Claude opened the plastic bag. Fumes wavered toward the ground. He pitched the soaked rag far back into the doghouse and quickly turned and sealed the door with his jacketed back.

“Wait,” he said to Edgar. He’d stopped the patter and all was quiet. Inside the dog house there was a panicky clomping as Epi positioned herself between the rags and the door. Claude sat looking downfield. A long time passed. Finally, he rose and stepped back.

“Come on, girl,” he said. “Come on out.”

Epi’s muzzle appeared. She blinked and stepped into the night. She tottered and growled uncertainly. Claude closed the distance between them in two quick steps and cuffed her under the chin with his left hand and stepped back. Her jaws snapped shut hollowly.

“None of that,” he said.

In her confusion-compounded by the night’s events and the ether fumes and now this lightning strike from Claude-Epi let her topline soften and her tail uncurl. For a moment all defiance left her, as if she were letting herself be taken down finally and forever in some fight that still carried on in her mind. Then Claude’s arm was looped over her back, his hand against her belly. She flashed her muzzle back at him in surprise, but he already had the needle between her shoulder blades, talking again, low and quiet, and he stayed there even after he’d tossed the syringe away, stroking her and waiting.

“Okay, honey,” he said. “Edgar, keep still. If you spook her, I’m the one she’ll bite. Time to lie down and rest, sweetie. Been a long night. Such a good girl.”

He ran his hand down Epi’s back. She sagged and folded herself against the ground and a shudder passed through her.

“Bring that lead over,” Claude said. “Slow.”

Then: “Put it on her.”

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s find out what we’ve got here.” Claude knelt and slipped one arm under Epi’s brisket and the other under her flanks and she came up in his arms, the whites of her eyes showing and her body lax. They rounded the silo and Claude waited under the metal-hooded flood lamp while Edgar fumbled with the door latch.

“There’s a bag in the car,” Claude said, walking into the kennel. “Front seat. Go get it.”

Claude was in the medicine room when Edgar returned. Epi lay stretched out on the examination table, limp but awake, keening feebly as Claude shaved the side of her face with the electric clippers. He stopped periodically to pour antiseptic over the pink skin he’d exposed, flushing loose hairs from her wound. Beneath the velvet fur her skin was freckled. The brown liquid streamed down the fur of her neck and puddled on the table.

Edgar set the weathered satchel he carried near the wall. The initials PP were embossed along its top, the curves and arches of the letters abraded over time into a pale felt. Claude lay the clippers aside and rummaged through the bag, producing black suture thread and a needle, both of which he doused with antiseptic. The wound was smaller than Edgar expected, opening just below Epi’s eye and ending near the corner of her mouth. Whenever Claude applied pressure, blood seeped from the ragged edges of the laceration and the sight made yellow rings jitter at the edge of Edgar’s vision.

You made this happen, he thought. Stop it. Pay attention.

He clenched his hands until they ached, and watched. Twice, Claude dropped the needle into Epi’s fur while placing stitches. He cursed under his breath and re-rinsed it with antiseptic.

“Is there another dog hurt?”

Edgar nodded.

“Look in that bag for a bottle of pills marked ‘Valium.’”

The bag sat jawed open on the floor. Edgar pulled out bottles and examined them then turned and held one out for Claude to see.

“That’s the one. Give it two of those and wait for me.”

Claude returned to his suturing. Edgar shook out the pills and walked to Finch’s pen. The dog met him, hobbling gamely on three legs. By the time Claude carried Epi out of the medicine room and settled her in her pen, with her head cushioned by a pair of towels, Finch had relaxed into sleep.

The stitches in Epi’s face were neat and black and even. Edgar counted twelve, top to bottom. Claude had smeared a glistening salve over the wound. Edgar dipped three fingers into the water dish and let the drops fall on Epi’s tongue and listened to the pop and hum of the clippers. By the time Claude carried Finch out, Epi had come awake enough to lift her head and watch. She tried to climb to her feet, but Edgar ran his hand along her back and guided her down again.

Courtship

I N THE HOUSE, CLAUDE WALKED ACROSS THE KITCHEN AND knocked at the closed bedroom door, coat bunched in his hand. Edgar knelt and stroked Almondine’s muzzle.

What happened tonight? he signed. Why couldn’t you stand?

She dug her nose along his arm and legs, scenting him to divine what had happened after he left the house. Her eyes were bright. She searched his face. When he was satisfied she was okay, he stood and walked to the bedroom door, where Claude was still waiting.

“Trudy?” Claude said, knocking a second time.

The door swung back. Edgar’s mother stood there holding the jamb for balance. Her hair was matted with sweat, her eyes set in hollowed circles above chalk-white cheekbones. Claude drew a quick breath at the sight of her.

“Christ, Trudy,” he said. “You need a doctor.”

She turned and sat on the bed. She looked past Claude as if his presence hadn’t registered.

“Edgar?” she said. “Is Epi okay? What time is it?”

Before Edgar could sign an answer, Claude said, “She had a cut near her eye, but it wasn’t deep. Finch is going to be limping for a few days, that’s all. They looked worse than they actually were.”

Edgar’s mother nodded.

“Thank you, Gar. You’re right, I don’t think these antibiotics are working,” she said. “Could you drive me to see Doctor Frost?”

They stood in silence for a moment. At first Trudy didn’t recognize her mistake but Claude’s posture straightened as if he’d laid a hand on some low-voltage wire. Something like embarrassment and fear and another feeling he couldn’t name made Edgar’s face flush.

“Yes,” Claude said. “I can do that.”

Trudy passed her hand in front of her face as if clearing cobwebs.

“Claude, I mean,” she said. “Claude. I’m going to lie back down. Wake me at eight, would you? Then I’ll call and make an appointment.”

“Not a chance,” Claude said. “We’re going now.”

“But he won’t even be in his office for another hour and a half.”

“He will be after I call him,” Claude said.

She insisted Edgar stay behind, that he not get near her. Reluctantly, he agreed to stay and watch Epi and Finch and Almondine. Claude backed his car up the driveway and headed toward town with Edgar’s mother huddled against the passenger-side door.

Edgar dragged himself through morning chores, lining the pens with the straw bales he’d slept on before the fight. He checked on the pups in the whelping room and weighed them for the log sheets and sat in the straw in the corner of their pen and dozed. The pups mustered the courage to mount an attack. He brushed them aside, but they charged again, biting his fingers and shoes and the belt loops on his jeans, and then he pushed himself up and went to Epi’s pen.

LATER, HE WOULD BLAME himself for not seeing what would happen, as if he could have prevented it, but during the weeks that followed, his preoccupation was above all with his mother’s health and the mending of the injured dogs. He cleansed and salved Epi’s sutures every morning, and held warm compresses in place until they had cooled in his hands, leaving for school with his fingers stained brown from antiseptic. Her fur began to grow in, but she was distrustful and skittish. Finch’s leg healed quickly. Most important of all, Almondine’s spell in the kennel was not repeated.