Read Online Man in The Woods by Scott Spencer - Free Book Online Page B

the cross on her daughter. “What are you doing?” Ruby asks, without looking up.
    “I’m putting the little cross on you, it looks so pretty.” Why do they have to make the fucking clasp so small? Kate says to herself. The circle she is trying to get the hook through is tiny, the size of an air bubble exhaled by a goldfish. There: at last.
    Ruby feels the cool slither of the chain on her neck, the infinitesimal weight of the cross itself as it drops onto the bib of her overalls, with barely more substance than a shadow.

    A couple of towns south of Leyden, Paul stops at a supermarket to get a bag of dog food, and a bowl for Shep to eat out of, in case Kate has views about a dog using her dinnerware. The strip mall is ringed by tall metal lampposts and bathed in enough bright silvery light to illuminate a night baseball game, yet the parking area is nearly bereft of cars—all this electricity and what it takes to make it, the utter mindless waste of it disgusts him.
    When Paul opens the door, Shep makes a move to jump out. “No, no, stop,” Paul says, grabbing at the dog’s collar. But Shep is determined to get out. He twists away from Paul and a moment later the dog is on the asphalt, his tail twirling around in that helicopter-ish way. “What are you doing, man, get back in the truck,” Paul says, hoping to strike a tone that is both commanding and reassuring.
    The dog turns its back on Paul and trots over to the nearest lamp pole. He lifts his leg. The light above illuminates the stream of urine that arcs out of him.
    “Good boy!” Paul says, “what a good dog you are.” Shep looks off into the distance, patiently waiting for his bladder to empty, and when he is finished he turns and trots back toward Paul. Paul gives him a pat on the head and the dog hops back into the truck. It is this that brings back the man in the woods with a stunning all-at-onceness. Because who had trained this dog to be so well-mannered if not that man? Paul stands there coping with this thought, and slowly, steadily, with the patience you need to sand down a slab of walnut until it is perfectly smooth, he applies the purifying abrasion of contrary reasoning: who but a terrorized, brutalized dog would hold its urine for such a long time without so much as a whimper of complaint?
    He walks across the parking lot toward the supermarket. It is the first time he has been away from the dog since leaving the woods. A dozen times at least he has told himself he needs to find a place to leave that dog. Even after he drove through Tarrytown and kept going right past the police station, not stopping, not slowing down, keeping his eyes locked on the road in front of him, even then he was thinking, If I am going to have a chance of really walking away from this, I need to get rid of this dog . But he could not think it through, he couldn’t figure out where he would bring the dog, where the dog would be safe. The dog had suffered enough, that much was clear. That one fact was true north. Paul could not beat a man to death for kicking the dog in the ribs and then just open the door of his truck and let the dog fend for itself.
    The dog is his witness, his confessor, he has seen it all and can still sit next to Paul, breathing with him, trusting him, the dog is the reason, the dog is what has been salvaged from the worst moment of Paul’s life, the dog is the bridge which Paul walks upon as he inches his way over the abyss, the dog is God spelled backward. Paul turns for another look at Shep, but can’t see him. The dog has drowned in the darkness of the truck’s cabin.
    The inside of the supermarket is a bright, throbbing riot of colors, but is nevertheless somewhat desolate. It is an immense store but there are only a half dozen or so shoppers, lonely, bedraggled-looking people in late middle age in no hurry to bring their groceries home. The piped-in music is string arrangements of Rod Stewart hits. Even in the best of circumstances, there