Paws before dying

reached, every muscle of his body drove indomitably forward.
    The handle and the frayed rope held, and so did my dog, heaving and straining. With a sudden crack, the big door gave. I had to stop Rowdy before he yanked it from its hinges. What I’d asked him to do had been beyond his strength, and he’d done it, anyway. His muscles didn’t force open that door. What did it was sheer will, the will to pull. It’s called heart, you know. Great heart. I sank to the wet blacktop and tried to cradle him in my arms, but he just licked my face and wagged his tail. Born to pull.
    With Rowdy roped to the door and nothing to use as a knife, I entered the dark garage. The angry male voices still rumbled not far away. I snapped on the flashlight. Ahead was a door. God help me if this is locked, too, I thought, but the knob turned easily in my sore, tom hand. I turned around and ran the beam over Mitch, Jr.’s, Corvette, a big lime-green station wagon, a battered lawn mower, a new snowblower, and a collection of rusty garden tools, including a pair of hand-held grass shears. Back outside, I used their dull blades to saw Rowdy loose from that makeshift harness. When I’d freed him, I called him to heel and returned to the garage, to that unlocked door. I eased it open a crack and held still. Rowdy sat silently at my side. I peered in and listened.
    The basement room must have been renovated in the fifties. Some long-ago do-it-yourselfer had stuck acoustic-tile squares on the ceiling and installed recessed lights. The tiles were water-stained. Some of the light fixtures dangled loose. The walls and a flight of stairs directly ahead of me, at the far end of the room, Were roughly finished in cheap knotty-pine paneling. The furniture, all painted a loud, hideous orange, consisted of some hanged-up kitchen chairs and a great many low tables that looked like discards from an unsavory cocktail lounge. The room also held a long, lumpy-looking couch and two matching chairs, all upholstered in some disgusting, furry black stuff that looked like home-dyed, overprocessed human hair.
    Leah sat upright and immobile in the middle of the couch. Her arms were folded across her chest. So far as I could tell, she was unhurt. I couldn’t see Kimi. Willie Johnson had one of the human-hair chairs, and the eldest brother, the Corvette-driving, would-be suave Mitch, faced Willie from one of the orange kitchen chairs. Dale was pacing back and forth taking swigs from a can of Miller Light. One of his hands held the beer can. In the other was a black cylinder. He was shouting at his brothers, who were both shouting back at him.
    Of the three louts, Mitch had the most penetrating voice and the clearest articulation. I caught his gist pretty quickly.
    “One goddamned stupid mistake of yours after another,” he hollered, jabbing a finger toward Dale. The jacket of a dark suit hung over the back of his chair, his white shirt was sweat-stained, and he’d undone the knot of his red power tie. “Every damned thing you’ve ever done you’ve screwed up. And then when you screw it up, and somebody comes in and tries to unscrew it for you, do you help? Hell, no. No, not you. You don’t need anybody’s help, do you? Well, this time, I’ve had it. Let your loudmouth friends get you out of this one.” He leaned back and fiddled with his tie.
    Dale crumbled his beer can in his fist, threw it against the wall, and bellowed what I took to be a defense of his loudmouth friends. After Mitch, Jr., had given him a reply that was mostly about his Corvette, his college degree, and the upward path that stretched before him in spite of Dale’s efforts to drag him and the rest of the family down, the two of them started in on their father.
    “So go wake the old man,” Mitch sneered. He stood up and immediately sat down.
    “Screw you, Mitch,” Dale said drunkenly. “Right. Go and suck up to the old man. And cut the crap about you always trying to help me, Mitch. In our whole life you never stood up for me once, not one time, not when I was a little kid, even. You remember Buddy, Mitch? You remember Buddy?” He stomped toward Mitch and loomed over him. His face and voice shared a raw, stupid intensity. “You stood up for me real good then, didn’t you?” I expected him to start sobbing, but instead of crying, he staggered across the room and tore another can of Mill#, Light from a six-pack that sat on top of two others on one of the orange tables. He popped