Dance of the Bones

Go to sleep, Sweet Ohb. Do not be afraid.

I will not let them hurt you. I will not let them come again

To beat you with their clubs and call you evil names.

No matter what they think, Sweet Ohb, we did not betray them.

They did not listen when I tried to warn them.

They did not listen when I tried to tell them

That you were not the one who stole from them,

That you were not the enemy who spoiled their fields.

No, Sweet Ohb, although we tried to tell them

They did not listen. But do not worry. I will not leave you.

We will stay here together, Sweet Ohb,

You and I together—-alone and in the dark.

IT SEEMED TO BRANDON THAT they’d escaped the Authors’ Dinner a little earlier than usual. They drove most of the way home in companionable silence. Speedway Boulevard narrowed first from three lanes in each direction, to two, and finally to one as they followed the winding road up into Gates Pass and off onto the dirt track that led to the house.

As the city lights fell away behind them, the stars and a rising moon appeared in a now jet--black sky. When Brandon and Diana married and he had moved in with her and Davy, the house had been a long way out of town, and neighbors had been few and far between. Now the surrounding hillsides were dotted with McMansions, most of them far larger than the river rock relic Diana and her friend Rita Antone had turned from wreckage into a livable home. Their house and pool were far smaller and humbler than those of most of their neighbors, but they were also something most of the others were not—-completely paid for.

Leaving the Escalade parked in the detached garage, Diana and Brandon headed for the house. As they did so, Bozo, their aging grand--dog, rose stiffly from his heated bed on the back patio and limped forward, tail a--wag, to greet them. Their son--in--law, Dan Pardee, had been Bozo’s original owner, or maybe, as Diana often pointed out, it had been the other way around. Dan had been Bozo’s handler in Iraq and credited him with saving his life in combat. When Dan’s deployment ended, he had used his own money to bring Bozo home to the United States. They had worked together as a K--9 unit attached to the Border Patrol’s Shadow Wolves.

Three years earlier, Dan and Bozo had gone after an illegal border crosser who had been packing two kilos of meth. Fleeing up the side of a mountain, the smuggler had, deliberately or not, sent an avalanche of rocks and boulders roaring down the mountainside behind him. Dan had managed to escape injury by diving out of the way. Bozo wasn’t as lucky. A vet had been able to save the dog’s life and wire his shattered shoulder back together, but Bozo’s resulting limp meant that his K--9 unit days were over. When Dan’s next K--9 partner, Hulk, arrived, Bozo had gone into mourning every day when Dan and the new dog left to go on duty. The best solution anyone could come up with, supplied by Lani, had been for Bozo to go live with Grandpa and Grandma.

There was a doggy door in the back of the house, one that Bozo steadfastly refused to use. He much preferred to be outside rather than in, but wherever he was, inside or out, he would wait patiently until a passing human opened the door before entering or exiting. Brandon suspected that the plastic sheeting hitting his shoulder bothered Bozo too much, and Brandon was the one who had insisted on installing a heated dog bed outside on the patio for Bozo to use on these still very chilly desert spring evenings.

“You’re making him soft,” Dan had objected when he saw the bed. “He never needed anything like that when we were in Iraq.”

“He isn’t in Iraq,” Brandon had countered. “He’s a veteran. He’s home now. He gets a heated bed. End of story.”

And it was.