One Who Doesn't Trust Me

What will happen to the hounds if I die? I consider it often and reach no possible conclusion...

This is a continuation of an ongoing series.

Read Chapter One - The Barrens here:

Chapter Two - One Who Doesn't Trust Me

What will happen to the hounds if I die? I consider it often and reach no possible conclusion. Places like the barrens turn me ghostly. Running with Rockstar toward the unfolding chaos, I am momentarily released from the weight of the pack.

A woman once confessed to me that it was a guilty pleasure to know you can trust someone with your body entirely. Rockstar is that someone. The other hounds follow because they know I will guide them toward better days. They trust my instinct. But this German Shepherd would give me his pelt if I were freezing.

The vest he wears is a relic of his old life, an unpleasant reminder. Yet, in times like these, I am grateful for it. It protects him so he can guard my body.

The empty distance is filled with two uncertain forms. From the tornado-like flurry, I am sure one is Ramona. She circles the other who is tethered somehow to the dry earth. The ki-yi resonates sharply in my ears.

I realize it is Shiloh either wounded or scared witless on the ground. He did the same a summer ago when he stumbled into a cactus and couldn't escape.

I search the inky night for a breath of relief, hoping he is not too badly injured, but I do not discover solace. Unlike Shiloh's, Ramona's bark warns against approaching.

I shine my light behind them. Three sets of yellow eyes flash. I am stricken with fear like a doe realizing she is caught in the crosshairs. This will haunt my sleepless days.

The skulking coyotes, only faintly manifested from the darkness, are as large as Rockstar and as small as the last starving puma we saw in the meadow. They are the figures of nightmares.

The nearest devours me with hungry eyes, yet stands motionless, waiting. The others creep toward Ramona and Shiloh. Yowls echo on the not-so-distant horizon.

I reach at my bag's left pocket for what terrifies me, but grim fragments resurface — the smoke, the abandoned cries of my best friend, the hopelessness as I scoured for escape through the haze. On hound's time, you must learn from your mistakes quickly or die.

I clasp both hands around the jar of coins instead and shake it. The tinny thunder draws the attention of the desperate coyotes. Rockstar crouches into his attacking stance. He is ready to take them. Yet, we will not fight tonight.

As if they understand I wield some awful, ancient magic, the coyotes scurry away, taking to the hills again. Perhaps they know, as I am often reminded, nothing comes easy in this world. The fight isn't always worth it.

My shoulders shiver and teeth tingle. My legs are so weak, I stumble when I finally reach Shiloh. I am never prepared for the misfortunes of our collapsing world.

Loops of barbed wire are tangled around his body.

"I'm here," I cry to the terrified beagle.

They are wet sobs. The last drops of water in these barrens.

Rockstar settles beside me. I survey what may already be Shiloh's lost battle. Ramona paces in circles.

I begin the dreadful task. I must tear the wire out of Shiloh's skin. I do not consider my own flesh. Everything I do is for the hounds.

When my hands bleed, I am entirely alone. For deafened seconds, it is just me and the wire leaving a sketch of the worst days on this parched land.

Once Shiloh is free of his bindings, he is as still as the stones of the desiccated riverbed. I am convinced, because I never felt lucky, that he is dead.

Pink saliva stains Ramona's chin. A best friend, she must have tried to help him escape. She nudges him miserably with her nose. He stirs like a moth starved of light. It is enough.

While I wrap his gouged abdomen in my dusty scarf, I think of Banksy. I was too late to save him in the chaos. For all that is good, I pray to his spirit that Shiloh can survive this.

With the pack again beneath the gangly mesquite tree, we recover our sense of care. Shiloh trembles under the bundle in my arms. Pain knocks on my conscience, but I don't answer.

I let my body and heart grow numb. All enduring energy drifts to my thoughts like a silent monk who knows our only true prison is confliction of the mind.

Barely recovered, we still need to find shelter before dawn.

Bandaging Shiloh and my own wounds with the last bits of our first aid kit takes an hour we can scarcely afford. I lay him in the cat crate. He seems an infant who has outgrown its bassinet. Empress will carry the pups through the night. She knows that.

I check on each sleeping baby. Itty Bitty pokes her head out beside the runt. Each hound visits Shiloh to check him through the mesh of the crate. Ramona is plastered to my side. Rockstar flanks my other.

Eventually, we are back to the same movements — shoal of fish, swaying to each other. On the road that feels like a lie, I finally let sense drift away and I am visited again by ghosts.

"I saw one as large as a man once," Talon said the first time I heard the yapping of a coyote at night. "Buddies used to cull the ones too close to their farms."

We were sitting on top of the bus. My hounds were stirring inside. Rockstar was guarding Amber's RV. Smith and Wesson had settled under the picnic table, chewing over remnants of hooves and antlers. I hadn't found the pups yet and didn't wonder if the coyotes could hear them. But I feared for our lives.

"Have you shot one?" I asked.

I had seen him hunt in the woods not far from our camp. He shook his head.

"Haven't needed to. Just make some noise, and they usually run."

I wasn't on hound's time yet. I didn't understand these ways of nature. Talon would explain the best he could. He was good like that.

"They prey on the weak, surround the vulnerable. A lone pup out there, they could take 'em. Pack sticks together, it's not worth the risk."

Back in the meadow, the hounds were children exploring a new world. I wanted to teach them freedoms they had never known. But life in the wild was a danger I didn't understand how to survive.

Sometimes the hounds came when I called them. Often, they didn't. A few wandered off and wouldn't return for hours, occasionally until nightfall.

Half fought with the leashes. A few, like Shiloh, startled at the wind. When the other hounds joined in, it was a flurry of confusion.

"What if the pack doesn't stick together?" I asked, gazing at my weak hand, still shaky and partially deformed.

"They can learn," Talon assured, brushing his thumb on my wrist gently like he cared about me.

"Where do I start?" I questioned, letting his touch linger on my skin longer than usual.

"Who is their leader?"

"I'm not sure, Duke or Piper."

Later, before the meadow burned, he would explain that some packs have more than one leader, that they are followed for different reasons. I would ask him how he knew so much about the hounds then learn about the brothers he lost in an explosion during a war always left unnamed.

"Why do you think the others follow them?" he asked, tossing seed pods off the back of the bus like frisbees.

"Even when they're scared, Piper and Duke make them feel safe," I guessed, staring into the red sunset.

"You feed them, keep them cool, lick their wounds despite your own. Don't you think they feel the same for you? Even Piper and Duke?"

Silence stole my tongue. I had never considered it.

"You have their trust. Time will come they'll learn following you is worth it. Once they do, your pack will always stick together."

And they do, but it took losing the meadow, Banksy, and every fragment of comfort we knew. As the sun threatens on the horizon of the wasteland and the pack staggers over weary limbs, I wonder when Shiloh stopped trusting me, if he ever really did.

I don't believe in miracles. But as the sun glistens against the back of my torn hands, the statue of a crucifix appears ahead. With no other building in sight, a lonely, dilapidated church waits just off the side of the road.

The pack diverts down the dirt path and idles at the entry of the holy place. A sign on the door says, "All Are Welcome." We usher in, a congregation heavy with the burdens of the world, ready to be cleansed.