In Charlotte, you can sit on your porch on summer nights and hear the kudzu edge forward. My friend Anne claims she once set out a marker. In twenty-four hours the runners on her banister had advanced two inches.

Kudzu covered the rusted chain-link fence at the back of the property. It slithered along power lines, swal owed trees and bushes, and blanketed the house and its outbuildings.

Boyd didn’t care. He dragged me from vine-draped oak to magnolia to pump house to wel , sniffing and wagging as he had at the annex.

Other than the depression left behind by the bear bones, nothing got a rise but the chipmunks and squirrels.

Boyd of the Baskervil es.

By eleven the mosquitoes had drained so much blood I was starting to think “transfusion.” Boyd’s tongue was barely clearing the ground, and Ryan and I had said “fuck” a thousand times each.

Fat, leaden clouds were drifting in overhead and the day was turning dark and sluggish. An anemic little breeze carried the threat of rain.

“This is pointless,” I said, wiping the side of my face on the shoulder of my T-shirt.

Ryan didn’t disagree.

“Except where we went digging for bear by the McCranie hedge, dogbreath hasn’t so much as stiffened a whisker.”

“He liked that sneak swoop-and-sniff of your tush.” Ryan addressed Boyd. “Didn’t think I was watching, did you, Hooch?” Boyd looked at Ryan, went back to licking a rock.

“Ryan, we need to do something.”

“We are doing something.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“We’re sweating.”

Katy would have been proud of the eye rol .

“And doing a damn fine job of it, considering this heat.”

“Let’s strol Boyd past the hedge one more time, remind him what we’re looking for, then make a final sweep and cal it a day.” I put my hand down and Boyd licked it.

“Sounds like a plan,” said Ryan.

I wrapped the leash around my palm and yanked. Boyd looked up and twirled the eyebrow hairs, as though questioning the sanity of another sortie.

“I think he’s getting bored,” Ryan said.

“We’l find him a squirrel.”

When Ryan and I set off, Boyd fel into step. We were weaving through the outbuildings at the back of the house, when the chow went into his “sniff-squirt-and-cover” routine.

Moseying up to a kudzu-shrouded shack, Boyd snuffled the earth, lifted a leg, took two forward steps, then kicked out with both back feet. Tail wagging, he repeated the maneuver, working his way along the foundation.

Sniff. Lift. Squirt. Step, step. Kick, kick.

Sniff. Lift. Squirt. Step, step. Kick, kick.

“Good rhythm,” said Ryan.

“Pure bal et.”

I was about to tug Boyd from the shed when his muscle tonus changed. His head and ears shot forward and his bel y sucked up.

One beat.

Snout to the ground.

Another beat.

Muscles rigid, Boyd inhaled then exhaled through his nostrils, sending dead vegetation spiraling outward.