Page 63 of The Forest of Lost Souls

The seer evaporates, and a porch post vanishes, and a section of railing with balusters disappears as Vida moves toward the steps, which dissolve behind her as she descends to the yard. The massive moon recedes, and as it dwindles, José turns toward her, fading away before their eyes can meet. The landscape rapidly darkens under the diminishing moon, and when she steps around the stranger to learn his identity, he covers his face with one hand. An eye rimed with a hoarfrost of lunar light regards her through a gap between fingers. Moon, meadow, and man become smoke, and the smoke withers away in an instant, and there is nothing in the dream except Vida. She floats in a void, as though she’s an untethered astronaut adrift in space, and then she closes her eyes against the horror of nothingness and continues sleeping where further dreams remain unborn.

52

THE DOG LOVER

In the dream, Sam Crockett’s face is on fire, but the flames don’t concern him because he is convinced that he is safe in the presence of the fortuneteller regardless of what happens. Besides, his dogs are with him in the woman’s candlelit kitchen, and they have kept him sane and happy in the years since fire took his face. The seer says, “There are dogs, and soon one even better than dogs.”

The phone rings, and he wakes into an absence of flames.

Sam doesn’t mind being awakened hours before he would otherwise arise to the new day, because the call is a request for him to bring his three best dogs to assist in a search. He takes great pride in his dogs.

When he hangs up the phone and turns on the light, the three German shepherds sharing the king-size bed—Sherlock, Whimsey, and Marple—grumble and snuffle and yawn. Four other shepherds occupy their dog beds in the corners of the room.

None of the seven rises from its mattress when Sam goes into his closet to dress. They lift their heads and watch attentively.

These dogs never bark unless their master issues the command to do so, which isSpeak.

When he returns to the bedroom, dressed for the chase, seven tails thump seven padded surfaces, because the gear he wears isa promise that some of them will soon be engaged in an exciting hunt.

“Let’s go,” says Sam.

As if sprung from their beds by some mechanism, claws clicking-scrabbling on the wood floor, the shepherds follow him out of the bedroom in a more or less orderly swarm.

Years earlier, the kitchen was extended to provide an area for the watering and feeding of dogs. Before retiring for the night, Sam had set out four clean bowls full of fresh water.

Some of the shepherds will drink before eating, some after they have eaten, and others only after they have eaten and toileted. Each has his or her own ways and preferences. Dogs can be trained to be civilized and dutiful, but they can’t be coerced into repressing their unique personalities, as can many human beings who will remake themselves into automatons and enchain their own souls in the name of one ideology or another.

Sam Crockett likes a few people, despises a few, and isn’t sure what he thinks about most of them—but he loves all dogs.

While he starts one cup brewing in the coffeemaker and begins filling bowls with morning food for his pack, the shepherds cruise the room, savoring the smells of yesterday or exploring the contents of the toy box, or parading around with tennis balls in their mouths to suggest that a play session might be agreeable to them.

After they have eaten, Sam opens the back door, and the seven venture into the last of the night to toilet in the fenced acre that serves as the backyard. After the hunt, when it’s light, he will bag the results of the morning potty session. He keeps the property clean for them, bathes them frequently, brushes their teeththree times a week, and adheres to a schedule for trimming their claws—none of which feels like work to him.

They are his children. Because of his face, he isn’t likely to marry. His family is the four-footed kind.

When the dogs return to the house, he puts halters rather than collars on Sherlock, Peter Whimsey, and Miss Marple. The four who will not be going on this job—Nero, Kinsey, Travis, and Doc—use their eyes to guilt-trip Sam, but they know that there is always another hunt and that their turn will come.

During his absence, they’ll use the hinged pass-through in the back door. Although he locks the house, it isn’t necessary. There is no alarm to set. Kettleton is no longer the low-crime town it used to be—maybe nowhere is—but no security system can be as effective at deterring burglars as can a pack of German shepherds trained to be intolerant of intruders.

He phones his neighbor, Jessie Berkel, one of those people he likes, and leaves a voice mail. If Sam doesn’t return from the hunt in a timely manner, Jessie will stop by to feed, water, and clean up after those in the pack who are staying home.

In the garage, the three dogs leap through the open liftgate into the back of Sam’s SUV, lie down, and curl up for transport, as they have been trained to do. He tells them how good they are, and their attitude says,Yeah, we know.

Sam has never been to the house at which the search party is being organized, but he knows where to find it. He hasn’t been told what they’re seeking, although he imagines that it’s competitors operating without permission of the Bead family.

Over the past four years, since returning from war and raising his shepherds, he has conducted searches at the behest of Sheriff Montrose, also for law-enforcement agencies inneighboring counties, and even for federal bureaus. He’s found lost children, old folks with dementia who have wandered off, and escaped prisoners—for which he’s collected rewards in addition to charging an hourly rate. Thanks to the industry and prudence of his mother, Pauline, who died while Sam was in a military hospital overseas, he doesn’t urgently need the money he earns with the dogs. However, without this work, he would have no purpose and no hope.

For Belden Bead and recently for Galen Vector, Sam has used his long-tailed detectives to sniff out competition from meth labs and marijuana farms concealed in the primeval wilderness. Once he and his dogs, along with Vector’s people, locate a drug operation, the sheriff’s department raids the place and makes arrests.

Sheriff Montrose is aware of this work Sam does. He approves because he believes the county will remain more peaceful if drug and human-trafficking offenses, which can’t be eradicated, are at least organized by one crime family. Montrose dreads intrusion by bloody-minded Central American gangs, which have been sending thousands of foot soldiers across the open border; they have a history of violent turf wars and campaigns of vengeance without regard for collateral damage wrought upon the innocent. Most likely, the sheriff also gets a slice of the action from the Bead family’s operations.

Sam despises Vector as he also despised Bead, but he works with these bad guys because the targets are worse guys. The dogs love the action, and it keeps them at the top of their game. Maybe the money comes from people with dirty hands, but he and his pack don’t do anything illegal to earn it. He has also been advised—not bluntly, but with discretion—that a refusal to assist Vector is likely to result in the poisoning of one or all of his dogs.

The dogs are his family. They are his life. The dogs don’t care that his face is a mass of burn scars beyond repair, that he has no hair or eyebrows, that his nose is misshapen and his ears are rags of crushed cartilage pinned to his head by long-hardened cicatrices. The dogs love him, and he loves them. When Galen Vector issues a summons, Sam will do what is wanted with resentment but without regret. To keep his dogs safe, he will swallow his pride and bend his knee, which he refused to do when he was in the hands of his enemies, thousands of miles from Kettleton.

This is a time in history when it’s best to endure the current shitstorm and keep faith that it won’t last. America’s ruling class is riddled with bad and stupid people who despise the lower classes, get rich by dealing with the nation’s enemies while impoverishing their fellow citizens, and send young men into battle for a purpose ill defined, with rules of engagement that ensure the war can’t be won, leaving those who fight it humiliated. Until better and wiser people wrench the country off the road to ruin, Sam Crockett faces the future with hope and gratitude, reminding himself each morning and evening that his life is short and passes like a shadow.

Eighteen years earlier, the fortuneteller had said he would endure a period of much suffering and sorrow. How right she was. She’d also said beyond that valley of misery, he would find greater happiness than he’d known before. Maybe he would. At the moment, if life gets no better than it is, that will be good enough.

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