The Dog Who Danced by Susan Wilson

Author:Susan Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

29

Ed drives past the cemetery gates; from their road, it’s not possible to get to the main route in Moodyville without passing this way. As he does every single time they do this, Buddy arches his neck, swivels his ears, and points his nose at the place where Alice first saw him. His mouth opens and his tongue lolls out; he pants, short intakes of breath, not like he’s hot or has been running, more like a vocalization. A question: Huh? Huh?

Usually, Ed speeds up at this point, pressing the accelerator to kick the old Cutlass awake, but today he pulls to a stop across from the cemetery driveway. Buddy jumps from front seat to back, a blur of silver and white. He climbs over Ed and presses his front feet against the driver’s side window. His excitement is obvious, and Ed can’t fathom what is causing it. He opens his door and the dog leaps out, the leash whipping after him and out of Ed’s reach. Thank God there are no oncoming cars. If anything happened to this dog … Ed cannot finish that thought. This is a bad idea and he regrets whatever impulse made him stop.

The dog is in the cemetery, coursing up and down the cracked and weedy drive. Must be squirrels, Ed thinks. The dog is mad for squirrels. But the dog doesn’t run toward the tree line. He stands there, sniffing the air with an upturned snout. He tracks along the drive, going farther than Ed should let him go. For an instant, Ed is afraid that the dog will desecrate a grave, but he doesn’t.

Ed leans against one of the pair of painted brick columns that flank the cemetery drive. The white paint has flaked away, leaving the bricks exposed. This old cemetery is fairly neglected; the grass gets cut, but little else is done to it. Only the more recent graves look visited. Some folks still have room in family plots owned since the eighteenth century. So many of the ancient stones are wafer-thin, like graham crackers left out in the humidity, their legends obscured by time and climate. Every Halloween, there is another one toppled. Old-fashioned angels sit in faceless guard over family plots, the history of the town in brownstone and granite. Founders and scoundrels.

A few yards further and he would come to the place he hasn’t been able to bring himself to visit, the place that Alice spends too much time tending. He gets mad at her sometimes, devoting all that attention to it, as if it’s a flower bed; it wasn’t good for her then and it still worries him when she gets into one of those moods. It can’t be healthy. He doesn’t have to read a headstone to remind himself of what happened. It doesn’t make him more accepting, or content, or reconciled. It just pisses him off. And Alice doesn’t get that. Goddamn chrysanthemums aren’t going to change things.

The dog returns to Ed, leash trailing behind, no longer excited.

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