Wade Junior ducks his head when he walks out through the front door, as he’s been doing since he was fourteen, the same year Momma walked out that door for the last time, ten years ago.

Mark Freeman is a writer and filmmaker who lives in northern Vermont with his wife and two daughters. Mark loves storytelling, be it long or short form fiction or filmmaking. He holds an MFA in Fiction Writing and is a 2017 graduate of the Mountainview Master of Fine Arts program.

The door slams shut behind him. Wade flinches in anticipation of his father’s angry rebuke—but it isn’t coming, Daddy’s gone now, too. He looks back at the house. The siding is worn, the navy paint faded to robin’s egg blue. Woodsmoke settles in the dooryard, the smell masking the stink of the kennels and overflowing trash bins next to the porch. From where Wade stands, the house leans towards him, the way Daddy used to whenever Wade done something wrong.

The beagles stir at the sound of the door. The baying of his hounds reminds Wade why he came outside in the first place. Most days the sound of the door means food or hunting, but today it means something else.

Wade has already taken the dogs out this morning, run them back along the old Abernathy property down past the state forest. It’s Wade’s favorite spot to hunt hares, especially this time of year. There’s just enough snow to spot fresh tracks and sign, but it isn’t so much that it slows his dogs.

Today’s hunt wasn’t their best. Emma—the pack’s matriarch—ran like she’s accustomed: hard and fast and at the forefront. Singer and Button were right behind her, quick to take the lead when she overshot the trail. They weren’t what was wrong with the run today, and not the reason Wade’s come back out of his house, leaving half a peanut butter sandwich uneaten on the dinner tray beside his chair.

Bo had run off again. Wade had to go get Bo, chase him through the scrub, and found him barking up a tree at some dumb bird. No matter what he did, Wade could never get Bo to quit chasing songbirds. Chickadees, sparrows, bluejays, didn’t matter what it was, Bo’d chase it. Wade never once ran them on grouse or pheasant, only putting them on rabbit scent, but that didn’t matter none to Bo.

He’d considered just letting Bo go, leaving him out there chasing damn birds and taking the other three dogs home. Daddy’d done it before to other dogs. Daddy probably would have done it to Bo, but Wade couldn’t leave him out there like that, alone.

“Dog don’t hunt, dog don’t eat,” Wade hears his Daddy say. Daddy used to say it about the dogs, but he’d said it to Wade too. Plenty of nights Wade gone to bed hungry for not getting his chores done, or for making Daddy angry. Once, Wade left the milk on the counter after fixing himself cereal for breakfast. It was the last thing he ate until the next morning. “Dog don’t hunt, dog don’t breathe.”

Wade’s hand stops at the latch to the kennel. It’s old and rusted now, but Wade remembers when it was new.

“Here,” his Daddy had said, tossing a burlap bag at Wade’s feet.

“What do I do with it, sir?” Wade asked.

“Put the pups in it.” Daddy had said matter of fact. “All four.”

“Sir?”

“Put them pups in it and dump it in the creek. Make sure the whole bag’s under.”

Wade looked at the bag at his feet, but didn’t pick it up.

“They’re just pups, sir.”

“Yeah, but whose pups are they? Who left the kennel open? If you hadn’t, that bitch wouldn’t got herself knocked up, would she? Now, either them pups are Buster’s or they ain’t. And, if they ain’t, then they’re Jake’s. If they are Jake’s, can we sell ‘em?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Cuz they’re brother and sister.”

“Right, and if I can’t sell ‘em, I don’t want to keep ‘em, so what’ve we got to do?”

Wade picked up the sack.

“What’ve we got to do?” Daddy asked again, his voice low and cold.

“Drown ‘em, sir.”

Wade replaced the latch on the kennel after he came back from the hardware store. He’d walked all the way into town to buy it, collecting bottles along the way, and cashed them in at the Price Chopper so he’d have the money for the latch. Wade kept his face downcast, eyes alert for bottles, dirt-streaked face averted from the cars on the road. Scared that if any of the passing drivers saw his face, they’d some how know what he’d done.

When Wade arrived at the hardware store—change in hand—he was short thirty-seven cents. The plump lady at the counter told him to take the new latch anyway. She was sure she had enough change in the bottom of her purse to cover the difference. Wade thanked her, snatching the latch before she could change her mind, and hurried home.

His Daddy never said nothing about the pups or the new latch. Wade didn’t either; he didn’t ever want to have to talk about what happened down at the creek.

Wade opens the kennel door and slides inside. Emma, Button, Bo, and Singer jump up on his legs, licking at his hands. Muddy paws splatter his faded work pants. Wade brushes the dogs off.

“Stop. C’mon, you’re getting me all dirty.”

Bending over, Wade hooks Bo to the leash. Once hooked, Bo dashes towards the door. The other dogs jump and bark, excited to get out and run, but Wade only takes Bo. Emma blocks them at the gate, and Wade ushers her aside with his boot. The others bay and howl as Wade leads Bo past the truck. Bo lunges for the rig, expecting to climb into the hound box set in the bed of the pickup, but Wade pulls him on. He leads Bo out behind the house, past the garden boxes with spring cabbage, onions, and garlic put to bed for the winter. Past the woodshed, at the back of the yard, a stone sits just before the line of black firs. Daddy’s stone.

Next to the stone is Wade’s spade stuck into the earth. Beside the shovel is a small mound of freshly dug dirt: rich, dark soil piled on the white snow.

Through the trees Wade can see the LeBlanc family cemetery. The old stones scattered among the shadows of the forest. Wade wanted to put Daddy with the rest of the family, but the plot was overgrown and too small. He’d gotten him as close to everyone else as best he could. The worn headstones were different than Daddy’s too. They were old, quarried slate slabs, rounded at the top. Wade couldn’t afford a real gravestone like that. He’d found a stone he thought his father would like and hauled it back here. He’d spent a night chiseling the inscription; his penmanship had never been very good. Wade’s teachers always told him he wrote too big, his letters shaky in their placement, but Wade thought Daddy’s stone came out good. Better than Wade hoped. The stone read ‘Wade LeBlanc Seenyor' above the words ‘Keep huntin Daddy.’ Wade often wondered what Daddy would have thought of it.

Wade stops Bo there, makes him sit. The beagle can’t stay still, his whole back end wags along with his tail. He looks at his master, tongue lolling from the side of his mouth, eyes earnest.

“Stop it, Bo. You know full well what Daddy always said. I ain’t got no choice in the matter.”

Bo swishes his tail in the shallow snow with more fervor, like a wiper on a windshield packing the snow to either side.

Wade reaches into his coat pocket. It’s heavy against his side, weighing down his jacket. Inside, the metal is cold against Wade’s sweaty hand.

Emma and the other hounds continue their racket. The noise grates on Wade. His hand tightens in his pocket.

“Quiet, Emma,” Wade’s voice catches and cuts short on the dog’s name. “This don’t concern you.”

Bo is impatient, he lifts his front feet, alternating left and right paws.

“You know Daddy’s rule.” Wade takes his father’s pistol from his pocket.

Bo closes his mouth, his tongue still stuck out the side. He tips his head, looking at the gun.

“Tell Daddy I say hello,” Wade says and pulls the trigger.

The shot is loud. Bo cries out before falling to the ground. His head too heavy to hold up, blood trickles from a hole above his eye. He whimpers at Wade’s boot.

The hounds’ barking escalates. They’re eager to run and hunt. Wade’s stomach churns.

Surprised that Bo is still alive, Wade flips Bo over on his side, and fires again. This time into the dog’s heart. Bo goes still beneath Wade’s foot. Small red drops, like high bush cranberries, stain the snow.

Wade unclips the leash and unfastens Bo’s collar. He scoops his hands beneath the small dog; the snow is cold against his hands, but Bo is warm in Wade’s palms. He lifts the dog, but Bo—lifeless—droops, almost slipping back to the ground. Warmth trickles along Wade’s arm, down his sleeve. He places Bo in the hole.

“You weren’t a bad dog.” Wade shovels dirt back into the hole. “But you got to hunt to eat.”

When Wade is done with the hole, he returns to the front of the house. Button and Singer stand on their hind legs, front paws on the kennel fencing, tails wagging. Emma sits at the door and watches Wade, waiting for Bo. The leash and collar feel leaden in Wade’s hand.

“He ain’t coming back, Em.”

Inside, Wade hangs the leash and collar on the coat hooks beside the door. He sits down next to the wood-stove, his sandwich on the TV tray beside his chair. At the sight of Daddy’s empty recliner, Wade thinks of the day he brought Daddy home from the hospital.

Wade had to carry Daddy inside and place him in his chair by the fire. Wade looked away when Daddy watched him, his mouth contorted to the side, his eyes wide and milky. One side of Daddy had shriveled up after, his hand pulled tight and claw-like to his chest, his leg bent. The hospital wanted to put him in a home, but Wade said no. Wade said he would take care of him. The hospital bills were already more than they could afford.

At the thought of money, Wade takes the bill next to his sandwich and feeds it to the fire. He doesn’t bother opening it. The pink final-notice slip inside is visible through the plastic window of the envelope. Wade watches it burn in the wood-stove. The window browns and bends back upon itself contorting into something twisted and unrecognizable.

There’s no money for the electric bill. No money for the taxes. No money for Daddy’s medical bills. They all keep coming anyhow. Don’t matter which bill it is, or which collector trying to collect, they’re all out of luck.

“Can’t get blood from a stone,” Wade remembers Daddy saying.

“No, sir,” Wade says aloud, watching the fire. He grips the armrests of his chair. “Can’t get nothin’ from a stone.”

“God, dammit,” Wade shouts. He hears the dogs outside yip and bark in reply. Wade stops, remembering it was the last thing Daddy ever said, just as the stroke hit him. Wade didn’t know what to do at first. He sat in his chair, not looking, expecting Daddy to cuff him on the back of his head for something he’d done. But the cuff never came. When Wade got up to see what Daddy had shouted about, he found Daddy sprawled out on the kitchen floor, face down, nose broken, a growing puddle of piss seeping out from beneath him. Wade dragged Daddy from the house, strapped him into the truck, and drove him to the hospital.

The next morning Wade loads Emma, Button, and Singer up in the hound box on the back of the pickup. The dogs are excited again to be let loose from the kennel. Wade thinks any hard feelings Emma may have had yesterday have been forgiven this morning with the prospect of an early morning hunt.

Wade slides Daddy’s 20 gauge onto the gun rack along the back window of the truck before getting in. The truck stutter-starts and settles into a loud idle. Even with the windows closed, Wade can hear the barking of the hounds. Their excitement doesn’t sound quite right. There’s something missing today.

Wade finds his favorite spot at the Abernathy property. A small pull off, just before the state forest, where the Gihon River switches back upon itself. He steps from the truck, buttoning up his wool jacket before retrieving the shotgun.

The dogs pick up the scent of a hare almost as soon as they’re let loose from the truck. Button finds the scent first, baying loud and taking off into the forest. Singer follows right after, but Emma lags behind. Wade follows the dogs, listening for their barks, changing his course accordingly. He’s lost sight of Singer and Button, but he catches glimpses of Emma through the trees.

Wade finds an opening in the forest. He knows hares like to run in an oblong pattern. He raises his shotgun to his shoulder. The baying grows louder as the dogs begin working the hare back.

Then there’s a different bark. Far off, deeper in tone, morose. The baying is still there, louder and closer. Then the screams. A dog in pain, whimpering. Wade sets off at a run in the direction of the cries. He pushes through dense cover. Snow falls from the fir branches as he pushes towards the screams. The forest around him smells of balsam, like Christmas. He’s almost there when the cover clears. Wade stands on the bank of the Gihon. In his rush, he’s lost track of where he was in the woods. The river runs loud, even from beneath its frozen sheath. On the far side is Emma. Wade sees her tracks cutting across the ice. She’s caught in a foothold trap on the far bank. Emma pulls and yanks on the chain, but the trap holds fast. She yowls and cries. Wade notes the sound of panic amid her pain. As Wade pushes through the last of the trees, Emma sees him and becomes frantic, desperate to pull away.

Wade looks down the embankment, but it’s a sheer drop to the river below. He scans the tree line looking for a place to get across when the bank beneath him reveals itself to be nothing more than a snow drift blown along the river and gives way. He falls head first and drops his gun. Wade worries it might discharge. He extends his hands to break his fall, but the ice shatters like glass. Wade’s hands thrust into the frigid water and don’t slow his fall. His face crashes through ice, slams against rock.

Wade scrambles to stand up from the cold water. He can’t discern if the ache in his hands is from the cold or the impact. There’s a sharp pain along his forehead, just above his right eye, and a warmth spreads across his face. Wade sloshes across the river, intermittently breaking through the ice and staying atop of it. His wool trousers, heavy with water, pull him down.

When Wade reaches the far bank of the stream, he collapses to the ground. He can hear Emma’s cries again. She’s just up the stream from where he’s collapsed. She sounds even more distraught, but it sounds as if she’s moving farther and farther away. Wade tries to spot her along the bank, but his vision blurs. It grows black in his periphery, as if he’s looking down a long tunnel. The pain of his forehead gets worse and he wonders if he’ll vomit before he passes out.

The day he brought Daddy home, the hospital warned Wade he wouldn’t be able to care for his father. That his needs were too many. They suggested scheduling a visiting nurse to come by and help, but Wade never set one up. Daddy wasn’t able to talk after the stroke, but he could still point with his good hand. He could still grunt pretty loud, and mean, too. After Wade sat Daddy in his chair, Daddy looked at the gun rack up on the wall.

Wade followed Daddy’s gaze to the guns. Daddy whined, his mouth frothing, his eyes watery. The look in them was one Wade had never seen before from Daddy. His eyelid—the one that drooped now after the stroke—twitched.

Daddy’d whimpered, thrashing in his chair, but Wade didn’t move or say anything. Wade recognized the look in Daddy’s eye then. It was the same look the dogs got whenever Daddy hollered at them, the same way Wade felt when Daddy raised a hand to Wade. Wade knew fear when he saw it.

“Dog don’t hunt,” Wade had said.

Wade’s eyes flutter open, snowflakes cling to his lashes. It takes him a moment to realize where he is, what’s happened. Pushing himself up, his stomach churns. Wade vomits his breakfast, staining the snow with his morning’s coffee and toast. He shakes his head to dislodge the cobwebs, but his brain flashes white hot as if electrified. Taking hold of his head, he squeezes it to stop the ache.

Wade looks upstream for Emma, but she’s no longer there. He tries to gauge the time, but the light is flat against the snow. He stumbles towards where he last saw her and finds the trap sprung, chain outstretched, but still anchored to the ground. Emma gone. Wade thinks he sees boot prints around the trap, around where Emma had been, but can’t tell for sure.

Wade is all alone.

Downstream a tree lies across the creek. Wade thinks he can use it to negotiate the stream and make his way back to his truck. He stumbles towards it, slips free from his coat, dropping it on the bank of the river onto broken ice slabs. The footing is precarious, each misstep jars his head again, sending shockwaves through his skull.

“Emma!” Wade pauses, to catch his breath against the stabbing in his forehead, but it doesn’t stop him. He’s worried about his dogs, so he shouts again. “Emma, come!” Wade’s voice echoes down the stream bed.

Barks, faint in the wind, carry back towards Wade. He’s not sure at first, as if the woods are playing tricks on him. He holds still, tries to be quiet. Another wave of it reaches Wade, but this time from behind him. Wade smiles. He doesn’t care where the dogs are coming from, just as long as they come. Good ol’ Emma.

“Here, Emma,” Wade shouts, relief cracks his voice.

The baying grows louder. It’s excited, the sound of hounds on scent. Wade starts in the direction of the dogs, he’ll meet them halfway. Wade passes his coat heading back along the bank.

“Emma. Here, Emma!”

Over-heated, Wade slips out of his work shirt and lets it fall, landing next to Wade’s imprint in the snow where he’d passed out.

The baying grows louder. The dogs sound like they’re right on top of him now, but behind him again. Wade turns and sees Emma break from the trees along the bank. She races towards him, tongue lolling from the side of her mouth.

Four more dogs race from the forest, noses raised, voices excited. Wade pauses. Too many, he thinks. Emma is almost on top of him.

Not Emma.

Bo.

“No,” Wade says. “No, no, no, no.”

Wade knows it’s impossible, that it can’t be, but he sees the hole above the dog’s eye.

A shadow stumbles from the trees behind the dogs, clawed hand bent into its chest. The figure shambles towards Wade.

Wade steps onto the ice. The rush of water beneath drowns out the barking of the hounds. The ice vibrates under his feet from the thundering water. The far bank is close, the river narrower here, but the ice uneven. Wade rushes to cross, to distance himself from the dogs and thing, even though he can’t hear them anymore. He chances a look back. The first dog has stopped along the shore of the river. The others jump and scratch along the bank behind him, mouths open and close in silent barks.

Wade slips, his ankle rolls on the jagged ice. He falls to one knee, tries to catch himself, but his knee breaks through the ice. Wade loses his balance, careens to the side. Frantic to grab hold of anything, he pinwheels his arms, reaching, before he crashes backwards. He sinks ass first into the river. Wade claws at the ice on the edge of the hole, his fingers scratch the surface, scrape troughs of white flakes.

The dark water pulls Wade down. Rapids thunder into him as he sinks, flowing over the top of him, pushing and pulling now. He gasps for air, but water fills his mouth. The pain in his head expands. Wade thinks of hot summers and the rush to eat his ice cream before it melts. The water laps against his face.

His lungs burn, the only warmth left in him. He opens his eyes to the rush of water, but the hole in the ice looks far away, the light dim.