Andy had hoped the sound of the gun would frighten away the deer. They’d been eating his wife’s tulips. He hadn’t seen his neighbor’s dog sleeping in the field.
His neighbor, Dan, came running out onto the porch.
“What the hell?” he yelled.
Andy still had the gun in his hand. He watched his neighbor scramble over the fence and run to his dog. Unsure what to do, Andy went inside, put the gun on the counter and then went back outside.
His neighbor cradled the dog in his arms and rocked it back and forth. Andy climbed the fence and walked down the slope of the open field. He could tell the dog was dead before he got close.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Your dog blended in with the clumps of buffalo grass. I looked. I swear I did. I just didn’t see.”
“What am I going to tell my kids?” Dan asked.
“What can I do to help?” Andy asked. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Do?” Dan said incredulously. His eyeballs bulged and he bared his teeth. Andy took a step back. Dan’s shoulders slumped. “Just help me bury my dog before my kids get home.”
Andy scratched the back of his neck.
“I’d be happy to take it to a vet,” he said.
“I want to bury him,” his neighbor said.
Andy went back to his house and returned with some shovels. The two men dug for hours in the field, not saying much.
“What are you going to tell your kids?” Andy asked after they’d filled in the hole.
“I’m not going to tell them you shot him, if that’s what you mean.”
“No. I just—”
“But if you ever fire that gun around here again…”
“No,” Andy said. “Of course I won’t.”
That night, Andy stood in his living room looking out at the field, at the place where they had buried the dog. He couldn’t even see the mound in the dark.
Most of the curtains were drawn in his neighbor’s house. In one of the windows downstairs, Andy saw something move. The curtains parted, and the older of the two girls, maybe nine or ten, stood there in her pjs.
She saw him watching and made a gun with her finger and thumb. She pointed it at him.
“BANG!” she mouthed.
Andy quickly stepped away from the window and shut off the lights. His heart hammered in his chest.
Andy’s wife, Judy, walked in from the bedroom.
“What are you doing in the dark?” she asked.
Andy’s eyes flicked to the window, and she looked out. He didn’t know if the little girl was still standing there. He couldn’t read his wife’s face.
Judy turned on the lights, picked up the TV remote, and sat on the couch.
“I’m going to bed,” Andy said and went into their room. He brushed his teeth and climbed under the covers. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the little girl pointing her finger at him. BANG!
In the morning, Andy drove to the power company depot where he picked up his work van. According to his detail, he was scheduled to repair some insulators on a high-tension wire out in the valley. When he got there, he packed his equipment and climbed the ladder on the transmission tower.
It was easy work, and he enjoyed the feeling of being up high, the panoramic view of the valley and the mountains to the south. Only occasionally did he think of the little girl, and by the afternoon he’d convinced himself that it was a coincidence. She’d just been playing some kind of game.
He was almost finished when a dusty van pulled over near the base of the tower. A young woman got out wearing ragged jean shorts. She had tattoos covering both arms. She folded them across her chest in a way that made her shoulder blades stick off her back, giving her the angular appearance of a bird. She pursed her lips as she looked up at him, her eyes hidden behind big black sunglasses.
“Do you know how to get to the ghost town?” she asked.
“Marysville?” he asked. “Sure. Keep going the direction you’re headed about seven miles or so and then take a right. You’ll see the sign.”
“Seven miles,” she repeated.
“Yup,” he said.
“How do you like your job?” she asked.
He looked at the tools in his hand.
“It’s all right, I guess.”
“When I was a kid,” she said. “There was a power transfer station near the church. I used to think that God’s power came down into the steeple and then went into the power station and traveled along the lines to reach everyone on earth.”
Andy didn’t know what to say.
“Thanks for the directions,” she said.
“No problem.”
She got back into the van, and Andy watched as it headed off, kicking up clouds of dust.
That night Andy came home to find Judy with a glass of wine.
“You know that little girl next door?” she said. “I caught her cutting our tulips with scissors.”
“Did you say something?” Andy asked.
“Yes. I told her to stop, and she ran off. I feel like I should go over and talk to her mother.”
“No,” Andy said. “It’s ok. I’ll go talk to them.”
“You will?”
“I’ll go after dinner.”
He could see this wasn’t good enough.
“Ok,” he said, “I’ll go now.”
Andy walked outside and stopped at the foot of his neighbor’s driveway. He was hidden from his wife’s view by the row of pine trees between their properties, and he hoped he could just stand there for a few minutes before heading back.
“What are you doing?” someone asked.
Andy turned and saw the girl playing under one of the trees. There were some small toy cottages and porcelain fairies, many with broken wings, arrayed in the dirt.
“Oh. Hi,” he said.
“Do you like my flowers?” she asked and picked up a bouquet of wildflowers and tulips that had been sitting in the dust next to her.
“They’re really nice,” he said.
“I’m going to put these on Tracks’s grave,” she said. “Tracks was our dog. He died.”
“I know,” the man said uncomfortably. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s ok. He’s with the angels now and is probably a lot happier. I miss him though.”
Dan came down the walkway.
“Hi,” Andy said. “I just wanted to come by and… I feel really terrible about what happened yesterday. Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?”
Dan folded his arms across his chest.
“My church is having a fair this weekend, and we need some help setting up the booths tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow is Saturday.”
“Yes. It would help a lot.”
“Okay,” Andy said.
“We’ll leave at 8 a.m.,” said his neighbor. “I’ll drive.”
Andy nodded and walked back to his house, trying to figure out what he was going to tell Judy. When he got home, he told her that their neighbor had invited him to breakfast.
“I guess he feels badly about the tulips,” he said.
“Sounds kind of like a lonely way to apologize.”
Andy shrugged.
“Could be,” he said. “We’ve lived here a year and hardly know them though. Maybe it’s partly a way to get to know us better.”
That night, Judy went to bed early. Andy stayed up late watching the local news. He was half asleep on the couch when he heard the word “Marysville,” and it roused him.
The anchorman reported that an indeterminate number of young people had moved onto a derelict farm and were creating quite a stir among the residents of the old mining town.
Andy watched the images of people walking the dirt streets in yellow and blue robes. Most of them were barefoot. They showed shots of the barn, and he saw the young woman he’d spoken to from the transmission tower. She was now turning in the field near the barn, her languid arms outstretched, her yellow robes twirling around her. Her eyes were closed and the smile on her face was serene. She seemed utterly transported.
The next morning Andy walked up Dan’s driveway. The door to the garage was open, and he was unsurprised to see the little girl in there. She was standing on a step, working on something. Andy cleared his throat.Yes, you do,” she said. “You help the power of God travel around the world.”
“Hello,” she said. “I didn’t even see you there. That’s how focused I was. Want to see?”
“Sure,” he said. He walked cautiously to the open garage door. The little girl held up a cross she’d fashioned from two sticks and some wire.
“Is that for the grave, too?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Do you know why we named him Tracks? It’s because the day we brought him home, he left a trail of paw prints all over the house.”
Dan came down the walkway.
“Like my cross, Daddy?” the girl asked.
“It’s beautiful, sweetheart,” he said and kissed her on the head. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To the church,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, “Are you going to introduce him to Jesus?”
“We introduce everyone to Jesus by the way we live,” her father said.
The little girl looked at Andy.
“He’s not just in the church, you know?” she said.
“I’ve heard that,” Andy said.
He got in the passenger side, and Dan backed the car down the drive. The little girl stood at the open garage door and waved her hand back and forth like a beauty pageant contestant.
“How old is your daughter?” Andy asked.
“Leilani is nine. The younger one is six.”
“Must be great having kids.”
“Sometimes,” his neighbor said.
“Did you hear about those folks up in Marysville?” Andy asked.
Dan’s face became grim.
“Yeah, that’s an odd business,” he said. “I heard about it a few days ago from someone in our prayer group. Sounds like a bunch of kids getting high and fornicating in public.”
“I ran into one of them,” Andy said. “I was working out on County Mile Road, and she asked for directions. Then I saw her on the news.”
“It’s an odd business,” his neighbor repeated.
“Do you know what they want?” Andy asked.
“Freedom, I guess.”
They pulled into the parking lot of New Hope Church and walked through the glass doors to the gym. About a dozen people were moving boxes to designated stations. Dan introduced Andy to several people before Andy was assigned to assemble the dunk tank.
Before the work began, the pastor asked everyone to gather in a circle and join hands so he could lead them in prayer.
Andy worked alongside a stout and talkative woman named Jan and a woman with a long nose and thin fingers named Sue. The work only took about an hour. On the drive home, his neighbor didn’t say much until they got close to home.
“Feel free to stop by the fair with your wife tomorrow. Should be a nice social thing,” he said as they pulled into the driveway. “You could come to church first, if you’re interested.”
“Thanks,” Andy said. As he reached for his seatbelt, he looked to his house and saw the remaining tulips had been decapitated.
He got out of the car and watched as the front door to his neighbor’s house opened. Judy came out.
“Hello,” she said to Dan as she hurried down the walkway.
She turned her grin on Andy, and he could see she was furious.
“Let’s go home,” she said.
He followed her across their lawn and into the house.
“That woman is crazy,” Judy said.
“What?”
“She said you killed their dog. She said you shot it.”
Andy stared at her for what felt like a very long time.
“What?” he said.
“I told her you don’t even own a gun.”
“What did she say to that?”
“She said her husband saw you… You did get rid of that gun, right?”
“Fuck yeah. Like, before we moved.”
“Her husband must have shot the dog and blamed it on you. Then he buried it in the field, and the little girl is putting every flower she can get on the grave.”
“That’s sad.”
“That poor little girl.”
“That must have been why he asked me to breakfast,” Andy said. “I could tell he felt bad about something. He wouldn’t even let me leave the tip.”
“At least we know now that we live next door to completely crazy people,” she said. “And that they have a gun.”
“He probably shot the dog by accident and then panicked and got caught in a lie.”
“That’s perverse.”
“What did you say when she told you all this?”
“I told her I’d have a talk with you, of course. Then I got the hell out of there.”
Andy nodded.
“I’m going to go lie down for a little bit,” she said. “We can talk about this more later. I can’t figure out if we need to do anything.”
“Like what?”
“Call the police? Move? I don’t know. If someone finds that dog and they blame you…? It will be in the news!”
He grabbed the ibuprofen from the cabinet and handed it to her.
“Go lie down,” he said.
She took the bottle and headed into their room. Andy waited a few minutes and then went to the garage. He came in through the side door and took the soft case of his old drill down from the cabinet. Unzipping the case, he was relieved to see the gun still inside.
Andy heard something and turned to find Leilani standing in the doorway. In her hands, she held a piece of paper folded in half.
“Hello,” she said and handed it to him.
The front had the letters R.I.P. written in black crayon against a bright blue sky over a green hill. On the hill there was a brown mound with a cross at the head and flowers at its foot. He opened the paper. YOU ARE OFFICIALLY INVITED TO A FUNERAL FOR TRACKS. TODAY, 5 PM, it read. A bounding dog had been drawn in yellow crayon. It had big butterfly wings on its back and a golden halo over its head.
“This is very nice,” Andy said.
“Can you come?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Please try,” she said. “It’s going to be a glorious tribute.”
She turned and ran down the hill back to her house. Andy locked the garage and put the drill case in the trunk of his car. He got on the interstate and drove out to the valley. He exited onto County Mile Road then turned onto the gravel road that led to Marysville.
Andy drove past the barn where the cultists were working on repairs and parked a few blocks up. He put on a hat and sunglasses and got the drill case out of the trunk. He walked into the field and waved over one of the young, blue-robed men.
“Hey!” he said. “I have something for you.”
The young man took the case with an uncertain look on his face and unzipped it.
“It’s unlisted,” Andy said. “I’m just giving this to you and walking away.”
A look of disgust passed the younger man’s face.
“We are a peaceful community,” he said and tried to hand it back.
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” Andy said. “It’s just precautionary.”
“Keep it, Tobias,” someone said.
Andy looked to see a woman with straight black hair sitting on a hay bale nearby.
“We might need it,” she continued. “They aren’t going to let us live here in peace for much longer. It doesn’t matter that we have a right to be here.” She looked at Andy. “This barn belongs to Tobias’s grandfather. We will fix it up, and they will try to tear it down. Thank you for helping us protect ourselves.”
“It’s none of my business,” Andy said and started back towards his car.
“Wait,” another voice called. It was the young woman he’d given directions to, the one he’d seen on TV. “You are the man from the tower, the power worker.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Yes, you do,” she said. “You help the power of God travel around the world.”
Andy quickened his pace. He could hear the young woman laughing.
“What are you really doing here?” she called. “What are you running from?”
He kept his head down until he regained the sidewalk in front of some of the still-occupied homes.
A squat, iron-haired woman wearing overalls leaned on the mailbox at the end of her walkway.
“These hippies are Satan’s hoof print upon the earth,” she said.
Andy ignored her and got into his car. As he drove through the valley, he could hear the young woman’s laughter in his mind.
When he got home, Judy was still in the bedroom. Out in the field, the family next door stood around the mound, each of them wearing a different pastel color as if they were about to take Easter photos. He had the folded invitation in his back pocket. Taking it out, Andy cast a cautious glance over his shoulder and stepped out onto the porch.
As he descended the steps, Leilani pointed at him and waved. Dan nodded in his direction, but Dan’s wife continued to stare at the mound, her hands loosely clasped over the chest of the smaller daughter who was trying to disappear into her mother’s skirts.
Andy eased himself over the fence. The tulips and other flowers had been neatly arranged in mismatched glass vases at the corners of the mound.
“You came!” Leilani said. “Now I can sing my song.”
“Not just yet,” Dan said. “Glad you could make it, Andy.”
“Thanks. I really can’t stay, but I did want to tell each of you how sorry I am that this happened and let you know how grateful I am for your graciousness. Tracks seemed like a great dog, and it was nice that you invited me.”
He turned to start back up the hill, but when he did, he saw half a dozen people walking toward them. Two families of three from the looks of it. One woman had a large Tupperware container in her hands and the other carried the pot from a slow cooker. Jan and Sue. Behind them, the pastor followed with his wife and their two boys.
Jan, Sue, and their families hugged Dan’s family and told them how sorry they were.
“Hey there,” the pastor said and shook Andy’s hand heartily. “Nice to see you again. Wish it could be under happier circumstances, of course.”
Andy looked back to his house to see Judy on the deck.
“I better be going,” Andy said and gave a quick wave to Jan and Sue. “My wife and I are going out to dinner.”
“Wait till I sing my song,” said Leilani. “Daddy, may I sing my song now?”
Judy was on her way down the steps to the yard.
“Sure, honey. Let me just say a few words first.” Dan cleared his throat. “It means so much that y’all stopped by today. We are sad about our dog, but Tracks is free now.”
“Amen,” said Jan and Sue.
“He was the best dog,” Dan continued, “and we’ll miss him a lot. Go ahead, sweetie.”
Leilani picked up another bouquet from somewhere near her feet and moved behind the cross at the head of the grave. She inhaled.
“I will remember you. Will you remember me?”
The sound that arose from her was immense, somehow far too big to have come from such a little girl.
“Don’t let your life pass you by. Weep not for the memories…”
She smiled at Andy, pointing at him, and then her hand opened into a little flourish, an almost professional touch. She was used to performing, Andy realized. She probably did so at church. Judy stepped up next to him, and he held up the invitation as if to explain. She glowered.
When the song ended there was some gentle applause, and Leilani looked down at the grave, a portrait of thoughtful reflection.
“Hi, there,” Jan said and gave Andy a hug. “It’s nice to see you again. Is this your wife? Hi, I’m Jan,” she said and shook Judy’s hand. “So sad about what happened to their dog, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Judy said. “What happened?”
Jan seemed taken aback.
“Why, I mean the dog dying is all.
“How do you know my husband?” Judy asked.
“We met at the church this morning,” Jan said. “We worked on the dunk booth together.”
His wife sighed.
“You are such an asshole,” she muttered and started up the hill.
Andy stood there awkwardly for a moment. No one was looking at him, except for his neighbor’s wife, who regarded him with a satisfied grin, her eyebrows high on her forehead as if to say, This is what you get.
Andy followed his wife into the house.
“Can I at least explain?” he said.
She walked down the hallway and shut the door to their bedroom behind her. Andy turned. Through the living room window, he saw the neighbors had moved onto the lawn. Dan was pulling the cover off the grill while talking to the pastor. Jan, Sue, and the pastor’s wife sat at the picnic table talking to Dan’s wife as the kids played in the grass.
Leilani crouched behind a rock and then popped up, pointing her finger at one of the boys.
“BANG!” she shouted, and the little boy crumpled to the grass, clutching his heart. She crouched again behind the rock and seeing Andy watching from the window, waved and smiled a wide-open smile.
Andy closed the blinds and sat down on the couch. The muted TV was already on, tuned to national news. He was about to change the channel when he saw the Marysville barn on the screen. The young men and women in their blue robes stood in the field holding hands in a circle. Next they showed a body on a stretcher covered by a white sheet.
He turned up the volume.
“We do not have a definite identity of the young man yet,” the sheriff said. “All we know is that he’s a member of the organization that has been living in the barn the past few weeks, and that we believe he fell from the hayloft.”
“Oh, thank God,” Andy said.
The young woman’s face appeared on the screen. Her eyes were red from crying, and she wiped at her cheek with the heel of her hand.
“He was up there,” she said. “He looked so beautiful. Even as he fell, it looked like he was flying through the air.”
Andy’s TV went dead. He hit the power button on the remote to turn it back on, but the glass remained gray and inert. Rising from the couch, Andy stepped toward the TV and crouched before the screen, as if he might be able to do something, as if he might be able to dive into it and chase the signal, follow it down, down, down, wherever it might lead.
Header photo by Jay Vaughan, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of David Driscoll by Gwendolyn Driscoll.