He turned to his mother. Just go, he signed. Please.

Almondine was up again by the time he reached her, walking unsteadily toward the door. He hovered alongside.

What is it? he signed. What? What?

By the time he’d slung the kennel doors closed after her, she’d regained some equilibrium and she trotted behind his mother. He shooed them all up the porch steps. Once inside, Almondine lay down again, panting. He dropped to his knees beside her.

Something’s wrong, he signed. She stumbled, back in the barn.

“Was she bitten?”

No. I checked.

He slid his hand under her belly and motioned her up. He lifted her feet and flexed her joints, watching for a wince. His mother made him describe Finch’s injuries and Epi’s; she didn’t ask how any of it had happened, or how Almondine had been involved. She just looked at Edgar like he wasn’t making sense.

We need to call someone, Edgar signed. He kicked the floor in frustration.

His mother began to talk through the options. “Page is in Florida until…” She glanced at the calendar on the wall. “It’s what? Wednesday? He won’t be back until next Monday.”

I’m not talking about Doctor Papineau, he signed.

“There’s no use calling that vet in Ashland. Not in the middle of the night. He’ll never…”

But Edgar was shaking his head.

“Well, what then?” she said, annoyed. “If we can get them in the truck, I could drive…”

He lifted the telephone receiver and set it on the countertop.

Call Claude, he signed. Call him right now.

Epi’s Stand

T RUDY SAT AT THE TABLE AND WATCHED EDGAR CLOSE THE kitchen door as he headed out again to find Epi. She’d made coffee, hoping it would clear her head, and a cup sat on the table issuing ribbons of steam. The overhead light starred and sparked in the periphery of her vision. She found it hard not to squint and would have walked to the switch to turn off the lights but she lacked the energy and possibly the balance.

Something had changed. It was difficult to gauge exactly what, but every movement ached. She could draw a deep breath, but when she exhaled there was a wheeze in her right lung, the sound transmitted through her flesh and bones. She shivered and sweated at the same time. This is the sort of thing that made people believe in possession, she thought. And she did feel inhabited, taken over, usurped by something blind and ferocious. What had Doctor Frost said about the antibiotics? How long before they took hold? The walls of the kitchen receded alarmingly. She felt a doubling, a sense of being inside her body and floating above herself at the same time.

She closed her eyes to shut it out. After a time, she jerked awake.

Just stay awake, she told herself. But the reason escaped her.

She stood. She made her way toward the bedroom, watching it all from above, her blue and shrunken hands reaching forward, gripping the counter, Almondine, lying on her side by the refrigerator, panting, the kitchen table with the now-cool cup of coffee, the feed store calendar with a picture of a farm hanging by the door. How oddly the veins crawled over the bones of her fingers. She was wearing an old flannel shirt of Gar’s over her nightgown. Her hair stood out in a wild tangle.

When she reached the bedroom door she stopped to look at Almondine. She’d had some sort of spell in the barn, Edgar had said, but Almondine was fine. She lay there resting, showing none of the inward look of a dog in pain. She was just old. Edgar needed to start babying Almondine, stop expecting her to have the energy she’d had five years ago. Trudy thought of the very first night Almondine spent in that house, a bumbling ten-week-old. There’d been a thunderstorm, she remembered, and Almondine had whined half the night, frightened and lonely for her littermates. Now her muzzle had grayed and she couldn’t stand up quickly after a long sleep. But her gaze was as steady and clear as it had ever been. That gaze was what had made them choose her out of all the other pups. Nowadays it seemed to take in more than Almondine could possibly express, and it gave her a sad, pensive look.

Trudy closed the bedroom door behind her. She dragged a twist of linen across her shoulders and lay back. Someone was coming. Page? No, Claude. There’d been a dogfight. She’d tried to get Edgar to explain as he maneuvered her back to the house, but he’d said he would explain later, and she lacked the strength to argue. More and more, he was his father’s son, so certain he was right.

In the morning she would call Doctor Frost and tell him the antibiotics weren’t working.

There was a chance he would want to send her to the hospital.

Perhaps she’d give it one more day.

CLAUDE ARRIVED IN A SNOUTY, mean-looking car with the letters SS overhanging the front grill. Impala, said the insignia on the blue scoop of its front fender. It was a twenty-minute drive from Mellen, and unless Claude had been ready to key the ignition the moment his mother called, Edgar thought, he’d driven very fast. Claude brought the car to a halt near the barn, where Edgar stood waiting.

“Your mom said there was fight?” Claude asked. The odor of beer and cigarettes clung to him like a halo.

Edgar handed across the note he had written in advance.

Epi is behind the barn. I can’t get near her.

“Where is she hurt?”

He ran his finger along his eyebrow.

Claude cupped his hands in front of his mouth and shivered and looked up at the night sky. His breath whitened in the air. He walked past Edgar and into the barn. In the medicine room he rifled the cabinets. When he was finished, he turned back empty-handed.

“Is there still Prestone in the milk house?” he asked.

Edgar looked at him.

“You know, starter fluid. We used it in the tractor last fall. There was almost a full can back then. Go see how much is left.”

Edgar ran to the milk house and pulled the chain on the ceiling bulb. He surveyed the tangle of rakes, shovels, and hoes tilting in the corner. Rototiller. Lawn mower. Chainsaw. He spotted a red-and-yellow aerosol near a row of oil cans on a shelf, grabbed it, and ducked out. Claude met him by the barn door with a collar and a training lead tucked under his arm, and a large plastic bag into which he was putting a rag from the medicine room, neatly folded into a square pad. Edgar handed over the Prestone.

“How much we got?” Claude shook the can. He clamped the bag around his wrist and pressed the nozzle against the rag. The bag puffed out with fog. “Ninety-nine percent ether,” he said. He looked suddenly concerned. “You aren’t smoking, are you?”

Edgar shook his head before he understood Claude wasn’t serious.

“Good thing, too,” he said. “Otherwise, there’d be a big flash and you’d be able to tell all your friends about your uncle Claude, the Human Torch.”

When the hiss from the aerosol tapered off, Claude extracted his hand and held the bag up. The saturated rag slid greasily inside. He waved the arrangement under Edgar’s nose. A sweet tang like sugar and gasoline swept through his sinuses. It made the hairs at the back of his neck crawl upright.

“At least it’s cold tonight,” Claude said, taking a cursory whiff of his own. “In the summer this would already be half gone. You might want to keep upwind anyway. This isn’t exactly airtight.”

Then Edgar led Claude behind the barn, quarter lit at best by the occluded yard light and the gooseneck lamp over the kennel doors. Epi heard them coming and backed up defensively until she stood in front of an unused old dog house near the silo. Drops of blood stained the snow around her.

“If we both come up she’ll run,” Claude said. He was carefully looking at a point on the ground a few feet in front of him. “Go around the other side of the silo.”