At dawn the sun is staining pulled-taffy clouds various shades of purple and orange and Doreen sits by the aluminum deer stand like Bobby told her to. There’s a skinny white dog at her side. Doreen does not see Bobby at first because of the angle of his approach but when the dog barks and wags its ass she stands and smiles. Bobby walks over to her and she puts his face in her hands. They kiss hard and her tongue is in his mouth when she starts to cry.

The dog sits. Doreen pulls herself together.

I brought this for you, she says.

Bobby looks at the dog.

To keep you company, she says. On the run.

Oh right.

It’s from Malek’s, she says.

Malek is the dogcatcher. He shoots them after ten days and the crazies even sooner.

Bobby puts his hand down to the dog and she sniffs at his fingers and palms.

My grandma rescued it, Doreen says.

What I’m gone to do with a fucking dog, Bobby says.

Give it a name for one thing, she says.

Is it one of those crazy fuckers, Bobby says.

Why would that trouble you, she says.

I don’t need no more crazy.

Running like you done wrong, she says. That’s what’s crazy.

Right.

Ought not pay for your father’s sins.

That’s what you say.

Just cause he got Junctioned again.

This time that fag judge will stick me somewhere, too.

You don’t know that, she says. You’re not like them others.

What others.

Your father and uncle and them.

Shit girl, he says. I’m exactly fucking like that.

Doreen turns her head violently as though she’s been slapped when he makes that claim.

Folks say Thaddeus rescued you, she says.

Bobby laughs.

That’s one way to look at it, he says.

You got a place.

We had a place.

She looks surprised and then disappointed.

I thought your uncle had a girl or something, she says. With a place.

That didn’t work out. He aint really the girlfriend type.

Doreen and Bobby climb the wood ladder up to the elevated metal shack and the dog barks as they ascend. The door hangs on a single hinge and Bobby pulls it aside with one hand and knocks down cobwebs with the other. She follows him inside. It’s just a dusty old mattress in there and they sit on it and she makes a face and sneezes. She has healed up nicely from the attack; he tells her again the details of how he settled things with those boys that had done her like that. It’s clear that he gets more from the telling than she does from being told. Then they lie back and touch each other until she feels better, but he can tell her parts are still tender.

The dog is barking like crazy down below.

How long we goin to do this, she says.

I’m almost done.

She laughs, says, I don’t mean this right now.

Bobby knows what she means. He doesn’t say anything for a little while and she goes back to work on him. Then he’s finished and she kisses him fast on his mouth until he pulls away. He closes his eyes. It’s a rare moment of comfort that he’d like to stretch out for a while.

So, she says.

Fuck, he says. So what.

Can’t just hide in the woods like some hermit.

All right then.

Not with that wildfire.

Right.

Hot embers everyfuckingwhere.

I know, he says. I seen them.

My daddy says it’s like Dark Days.

Shit, he says. That was a long time ago.

The hills are burning, she says.

It’s a bad world, he says. I’ve told you that.

That’s what I’m saying.

I mean crossing the street can be dangerous.

Whatever, she says. Got half a mind to bring Westy next time.

Bobby throws her a look and she knows she has crossed a line.

He pushes her off his lap and stands and fixes his pants and belt.

That’s a fucked up thing to say, he says. Take it back.

I take it back, she says. I truly do.

She reaches up and gets hold of Bobby’s hips.

I said I didn’t mean it, she says. Please, Bobby.

You can’t even play like that, he says. Or we’re through.

Don’t ever we’re through, she says.

She cries. It seems to Bobby like she is always crying about one thing or another. She stands up, too, and he gets her to calm down a little bit, but she is shaking now like some kid.

She snaps her pink bra and tugs her T-shirt down over it.

Jesus fucking Christ, he thinks. Maybe my uncle is right about females.

Come on now, Bobby says. Stop it.

I’m sorry.

Don’t be sorry, he says. You just can’t do like you said.

I know.

This here is some shit, he says. Some real shit.

I know it.

All right then.

But the damage is already done. Bobby sees trust as a length of firewood and when Doreen threatened to bring the local police, well, it was like she chopped off a piece of it with an axe. She doesn’t say anything else and they hold each other for a while, but he has to get back so that his uncle doesn’t get suspicious. There is a cow behind an electric fence switching its coarse black tail at fat black flies. He watches the bovine over the top of Doreen’s head until she speaks.

Well, she says. Maybe I can run with you.

Bobby laughs.

He can picture how that would sit with his uncle.

Bobby rests his chin on her scalp and softly exhales at the flakes of dead skin in the dark roots of Doreen’s dyed-blonde hair where today she has parted it straight down the middle. Then he looks out the rectangular plastic window and in the near distance is a cool-eyed timber wolf already with its thick winter pelage. Gray brown and stiff-legged and tall; the word regal comes to mind. It’s looking back and forth between the cow and the barking dog with its ears erect and forward. Bobby watches it and he runs his fingers along the new scabs on Doreen’s arm where she has scratched his name into her flesh with a beer bottle cap so that everybody in the world can fucking see it.

+

Uncle Thaddeus boils river water in a metal can that is balanced on some rocks over an open fire. He sits on his haunches and watches it start to boil. He pokes at the flames with a stick. There is a frying pan off to the side so he can cook up the half dozen eggs they stole from Len Boulanger’s hen house by the apple orchard. He has not looked at Bobby for a long time and he will sure as shit not look at Doreen. She is next to Bobby wrapped in an old wool blanket. Then he pulls the sleeve of his flannel shirt down a little so it covers his hand and he takes the metal can from over the fire and rations out the boiling water into three chipped cups. Now you can smell the coffee. He rests the metal can in the dirt where Bobby had cleared it with some hemlock branches.

Come on now, Thaddeus says. Get you some.

Spitting into a pile of saw-logs he indicates Doreen with a backhand wave.

I won’t say much on the topic, he says. But I will say this.

Bobby and Doreen look at him.

She shouldn’t fucking be here, he says.

Doreen looks at Bobby and Bobby looks at the fire.

Not happy about the dog either, Uncle Thaddeus says.

The dog barks.

For the record, Thaddeus says.

Bobby kicks dirt at the fire with the steel toe of his boot.

But at least we could eat the mutt, Uncle Thaddeus says.

He doesn’t look up when he says it. Then he puts his cup to his mouth and rises and blows a little and takes a sip and closes his eyes while standing still. Bobby gets up, too, and walks over to get his and Doreen’s drinks. The cups are hot and he can feel it on his hands. Doreen pulls her sleeves down and holds hers like that and she closes her eyes and the steam floats up into her face. Bobby stands next to where she’s sitting and puts his hand in her hair.

This aint no life, Uncle Thaddeus says. For a pretty little thing.

He looks at her and then he looks at Bobby and Bobby looks at his coffee.

That’s all I got to say on the matter, Uncle Thaddeus says.

Then he turns to fixing the eggs.

Well, that and also she might’ve been followed, he says.

He looks straight at Bobby when he says it.

Which I warned you about, he says.

He puts the pan over the pit resting on the same two rocks he used before and after a minute he spits into it and when his saliva sizzles and snaps away he cracks the eggs two at a time into the pan and chucks the shells over his shoulder. He turns them with a stick and puts them over the flames until they thicken just enough and you can hear them pop yellow and white. Then he lifts the pan out and puts it in the dirt to cool—the damn dog sniffing at his legs the whole time. Uncle Thaddeus, Bobby and Doreen sit together and rest atop a carpet of leaves under a blue-lavender sky. They eat with their fingers and the dog whines and yips at Doreen.

Then it’s as though somebody turned out the lights.

Thaddeus looks up.

Fuck me, he says. We’re deep in it now.

Bobby follows his uncle’s upward gaze and Doreen does the same.

With tiny dappled shadows on their faces, they can see that the sun is being blocked by black ashes falling from heaven like the delicate feathers of a thousand buckshot birds.

+ + +

“Dark Days” is excerpted from Jon Boilard’s novel ms A River Closely Watched. Boilard was born and raised in Western New England. He has been living and writing in the San Francisco area since 1986. His stories have been published in literary journals in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Boilard has also won the Sean O’Faolain Award and several of his stories have earned individual small press honors. His website is here.