the dingy rec center gym where that free throw went in every time.

Maybe some people wouldn’t think something like that was possible, that such a small event could precipitate so great a fall — everything in a man’s life hanging on a hoop, a net, the soft spin of the pebbled leather kissing the fingertips goodbye on the release. Rand was not one of those people.

—

Summer. From his desk, in the mornings, he could see sandhill cranes stalking the fallow field across the road. Rand watched their stilted movements against the rimrock hills. The dentist’s office job was coming to an end. A month or so more of loose ends and then they’d come and haul the trailer away, and Rand would be embarking on a whole new project. He wasn’t sure exactly what yet, the company had put an aggressive bid in on a small, high-end, ski chalet — style strip mall in Bozeman. He was having a hard time drumming up enthusiasm for a new job.

The site was in a small wooded area just off the freeway, and Rand took his lunch out into a thicket of pines and immature aspens and ate his sandwich sitting on the ground in the shade. He brought his pup with him most days. He was a small block-headed black lab mix whose existence revolved around food, searching it out, devouring it as quickly as possible, and retrieving sticks. On his lunch break Rand would let the dog out of the trailer to run around cadging treats from the guys.

On the weekends, he ran his boat upriver. He was fishing again. One day he caught his limit of walleye in an hour. The puppy hadn’t been fond of the water at first. Eventually Rand caught him by the collar and tossed him off the dock. After a few moments of thrashing, he figured it out.

Mostly things were going okay, and it seemed that the events of the winter would eventually fade — the sharp edges ground away by the simple everyday adherence to routine. He walked the dog in the early-morning dark. Made coffee and went to work. Put in a full day. And then he went home, walked the dog, and made dinner, watched TV — his dog on the floor next to him. He could hang his hand over the edge of the couch and rub the dog’s ears.

Occasionally, something would come to him. Sitting out in the thicket on his lunch break maybe, chewing his dry sandwich while the dog sat impatiently waiting for the crusts. He’d remember a simple thing, like the way Angel’s crew used to cook their lunch outside. They’d bring an electric skillet and set it up on an overturned bucket. Someone would have a plastic bag of marinating beef and someone would have tortillas, and they’d throw together simple tacos, filling the air with the scent of seared meat.

Once, Angel had called him over and offered him some. Rand had ended up eating three, juice running down his chin, wiping his hands on his jeans like the other guys. They were good tacos.

“Better than a sandwich?” Angel had said. And Rand had nodded, his mouth full, thinking that not all food cultures were created equal, that maybe he should bring a hot plate into the trailer and cook his lunch. He never did, but at the time it seemed like Angel’s guys were onto something. They had a knack for enjoyment. All the other workers were sitting in their trucks, eating fast food or choking down the same ham-and-cheese their wife had been making for them for years — and here these men were, cooking in the open air, talking, laughing, eating a real meal.

Remembering this wasn’t much, just enough to make his sandwich stick in the back of his throat.

—

In late August, Sam called to tell Rand that Stella was pregnant, and to invite Sam to another tribal ceremony. This time it was something called Crow Fair, specifically the culminating event — a sun dance.

“This is the real one, man. I really hope you’ll come.”

“What do you mean, ‘the real one’?”

“Yeah, they have a dance that’s open to the public — concession stands, moccasins for sale, Winnebagos full of lost South Dakotans looking for the Little Bighorn Battlefield — and then this one, tribal members and close friends only. I’m going to be dancing.”

“You? Why?”

“For my unborn child. To show my gratitude. For good luck.”

“I didn’t know you were a dancer. I mean, how do you know what to do?”