Part 45 (2/2)

He looked at me, and his lip twitched. ”Knew I was going to like you.”

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place then, with a satisfying click. ”Kale knew too. He called you in, didn't he? For Liz's sake.”

Stagolee just stared at me, eyes like chips of gla.s.s as he picked up the bottle and took three hard swallows. I watched the air bubble up in the bottle. He set it down with a click, wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

I set down the bowl. ”Browning's still out there. I think I tagged him.”

Stagolee looked at his gun, lying on the bar. He fumbled it open, replaced the empty, clicked it shut. It made a satisfying sound, like a closing door. He nodded his s.h.a.ggy, gaunt grey head. ”Believe you did. Hard man to kill, though.”

The back of his hand rubbed across his cheekbone as he said it, and as it concealed the ruined half of his face I looked into the face of my brother: weary, fallen, lost and broken, but once far more worthy than I. I wondered if it would not have been better, to lose immortality and memory both, rather than to continue on as I have, as I will. I smiled at him, and laid a hand on his arm. ”Come on, Strifbjorn. We've got a man to kill.”

He reacted as if I'd poured whiskey down his throat when he was expecting iced tea. ”Where did you hear that name?”

I picked up the eight shooter and held it out to him, b.u.t.t first. He gawked at it for a moment as if it had grown eyes and were staring back, but he took it. ”I have the second sight,” I told him. ”Come on. Time's wasting.”

But Browning was gone. There was some blood upstairs at Pamela's and his best horse was gone from the ranch house, and his track led out into the desert. It made me d.a.m.ned uncomfortable to know he was still out there, but it wasn't my vengeance to follow.

Stagolee never came back into town. The last I saw of him, he was slumped in the saddle of his good-looking dappled dun horse, riding into the West with his shadow stretched out before him, looking for vengeance still.

I kept that fiddle.

Sleeping Dogs Lie Liam dreams of flying. Overlong nails scrabbling cement, coa.r.s.e black fur matted and filthy against skin that would show flaking and raw in the light. But the bas.e.m.e.nt is cool in the summer, and Liam, hungry, sleeps. And whines.

But the whines are laughter. Until he wakes.

Strong hand lifting him from mother's too-warm belly, Liam cries as he soars through the air. Eyes blind, ears deaf. The rush of wind, and then the sweetness of milk: goat's milk, warmed on the stove, doled from an eyedropper: fevered, his mother cannot feed him. Belly full, he flies again, into the wrestling embrace of his nine brothers and sisters, mother's soft kisses as another puppy flies through the big, invisible sky to be fed.

Liam knows not to go to the stairs when the bas.e.m.e.nt door opens. He sits up, whining again at the shaft of light. He can't fly in the light. Can't fly with his eyes open. And he won't let him know. It's Liam's secret.

Liam's secret. Secret like Liam's name. Good dogs don't keep secrets.

But Liam's learned to lie.

”Dinner, Luke,” he says-not the big, warm hands but the boots and the pail. ”Outside.” He comes down the stairs and opens the bas.e.m.e.nt hatchway and Liam follows him into the yard, to the chain. He lies down under the tree and noses fallen apples while he half-fills a bowl with kibble from the mouse-nibbled bag in the shed. A grey squirrel eyes him without compa.s.sion from the branches, and Liam braces his front feet and lurches up. Squirrels are not tolerated. The whole litter learned that, a snarl of dark fur and giant paws in pursuit of mother and the big, light-colored dog that she wouldn't let close to her puppies, even when he whined. Even when he laughed.

”Luke. Down.”

But squirrels.

Liam lies down, although the pressure hurts his bony elbows. The bare ground under the apple tree is softer than the bas.e.m.e.nt concrete. He leaves the food and goes inside. It's almost enough to fill Liam's belly. Once the door is shut, Liam drinks yesterday's water and paces, although his head hurts and the ache between his ribs makes him dizzy. Squirrels are not tolerated, and he watches the grey villain race up and down the trunk, chattering.

Liam knows if he could bark and throw himself into the air, eyes closed, he could fly. If he could fly, he could make the squirrel pay for its temerity. Somewhere in the sky is where the food is. Round the tree he paces, chain grinding the bare ring deeper, and the squirrel finds his hole for the night. Liam stands up on his chain and dances, but he knows better than to speak, and you can't fly if you're silent, and he doesn't dare close his eyes. He couldn't get far on the chain anyway, and Liam's dreams are a secret.

The house lights dim and silence follows, but the summer night is warm, and Liam, hungry, sleeps.

And dreams of flying.

thizwunwilbeeahpeht, the big, warm hands say, and then they make other noises as they cuddle Liam close to a neck that smells like coffee and sugar. He, the one who'll be the pails and the boots someday, makes noises too-friendly noises-and then hands are soft on his ears and different hands are holding him. Liam squirms, because the hands don't know how, but they're gentle enough and he calms down slightly. amgunnacalimLuke.

Brothers and sisters have left before him, so Liam knows what will happen next. ”Hey Luke!” the new voice says, wannac.u.mhoamanmeetmykids? Liam knows about car rides from vaccinations and having his ears cropped and trips to dog shows and puppy cla.s.ses. He knows about gra.s.s and backyards and the big blue sky and he knows that squirrels aren't tolerated, and the one who will be boots and pails laughs and laughs and laughs when puppy-Liam barrels out the back door after them, forgetting to close his eyes so he can fly.

Liam sleeps on the boy's bed that night, and the girl's bed the night after that. They tease and make him jump to snap cookies out of their hands and laugh when he laughs back at them-kiy yi yi kiy yi yi.

But Liam gets big, and barking and jumping aren't cute anymore. And big people have work, and children have school, and long-coated dogs need grooming if they're going to be clean enough to come in the house. Nevermind that they chew when they're lonely.

Liam dreams of flying, and warm hands hold him up.

Car doors slam, and Liam s.h.i.+vers and whines in his sleep. He dreams about car rides sometimes too, but those dreams and those whines aren't like the ones where he's flying. There's not so much laughing. His paws scrabble in the dirt, dew-claws grown long and curled back into the flesh of his leg. He squeezes his eyes tight so he won't see the sunlight. He's flying.

yushuldhavecaldmesuuner says the voice in his dreams, and canyookeephim-foraweekuntilayefindahome. The big, warm hands' voice, but Liam knows better than to believe it. He hears the voice often, but he never feels the hands. He buries his face in his paws. He wants to laugh. He wants to keep flying. It's the way to catch squirrels. He knows, because he hasn't caught one yet.

He's confident he will someday.

”Come here, Luke.” No help for it. Liam opens his eyes and stands up, rattle of chain and he's moving.

Good boy, nice boy. Remember me?

The hands aren't as big as they used to be, but they're just as warm. Liam flinches from the trembling fury he feels in them as they touch his ribs, his matted fur. Oh poor Liam.

Liam.

His hands. His name. And the rage in those fingers isn't for him, he realizes, leaning against her legs when she stands up and unhooks his chain, never-mindahlltaykimnow. sunnuvab.i.t.c.h.

Nevermind.

Liam.

Liam hits the screen door running, sails through the air from the top step, hits the oak at the peak of his arc, eyes closed and fur a black banner of war flying long around him, singing out his secret in a series of joyous yelps. Ki yi yi yi yi yi. He scrabbles after the squirrel by sound, chatter of challenge and then nails on the bark as it dives into its hole. Acorns rain down around him and twigs catch in his coat. Squirrels are not tolerated. Over the ringing of his barks he hears voices: ahnevasawadogflybefore.

Yoonevvasawwadogthathaddalearn The Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe She cuts him from the belly of a shark.

If this were another kind of story, I should now tell you, fas.h.i.+onably, that the shark is not a shark. That she is not a she and he is not a he. That your language and symbology do not suffice for my purposes, and so I am driven to speak in metaphor, to construct three-dimensional approximations of ten-dimensional realities. That you are inadequate to the task of comprehension.

Poppyc.o.c.k.

You are a G.o.d.

The shark is a shark. A Great White, Carcharodon carcharias, the sublime killer. It is a blind evolutionary shot-in-the-dark, a primitive ent.i.ty unchanged except in detail for-by the time of our narrative-billions of years.

It is a monster wonderful in its adequacy: the ultimate consumer. So simple in construction: over eighteen feet long, pallid on the belly and shades of gray above, in general form comprised of two blunt-ended, streamlined, flexible, muscular and cartilaginous cones. One is squat and one is tapered. They are joined together base to base.

It is a sort of meat ramjet. Water runs through, carrying oxygen, which is transferred to the blood by a primitive gill arrangement. At the tapered end are genitalia and propulsion. At the thick end are lousy eyesight, phenomenal olfactory and electrical senses, and teeth.

In the middle is six meters of muscle and an appet.i.te.

Beginner's luck; a perfect ten.

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