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from THE BEST FRIEND
by Chris Offutt
On the hill above a narrow hollow, a dog sat in the woods with its head propped over a log. A blue jay called from a shagbark. The dog twitched an ear, causing fleas to rise and circle its head before settling back to the black fur. The jay moved on. From an arched weed stem, a tick slipped onto the dog's hind shank.
Below the dog at the foot of the hill, a yellow bus stopped beside the grade school. The driver spat a brown arc of tobacco against a limestone shelf that jutted from the hillside. Lines of heat shimmered above the blacktop, the edge of which was soft enough to hold a footprint. The driver squinted into the murky shadows, seeking the dog. It was there every day to meet a girl. The dog was part coonhound and part something the driver had never been able to name -- husky or Lab, maybe wolf. He wanted to ask the kid, but she walked to school and the driver never left he bus.
The black dog stood and stretched like a cat. It scratched itself and the tick fell from the strand of hair it was crawling along and landed on a fern. The dog followed a game path to the rain gully. Rocks skittered down the hill beneath its footpads. The dog left the cool shade of the woods. The sudden sunlight was swift and harsh as an ax cut, but the dog continued without breaking stride, accepting heat as easily as the girl had accepted the dog's presence outside the schoolhouse every afternoon for seven years.
A child left the school. The driver spat. More children began spewing from the building All were bald, shaved by the State to stave off a plague of lice. At the bottom of the hill, the dog stopped, its nostrils opening wide. From the combined scents of sweat, urine and food that marked the human presence in the hollow, the dog smelled the girl. The fur along its neck rose. The dog became very still. Twined with the smell of the bus exhaust was the scent of a gray-and-yellow shepherd that was nearing the girl. The dog charged across the road in a galloping fury. . . .