Symbiosis

The sun beat down brutally, waves of heat pulsing like a heartbeat, matching our pace as we ran. The overgrown grass had been squeezed of its last bit of moisture, and the blades cut painfully at the soles of our bare feet. The sweat sliding down my legs made me shiver in spite of the warmth, the feeling akin to bugs crawling over my flesh. As the sweat flicked from my toes, I imagined the grateful grasses greedily soaking it up, a path of green footfalls re-emerging from long-forgotten spring. My constricted lungs were a sharp contrast to the open field we traversed. I sucked in more air, trying to force my chest out as wide and open as the land around us in order to quell the fire that had begun to burn below my ribcage. As we ran, our tiny home was at our backs, shrinking ever smaller as we desperately chased down our new puppy.

"That stupid dog," my mother managed to wheeze out as we pushed forward.

I didn't know why she wasted her breath. It did us no good. The dog was leagues ahead of us, four giant paws outpacing our human efforts with an ease further encouraged by the idea of playful competition. Our only saving grace was his proclivity to sprint in circles, checking and re-checking the scent trail he sought with a compulsivity that came from ineluctable instinct.

"PEANUT!" we cried in unison.

Though he had paused to snuffle at a tuft of dry grass, he didn't so much as look up as we called out his name, feigning deafness in favor of adventure. He had made it nearly to the tree line, and I knew if he ran into the woods, we would lose sight of him completely. His history of returning, hungry but happy, would do nothing to soothe my mother. She would spend his absence pacing her own compulsive circles around the property, displaying the ineluctable instinct of her motherly nature.

Peanut was a livestock guardian by blood but not by practice, and my mother worried that he would be torn to pieces by wildlife before he ever saw maturity. He had been particularly antsy the past couple of days, a sure indicator that some creature was haunting the fringes of our land. 

Thankfully, the grass managed to hold the dog's attention, and he remained still as we gained much-needed ground. The sound of our footfalls beat down onto the dry earth, and the steady rhythm helped me to regain control over my breath. I pulled ahead. As our shadows converged, Peanut looked up, hastily priming to launch himself into another sprint. Smart and quick as he was, he was still a bumbling puppy and no match for the merciless ferality of an eight-year-old girl. Closing the distance with a desperate leap, I nearly landed on top of him. For a moment we wrestled like the young animals we were, my fingers slipping through fur as tan and coarse as the grass surrounding us. Peanut was a writhing band of pure muscle, but just before he managed to wiggle free from beneath me, I clamped a firm hold onto his gangly back leg. He yelped loudly as he was yanked to a halt. At this point, my mother had caught up with us and managed to get a firm hold on his collar, allowing me to release his leg unharmed.

My mother plopped onto the grass, absolutely heaving as she clutched at Peanut's wide chest. Completely unaware of the inconvenience he'd caused, he bent to lick her face, fighting the flies for a taste of the salt on her freckled skin. She should have shoved him away, his body heat only adding to the discomfort of her heightened temperature, fueled by both anger and the brutal sun. Instead, she buried her face in his neck and pulled him closer.

"You idiot," she mumbled, quietly so I wouldn't hear.

When she finally came up for air, bristles of his coarse fur clung to the sweat on her face like tiny threads of gold. She wore a complicated expression, one I had long ago decoded because it was often aimed at me. She was saddled with exhaustion-driven anger, but she choked it down with love.

She turned to me where I lay, sprawled out on the grass beside her. Tiny pinpricks of brittle pasture tickled my cheeks as I flexed my arms and legs, making little snow angels in the dust around us.

"Did you see what he was chasing?" she asked.

I shook my head, eyes closed, face aimed at the sky as my cheeks soaked in the fading sunlight.

It wouldn't take us long to find out. Peanut once again began straining violently against my mother's hold, his body pulling towards the tree line. Her fingers took on an ugly shade of red and then a deep purple as his collar twisted in her vice-like grip. If the situation was painful, she didn't seem to notice. She was too busy squinting into the nearby trees, desperate to make out the shape that was weaving its way between the shadows bleeding from the forest.

"What the he—" She trailed off, eyes locked in the distance. She had a habit of treating some words in a way I didn't yet understand, like they were gravel, walking softly over them so as to not pierce bare feet.

Disturbed by her tone, I sat up, blinking away the red glare which the weakening sun had stamped through my fragile eyelids. I followed my mother's gaze, and as my blurred vision gradually refocused, I was able to make out a four-legged animal moving erratically through the brush. It was midsized, furry, and oddly round.

"Is that one of the Reed's dogs? I see the brown and black one get out a lot," I suggested.

My suggestion was a foolish one. It couldn't be the same dog; this animal’s fur pattern was wrong. The animal in general was wrong. Its coat was ratty and irregular. Some sections were full, fur standing up in thick peaks, while swatches of bare pink skin showed through in others. The hair was particularly sparse along its belly, which was unusually bloated.

"That's not a dog," my mother confirmed.

"What is it then? Why does it look like that?" I asked with slight disgust.

My mother didn't answer. Instead, she silently passed me Peanut's collar and stood up. For a moment she stood remarkably still, seeming to ponder something deeply before she abruptly took off, kicking up a cloud of debris as she angled towards the animal.

"What are you doing?" I called after her retreating figure, distress clear in my voice.

Whether she intended to scare the animal away or simply wanted to quell her curiosity, I wasn't able to debate her motives for long. I had inherited the task of grappling with Peanut, and my mother's antics had only rekindled his zeal for freedom. His wiry body was like wet soap beneath my touch, and he thrashed in desperation, attempting to free himself from both his collar and me. Above our scuffle I caught glimpses of the strange animal slinking into the trees. I lost sight of my mother as she dipped within the foliage behind it.

By the time I'd fully calmed Peanut, my mother had reappeared in my line of sight. She crossed the short distance back across the pasture at a gentle jog and dropped to her knees in front of me, catching her breath.

"It's a coyote," she heaved.

"That was a coyote?" I marveled.

We often saw coyotes, usually multiple all at once. It wasn't a rare occurrence, but they had never looked as ragged as that.

"Is it sick?" I asked.

"I think it's pregnant. It's strange. They're not supposed to be pregnant now. It's not the right season," she replied. Confusion coated her tone.

"Maybe it has a bad liver? Like Grandma did?" I suggested, remembering the distended belly my grandmother had sported throughout her last days.

"Maybe. I've just... I've seen a lot of coyotes. And its teats were all swollen too," she explained, but her voice lacked conviction as she hoisted me to my feet, brushing the dirt from my pants and scooping up Peanut in her arms with a strained huff.

"Come on, it'll be too dark to eat soon," she called over her shoulder as she turned back towards the house.

Our tiny two-bedroom ranch home was quiet upon our return, darkness quickly creeping up the peeling white paint of the exterior walls and spilling in through dirt-streaked windows. Our electricity was out and would remain so until my mother's next paycheck. Once the sun fully set, we would be cocooned in a darkness only feebly beat back by candles or the weak glow of my mother's phone screen. The darkness might feel disorienting to some, but I found it soothing. I had lived in the home my whole life; I didn't need light to navigate. A baby didn't need eyesight to navigate the womb.

The darkness didn't bother me, but the silence that radiated from every room was still relatively fresh. My grandmother had passed away three months ago, and her absence made it feel as if our home had grown three times its size. Neither my mother nor I had known a life without her, a life outside the home we'd made together. There had been a time when my mother had dreams of going off to college, leaving the Atchison pastures behind, but when she fell pregnant with me, she made the decision to stay firmly planted in her childhood home.

And then, two years ago, my grandmother had gotten sick, and my mother had become the caretaker for us both. When my grandmother finally died, I was sad, but mostly I was young, naive selfishness still clinging to me like the waxy white sheen of fat that covers a newborn. I figured the new quiet meant my mother might have more time for me. I was quickly proven wrong. The social security checks we relied on to help pay our mortgage had been sucked down into the grave along with my grandmother, forcing my mother to pull even longer hours at the grocery store she worked at. I was left to learn how to fix my meals and find the bus stop on my own in the cool morning hours. My mother's first taste of true independence was marred by the harsh reality of total responsibility.

A few weeks after my grandmother's funeral, my mother had bought Peanut off a neighbor whose dog had produced an accidental litter. She'd gotten me the dog both for company and for safety, fretful over the inevitability of leaving me home alone. He was a handful, a bigger responsibility than I think either of us had expected, but he did have an effortless ability to beat back the oppressive silence within our home. He did so now as we opened the back door and slipped inside through the kitchen. His collar jingled as my mother set him on the floor, and the click of his nails echoed off the linoleum as he skated towards his water bowl. My mother and I took his lead, and after a much-needed drink, all three of us plopped into various corners of our living room.

Through new eyes the living room most likely seemed antiquated, still furnished in the same style my grandmother had meticulously picked out decades ago. To me it felt cozy. Not only did her memory linger in the design, most of my own growth had been done on this very floor. In a way I felt possessive over it. My mother took a seat on our tattered tartan sofa. Peanut and I dropped onto the rug.

As I tugged on the filthy rope toy Peanut had dropped near my head, my mother pulled out her phone, a rare occurrence when we went without power. She always made sure to charge it up before leaving the grocery store, but she was still vigilant about reserving it for emergencies when we went through these dry spells.

"What are you looking at?" I asked.

"I want to know if I'm right about the coyote."

"Right how?" I asked absentmindedly, my hands slipping from the rope that was now coated in a thick sheen of slobber.

"That it could be pregnant even though it's not spring," she responded.

"It's July now," I stated, my painfully obvious response an unconscious bid to prolong this moment of connection.

"The internet says that a hormonal anomaly could result in a summer litter, but it almost never happens. If she's really pregnant like I think, we've seen something rare."

"She's all alone out there?" I asked.

"I don't know. Seems like it. She was very beat up," my mother replied.

She was silent for a moment until she turned her gaze to me, wistful. Thoughtful.

"Are you happy?" She asked me softly.

"Yeah," I responded. "Can we fry hotdogs for dinner?"

"Yeah. Grab me matches from the hall closet. I'll get the oven lit."

Later that night I woke to a strange rustling noise. As of late, I had become an uncommonly light sleeper. After my grandmother's passing, I had been granted a room all to myself. I was elated at the new opportunity for privacy, but my sleep had turned fitful, my subconscious reaching out for my mother's dependable warmth, which now radiated only faintly through the wall between us.

I heard the noise again, a strange rustling similar to the sound that our kitchen door made in the wind. That realization woke me fully, and I shot upright, suddenly paranoid that Peanut had somehow managed to get out twice in twenty-four hours. My fears were quelled as I moved to get out of bed, and my feet made contact with his soft form, still curled at the edge of my comforter. I crept to the window, curiosity more familiar to me than fear. A full moon offered ample light, and through the dirty glass I watched my mother leave the house, gently wrestling the kitchen door shut behind her. She was barefoot, wearing one of my grandmother's nightgowns, which matched the pale white of her skin. Her dark hair was loose across her shoulders, and in her hands she held something round and silver. It caught the moonlight as she made her way across the pasture. I wanted to call out to her, to ask her what she was doing outside in the middle of the night, but she'd never hear me from inside my room. Instead, I pulled on my slippers and followed her, leaving Peanut still sleeping soundly beneath my sheets.

I didn't try to approach unnoticed, allowing the kitchen door to swing shut loudly as I made my way towards her retreating figure. If she was going to be angry that I had followed her, she'd only be more so if I snuck up on her unheard. As she registered my presence, she froze, her body locking up like a child caught in some punishable offense.

"What are you doing?" I called as I ran to her.

She turned to face me, and though I couldn't see her expression, I could tell by her body language that it was one of frustration. Undeterred, I stopped at her side, the silver object in her hands finally revealing itself to me.

"Why do you have a dog bowl?" I asked.

It was an extra, one we'd bought Peanut that he hadn't quite grown into yet. Inside the bowl was an odd assortment of food, a few raw eggs, and the last lonely hotdog we'd left over in the pack after preparing dinner.

"Why are you up?" my mother hissed back, exasperated but without the bite of true anger.

"Because you're outside my window in the middle of the night holding eggs," I replied.

She squinted down at me, scrunching up her dark eyes as she pursed her lips. It was the same face she made any time she was trying to stifle a laugh behind sternness.

"God, how did you get your father's attitude? You've never even met the man," was her response.

I shrugged off her comment, still looking down intently at the bizarre food choices, my eyebrow stubbornly raised in accusation. I had planned on eating that hotdog the following morning. Now I’d have to settle for oats. 

She relented, letting out a defeated sigh.

"I'm leaving the coyote some food," she explained.

This confused me even further. One of the major rules I’d grown up with on our homestead was to never feed wildlife. It hurt the natural cycle of things. 

"Why? Won't they eat the Reed's chickens? Or Peanut?" I asked, thinking back to her anxiety every time the dog got out.

"I don't think there's a they this time. Like we talked about before, I think it's just her," she replied.

“Ok? But she’ll still eat the chickens, right?”

My mother offered no reply. In the prolonged silence I felt a strange sense of dizziness begin to grow inside me. I was suddenly profoundly aware of the enormity of our surroundings, of the juxtaposition of the dark open fields to the small bedroom I had awoken in moments before. I felt unmoored. I wanted to fill the vastness with words and thought hard about what to say next. I knew my mother needed comfort, but I wasn’t quite sure why. 

"It'll be hard on her own? That's why you're helping her?" I finally asked.

"Yeah, it'll be hard. But she'll be ok." 

I think in that moment I understood my mother's words more than she hoped I would.