Callan Wink - Dog Run Moon

“No,” he said. “Don’t even ask. I will not dance with you.” Then he turned away from her and began drinking. She had to laugh, despite herself.

Many drinks later, they did dance, slowly. He was without his cane, so she had to hold him upright, although by then she was none too steady herself.

That night, he’d told her he had nerve damage from taking shrapnel in Vietnam. A few months later, after they’d gone to the courthouse and signed the papers, he admitted he’d never even been to Vietnam. His number never got picked. What he had was multiple sclerosis. He could look forward to the continued degeneration of his body on a timeline and severity scale known only to the disease itself. He might remain more or less as he was for years, or, over the course of a few months, devolve into a complete invalid.

Lauren quit the veterinary clinic and took the night custodian position at the high school. The pay was similar but the health benefits were much better. She missed the animals and the normal hours. Getting to work as the sun was going down was disorienting, but it did mean that she could sleep most of the day when Manny was awake, which turned out to be good. She’d moved in with him, his modular home on the windswept bench on the west side of the river. He’d gotten the cattle a few months before his MS diagnosis. It had been getting increasing hard for him to take care of their feed and water, and he had been on the verge of selling them before he met Lauren. Now that he had her, he decided to keep them.

Manny clung to the cane for as long as possible before succumbing to the wheelchair, and, when this transition finally came, it was not pleasant. Lauren lay a sheet of plywood down on the front steps for a ramp so he could come in and out on his own. When it was warm, he’d roll outside to drink in the front yard. When it was cold, he’d stay inside and drink with the TV on mute while Lauren slept. During the week things between them were bearable. They saw each other for one or two hours at best. On weekends, though, it was different. He’d yell for her to bring him more ice for his drink or change the radio station or to adjust the volume of the TV. In nice weather, he’d be outside rolling around, drinking Lauder’s scotch from a travel mug, shouting out things that needed her attention.

“Come out and look at the steer with the white on its face. Is there something wrong with his hoof? Come here and look at the corner of the foundation here. Is that a crack? The mailbox post is tipping a little to the left. The next big wind, and the thing is going to fall right over. You need to get out here and shore it up or our mail is going to get scattered all over the damn countryside. Goddamnit, Lauren, I need you to keep this place from crumbling into the dust. I’m counting on you here.”

Occasionally, when Manny was especially far gone, and she was helping him into the bath or onto the couch or bed, he’d become enraged and lash out at her. Once, he’d connected, a hard, closed fist to her eye, and she’d seen an explosion of white sparks and then she’d dropped him, and left him, on the floor of the bathroom. She went and sat in the kitchen with a bag of frozen peas on her swelling eye, trying to ignore him as his angry screams turned to sobs, the first of their kind she’d ever heard.

—

In the summer months, Lauren began taking small road trips on the weekends. She’d load up the truck with a cooler and an inflatable mattress and a tarp and head out. She went to the Bighorn Canyon and then over to the Little Bighorn Battlefield monument. She went to the Lewis & Clark Caverns and took a candlelit tour, the hanging mineral formations breaking and sending the flickering candles’ glow in a million different directions. Manny didn’t like her to be gone, but there was nothing he could do to stop her. And even he realized that when she left for the weekend she was generally in good spirits for the rest of the week when she got back.

On one of the last nice weekends in October, Lauren packed up and headed to Butte. She wanted to see the Berkeley Pit and walk around the old town to see the crumbling copper-king mansions. It was a beautiful weekend. She camped one night and then, on the second night, sprung for a room at the Finlan Hotel with its ornate, high-ceilinged lobby, the chandeliers and wall accents made of pure, polished copper. The room was pretty and had a clawfoot tub, and she soaked until the water began to cool, and then she drained and refilled the tub and soaked some more. She had a steak at the Cavalier Lounge and drank a dirty martini. She walked around town some more at night so she could see the neon bar lights, and, way up on the hillside, the white glow of the ninety-foot-tall Our Lady of the Rockies statue.

Sunday morning, she woke up late and took her time getting back. She stopped more than she needed to — for coffee, for water, for the bathroom, for gum. Despite all this, she still made it home before dark. She pulled into the driveway as the sun was getting ready to set. The cattle had come to the edge of the fence and were looking at her as she sat in the truck, taking deep breaths, trying to retain, for a little while longer, that good, carefree, weekend-away feeling. She got her bag and went inside. Usually when she returned she found the kitchen a disaster area of dirty dishes and empty soup cans and beer bottles and puddles from dropped ice cubes. Upon hearing her open the door, Manny would begin shouting about something that needed her attention and she would set her bag down, square her shoulders, and get started cleaning things up. Today, however, the house was quiet, the TV off. There was only one empty soup can in the sink and Manny was nowhere to be seen. She went to the back porch to see if he was outside smoking, but he wasn’t there either.

Eventually she spotted him, and she knew immediately. He’d wheeled himself out to the far corner of the pasture and his back was to the house. There was a turkey vulture resting on his shoulder like some hideous overgrown parrot. From a distance, it looked like the bird was whispering a secret into his ear. When she came closer she saw that the blast from the shotgun in his lap had removed the part of his head where his ear would have been and the bird was doing something there altogether different.

—

With Manny gone, once again her life resumed its simple course, dinner with wine, magazines on the table. She stopped the weekend trips.

She decided to sell the steers. She’d made a call and set up a time for a livestock truck to come and take them away. The day before its arrival, she’d come home to find that they’d broken out. It was early morning, and she was tired after a long day. She saw the fence was down and the cattle were gone and she decided to go inside and sleep for a few hours until it was light enough to see, and then she would go out and round them up.

She lay down with her clothes on, and was awakened a short time later by pounding on the door. It was just past dawn, the mountains still black, the pasture streaked with gray light. Manny’s son, Jason, was at the door, his long hair tangled, eyes shot with red, looking like he hadn’t slept in a long time. His black shepherd dog sat on the steps staring at her more directly than any natural-born dog would dare. She hadn’t seen him since Manny’s funeral. He’d spent the whole service eyeing her murderously.

Jason was holding a long section of vinyl house siding in his hand. When she opened the door he waved it in her face.

“See? Look at this. You see this? I’m watching TV and I come out to see your goddamn loose animals tearing up my lawn, rubbing themselves against my house. This is Timber Tek siding. The best they make. It’s made to look like wood. You see that? That’s simulated wood grain right there. You don’t get that unless you pay extra. I paid extra for the wood grain, and now you are going to pay to get everything put back just the way it was.”