Just a sliver of the moon was out, but we were far enough north that we got the midnight sun effect-since the sun didn't fully set at night, the sky wasn't as pitch-black as it was elsewhere. Instead, we suffered through what I thought of as deep twilight-too dark to read but with enough residual light to see the silhouettes of large objects.
My heart sank at the sight of the big black mound in the middle of the road.
"Please be an elderly deer that was ready to die, please oh please oh please." My voice was thick with the tears that were splashing down my face. I felt perilously close to vomiting, but I could no more leave whatever it was I hit lying on the road than I could have sprouted a second head.
The black mound resolved itself into the shape of a large black dog. "Oh my God," I moaned, guilt stabbing at me with hot, sharp edges. "I've killed someone's beloved pet!"
I knelt next to the dog, the tears now falling on my hands as I ran them over the animal, my heart aching with regret. If only I had been paying attention. If only I hadn't been so caught up in myself. Right at that moment, I would have given anything to take back the last five minutes and live them over again.
Heat blossomed under my hands where I touched the dog. There was no visible blood, no horribly mangled limbs, but the animal wasn't moving. "Noo!" I wailed, wanting to hug the poor thing and make it all better. "No, this can't-Sweet suffering succotash!"
To my astonishment, the dog jerked beneath my fingers, then leaped to its feet and shook. We're talking a full-body shake, the kind where not only the head and ears get into the action, but also the sides, tail, and evidently, copious amounts of slobber. He was big, with thick black fur and droopy lips from which stretched tendrils of slobber that lazily reached for the earth.
"You're not dead. You're okay?" Hope rose inside of me at the sight of the dog. "Did I just stun you? Man, you're big. You're the size of a small pony, aren't you? Let me just look you over and see if there are any serious injuries … " I patted him up and down his body, but he didn't seem to react as if he was in pain. In truth, he looked more dazed than anything. He kept shaking his head, which sent long streamers of drool flying out in an arterial pattern. My left arm took the brunt of much of that slobber.
"But I don't mind," I told the dog, getting to my feet. "So long as you're all right."
He sat down and promptly howled, causing me to wince in sympathy.
"All right, you're not quite unharmed, but at least you're not dead, and that's the important thing. Here … um … " I looked around but didn't see signs of any nearby houses. "Damn. Houses here can be a mile or more apart. Looks like you're my responsibility now. Great. Ack, don't howl again! I'll take care of you, I promise. What we need is a vet. Can you walk? This way, boy. Or girl. Whatever you are, here, doggy. Car ride!"
I opened the door to the backseat. The dog looked at the car, then looked at me. I patted my leg. "C'mon, doggy. Let's go for a ride in the car!"
He cocked his head for a moment, then got to his feet and limped over to the car, hopping nimbly onto the backseat. "Well, thank heavens I don't have to haul you into the car. I'm not sure I could do it if I had to. You look like you weigh about as much as me. Right, let's go find you an emergency vet hospital."
Two and a half hours later, I emerged from a twenty-four-hour animal hospital, the Swedish equivalent of $180 poorer. "I don't quite see why I should be the one to take him home."
"You ran over him," the vet, an older woman with a no-nonsense haircut that perfectly matched her abrupt manner, told me. "He's your responsibility."
"Yeah, but you have a kennel where you could keep him until his people come to get him."
"He has no collar, no identification of any form, including a microchip, and you said you ran him down on a rural stretch well outside of any town."
I flinched at the "ran him down" mention.
"Therefore," she continued, opening up the rear door of the car. The dog hopped in and plopped himself down, taking up the entire backseat. "He's your problem. We don't have the space or the resources to take care of him."
"Yes, but-"
She pinned me back with a look that had me fidgeting. "If you insist on leaving him here, he'll be collected by the animal welfare people in the morning. A dog of his size is virtually unadoptable. He might be a purebred Newfoundland, or he might not. Either way, he would be put down in less than thirty-six hours. Do you want that on your conscience?"
"No," I said miserably, and got into the car. The rest of the trip home was accomplished in silence … if you didn't count the snores of a 150-pound dog.
Four
"You can stay here for the night," I told the dog when we got home. "But my sister is allergic to your kind, so it's just a short visit for you, and then we'll find somewhere else for you to go."
The dog wandered off as soon as I let him out of the car.
"Hey!" I shouted after him when he ran across the dirt drive and the scrubby grass that was the only thing that would grow so close to the water, and bounded over a large piece of driftwood and onto the rocky beach. "Dammit, dog, don't make me chase after you. Wait, are you going home? Do you know your way home from here? Home, doggy, home!"
I followed after him, half hoping he'd head back to the road and to wherever it was he belonged, but instead, he turned down the beach and loped along the edge of the water until he disappeared into the semidarkness.
"Great. Now he's gone. Oh well, at least the vet gave him a clean bill of health."
I walked back to the house, trying to convince myself to forget the dog, but I couldn't even get across the threshold.
The vet was right-the dog was my responsibility. He might not be hurt, but I had hit the poor thing, and since I had opposable thumbs and he didn't, I had to see to it that he was either returned to his people or handed over to folks who would find him a new home.
"Yo, dog," I called, doing an about-face and heading down the beach after him. The weak light from the horizon seemed to glow across the now-inky water, making it possible to see the large rocks and tree trunks that dotted the shore. A familiar scent of seaweed, damp sand, and salty air filled my lungs. "Here, boy! Treaties! Or there will be once I get you into the house."
Ahead of me, over the soft sound of the water lapping at shore, I heard a muffled woof.
"Doggy?" I yelled. My nearest neighbor was a good three miles down the beach, so I didn't worry about waking anyone up. "Hey, dog, if you found something dead and stinky and are planning on rolling in it, I'd like to encourage you to change your mind. For one, it's not nearly as attractive a smell as you think it is, and for another, I don't think you'd fit in my bathtub-Oh no, not again!"
By now I'd come upon the dog, who was standing with his nose pressed against a black shape that was slumped on the ground.
"If that's a dead seal or something equally nasty … " I started to warn him, but stopped when I got a better look at the shape.
It was a man.
A dead man lay at my feet.
Right there on the beach. The tide was going out, leaving the ground sodden with seaweed, the tang of the night air stinging my eyes. I stared at the black shape, wondering who was screaming.
It was me.
"No!" I said in protest, wanting to turn on my heels and run away from the horrible sight. "No, no, no. I can't have this. I can't have men lying dead at my feet. The last time that happened, I ended up hooked to a machine that zapped me full of a kajillion volts. I refuse to be crazy anymore. Therefore, you, sir, cannot be dead. I forbid it."
I reached down to turn the man onto his back, jerking my hand away when a static shock to end all static shocks snapped out between my fingers and his arm.
"What the hell?" I rubbed my fingers, wondering if the man had some sort of electronics on him that had gotten wet. But before I could ponder that, he moaned and moved his legs, his head lifting off the rocks for a few seconds before he slumped down again.
"What is this, my day for seeing dead things that aren't really dead?" My mind shied painfully away from that thought. "Hey, mister, are you okay?"
It was a stupid question to be sure-he was facedown, obviously having been deposited on the shore by the tide, and clearly unconscious. But at least he was alive.
Tentatively, I reached out a finger and touched the wet cloth of his sleeve. "Mister?"
There was no static shock this time, so I tugged him until he rolled over onto his back. His hair, shiny with water and black as midnight, was plastered to his skull, while bits of seaweed and sand clung to the side of his cheek and jaw. His chin was square and his face angular, with high cheekbones that gave him a Slavic look and made my fingers itch to brush off the sand. There was a bit of reddish black stubble on his jaw that I really wanted to touch. I was willing to bet that it was soft and enticing …