The Garden of Darkness

The dog pulled itself up, as if in surprise. Then it came on. The animal was heavier and bigger than she was—there was no chance that she would be able to overpower it. Clare was just starting to put a hand up to defend herself when it leapt at her. Its breath was rank, as if it had fed on corpses, and she felt teeth closing on her arm.

She stared up into the dog’s yellow eyes, eyes running with mucus, and at that moment she found herself thinking—strange as it was—about the stag she had seen in the honey light of a morning that now seemed long ago.

Without thinking, she blew into the dog’s nostrils.

“Bad dog,” she said.

One of her arms was trapped under the dog while its teeth were buried in the flesh of the arm that covered her throat. She had blown all the air out of her lungs with those two words, and now she couldn’t breathe in.

She felt the animal pause. Clare managed to free her pinned arm, and she used it to beat the dog on the side of the head. The dog shifted his weight, and suddenly she could take a breath.

“Bad dog,” she said again.

For a moment, Clare could feel the dog’s anger and hunger, and then, as if he felt her thoughts tangling up with his, the anger began to dissipate into confusion.

They stared into each other’s eyes. The dog lowered his eyes first. Then it slowly crept back off of Clare’s chest, whining. She gasped, gulping up air, and sat up.

“Dog,” she said. “I’m the boss of you.” It didn’t seem to matter that they were kindergarten words. She gave him a final cuff. The giant animal sat back on its haunches and then leaned forward and began to lick the wounds it had inflicted on her arm.

She was no longer afraid. She wanted to put her arms around his neck, but she knew it wasn’t time for that yet. Right now they were busy determining what their relationship would be now and forever.

Clare started to get to her feet, but the dog, with gentle enthusiasm, knocked her over in order to lick her hurt arm more thoroughly. Clare found herself wiping away the mucus from its eyes and mouth. The mouth that a moment before had been about to take her throat out. She was, suddenly, surprisingly, overcome by tenderness.

And she realized that it wasn’t just that she had found something instead of losing something more; she had done one better than that. She had been found.





CLARE AND ROBIN, in preparation for the trip to the country house, put freeze-dried food and other essentials in four knapsacks. If something happened to the car, they wanted to be able to keep on the move.

But sometime in the night, while Clare slept, Robin disappeared. In the morning, she was simply gone. Long after it was time to go, they waited for her, helplessly. Around them, the city seemed to be asleep; old newspapers and litter blew across their yard. Mrs. Hennie’s body still lay in the street.

But Clare knew, after the first hour, that Robin must be dead.

Later Clare was to think that she should have done or said something more as they left without Robin. Certainly she should have somehow known that the last seconds of her childhood were coming to an end, and that she would spend the rest of her life making up for her desertion.





A STRING OF saliva fell from the dog’s mouth onto Clare’s forehead.

“Yuck,” she said, as he drooled on her some more. “I thought you were rabid, but you’re just a mess.” She wondered where the dog had come from. Certainly it was larger than any city dog had a right to be. Perhaps his owners had lived in Fallon. The giant dog nosed at her again and then lay back to expose his belly.

“You’re like a bear,” she said. And that’s what she called him: Bear. She looked into his yellow diamond eyes, and she realized that he was going to be there for her at the end—though of what, she couldn’t yet say.

She walked from the garden back to the cabin with her hand on Bear’s neck. He had dog breath, she decided. Not corpse breath. After giving him a can of Spam, which he ate dubiously, she pulled all the burrs and briars and ticks out of his fur. He almost purred with pleasure. And she realized that she couldn’t help it—she loved this killer dog. More than that, something had passed between them. This killer dog loved her.

Then she thought of all those people who were probably dead. Robin. Mrs. Scherer, her piano teacher. Caroline and Maggie and Heather. Miss Hill, the most popular teacher in school, whose husband had died in the Vietnam war. Gail, at the art gallery. Larry Garr, her father’s editor. Mr. Highfil, the biology teacher, who went on and on about the importance of hand washing.

Hand washing had done nothing to stop Pest.

She thought about Michael. He had confided in her about everything. He was proud of her gymnastic abilities as a cheerleader. He was even proud of her straight A report card, which he seemed to find inexplicable.

But he hadn’t been in love with her. He had loved Laura Sparks, with her Angelina Jolie lips and her C+ report card and her Cliff Notes and her pep, which was always on tap.

Clare looked at Bear, who was dozing at her feet, and she thought about Robin’s Plan B. The man on the television. A master of the situation. A man with a real cure.