The Dogs of Littlefield Read Online Free PDF Page A

said, after apologizing again. “I was just walking by.”
    â€œVisiting the scene of the crime?”
    He was shorter than she was. Green T-shirt, tight enough to emphasize his biceps, denim pants, cowboy boots. There was a stolid pugnacity about him, an exaggerated maleness enhanced by the burnish of dark stubble on his cheeks and his way of sticking out his chin when he spoke. His voice was peculiar: light but sandpapery, bordering on derisive.
    Binx was sitting at her feet panting, his pink tongue lolling.
    â€œI’m really sorry,” she said again.
    â€œWhat do you have to be sorry about?” George crossed his arms. He was holding a brown paper bag, patchy with grease. When he saw her looking at the bag, he opened it and pulled out an enormous blood-streaked bone.
    â€œBeef shank. I got it at the meat counter at Whole Foods.”
    â€œWere you planning to bury it?” she asked politely.
    â€œI don’t know what the hell I was planning.” He stared at the bone for several moments. Then he made a disgusted noise and tossed it under the sumac bush.
    To restrain Binx from lunging after the bone, Margaret began walking backward toward the trail that led into the woods. George followed, asking businesslike questions about how exactly the dog had been positioned when she found him and whether she had noticed anything nearby, a container of some kind, any evidence that he might have eaten something.
    â€œNo. Nothing.”
    They arrived at the opening to the trail. Actually, two trails, one leading right and one left. She stopped, thinking that George would say good-bye and head back to the meadow, but he took a step or two into the woods, and then turned to look at her. “Going this way?”
    They took the trail to the right, and for several minutes they walked along in silence, Binx as usual pulling hard at his leash, forging ahead and gagging.
    â€œYou can’t let him off?” George said finally.
    â€œI’m afraid he’ll run away.”
    But she bent down and unclipped the leash from Binx’s collar. Off he went, bounding down the trail ahead of them. Amber light filtered through the trees, and from somewhere a bird cried out. How cool the woods were after the heat of the meadow. She felt herself appreciate the leafy privacy and the subversive sense of being, for a few minutes, where no one would look for her or expect her to be.
    They walked on, George trudging beside her with his fists cocked backwards. She wondered if he got into fights easily—or if he only wanted to look like someone who got into fights easily.
    â€œSo,” she said at last, “this probably isn’t the best time to mention it, but my book club is planning to read your novel. And we were hoping maybe you’d come talk to us? Maybe about how you get your ideas and what you’re working on now?”
    â€œSure,” he said, hardly moving his jaw. “Be glad to.”
    Binx had returned to amble beside them.
    â€œIt’s so amazing, what you do, making stuff out of nothing.” She was embarrassed to find herself blushing. “Sort of like being a wizard.”
    George gave a snort and kept staring straight ahead, stumping along in his cowboy boots. They had come to a narrow part of the trail, where the trees grew closer together and the underbrush was a tangle of saplings struggling through briar and creeper. A dead tree had fallen across the path; they had to take turns stepping over it.
    â€œSo what do you do?”
    She pushed aside a whiplike branch and held it for George. “Me?”
    â€œHusband? Kids? Job?”
    â€œI used to be a teacher before I had a family. Then, you know, I took time off, and then it’s hard to get back in once you’ve been out for a while.”
    She listened to the squeak of her leather sandals. The breeze had stopped and the leaves were still. From deep within the woods came a low insect