THE DOMINANT ANIMAL

Years ago I had two dogs, one large and one small, and one day the large one killed the small one, though it took the small one a day or so to die. When it was over I wrapped her in a towel and dug a hole beneath a pine tree and set heavy stones on her body and covered her with dirt while the large dog sat at a distance watching me.

After that I hated the large dog though he seemed sorry for what he’d done. He and the small dog had been friends. I refused to pet him even when he slipped his head under my hand hanging loose at my side. I wouldn’t let him in the house. Then he began to stray farther and longer from home. After he was missing several days, I found him lying bloated by the roadside. I got the old blanket from my car, the one I put across the backseat for the two of them when we went places together, and spread it on the ground next to him. I tried to push his body onto it with my foot. Used to be I’d roll him back and forth on the floor like a hollow barrel—his jowls flopping open, his teeth bared in pleasure—but he was heavier than he’d been. Each disturbance I made to his body sent insects circling and redoubling their efforts.

A few cars passed. The sun began to beat on us. His smell rose from him in waves. I sat on the gravel. After a while, a pickup pulled to the side and a man got out. He took a few steps, then squatted on his heels and looked at us.

It’s just going to get worse, he said.

I let him buy me a cup of coffee after. The cab of his truck was oily with labor. I smoked one of his cigarettes with the windows up and watched his hand on the gear shift, how the veins strained the skin—his fingers and knuckles marked with blue.

I did not have a dog after that. I did not want one. I was busy and did not think about them much. But then I moved to a place where it seemed everyone had one, sometimes two or three. I went to where they kept them in great number and looked around, slowly walking the aisles that smelled of feces and bleach. I looked in their eyes and their eyes looked back, but it was hard to tell.

In the house next to me then lived a man and his three dogs, a type I hadn’t seen before, very large—larger than the small man—with sharp, narrow snouts and glamorous long hair that framed their faces and gave them the appearance of strange, homely women, though when they barked they sounded like angry men. Whenever I am walking now and a man leans out of a slowing car to bark at me, I think of those dogs.