Bloodlines

applicators. The headline of a soggy but legible tabloid newspaper caught my eye: “The Curse of Elvis Strikes Lisa Marie!” Poetry, right? At every supermarket checkout aisle. No wonder nobody reads Robert Frost anymore.
    In spite of my maddening circuit around the garbage, I again had the sense of reaching my goal more quickly than I’d expected. These sheds were smaller than the first. For no particular reason, I’d intended to begin by checking out the one on the left. I’d even begun to search for the door, but the sudden eruption of frantic thumping in the other shed changed my plan. A dog was in there, a dog trying to batter down the door, which turned out to open outward and to be barred shut by a piece of two-by-four suspended on heavy metal hooks. I had the bar off in no time.
    Missy? But I was as careful as I’d been at the first shed. I held the door, braced it, and began to inch it open. I had nothing to fear, though. A big, familiar-feeling creature knocked the flashlight from my hand, scoured my face, bounced at my feet, leapt up, popped down, and nearly made it out the door before my groping hands sank into a thick double coat and finally grabbed a leather collar. I gripped it tightly, retrieved the flashlight, and trained the beam directly on that full mask so much like Kimi’s, the black cap, the bar down the nose, the goggles around the eyes.
    My relief was so great that a wave of exhaustion suddenly swept over me, but Missy—thank God, Missy —was all energy. Her powerful body swept back and forth, and her tail sailed joyfully above her back like a plume waving, exactly as the breed standard says. I pulled the leash and collar from my pocket, snapped the leash to one ring of the nylon choke, and slipped it over her head. One goal accomplished. I swept the light over the interior of the shed. The floor was dirt, and Missy had, of course, been forced to soil her quarters. She’d tried to free herself, but had succeeded only in digging a series of holes before she’d repeatedly hit chicken wire. Was there evidence to photograph? The absence of food and water? Weak evidence, at best.
    But the third shack, only a few steps away? Because I hadn’t wanted to use the flash outdoors, I’d taken photos of only one dog, a starving dog cruelly confined, of course, but only one dog. Were those photos enough? I was taking Missy with me, but I couldn’t free all of these dogs, not by myself. The elkhound bitch and her three puppies? I couldn’t carry the puppies while leading Missy and the bitch, could I? And the two bitches, oblivious to my purpose, might decide to go for each other’s throats. The golden? Pregnant, emaciated, maybe dying? She was the legal property of Walter or Cheryl Simms, and if my evidence proved inadequate or insufficient, so she would remain.
    I hated to leave Missy in that shack, even for a few minutes, but, with a malamute on lead, it would be impossible to check out the other shed. To enter, I’d need one hand for the door and one for the flashlight. If the place, in fact, held a dog? I’d never manage to handle Missy and the stranger while using the flashlight, never mind the camera. So I barred the door on an eager, puzzled Missy, crossed to the neighboring shed, and located the door, directly opposite the one to Missy’s. Like the first shed, where I’d found the starving golden, this one had a door fastened with an oversize hook and eye. I repeated the cautious procedure I’d used to enter the other two sheds. With Missy almost free and the two of us almost safe, I didn’t want to get careless and end up mauled, maybe even too badly injured to get Missy away. As I eased open the door, I listened hard for the soft pad of feet or for the sound of a dog panting or simply breathing. I heard nothing. I inserted the flashlight and peered in. The other sheds had been barren. This one was piled with junk: a rusted wood stove, a pile of split logs, a chain saw, a pickax, a shovel, a couple of galvanized metal buckets. Still moving cautiously, I opened the door. By now, it seemed to me, my nose should have adapted to the pervasive stench, but when I stepped in, my rib cage contracted in deep, rhythmic waves of nausea. I pulled out the camera and tried to prepare for the sickening task ahead of me. There was a dog in here, after all, a dog beyond the suffering of the others. The dark, dirty shed reeked of death.
    With the camera in one hand and the flashlight in the