The summer sun is a gentle black-and-white fuzz at the end of my regularly scheduled programming. The cuts on my knees from Tuesday’s fall have healed and scarred into crusty mountain ranges a few shades darker than my quilted skin. I sit on the patio with a glass of tea and watch Godiva chase June bugs in the backyard. She’s all lean muscle, fur, and fang. A suburban nightmare of wolf and husky who found her way to me by chance, or fate if you hold to such ideas. I was in the city for my monthly trip to the farmer’s market. Used to be I’d go once a week, but these days I can hardly stomach it. It’s the smell. Even the market, for all its hippies and homeopaths, is ripe with the stench of the city. I was buying a few jars of honey when I saw a young man with too much beard and not enough brains trying to shoo her. Well, I marched over, took the poor girl by the scruff of the neck, and led her back to my truck. She jumped right in and that was that. 

I sip my tea and watch her run wild through Sarah Jane’s garden, throwing up carefully fertilized soil and knocking over painstakingly hand-crafted signs. Sarah Jane’s the kinda neighbor who used to tell me I’d regret not having kids, even though her own never visit. She spends most days on her knees in that garden, carefully tending to squash and okra like a botanical nun. Sometimes on Sundays, I attend communion with her. We break bread at the Modern Tea Room on Main before the holy sacraments. Together, we pray at the altars of Home Depot and Garden Town that the tomato moths will be manageable this year. Sarah Jane is nice enough. I invite her around for dinner every now and again, but she’s always too busy. The plain truth is I don’t know if she’s afeared of Godiva or my feminine wiles. Though, she claims she saw the dog kill a coyote once in the early hours when she was attending morning mass in the garden. 

“Shouldn’t have been in my yard.”

“It was in mine, it was,” she trilled. 

“Shouldn’t have been in yours, then.”

There’s a buzz in my head and a warmth in my body that’s disconnected from the summer eve and its heavy air. I can feel sleep creeping at the edges of my eyes. Godiva gives up her chase and comes to lay near my feet. I notice a limp in her step as I greet her, and she tucks her paw against her chest. 

“What is it girl?”

Just a light touch, but she pulls away. A cut from the garden, or a pulled muscle. But reason enough as any to see Kathy. I bend my knees and feel the grind of 72 years against my bones. She follows me inside, gently limping, and watches calmly from the kitchen floor as I grab my keys and search for my purse, only to remember I stopped carrying a purse decades ago. These days I keep my license tucked into the band of my truck’s visor. Allen’s always telling me off for it. 

“Ava, someone’s gonna steal it,” he said. 

“So what?”

“So what? They could steal your identity.”

“I’ve had my fill of it, honestly, they can have it if they wat it that bad.” 

Allen’s my cousin. Younger ‘en me by a bit. The golden child. Law degree, his own firm, and plenty of children and grandchildren. Eight kids with three different women — each one younger than the last – the women, that is. Kids too, I suppose, what with how that works. He comes to see me now and then. Always bringing me things I have no use for. Things that string invisible webs to the outside world. Don’t know what sorta sick thing would purposefully wander into a web – or what devours them once they’re caught. But it ain’t for me. 

I load Godiva into the truck, careful not to aggravate her injury. The sun’s all gone now, but there ain’t no starlight so I say a prayer for guidance. The truck coughs to life with a growling, choking bark of mechanical grievance. Godiva settles herself into the worn cloth of the passenger seat and together we drive toward the city. There’s a static on the radio, but different from the static of the evening. It’s angry, filled with a secret violence, so I cut it off and roll the windows down. Godiva sniffs the air as we pass a fence with fresh catfish heads strung along the barbed wire. She catches their scent and sings them an elegy.

Doctor Kathy’s house is the color of a water-stained page in an old paperback novel. Her lawn cut to the bone, more dirt than grass. It sits in a part of the city that once held wealth but’d gone to dust in the last few. I take Godiva out the truck by her scruff, she carries the injured paw against her body but doesn’t whine. There are four steps up to the wraparound porch and I worry she won’t make it. But of course, she clears them in a single stride and instead, I struggle with my bum knee on the third and almost fall. Kathy’s already at the door, a worried look on her face. 

“Ava, darling, what are you doing out this late?” 

“She done hurt herself, and you know I can’t take her to Billy, he hates her, says it’s unnatural for a person to own something so wild.” 

“Billy get his panties in a knot about anything bigger than a poodle. Y’all get on in out the heat.”

She brings us inside, sits me down in a chair, her warm hand on mine for a moment, and puts Godiva over on her side against the living room floor like she’s nothing. 

“I saw that new wife of your cousin’s last week at the market,” she says, applying pressure to each of Godiva’s paws in turn.

“Sometimes I just want to haul off and wrap a stick around that boy’s head, the way he treats women, you know Gale’d be disgusted,” I say.

Kathy nods her approval, and Godiva growls under her breath as her injured paw is prodded.

“Well, it’s not broken.”

“She’ll be okay?”

“She’s a tough girl, like her mama, should be back on it by tomorrow. If she’s not, just phone me and I’ll get her in with Doctor Scott in Ardmore—don’t worry, he’ll have no trouble with her.” 

She disappears into the kitchen and comes back with two cold beers and a fat bone. We leave the dog to gnaw happily on the floor and retire to the front porch swing together. A high and steady Oklahoma wind plays a nocturne on Kathy’s chimes, and we sit in silence, sipping our beers.

“Such a quiet neighborhood,” I say, not looking at the neighborhood at all.

“The only trouble is the damn Porter kids, they’ve been setting off fireworks every weekend since the 4th. I’ve had half a mind to chase them off with a shotgun when they get out there in them empty lots, I mean, they’re liable to start a fire. But you know Brenda, she’d go straight to the sheriff and claim I was threatening her kids. It’d be a whole ordeal.” 

“Sounds like Brenda,” I say, and we fall into the quiet static of the chimes, and I can feel the warmth of her eyes on me, picking at my skin.

“Oh shoot. Have I shown you this yet?” She hands me her keyring and points to a little plastic square hanging from it, a stick figure woman surrounded by different stick figure animals and little red hearts.

“Julie did it, for Grandparent’s Day, talented little girl. Don’t know where she gets it. Certainly not her daddy.” 

The wind sinks low and the chimes go quiet. The night is still and my beer begins to sweat. My hand is sticky and wet from it. Godiva paws at the door, so I sit the beer on the porch and thank her before springing the dog who makes for the truck like an arrow. Kathy hugs me and our cheeks are together for a quiet eternity. But she says nothing. And nothing is all we’ve ever said. Godiva jumps in the truck and licks the backs of my hands as we pull away. I say no prayer this time. The wind has blown away the clouds, and the stars have rejoined the sky.