Sterling and His Boy
by Mark Cravens
Steve reckoned himself alone. The only person he knew of who lived near that small peninsula of woods was Marshall Holley. Steve didn’t know Holley personally but saw him in town from time to time, engaged in friendly conversation with one person or another. A man had to be approved before he could hunt on Holley’s land, and Steve didn’t have anyone who could vouch for him. He only spoke to a few people these days—the clerk at the country store, Minister Frank, and Johnny the Mailman, who was due to bring him a package of new ammunition soon.
His only play was to try and get an invite through Lisa, so he slept over at her house once or twice a week throughout the summer, endured her brown teeth and her lazy eye just to get access to her cousin, an acquaintance of Holley’s nephew. But all that time with his face between Lisa’s sticky thighs had not worked out. She either hadn’t said anything to the cousin or the cousin had not cared to pass on the request, so Steve sat in a tree stand on the far edge of the wooded peninsula, trespassing, looking out onto an old barley field, too wary of being caught to fully enjoy himself.
The buck walked out into the field after three hours of waiting. It stopped every few yards and regarded the woods, as if it knew Steve was there. The buck was the largest and grandest target ever to cross his path, at least a ten-pointer. For a moment everything in God’s great plan felt tailor-made for Steve, and he could relax and breathe calmly, the way his father taught him.
Shoot during an exhale, at just the right moment.
Steve knew how temporary that moment could be, how quickly a perfect split second passed. This time he waited too long. The deer heard something or it smelled something, because it darted just as Steve pulled the trigger. Hooves thudded and thrashed through the field. The buck snorted and charged into the brush over the dying report of the shot.
“Damn,” Steve choked out. “Damn, damn, damn!”
He stayed in the tree stand for another hour or so, waiting as the day grew brighter and warmer and the shadows smudged across the land, hoping to see another big buck. He knew another wasn’t coming. “That don’t sit right with me,” he said. “Not how it should be at all.” It would be years, he thought, not hours, before that chance came again, if it ever came again. He decided to pack his gear and start walking back toward the truck. To get there, he followed the yellow ties he’d used to mark his path through Holley’s unfamiliar land.
A few minutes into walking back, Steve saw a dog sitting in the middle of the path. It peered at him with deep gold eyes and stood with a majestic posture, its blue-gray fur tinting handsomely in the sun. Steve walked closer to the dog. Just as Steve was about to speak to the animal, he saw the boy he’d shot. His light brown hair was drenched scarlet and dotted purplish-gray from blood and brain tissue. The color was darker around a large hole that had exploded from his hairline. Steve ran over to the dead boy and shook him. “Come on, boy,” he said. It took Steve a minute to realize what exactly had happened, to sort out the chain of events and his part in it. As the realization set in, Steve lunged into the brush and threw up in a pile of leaves just off the path.
He had killed someone’s son. He’d known the path wound back behind the barley field but he didn’t know anyone was there. Would that be considered an accident? Why was the boy on the path? Where did he come from? Steve focused on the dog, as if it held the answer. It followed him with its gold eyes, never once looking away. Steve reached out to pet it and received a low, steady growl in return. Steve remembered he had a tarp in his truck, which was parked a half-mile further down the path. He tried to convince the dog to walk back with him. He whistled and snapped his fingers, then tried to trick it into thinking he had food in his hand, but the dog was having none of it.
At his truck, Steve fished the tarp out from behind the driver’s seat and carried it back to where the dog and the dead boy waited for him. Steve heeded the dog as he wrapped the boy in the tarp, but it only stood there marking him. Besides growling, he didn’t know what dogs did to signal that they were about to attack. Maybe this one didn’t give warnings. He finished wrapping the boy and covered his blood with dirt from the sandy washout on the side of the trail. It wasn’t until Steve picked the boy up that the dog stood on all fours and began following. It stayed a few paces back at all times while it walked, head held high, tail pointed up.
Steve placed the boy in the back of the truck and just before he closed the tailgate, the dog jumped in. “Shoo, dog. Get down.” It didn’t move and Steve waved his hand at it. The dog growled.
“Have it your way,” Steve said. He opened the door and hopped into his truck. He drove until he reached a small piece of land deep in the country, land that his father told him once belonged to his great-great-grandparents but which had been lost somehow. Steve parked his truck by the old tobacco barn, where as a young man he’d brought his few girlfriends. The barn shielded his truck from sight of the main road. There he buried the boy, the blue-grey dog watching him from the truck bed, again sitting in that regal position, its posture more like a cat than a dog. Its tail never wagged. Its tongue never hung from its mouth. It only stared as the sweat poured off Steve’s brow and the brown-red clay caked onto his hands and clothes.
When he finished, Steve glanced to his left and right. To his left was a long row of pines and oaks, their beauty marred by the few that had succumbed to rot and ant colonies and had fallen over. To his right were rolling hills that were still green in spite of the early fall setting in. Steve didn’t know what to do other than leave. The boy was buried. He looked over at the dog, who stared him square in the face.
“This is your plan?”
“Yes,” Steve said. “What’s your plan?”
The dog jumped down off the truck, trotted over to the fresh grave and assumed the same position as before. It seemed to Steve that the dog never blinked.
“You should go now, shouldn’t you?”
Steve shrugged and rubbed his left eye with the back of his hand. Then he struggled into his truck and drove back to his house.
That evening, he learned the boy’s name. Ryan Hunt. Twelve. Liked football. Had a girlfriend who he talked to every night for an hour on the phone. These were all details given out by family and friends during interviews by the local news channel, along with information about volunteers who had gathered near the boy’s home and who were extending their search over to the neighboring property, Marshall Holley’s land. The boy was known to wander, and the sheriff’s office was looking into hunters who may have had access to Holley’s land that day.
Steve stayed in his house and told himself it was okay, that nobody knew he was there. He tried to clear his mind by thinking of the magnificent buck that he’d missed, and how it would have felt to make that shot. He pictured the awed faces of the old men at the checking station. He imagined his black and white photo in the paper, him holding the deer’s head up by its antlers. Steve thought maybe even his father would’ve had something good to say about it had he been alive, that Steve had finally shot something big enough to mount on the wall, next to his four. Maybe he would’ve been proud.
Steve kept his television on, waiting to hear news about a body being found. He stayed up all night, fearing that the dog would give him away, that it would find its way back to its home and alert the boy’s family as to what had happened.
***
The next day, Steve pulled himself into his truck and drove down his curving driveway. He thought he might head to the country store, see the old men and hear some stories. Instead he drove out to the tobacco barn. Surely the dog would be gone, having wandered off into the countryside to forage for food. Or it had found its way home. The truck hopped the last hill before the tobacco barn. Steve convinced himself he didn’t see it, the fuzzy, gray shape that marred the unobstructed view he had been expecting. It was trash or debris, he thought, a garbage bag blown across the grass by the wind.
Steve drove to within a hundred feet of the barn and stopped. The dog raised its ears but otherwise didn’t move. Steve drove another fifty feet into a patch of sun that had forced its way through the clouds, and stopped again. He studied the grave. If the dog had started digging up the boy’s body, he had some work ahead of him. He sat in the truck for a moment, afraid to get out. Finally he left the truck running and slid out of the cab, banging his right knee on the door as he did so. He limped toward the grave and wished he’d brought his rifle. He should’ve shot the dog the day before.
At fifteen paces, Steve surmised that the earth around the grave had not been disturbed. The scene was as Steve had left it, and the dog sat in the exact same spot.
It turned its head toward Steve and its eyes narrowed. “What?”
“You’re going to die out here, dog,” Steve said. “You’ll starve.”
“I won’t starve.”
“What are you living off right now, for food?”
“Not your concern. I’ve just been thinking.”
Steve laughed. “What are you thinking about? Go home. Forget about it.”
“That’s two now. Two for you.” The dog blinked and seemed to smile. For the first time, its tail wagged, only lasting for a second or two. “You deserve to die for what you’ve done.”
“I’ll kill you first,” Steve said. He picked up a rock and threw it at the dog. The throw was poor and the rock sailed over the dog’s head. The dog watched it land in the grass before turning back to Steve.
“They were worth a hundred of you. Both of them. You’re nothing. Someone should’ve thrown you off the Jones Road Bridge a long time ago. Someone should’ve smothered you with a pillow.”
“You shut your mouth!” Steve screamed, before turning back to his truck. “I didn’t mean to! Leave me alone!”
Later that day, Steve watched the news. The boy still had not been found, and the dog had been included among the missing. The sad-faced people on the news talked about little else other than Ryan Hunt and his beloved and loyal dog, Sterling. Now the dog had a name. It annoyed Steve how the pretty newscasters badmouthed him, accused him of being a kidnapper, called him things like assailant and predator. They were reporting live from town, right in front of Diane’s Diner. All these reporters famous for covering hurricanes and tsunamis were right there in town. One reporter said that everyone with known access to Holley’s land the day before had been cleared by the police. Steve unplugged his TV and went out to sit on his front porch.
For the rest of the day, he watched the woods constantly, his hunting rifle across his lap and his eyes drawn to the curve in the dirt driveway. He watched that spot and listened the best he could to everything else. He heard noises, one and then another—the snaps of the falling limbs breaking in the distance, the crunching of leaves under the footsteps of animals, the shouts and screeches and calls of the forest dwellers. His grip tightened on his rifle. When night fell, it was impossible to tell where the noises came from because there were so many of them. The tree frogs dominated the soundscape, joined occasionally by a hooting owl. In the darkness Steve couldn’t focus, so he moved back inside. He slid his recliner over so that it faced the front door. He sat and pointed the rifle at a small dent in the door, at a spot he thought Sterling’s head would be if he stood at full height. He heard every sound, the creaks and groans of his small house, the quiet flapping of papers as they surfed over waves stirred by an oscillating fan. Every pop of the refrigerator’s compressor exploded like a bomb.
***
After his mother died, the only time Steve saw his father sober was at church. His father rang the church bell that signaled the beginning of the service. Some weeks he handed out communion or passed the offering plate around. He put his hand on Steve’s shoulder while they walked to their pew. He held the hymnal up for both of them to sing together. To the other parishioners, he spoke proudly of Steve and mussed his hair affectionately with a callused hand. He shook Minister Frank’s hand firmly when he left, said he and Steve were doing well.
But at home, he hardly spoke to Steve. Sometimes it looked like he was about to say something, but instead he filled his open mouth with a bottle. He glared at Steve often, with expressions that ranged from disgust to pity, and then morphed into blank, unreadable stares. When he died suddenly from a heart attack, he was buried beside Steve’s mother in the church cemetery.
Minster Frank visited many times after his father’s death, bringing Steve spiritual advice and vegetables from his garden. The old church ladies brought him casseroles and donated him the recliner. Steve used to look forward to seeing them even though he’d never cared to talk to them while his father was alive. That was five or six years ago. Minister Frank only came now for a minute or two, mostly to invite Steve to the next service. He never came inside. There were other people he had to visit. That’s what he said. Had to visit.
It was an accident with his mother. It was a game that they used to play together. She threw his toy soldiers into the bathtub with him. He threw her curlers in with her. She tossed a tray of ice cubes in with him. He dumped the silverware in with her. Steve couldn’t recall the sound of her laugh but only how her face looked, her laughing face. He barely remembered anything about his mother. She was a fog of keepsakes and faded photographs and the vague recollections of church ladies.
***
By late morning on the second day since he shot the boy, Steve lost all sense of time. Noises made him panic. He heard Sterling in his head, threatening him. He’d already fired the rifle six times, five times at birds perched high in the trees, and once more at a fox as it crept along the tree line where his yard ended. He had one more round in his rifle.
He walked over to investigate the shots he’d fired. He missed the fox but he got one of the birds. He left it and returned to his post. He’d set up a bucket as a chamber pot by the steps. He hardly noticed the putrid stench of his own waste festering in the bucket but when he did he thought the smell would keep all the animals away from his property, out of earshot, so he could focus on Sterling’s arrival. He planned to put his last bullet between the dog’s grinning canines.
Around noon he saw a shape. It started as a long shadow coming around the bend in the dirt road. Steve dove onto his porch and lay flat, the rifle propped up by a two-by-four that he’d dug out of his utility shed exactly for this purpose. He’d chiseled a chunk out for the barrel to rest, and he lay like a sniper, pointing his rifle toward the bend in the dirt road. The shadow grew longer and longer. Again Steve remembered his father’s advice and tried to keep inhaling so he could be on the sweet spot of an exhale when it came time to shoot.
He shot just as the moving shape came into view. From the way it moved, Steve was sure he’d hit it. He started through his yard. He laughed as he ran and it made his lungs ache and his pulse thud in his neck. He couldn’t see what he’d hit until he ran most of the way up the driveway.
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He’d shot Johnny, his mailman. The bullet hit him just above his left eye and he lay on his side, his cheek resting on the box he was about to deliver to Steve’s front door. The package was too big for the mailbox. Steve dropped to his knees. “Oh man, Johnny.” He stared at the dead man for a very long time, waited for his heart to settle and his mind to clear. He slammed his palm down on the pebbly driveway. “It was supposed to be the dog. I thought you were the dog! Just leave it by the mailbox next time!” Steve snatched the package and the dead mailman’s head thumped dully on the ground. He ripped the package open and saw the bullets he’d ordered, a couple dozen small green boxes wrapped in plastic. He clawed out one of the boxes and headed for his truck.
Steve drove right up to the grave, his front tires only inches from making tracks on the fresh dirt. He jumped out of the cab and lowered the barrel of his rifle until it pointed at Sterling.
“So what’s it going to be, dog? I thought you were coming to get me. I’ve been sitting on my porch waiting, pissing and shitting in a bucket. Are you going to kill me or not?”
“Yes, I am.” The dog leaned over to bite an itch on his leg.
“I shot my mailman just now. I thought he was you.”
“Oh. And he had a family?”
“Yeah, a daughter. She works in Washington, D.C. He showed me pictures once.” Steve spat on the ground. “He was a really nice man.”
“That’s two families you’ve ruined Steve, in three days. And then there’s your own. You ruined that one too.” The dog shook his head disapprovingly.
“No one told me there were things I couldn’t throw in the tub. I didn’t know. She should have told me. It was a game.”
“So is hunting. Or it’s a sport. What you shoot is called ‘game.’”
“It’s deer season. The boy shouldn’t have been on the path. Johnny should have left that package by my mailbox. None of this is my fault! They’re accidents. I told Dad the same thing! If only the curling iron wasn’t plugged into an extension cord. That’s the only reason it happened. If there was an outlet by the sink, she wouldn’t have needed the extra cord. It shouldn’t have reached the tub without being unplugged. It shouldn’t have happened.”
“That’s a lot of ifs and shoulds.”
“I used my last bullet too.”
“It’s not your week, Steve.” Sterling began to pant.
“But see, Johnny was walking to my house to deliver me some new bullets.” He tapped the barrel of his rifle. “Guess what’s in here.”
“Things are looking up then!”
Steve noted the ground where he’d buried the boy. The soil had set and the grave had begun to sink. He hadn’t put enough dirt on top. He wouldn’t make the same mistake with the dog.
Steve aimed the rifle at the dog’s head. He was ten feet away. The report echoed off the tree line behind him. The dog yelped and hopped off his spot. He walked in a circle and then sat again. Steve cocked the rifle and fired again.
Another softer yelp and a smaller hop.
“What the hell?” Steve said.
“Yeah, that stings.”
Steve fired again. Nothing but sound. The dog sat and panted.
He walked up to the dog and put the muzzle flush against its neck. He pulled the trigger. The rifle popped and the dog whined slightly but didn’t move. He cocked and fired, again and again, until he heard the soft click of the empty rifle.
“Why can’t you die?” Steve saw two bright sparkles of light flash at him from below. Two of the bullet casings lay on the ground. One of them had landed on the boy’s grave. “The bullets are bad,” Steve said. “Johnny brought me dud bullets.”
“Like I said, it’s not your week.”
Steve turned and limped back to his truck. He sat on the front bumper and glanced at the tobacco barn. It still had that sweet curing smell. The breeze that brought the aroma felt good on his cheeks. He’d always liked that smell. He liked the work it took to make it all happen, that old business of tobacco. Steve had done that work himself when he was younger. He had developed the leathery skin of a field hand. His father had taught him how to work the fields, just like he’d taught him to shoot, just like he’d taught him that some things weren’t forgivable. “I suppose you’re going to kill me now,” Steve said to Sterling.
“You could get in your truck and drive away again.”
“What’s the point of doing that? They’ll find Johnny soon, I suppose. They might even find your boy. Then they’ll talk to Lisa. She’ll tell them I always wanted to hunt on Holley’s land over there.”
“I can see why you’d think that.” The dog tilted his head. It was a quick, pitying gesture. “It’s understandable.”
“So what did you need to think about before you kill me? You said you had something to think about last time.”
“How much I miss him. He was a good boy.”
“Oh. I miss my mother too.”
“And I wanted you to think about what you need to do. About what you’re going to do.”
“About what I’m going to do,” Steve repeated. He held the rifle up to his chest and looked at it.
“You might have one good bullet left.”
Steve leaned back and rested his shoulders on the truck’s hood. “Let’s get this over with.” He closed his eyes. He tried one last time to recall the sound of his mother’s laugh, the way it felt to throw his arms around her waist, the look of her wet hair in the tub. He thought he had it, the image, and just when he grasped it, his mind shifted to the thought of that beautiful buck he’d missed. He could finally see it again. Man, that would have been something. It really would have been something to get that buck, to mount it on his wall, to brag about it with Dad. Steve inhaled deeply, felt the familiar callused hand on his head, mussing his hair, and he waited.
Then, he exhaled.
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About the Author
Mark Cravens used to kill time attempting to teach math to eighth graders. Now he stays at home in Apex, NC with his four boys, where he feels his knack for toilet humor can finally reach its zenith. He writes in the morning and just after lunch, while his fingers still smell pleasantly of PB&J. You can read more of his fiction in The Bicycle Review, in Slush Pile under the name William Greer, and hopefully soon at other fine retailers.
“Sterling and His Boy” © 2014 Mark Cravens
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