All of this with the dog happened when I was almost 18 years old and living in Memphis with my sister Sharon and her husband. His name was Bill Hayes.

The first time Sharon ever told me about Bill, she used the word "complex." I believe what she meant by this was that he might have been a little crazy. I know that they met in a bar one weekend; Sharon was still in nursing school then and was down from Fayetteville for a football game. Bill had been working out in Los Angeles as a set carpenter; a studio had brought him and some others to Memphis for this movie that ended up never being finished. Three weeks later, Sharon had officially dropped her classes and moved into the hotel where Bill was living. When the movie pulled out of town, she somehow persuaded Bill to stay. It wasn't much later on that they were married.

Bill drank a little; he was both quiet and wild, unlike any of the people I then considered as adult. He wore his black hair long and had a thick mustache that set off his gray eyes. They were eyes I could never really force myself to look into for very long, though I guess Sharon saw something in them. I was intimidated by him but up until the time of the story I am about to tell, he never actually did anything to make me feel threatened.

I'd started working some small construction jobs and found out that Bill had developed kind of a reputation for himself. Memphis wasn't that big a place in those circles. Finding steady work around town was an impossibility for a carpenter at a time when almost all the whites were moving out of Memphis and building homes and offices in Germantown and Bartlett. The joke going around then was that "Hollywood" Bill Hayes "don't build nothing that lasts." And whether he was a good carpenter or not, no foreman would keep anyone on the job who was irresponsible about getting to a site on time or showed up drunk or too hungover to work. So, Bill was away, off and on, for long stretches at a time, working in places like Charleston and Chicago on some sets that friends of his, or the union, had helped him to find.

Sharon and Bill rented a small house in an area of town called Overton Park. It wasn't too far away from the restaurant where my sister worked.

The house looked like any house you'd see around there then; it was a little shabby and run-down, with peeling paint flaking off the shutters and one or two half-rotten boards in the front steps. It also had two pecan trees in the yard, one in front and the other in back, which stretched their heavy limbs out over the roof. And late that fall, when the pecans fell, we ate pies that my sister baked. The house was a pretty good place overall. Bill always said that he was going to do some work on it.

They were happy there, though I won't begin to tell you that I thought Bill and Sharon's marriage was ideal. I'm sure I didn't think about it much at all then; I thought that "compatibility" meant that you both smoked the same brand of cigarettes and watched the same TV shows.

During the early part of the spring, Bill was in New Orleans on one of his projects. Sharon was working a lot, and I knew that every now and then, after work, she'd begun spending time with a man named Frank whom she'd met there. I did not blame her for this. I was not her judge, plus I was sure that Bill was getting away with murder down in New Orleans. But I had the feeling that she felt bad about seeing Frank anyway, especially when they would come in and I'd still be awake, lying on the sofa and watching TV. But I realized that Frank treated her pretty well. He took her out riding in his big, fancy Lincoln and gave her gifts, and I believe she liked this more than she did Frank himself.

For some reason, right before Bill was due back in town, Frank decided to give my sister a greyhound from the track over in West Memphis. The dog had something wrong with one of its paws and had been retired. He had been called Early Time when he raced; my sister decided to call him Earl.

According to Frank, the dog's injury was probably a result of him having been too good or too fast at one point: a sure thing. What he thought was that maybe they'd tried to remedy this temporarily, and a gimp foot was the result. Since then, I've heard of groomers doing all kinds of things like cutting the faster dogs' nails back to the quick so that their paws are sore and they have no traction as they chase the lure. Sometimes a dog's paw will get infected; maybe that's what happened to Earl.

He was a beautiful dog, dark orange and brown. His ears angled straight back along his narrow head and gave him the look of speed even when he was standing still. The corners of his mouth pulled up into a hard smile, and he stood in a crouch with his tail curved back between his legs, pointing into his thin belly, which tapered down from thick shoulders and ribs. Earl was such a regal dog that you could almost overlook his left paw, bent at the first joint like a broken matchstick.

On the day Bill was to arrive home, Sharon and I were in the kitchen with Earl. Sharon had worked the lunch shift that day and was still in her uniform, though she had tied a faded blue bandana around her head to hold back her hair. She was leaning against the counter across from the table where I sat. A dim light came in through the curtained window above the sink, and Earl was lying on the floor at Sharon's feet.

"What's Bill going to think about Earl?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. She looked down at Earl and scratched his head. Earl stood and stretched; his nails made light clicking noises on the linoleum.

"Is he going to ask where Earl's from?"

"Maybe so," she answered.

Sharon took a long drag from her cigarette and placed it in the ashtray. She was trying to act nonchalant about Earl, but I knew she was concerned about Bill's reaction to the dog: she had smoked about a hundred cigarettes that afternoon.

"He won't mind, I don't think," she said. She exhaled a stream of smoke that drifted upward to the ceiling.

"I can tell him that Earl is mine," I said. "That I got him."

Sharon smiled at the suggestion.

"You're sweet, Charlie, but no thanks," she said. "I can handle it. Anyway, he probably won't even ask. I don't think Bill cares about those sorts of things."

I looked down at the open magazine on the table before me and pretended to read it. Sharon came and sat across from me. She pulled a copy of Cosmopolitan from a small stack in the center of the table toward her. She did not open the magazine, but just stared at the cover. Except for Earl's panting it was quiet in the kitchen.

"I'm not a bad person, Charlie."

"I know you're not," I said. And I really believed it, but for some reason, I did not look up when I said this.

Sharon was leaning against the sink, looking out of the window, when Bill pulled into the driveway.

"That's him," she said.

She held a half-smoked cigarette under the faucet, turning the water on and off quickly, letting the cigarette drop into the sink. Then she turned and walked out the door that led to the carport.

I stood in the doorway and watched her go out toward Bill's truck. He got out and gave her a hug. They were like that for a long time, then when they stopped, I shut the door and walked about halfway down the driveway toward them. Bill was letting his beard grow out, and his face was sunburned. He had on an old army jacket.

"Hey, Charlie-boy," Bill said. This is what he called me when he was in one of his unusually good moods. It bothered me a little, made me feel like a child. He put his hand to his brow and saluted me.

Then he looked back at my sister. Sharon had her arms crossed on her chest and she was starting to shiver. She didn't have her coat on, and it was chilly outside. From the look on her face, I knew she was about to mention the dog.

"I've got a little surprise for you," she told Bill. "I hope you're not upset. Charlie says you won't be upset." Her voice was searching. Hesitant. It sounded much different than it had earlier, when we had spoken in the kitchen.

"Christ, I hope it's not a bun in the oven," Bill said. He laughed when he said it and he looked at me and winked.

My sister took his hand. Right then, I saw this look of terror come across his face; all the blood rushed from his cheeks, his sunburn faded into a stark white. Sharon looked so serious, maybe he thought for a moment that she actually was pregnant.

"Bill, I got us a dog. Well, we're keeping him for a while anyway. From a girl I work with."

"A dog? Why in the hell would I be upset?" Bill actually sounded relieved. It seemed like he thought it was great, as if he had no idea what the big deal was.

"Come and see him," she said. She led Bill into the house.

While they walked inside, I went to the back of Bill's truck and got out his bags and tools and put them away in the storage closet.

Inside, the scene was better than I expected.

Bill was sitting on the kitchen floor with Earl in front of him and was rubbing the dog's head. He was babbling out loud in a voice I never heard him speak in, the sort of thing people do when they get around dogs. He was saying the dog's name over and over like some kind of an idiot. Like a big, dumb kid. Sharon was standing there and watching Bill and absolutely beaming. She was damn happy over that dog.

"Where'd you say he was from?" Bill asked.

"He was a racer. Over in West Memphis," my sister said. "They used to call him Early Time. Isn't that funny?" She let out a laugh that sounded half fake.

Bill stopped for a second and held Earl's head still between both of his hands, the way I've seen some veterinarians look at sick dogs. He looked into Earl's eyes, just staring into them, like he'd never seen a dog in his life. Then he reached down and held the dog's left paw for a moment, studying it. He looked back at Earl, straight into the dog's eyes; it was as if Bill was trying to draw something from the dog that we weren't going to tell him.

Bill just sat like that and we were all three quiet for a while.

"So what do you think?" Sharon asked.

Bill turned and looked up at her. He started scratching the dog's head.

"It's great," he said. "Why would you worry?"

"You can be funny sometimes about stuff like this, that's why. Other than that, I don't know."

Bill turned back to the dog and kind of shook his head a little in disbelief.

"Don't ever try to understand women, Charlie," he said without even looking at me.

Then Bill started working on the dog's neck again, scratching hard behind its ears. Earl held his head up and back like he was really enjoying it.

For the next few months, Bill was in town most of the time. He'd called around about some things that were going on but with no luck. I thought that he and Sharon were getting along fairly well though I didn't really know. I guess Sharon had kind of ended things with Frank.

We had an uncle who lived in Memphis and was paying Bill to do some work on this hunting camp down in Mississippi that he owned along with some other men. It was in Leflore County, and parts of the camp backed up along a northern stretch of the Yazoo River.

All in all, Sharon seemed happy for Bill to be there, working so close to home, though she was working twice as hard as she had before, even with me around helping out with the rent.

She took good care of Earl though. I liked seeing her with him, both of them sprawled out on the floor or sitting beside each other on the couch while we watched TV. After dinner, when we'd just finished eating and were still sitting around the table, she'd even let him eat off a dinner plate that she'd raked all our scraps onto.

One Saturday Bill drove down to the camp to do some work. He let me go along with him to help out a little, though the main reason I wanted to go was to sight my rifle. It was this Remington .270 that I'd been given for my birthday a year before. I'd been hunting with the gun a few times in the winter, and thought that it might be off by a little. It was also getting hot, and things were slowing down for me. I needed something to do.

Sharon was set to work a double shift that day, so we took Earl with us.

I had put him into the back of Bill's truck after loading some tools and my rifle case and a couple of sandbags to balance my rifle on. Then I waited in the truck until Bill came out of the house.

Once we were south of the rundown warehouses and gas stations on the outskirts of Memphis, we hit the interstate. It was still dark, though the sun was beginning to rise. The road rolled out, lined by tall, thin pines that grew thick along its sides. In the early morning haze, I could just catch blurred glimpses of fields through the trees. When we neared the camp, on the smaller highways, then side roads, the trees thinned out and the ground began to flatten before us.

Bill didn't say much as he drove. We listened to a couple of radio stations, and he hummed along to the songs he knew, old country, and smoked. I just looked out of the window and drifted in and out of sleep the whole way down. To keep my eyes open, I tried to trace some of the colored wires that hung out in clumps from the dashboard and dangled above my feet.

I'd drifted off to sleep again for a little while when we were close. When I woke up, I looked over at Bill. I had this feeling that he'd been watching me for awhile.

"So, Charlie, what do you think?" he asked.

I had no idea what he meant. The sun was fully over the horizon directly behind us. I felt out of it.

"About what?"

"About what you're going to do next year. Next week even."

I thought about that for a little while we rode. In fact, I had been thinking about it almost the whole time I'd been in Memphis. I had ideas but no definite answer. What I was thinking was that maybe I'd go down to Lake Charles where my father was living. I'd get a job and maybe take some classes at this college down there. I told Bill about this.

"Your mother and sister are bound to enjoy that one," he said. "You ought to come out to California with us."

"I didn't know you two were going out to California," I said. "Sharon hasn't even mentioned it."

"Sure, at the end of the summer."

"What does she think?"

"Sharon thinks it's fine, but I don't know how her friends are going to feel," he said. Then he was silent.

I knew that Sharon probably didn't believe it was fine and that, more than likely, she didn't even know about these plans; I also knew what Bill meant by "friends" and that he was feeling me out. I'd have been surprised if he didn't already know about Frank; as I've said, I'm sure he had some "friends" of his own. I had no idea how to respond.

"Sharon thinks you're going to leave her sometime," I said.

I have no idea where this came from. All I knew was that it was a stupid thing to say, but I wanted to say something honest and true, even if what came out was possibly a lie. Sharon had never even said as much to me, but for some reason I was, I felt, speaking for her. It seemed like some kind of a pressure had built up in the cab.

"Well, she just doesn't know then, does she?"

I tried to process what this could possibly mean. Bill pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lit one.

"She's just scared because your old man ran off, Charlie. I think that's why she keeps so busy when I'm gone. It's about security with her, Charlie."

A slow, burning feeling spread across the back of my neck. We rode for a while and neither of us spoke.

"She just gets lonely, Bill, like you or anyone else you know," I finally blurted out. I had been saying it over and over in my head and wanted it to sound better than the way it did when the words left my mouth.

Bill just laughed and didn't say anything the rest of the way there. What I was waiting for was for him to pull over and beat the hell out of me, or force me to get out of the truck and then he'd drive off and leave my life, and Sharon's life, forever. But that is not what happened.

At the camp, we pulled into a field that lay beneath a long levee. The field was bordered on three sides by an unbroken line of trees, the only opening being the dirt track we had come in on. It was a place where we'd hunted dove with my uncle once, back in September. A small canal ran along the edge of the field across from us.

Bill swung the truck around and put it into park. We were facing the steep bank of the levee. I sat there and he did too, and we looked straight ahead, and he let the engine run. Then he turned the engine off.

"You've got a lot to learn there, Charlie-boy," is all he said as he took the keys from the ignition. Then we both got out of the truck and walked to the back of it.

I'd forgotten Earl was with us. Bill opened the glass top gate, and I reached in and got the rifle case and the sandbags and started down the side of the truck. I was just going to walk out into the field and sight my rifle and try and forget about the incident in the truck; I figured I'd meet Bill over at the house, which was further down the dirt road we'd turned off to get here.

I set up my target against the levee. I walked out away from it, measuring my steps as I went along. Bill hadn't left yet; I knew he was watching me, and it made me feel strange. He just stood there next to his truck. He'd gotten Earl out and was holding him on the leash. I set up, lying on my stomach near the middle of the field on the flattest spot I could find. I lined up the center of the target in my sights and then let off a shot. An empty cartridge kicked off, and the sound of the shot carried out away from me. I looked over at Bill and the dog. Earl was going berserk, scrambling and jerking hard at the leash. Bill was struggling for a second, like it really surprised him.

I stood up and ran toward them. By the time I got over to the truck, Bill had calmed the dog down a little and held him by the collar. He was still looking down at Earl, and I asked if he was going up to the house. I told him I'd just walk down there in a little while and meet him. Bill did not respond; I don't think he even heard me.

"Earl can't handle the shooting," I said. "Why don't you just take him on up to the house?"

Then Bill looked up at me, his eyes glazed over.

"I'm going to let him go, Charlie," he said slowly and clearly, like he thought maybe I wouldn't understand him. "We're going to let him go."

"You can't do that," I said. My legs went weak. I felt like I was going to cry right then.

"She can give him back," I said, even though I knew she'd never do it.

He told me that nobody really wanted this dog and that letting him go was the right thing to do, that people did much worse things to dogs like Earl, that they filled dumpsters with them.

"What about Sharon? What are you going to tell her?"

"I'll think of something, or she'll get over it," he said. "Maybe somebody will get her a new dog."

Right then I wanted to do something to stop him from letting my sister's dog go and from letting her go so easy, like it was nothing. It felt strange that I had the rifle there in my hands.

Bill turned from me. I knew that if he let go of that leash, Earl would probably run for days. It's why Frank had told Sharon to make sure the dog stayed on that leash when she took it outside.

"She doesn't want to take care of this dog, Charlie. Plus, the damn thing will be miserable. Dogs like this were made to run. That's what we're letting him do."

"But . . ."

"But nothing. This is a running dog. If it's such a big deal, then why don't you just go ahead and shoot me? Would that clear things up for you, Charlie?" As he said this, he walked back to the truck, opened the door, and pulled out a pistol from beneath the driver's side of the seat.

This is what happened: Bill fired his pistol into the air. The report was deafening. Bill let go of the leash and Earl took off in a hard sprint, dragging it behind him. It was a beautiful thing to see, his body working like some kind of machine, like a tight spring or a lever, uncoiling and retracting in one fluid motion.

He ran straight from us, toward the small canal. Even over the rough patches and high grass growing in the field Earl kept his speed, but by the time he had reached the ditch, he had slowed and his left paw was barely hitting the ground. I was calling out for him and stepped forward. Earl stopped for an instant. His head swung back and forth.

From behind me, Bill fired another shot into the trees to the left of the dog. And Earl took off along the ditch heading for the levee. When he reached it he stopped again and Bill shot in front of him. A small cloud of dust rose from the ground. The dog turned and ran the opposite way, toward the trees this time. After just a few yards, Earl's legs became tangled in the leash; he stumbled and fell on his side and then got up and continued sprinting for the woods. His left shoulder rolled hard as he ran, an attempt to keep the weight off the injured paw. Bill shot behind Earl again.

And before I knew exactly what I was doing, I had shouldered my rifle and was looking through the scope. I pulled quickly to the left and found Earl in the crosshairs and fired.

The dog fell forward with the force of its movement, its chest skidding first into the ground, then its rear legs pitched up and over. It rolled twice and came to a stop. A hardness came up from my stomach to my throat, then back down again. A sharp ringing filled my head. I dropped my rifle and walked to the truck and used its open door to hold myself up.

About an hour later, I watched as Bill walked out through the trees. I was standing on the top of the small levee, and he came toward me. He was carrying a shovel he'd taken from the back of his truck. He had my rifle with him, slung over his shoulder by the strap. I hated Bill and I felt sick. The shock had begun to wear off, and it had just begun to dawn on me that I would have to tell Sharon in just a matter of hours what I had done. I felt hollow. I wanted to cry but I could not.

I turned and looked over the abandoned, flooded rice fields that lay below me. There were three of them, each about the size of a football field. The water they held was gray, reflecting the clouds above. Out in the center of the fields, bare trees grew up out of the water, so thin and crooked that they did not look real. I stood there looking over them until I heard Bill's voice. He was behind me, at the bottom of the levee.

"I buried Earl, Charlie. Off in the woods. In a good spot," he said. I did not turn around.

"What just happened should have happened months ago anyway. Sharon should've never taken that dog. It should have been put down, Charlie. Things should have ended for it. Come on down now, Charlie, we're leaving."

What I thought then was that, in a way, I had opened the door for Bill: he wanted out. Maybe "losing" Earl would have been the first, or last, step in that direction. I had made it final. I knew that what he would tell Sharon would be his version, and that if I didn't want to tell mine, she'd never have to hear what actually happened. Either way, Bill was long gone. I thought he was a coward, and that his leaving probably wasn't such a bad thing for Sharon. But I was young then and really had no idea what it meant to give up on someone or something steady, though since then I have found out a few things about that.

I stood there a little longer, and then I made my way down to the truck. Bill was already in it with the engine running. I climbed in and shut the door without looking over at him. We pulled out of the field and started back to Memphis on the same roads we'd come down on.

Copyright © 2000 President and Fellows of Harvard College.
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