Sammy

by John R. Little

          Sammy stared out at her yard again.  The arthritis in her wrists and ankles hurt just thinking about the mess.  The twister had spared her house -- well, most of her house -- but the yard . . .

          Sigh.

          Ten years ago, she wouldn’t have cared.  Well, that’s not quite true.  She would have cared, but she wouldn’t have been bothered.

          Adam would have been there to help.

          Now all she could see was a mountain of work with no reward.  No teaming up with Adam to clean up the mess, no hearing his laugh and seeing his smile as they worked through things together, no hugs whenever they happened to be working in the same general area, no secret glance that said, “We’ll have more fun tonight, sweetie.”

          No more Adam.

          Just the mess.

          She walked out to the garden and looked at the shredded flowers.  Marigolds, carnations, mums.  Now, the whole garden was just a giant bowl of cole slaw.  The dozens of hours of pain she’d endured as she kneeled to the ground during planting season . . . all the pain was wasted.

          “Why’d you leave, me . . . ?”

          Sammy glanced over her shoulder, wanting to be sure nobody saw the mess.  She had the finest garden in Ayr, but now she felt naked, exposed as a fraud.
          It didn’t help that all the gardens on Watson Avenue had fallen to the same fate.  She didn’t care what happened to her neighbors’ gardens.  She only cared about her garden.

          The garden she originally planted with Adam all those years ago.  Before her aching ankles.  Before his chemo treatments.

          Sammy raked a bit of the mess, half-heartedly, as the broken stems and crumpled flowers seemed to drain her ambition.

          Why bother?

          It didn’t take her long to answer.  As long as she was still above the ground, she’d tend to Adam’s garden.

          She raked more seriously, pulling up the plant roots easily.

          Above the ground . . .

          Puppy.

          She steadied her eyeglasses and looked to the back of the yard.  There were thick branches scattered around, cast off from the nearby oak tree.  More work.  She mentally tried to judge if she could move the branches on her own and doubted it.

          Storm clouds covered the sky, and if it weren’t for Adam, she would have waited till a better day.

          He would have said, “Screw it.  It can wait till nicer weather.”

          “But what about . . . ?”  Sammy imagined herself pointing toward the Hendersons’, next door.

          He’d just laugh and kiss her. “Who cares what they think?”  And maybe later, he’d make love to her.  He always liked to love her when she was upset; he wanted her happy, and he knew just how to do that.

          The wind blew her hair into her face and she moved it back.

          “I’m going to fix it for you, sweetie.”

          But first, Puppy.

          She took her first steps toward the back of the yard and felt the years of arthritis fighting every move.  Pain bolted through her ankles, screaming at her to give up, go back inside and have a nice hot bath.

          That wasn’t possible until she checked on Puppy, though.

          Sammy took a deep breath as she saw that the fence at the back of the property was smashed into kindling.  More work.

          No way I can do that, she thought.  The fences had always belonged to Adam.

          The tornado had ripped through Ayr at 9:00 that morning, surprising everyone.  It wasn’t like they lived in Kansas or something.  This was the Oregon coast, and Sammy’d never heard of a twister hitting the small town before.  She glanced back and was surprised again that her home seemed untouched, except for one corner where the shingles had been ripped off.  The roofers were coming tomorrow.

          Eight hours after the tornado swept through the back yards of Watson Avenue, Sammy kept her feet moving.  The air pressure was increasing and her ankles were aching more than she could ever remember.

          Loose branches covered Puppy’s grave and at first she couldn’t see the cross.  She looked farther back and then saw the two white pieces of wood sticking out of a pile of dirt and wood about six feet away.

          “Didn’t last long, did it, girl?”

          She walked over and picked up the sticks, leaning on the rake she’d used as a crutch while walking.  One of the sticks was cracked near one end but she thought she might be able to use it still, until she had time to get a new one.  The nails that connected the two pieces were still there and she was able to press them back into the holes and make the cross solid again.

          Puppy had started to die the day Adam went to the hospital for the last time.  She always stared out the window, but he never came back to her.  Her tail never wagged again and she just seemed to mope about.  Dachshunds aren’t normally the brightest dogs in the world, but Puppy just seemed to know her master was leaving for good.  Her personality changed that day.  She ate less and less, and even though she lasted two more years, she was never the same.

          Sammy buried her six weeks ago after finding her cold body laying by the front window one early morning in May.  She knew she had to bury Adam’s dog beside him . . . beside his ashes.  He’d want that.

          Now Puppy’s grave was covered in branches, leaves, wood splinters, and other things that Sammy didn’t even recognize.  She couldn’t tell for sure, but the grave itself seemed disturbed.

          “I’m coming, Puppy . . . ”

          She grabbed the biggest branch with both hands and pulled. It was stuck on something.  She pulled harder and the limbs inched toward her.  There was a pile of other branches caught that came along as well.  They cracked against one another as she moved them off the grave.

          There was a smell of rain in the air and Sammy looked to the sky, wondering if another tornado might come along.

          One’s enough for me, thank you very much.

          The sky was darkening and she looked at her watch.  Only 5:00, but it felt like twilight.  She shuffled around the branches, back to Puppy’s grave.

          That Saturday in May when Puppy had died, Sammy cried holding her tiny body in her lap.  Time seemed to slow down or maybe speed up, somehow she couldn’t decide, but then it was mid-afternoon and she took the stiff little body out and spent two hours digging the shallow grave.  After laying the dog in the ground, there was only a foot or so of dirt on top.

          “It’s all I can manage, Puppy.  I’m too old to be digging anyhow.”

          Now the ground seemed shallower and Sammy worried about . . . well, she didn’t want to think about it.

          She had to walk around the damned branches, using the rake as a crutch again.  The grave was under the shade of the old oak tree, and it was hard to see clearly.  Sammy moved closer and leaned over.

          “Woof.”

          Sammy froze.  She couldn’t have heard it; her mind was playing with her.  She turned her head, so her good ear faced the ground.  Silly, but she did it anyway.

          She heard panting.

          Sammy’s heart started to race.  Had some other animal gotten trapped somehow?  She inched closer and got down on her knees.

          “Woof!”

          Puppy!

          After fifteen years, there was no mistaking the sound.  Adam’s dog had the most distinctive bark of any dog she’d ever seen.  It was wheezy, like she didn’t quite want to put her full effort into making the sound.  A kissing kind of bark.

          She watched as the dog’s snout rose up from the dirt.

          “No,” she whispered.  “This can’t . . . ”

          Then the front paws burrowed through the soil, scrabbling to pull the body up from the grave.  The dog panted and its tongue hung out, covered with small white maggots.

          Sammy fell back and stared.  She couldn’t move.

          Puppy continued to dig, pulling her body up.  She was even thinner than the scrawny little dog that had died not two months earlier.  Patches of fur were missing and pus-covered sores covered her remaining brown fur.  The thing was just skin and bones.

          Then Puppy stopped digging and turned to stare at Sammy.  Her eyes had fallen back into her skull and only empty pits stared at her.  Even without eyes, Sammy knew the horrible thing was staring directly at her.  Wanting her.

          She tried to stand, but her legs were too weak.

          “Adam, help!”

          She felt stupid, because just for a moment she’d forgotten he was dead too.  His ashes were interred in the concrete monument behind her.  Her husband would be no help to her today.

          The dead dog growled and bared its teeth at Sammy and somehow it continued to pull itself from the dirt.

          “No.  Go away.”

          The dog was almost free of its grave when she felt a rush of adrenaline and used the rake to help herself up.

          Puppy glared at her without eyes and started to move toward her.  The mouth was wide open and her teeth were sharp and ready to attack.

          Sammy swung the rake over her head and smashed it down on Puppy’s body.  It landed with a thud and she felt awful.  She’d loved the dog almost as much as Adam had.

          She swung again and hit the dog just behind the neck.  It yelped and growled but it moved closer.  Sammy inched backward and tried to scream, but nothing came out.

          Again the rake came down, harder this time, and she felt Puppy’s head crush.  The next blow hit the head a second time.

          It took ten hard hits to the head to stop the dog.  Once again Puppy was dead.

          Sammy pushed the corpse with the rake to be sure.  It was crushed beyond recognition.

          She sat back down on her knees and cried.  “My little Puppy.  I’m so sorry.”

          And behind her, she heard a whisper near her ear.  “So am I, sweetie.”

          She knew that voice.  Knew her love from the softness in him.  Knew how he was the only one who’d ever called her “Sweetie.”  He’d used that nickname for the forty-two years of their marriage.

          She turned but she didn’t get far.  His hands closed on her neck.  Her last thought was that she should have checked on his ashes first, instead of the dog.

          At least now, they’d be together again.

Back to Dead Lines Issue #3