The sun was going down. The dog, the colorless dog, followed the border of the road, weaving. He had no food to offer it this time, but he whistled, and it came. He touched its scarred and rippled neck, and it whined. Sharp, black, careful eyes.
He opened the back door of the Lincoln, and warily it looked the car over. “Get in,” he said.
Before he left, he stopped and ate a doughnut. The place was nearly empty—the thin boy pouring coffee, two women from the grocery store, a lady truck driver in a fur collar eyeing her cab outside. He would miss this town, not that he’d ever liked it. It was a place he’d stopped and studied. But the way he was leaving felt like leaving home. He bought a second and third doughnut and had them packed in a paper bag. Take-away to anywhere. Outside, the strange dog lay asleep and breathing in the borrowed car.
He stood outside and took a last look around. It was growing night, but the town was not dark. Lights shone beside doors and over driveways, still air. Somewhere he sensed a clatter: he listened, then caught the voices, boys in a driveway shooting hoops, the echoes clashing. He could see the plumes of smoke, the exhalations of every chimney, rising and dispersing. Each house a quiet mystery.
Nobody watching. He fingered the keys his brother had handed him, and as he opened the door of the borrowed gray Lincoln, he caught himself, just a glimpse, in the curved window glass. Alone, the first few stars in the unswept sky behind him.
Then he was gone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was largely drafted at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and I thank its staff and its many Fellows for their listening and encouragement and kinship.
Thanks to many people who helped Dodgers find its way: Dan Barden, Kevin Canty, my colleagues Wendy Bilen and Rewa Burnham. Wendy Brenner, my best-writer-friend from forever. Steve Yarbrough and other fellows and teachers at Sewanee Writers’ Conference who helped me put the book in drive. My remarkable agent, Alia Hanna Habib, for her readings and advice, and everyone at McCormick Literary, especially Susan Hobson and Emma Borges-Scott. To Jon Cassir and his team at CAA.
At Crown: Nate Roberson, my editor, who has been unvaryingly patient and sharp-eyed and wise. To Barbara Sturman and Chris Brand for design. And to Danielle Crabtree, Dyana Messina, Rachel Rokicki, Lauren Kuhn, David Drake, and Molly Stern: I am deeply grateful for how you have received and imagined this story and what it might become.
And to my students at Trinity.
To my parents, for the world, and to Deborah Ager, for making it sweet.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bill Beverly was born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He studied at Oberlin College and at the University of Florida, where he earned a PhD in American literature. He teaches at Trinity University in Washington, DC.