Into the Dark

My father and I exited the back of the house and headed out across the field to kill the only thing that I had ever loved.

That morning had been chilly and now with the sun covered up by clouds, the cold had turned bitter and biting. The sky was gray, shot through with streaks of pale green the way it got just before a big storm was about to hit. It hadn't started yet, but when it came it would drop the temperature even further, the wind howling and whipping the window shutters and lightning scorching the tops of the trees leaving them with shattered branches, the remnants scattered at their roots looking like amputees gaping down at their lost limbs.

I knew Milo was sick and needed an operation that we couldn't afford. I understood this, but couldn't bring myself to accept it. When I looked into his eyes all I saw there was love. That love should have made me want to end his suffering, but instead I held on tighter, because after he was gone it would just be me and my father alone in the house, the two of us silently skirting around each other like ghosts.

It wasn’t that my father didn’t care for me. He had never raised his hand in anger, and I had never gone to bed cold or hungry, but he kept a large part of himself locked away from me and from everyone else. I don’t know if he had always been this way or only became so after my mother died. Sometimes it felt as though he didn’t know quite what to make of me—instances where he seemed utterly at a loss, like the time as a small child when I had bawled for hours over the loss of a plastic, toy horse. He stared at me like I was some strange creature he couldn’t comprehend. Eventually he left me there to cry myself to sleep. Some might consider his actions cruel, but I think he was simply confused and unable to cope with situations that would have fallen to my mother had she not vanished from my life before I even knew I was in the world.

Milo had been my father’s solution to the problem. The day he brought the black and brown puppy home was the happiest of my life. I suppose most would argue that a dog, no matter how affectionate, was no substitute for a mother’s love, but to me Milo was the world. He would walk with me in the morning along the dirt path that lead out from the front of our property and met up with the paved road where I waited for the bus. In the afternoon he would be sitting on the front porch when I got home from school and would come bounding across the lawn to meet me. We grew up together, and in a lot of ways I thought of him more as my brother than my pet.

He was still bigger than me, even with all the weight he’d lost from the cancer, and I heard my father grunt several times while carrying Milo in his arms as we made our way to the tree-line that marked the beginning of the forest that bordered our property.

This had been our favorite spot to play. The field behind the house was for planting and therefore off limits, so Milo and I spent all our time wandering around the woods with me skulking through the trees pretending to be a ranger while he chased squirrels and rabbits and gophers and once a very agitated skunk that made him stink for weeks afterward.

We had seen so many things there.

A family of deer drinking from a pool, the parents flanking either side of their fawn that was barely half the size of Milo and still shaky on its new legs. A black bear trudging through the stream snatching fish out of the water like they were standing still. Wolves howling in the distance and Milo howling back like he wanted to join them.

There were also those simple, everyday occurrences. The sweet perfume of flowers in the springtime and the earthy aroma of dead leaves in the fall. The satisfying crunch of snow and ice underneath our feet in winter. The summer sun streaming in through the branches casting angular patterns of shadow on the ground.

These were moments that wouldn’t have been the same if Milo hadn’t been there at my side to witness them with me.

When we reached a small clearing circled by a ring of birch trees, my father stopped and set Milo on the ground.

“This is a good spot,” my father said. “You’ll have no trouble finding him here to visit after we put in a marker.”

I nodded, not sure of what to say. I knelt down and nestled my hand in Milo’s fur; he lifted his head a little and looked at me.

“He’s your dog. You ought to be the one to do it,” my father said as he unslung the .22 rifle from his shoulder and held it out to me.

This was the way of things for my father. Something he understood better than crying toddlers. It had been his daddy’s way, and his daddy’s daddy before that.

I shook my head at him. “I can’t.”

My father put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry it has to be this way. I wish there was something more we could have done, but it isn’t right to let him suffer.”

“I know....” I said, choking back a sob that caused my whole chest to hitch forward.

“Say your goodbyes and give him some peace, son.”

I nodded again and took the rifle from him.

My father stood there for a moment like he was about to say something else, but instead turned and headed towards the house without looking back.

I laid the gun down next to me in the grass and stroked the top of Milo’s head. He was staring up at me again, gazing straight into my eyes with that love that made me want to hold onto him as tightly as I could and melt into the ground so that we would always be together.

The first drops of rain began to fall.

I put my arms around Milo and pointed my face towards the sky waiting for the storm to come...waiting for the rain to turn the earth to mud, and swallow us both up forever.

Written by: Peter Naughton

Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

Some Farm

When the woman came to paint the farm, I didn’t know what to say, so I asked her if she would like to come in.

She wore a white, crocheted shawl about her shoulders and a colorful bandana in her hair. She had light eyes, blue or green, and a green sweater over a pale pink dress. It was a warm day for early April in Hoosick, the day after Easter, and she arrived as pleasantly and unexpectedly as the warm day had.

“I looked out my window and saw your farm, and I have canvas and acrylics in the car. Would you mind if I set up across the road and try to paint the property?”

I hesitated, at first not understanding what she was asking. I looked past her to the blue Volvo station wagon, where a crystal dangling from the rearview mirror winked back at me. She must have mistaken my pause for reluctance because in my silence she said, “There’s a strip of dead land between your crops that runs along your farm, and from the road it looks like a river.”

“The land’s not dead,” I said. “That’s just where we cut the corn.”

“It’s one of the loveliest, most unexpected sights I’ve ever seen,” she said.

“You’re welcome to paint it. Is there anything I can get for you?”

“I’d love a piece of charcoal, actually,” she said. “If you have it. And some water, if you’d be so kind.”

“You’ll want a chair to sit in, I imagine,” I said. I went to the deck and put a couple of pieces of charcoal into a brown paper bag and got a hard-backed chair from the office. I went to the kitchen and filled a jar with water. She waited in the doorway.

“Would you care to come in a moment? I’m just about to have breakfast if you’re hungry.” She came in and said no thank you. I offered her a glass of water.

“Just for the paints,” she said. I gave the jar to her, and she thanked me.

“Restroom’s first door on your right here, just come on in any time you need to.” I brought the chair out to her car.

“Oh,” she said. “Would you mind if I left my car here?”

“Not at all,” I said. “You want me to drive you over?”

She turned to look at the world behind us.

“You’re very kind, but I’d like the walk. I’ll bring the chair across the road myself,” she said.

“Let me help,” I said. I rarely walked to the road any more. I was almost always in the truck.

“Thank you. I don’t mean to put you out,” she said.

We went on down the drive, a two-person caravan. She didn’t have to stop once to adjust the way she carried her canvas, acrylics, cups, water and brushes. She had perfectly balanced all of it, or she was supernaturally determined not to waste a minute of sunlight, or both. I set the chair down across the road, ending our procession where the Wilsons’ trash bins usually waited for collection.

“Cars come by awful fast, you know,” I said. She smiled as if to respond, Not much we can do about that, can we? She sat down in the chair.

“Perfect,” she said. We were both a little short of breath. She put the canvas in her lap and supplies by her feet. We looked at the land. I think I saw what she meant by the land looking like a river, though I can’t say for sure. “This quality of light is just beautiful,” she said. It was. Looking at the farm from where she sat, the barns stood both out of and a part of the land. It would make for a fine painting, I thought.

“It’s funny. You saying the land between crops looks like a river. From here you can’t see it over the corn, but there’s a real creek, you know. We passed it coming up the drive.”

“Yes,” she said politely but without much interest. It occurred to me that she didn’t plan to paint the land, but the land as she saw it. She had taken one of the lumps of charcoal from the bag and began streaking it across the canvas, looking alternately between the canvas and the land, creating something that was neither.

“If you need anything, just start to walk back. I’ll drive out to meet you.”

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you so much. This is just wonderful. Please, enjoy your breakfast.” She was trying, it seemed, to look meaningfully at me when she thanked me, trying to make sure I understood her gratitude, but the scene had hypnotized her. I reckoned there wasn’t any form of gratitude more evident than her intense pursuit of the work before her.

“All right now. I’ll keep an eye out,” I told her. She hummed in response. As I crossed the road, walked down the drive, past the creek, and up to the house, I felt something like an usher at the movie theaters walking in front of the screen. Down in front, I imagined the woman thinking, wanting popcorn to throw at me. As I walked to the porch, I became acutely aware that I was somehow between and a part of the landscape and the woman’s rendering of it.

After a few hours on the tractor, I walked back up the drive with some water.

“For the painter.” I said. She laughed.

“Thank you. My paints aren’t thirsty yet, but I am,” she set down the nub of coal and canvas and stood, accepting the jar with blackened hands. She stepped away, drinking and looking. “My, what a day,” she said. The canvas was charcoal all over, rough smears and delicate, grainy shading, thumb-smudged adjustments. It looked unlike any farm I had ever seen.

Story and Photograph by: Matt Briggs