This Fleshy Side of the Bone - Reactor

While mourning the sudden death of his family’s first dog, a college student recounts the tale of a harrowing encounter he and his dog had several years earlier.

Novelette | 15,740 words

Because he was the only one who was actually twenty-one and not just the holder of a fake ID, Lawrence was in charge of buying the alcohol. Dave had handed him a hundred and ten dollars in tens and twenties and instructed him to choose something good, something special. Piper, the oldest of his family’s dogs, had died early that morning after a sudden, short illness which had dropped his ninety-pound bulk to the living room floor and left him there legs twitching, chest heaving. Dave’s dad had called him with the news at lunch and had met his son’s request to wait on Piper’s burial until he could drive up the following day by informing him that the sad task was already done, Piper’s great, still form interred under the peach tree behind the garage, heavy stones fetched from the woods nearby to build a cairn befitting the family’s first dog. Unable to assist in that ritual, Dave had invited Lawrence to join him in another, a wake, to which his band- and classmate had agreed immediately. A mix of Dave’s roommates and friends would likely be present, as would his girlfriend, Sam. There was alcohol discreetly stored at the backs of the cupboards and closets in Dave’s college apartment, an eclectic mix of flavored vodkas, Jack Daniel’s, and the remnants of a dozen different six-packs. For this, though, for Piper, Dave said, a proper bottle was required, preferably a decent single malt. Lawrence didn’t know from scotch, his drink of choice being tequila, so Dave gave him a few names to watch out for, one of which, Auchentoshan, he recognized on the label of a bottle on the shelves of Veres Wine and Spirits, his liquor store of choice. Marco, the tall Serbian guy who ran the cash register during the afternoon, lifted his dense eyebrows when Lawrence placed the scotch on the counter.

“Oho,” he said in his deep voice, “this is something new. With you, usually it is Jose Cuervo, right?”

“Right,” Lawrence said. “This is for a friend.”

“What is the occasion?” Marco said. “Happy or sad?”

“Sad,” Lawrence said. “His dog died, and he wants to drink a toast to him.”

An expression of profound sorrow made Marco’s eyes widen deep in their caverns, the corners of his mouth drop. “That is sad news,” he said. “A good dog is…” He waved a large hand as if trying to snatch the remainder of the sentence from the air. “Your friend had his dog for a long time?”

“I think?” Lawrence said. “Ten, twelve years, something like that. I know he was a big dog, a labradoodle. He had three legs, lost one of them to cancer a few years back. The right one, on the front.”

“Cancer,” Marco said. He shook his blocky head. “Then your friend already had extra time with his dog.”

“Yeah, I guess he did,” Lawrence said. “All the same, it was his first dog.”

“I understand,” Marco said. “I remember my family’s first dog. Maximus. I loved him. He was very small, a dachshund. Like Leo. You don’t know about Leo, do you? In Pančevo?”

“No.”

“Of course not,” Marco said. “Why would you? In this town, Pančevo, a kid, a girl who was roller-skating in the street, was attacked by a dog. Out of nowhere, this big dog, a mastiff. It runs at her, knocks her down, and starts biting her. Mauling her. This is a dog with strong jaws, sharp teeth. All the girl can do is scream. Leo’s owner comes out of her house to see what all the noise is about. She brings Leo with her. Right away, when he sees what is happening, Leo pulls the leash out of his owner’s hand and runs to help. He clamps—clamps? Yes, clamps his teeth on the mastiff’s leg. It is how dogs fight, you know. The mastiff leaves the girl and attacks Leo. Leo does not run away. There is a terrible fight. Ferocious. Leo is very badly injured. But the girl is saved. I do not know what happens to the mastiff. Leo’s owner takes him to the animal doctor. The doctor says this dog is too hurt. It would be better to put him to sleep. The owner refuses. Leo goes to Belgrade, to the best animal hospital in Serbia. The doctors do their best, but after a couple of days, Leo dies. The people in Pančevo, they recognize what a heroic dog this was. A little dog, and he saved a girl’s life. They raise money and put up a monument to Leo.

“It is ironic. A little dog, you give him a name like Leo because it is funny—cute, yeah? Like, ‘Oh, look at this fierce lion.’ Then, the dog shows you he really is a lion.” Marco wiped his right eye with the back of his hand. “Tell your friend he has my sympathy.”

“I will,” Lawrence said, unexpectedly moved by the man’s emotion. It remained with him through the remainder of the afternoon into the evening, when he parked his Sentra in front of the junior dorms and headed first up the walkway and then up the stairs to Dave’s apartment. The sun was dissolving into a crimson smear over the tops of the trees surrounding the dorms. Dave answered his knock right away. His friend looked pale, his eyes watery. His “Hey” was weighted with grief.

“Hey,” Lawrence said, passing him the bottle in its brown paper bag and adding, “The guy at the liquor store sends his condolences.” He had the momentary sensation he was handing over Marco’s sentiments together with the alcohol.

Dave stared at him, head cocked to the side as if uncertain how exactly to receive this information.

“Marco,” Lawrence said. “He’s like, the owner’s cousin or something. He asked me what I was buying the scotch for. I said it was so my friend could drink to the memory of his dog. Marco was very moved by this. He asked me to convey his sympathies.”

“Okay,” Dave said, and turned back into the apartment. Past the kitchen’s breakfast bar, the living room’s mix of short couch, easy chair, beanbag chairs, assorted throw pillows, and a pair of shaky-looking folding chairs were occupied by Dave’s combined roommates, class-/bandmates, and girlfriend. Lawrence, it appeared, was the last to arrive. He high-stepped his way across the crowded space to the last available throw pillow, between Marcie, the bassist in Dave’s band, and Tucker, one of Dave’s roommates, a short guy with long dreads who Lawrence thought was some kind of visual artist, maybe a printmaker. He removed his leather coat, dropped it on the pillow, and sat. Already, night was pressing on the living room’s big windows.

Marcie’s curly hair was tied back with a black-and-red scarf, and she had swapped out her contacts for a pair of large glasses with black plastic frames. A mostly full bottle of Heineken dangled by the neck from her right hand. “Hey,” she said in the raspy voice that sounded as if it had emerged from endless cartons of cheap cigarettes, though the most Lawrence had seen her inhale was a hit from a friend’s vape at another, happier gathering.

“Hey,” Lawrence said.

“What’s up,” Tucker said.

“Just this,” Lawrence said.

“Yeah,” Tucker said. “Sad times, man. You ever have a dog die on you?”

“No.” Lawrence shook his head. “Growing up, the only pet we had was my sister’s turtle. Baxter the box turtle. Far as I know, he’s still going strong.”

“Turtle’ll live forever,” Tucker said.

“This one’s doing okay,” Lawrence said.

“Not like a dog,” Tucker said. “Dog’ll break your heart.”

“A cat will, too,” Marcie said.

“I guess,” Tucker said. “I never had any cats, just dogs. My grandmother was a cat person. Had these two cats, Pitty-Sing and the Misfit. Named them after characters in a story she taught. She was a teacher, high school English. The cats were siblings. Tortoiseshells. They liked Grandma, and she loved them, but every time I came over, they ran off and hid.”

“Cats can be like that,” Marcie said. “My aunt had a cat I never saw, like ever. For a while, I was convinced she made him up.”

“Not like that with a dog,” Tucker said. “Dog always lets you know they’re there.”

From the kitchen, Lawrence heard the choonk of a stopper departing a bottle. On that side of the living room, one of the roommates leaned back on his beanbag to accept a stack of plastic cups from Dave. The roommate slid one off the end, then passed the rest to the person sitting beside him, and so on, until everyone was in possession of an empty cup. Dave stepped into the room, the open bottle of Auchentoshan in one hand, a measuring cup of water in the other. Into an out-held cup, he poured two fingers of honey-colored liquor, to which he added a splash of water. As he circled the room, conversations dampened, until by the time he was serving Lawrence, anyone who was speaking was doing so in low tones appropriate to a church. Dave exited the living room to trade scotch and water for his own plastic cup, and when he reentered took the seat Sam was saving for him on the couch, folding his long legs and arms up to squeeze in beside her. She leaned her head against his chest, and he tilted his cheek against her brown hair.

With the exception of Dave, everyone here was dressed in black, black shirts and black, or at least dark blue, jeans. Dave wore a red-and-black flannel shirt, its unbuttoned sleeves rolled up, faded and worn jeans, and old black Chuck Taylors. It appeared he was leaning into his image as the country boy come from the wilds of upstate New York to study music amid the urban sprawl of White Plains. Lawrence knew, as did the rest of the gathering, that Dave’s mom was a professor at SUNY Huguenot, an hour and a half north on the Hudson, and his dad was some kind of writer, while Dave himself had attended a small progressive school in Wiltwyck and espoused politics that fit the same left end of the spectrum as his friends’ (as just about everyone on campus, really).

All the same, Dave, the rhythm guitarist and lead singer of their band (The Frosty Bottles), was a fisherman, a dedicated one, who took the occasional day to drive up the Catskills and spend the daylight hours waist deep in a mountain stream, an eight-foot bamboo rod in hand. Every bit the equal of his passion for music, Dave’s devotion to fishing was a part of his friend that Lawrence found opaque. He sometimes wondered if the distance he felt owed itself to having grown up in Manhattan, where the Hudson and East Rivers seemed to serve principally as backdrops for the buildings past which they were glimpsed.

Sam lifted her head from Dave, who leaned forward, cup in his outstretched right hand. “For Piper,” he said. “He was the best dog.”

About half the room murmured, “For Piper,” as they raised their drinks; the rest bowed their heads briefly. Lawrence brought his cup to his lips. The strong taste of the whiskey—earth and vanilla—heated his mouth and burned a line of fire down his throat. His eyes moistened, and he coughed.

“Okay?” Marcie said.

“Fine,” Lawrence said, voice raspy.

“That is the stuff,” Tucker said.

“Piper was the first dog my family had,” Dave said, bringing the room to quiet once again. “He was a labradoodle, because we were concerned about my dad being allergic to dogs. We got him the year my parents bought our house. Before that, we were renting a place which had a strict no-pets rule. We broke it to adopt a couple of kittens, but cats are easier to hide than a dog. Once we settled in the new house, my mom realized there was nothing to keep us from owning a dog if we wanted one. That was the way she put it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she had the thought as soon as she and Dad decided to call the real estate agent. Like I said, we were worried about Dad’s allergies, so we started looking for hypoallergenic dogs. Dad thought a Portuguese water dog sounded cool, which I guess it did, but they were impossible to find on any of the pet-rescue sites we looked at. We didn’t want to use a breeder: we all agreed, we wanted a shelter dog. Mom located a few labradoodles, but by the time she spoke to someone at whatever location it was, the dog had already been adopted. It became a kind of game, shuffling through the different rescue sites throughout the day, looking for labradoodles within a reasonable driving distance. When Mom came across one at the animal shelter in Middletown, off we went.

“As a puppy, Piper was already big. He was twelve weeks old when the shelter person brought him out to meet us. Apparently, he and his brother had been for sale at one of the local pet stores until they grew too big for their cages and were dumped at the shelter. His brother had been adopted earlier the same week. My mom took one look at Piper with his awkward legs and curly black hair and that was that. On the drive home, she and I sat in the back seat with him. Every five minutes, it seemed like, Dad asked how he was doing. ‘Fine,’ Mom said, ‘fine.’

“Having a dog was an adjustment. The whole peeing and pooping in the house thing, I was not ready for. Or all the licking. Or jumping up on the couch when I was sitting on it. Or sitting down when we took him out for a walk and refusing to move. Don’t get me wrong, he was sweet, about as sweet a dog as I’ve ever met. But he was strange—he behaved in ways I didn’t always understand. Like a dog, I guess. Mom loved him, and the feeling was mutual. No matter how much he liked Dad and me, there was no doubt, she was his person. Someone told me standard poodles pick one person in the house to listen to, and this part of his pedigree was in full force with Piper. If Dad was about to take him out for the last walk of the night, Piper would look over at Mom, like he was checking with her. Frustrated Dad to no end. ‘So much for the voice of the father,’ he said. He said that a lot.

“This was because we added to our pack. At the most, there were five dogs running around the house. There’s a story for each of them, but five was maybe too much. No, it was definitely too much. We took in another cat, too, Heathcliff, who was the chillest cat imaginable. And I had anywhere between five and six fish tanks, including one that was a hundred and ten gallons.”

“Whoa,” Tucker said.

“Don’t forget the hermit crab,” Sam said.

“Kirby, yeah. I guess overdoing things runs in the family.”

“What about your dad?” Tucker said.

“Books,” Dave said. “His office is overflowing with books. So many, we moved a bunch of them to the garage, and there’s still too many.”

Lawrence, who with the other members of the band had rehearsed and recorded in the two-car garage the summer past, recalled the bookcases lining the walls, their shelves stacked two volumes deep, and nodded.

“To be fair,” Dave said, “one of the dogs was supposed to be for me. I was fishing by then, and my parents thought it would be good for me to have a dog to go with me. To keep me company, but also for protection. It’s like a picture from an old magazine, something Norman Rockwell would have painted: a boy holding his fishing rod, the line drooping to the bobber in the water, his loyal dog standing guard behind him.

“Mom took me fishing a lot of the time,” Dave said. “Sometimes, she brought Piper. The two of them would go for a walk while I tried to catch a smallmouth—a bass. I assume that’s how she came up with the idea of me having a dog. The problem was, that dog, Patches was young and energetic and had zero interest in sitting quietly beside me. Not to mention, she was my mom’s dog, too. They all were, all the animals. We used to call her Queen Mim, from a time I mispronounced ‘Mom’ when I was little.

“The point is, none of the dogs was much good for coming fishing with me. I didn’t mind. I appreciated them for what they meant to Mom—Queen Mim—but for me, dogs, especially five dogs running around you the moment you walked in the house, was kind of a lot. They weren’t big on personal space, and they couldn’t stop licking you. I went fishing with no dogs, and that was fine. I enjoyed the quiet.

“And then, a few years ago, things changed. Although Piper was never bad, he mellowed out. He was happy to lie on the living room floor while my dad and I watched The Amazing World of Gumball or Avatar: The Last Airbender. Hewasn’t needy in the same way the other dogs were. He grew big—about ninety pounds. With his heavy coat, he felt the hot weather acutely. But man, did he love winter. There’s a steep hill behind my house. After a big snow, the whole neighborhood comes to sled there. Well, they used to, when all the kids were younger. Piper would wait at the top of the hill with us, and the moment we pushed off, he sprinted alongside us all the way to the bottom. Sometimes, at the very end, he would jump into the sled with us. Mom laughed so hard, like she’d never seen anything so funny. His face and fur would be crusted in snow, which somehow looked natural on him. My mom called him the laughing dog. It was true, he always seemed to be having a great time. Honestly, there were times we weren’t a hundred percent sure he was a labradoodle. We had these friends we knew through our karate school. Every six months, they threw a party at their family farm. There was a big potluck in their barn. You could fish in the pond behind the barn, and there was clay pigeon shooting in the field beyond that. These guys kept Irish wolfhounds, which were massive. I had no problem believing they could take down a wolf. The thing is, Piper looked exactly like them. (Except for his hair. Theirs was gray.) If you didn’t know Piper, you might have thought he was bred for something similar. One of my dad’s friends saw him out walking Piper and asked him if that was the dog he used for hunting werewolves.

“He wasn’t any kind of hunter, though. One time, Kirby the hermit crab escaped from his tank. Climbed down one of the stand’s legs and started crawling along the baseboard. I don’t know where he was going. If any of the other dogs had discovered him, he would have been a crunchy treat. Fortunately for Kirby, Piper was the one who found him, and he just sat there staring at this weird creature. In fact, that was how my mom realized Kirby wasn’t in his tank. She couldn’t figure out what Piper was so concerned with until she followed his line of sight. Kirby has no idea how much he owes that dog.

“Now when Mom took me fishing, Piper was content to stay near. He would sniff around the spot, pee, and settle down. Mom would sit next to him and read a book for class, or grade papers. I kept a slight distance from them. I was learning how to fly fish, which meant using a longer line than I was used to. Mom was afraid I would snag Piper with the hook. Which I almost did a couple of times at the beginning. As I improved—or maybe it was because I persisted—my parents bought me a pair of waders and wading boots. This let me fish in the water. I would move along whatever river I was fishing but try not to get too far out of sight of Mom and Piper.

“A couple of times, Piper came with me on his own, and I guess this is what I’m trying to get around to talking about. Our last trip was kind of a disaster—actually, it was a complete disaster, an utter clusterfuck. In the long run, it cost Piper his leg, the right one, on the front. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the reason he died. My dad said—look, I realize this is taking a while. If anyone needs to go, it’s okay. I appreciate you coming.” He looked at his cup.

Lawrence considered standing. He had joined the toast to Dave’s dog—hell, he had brought the liquor for it—and the accumulated work for at least three of his classes was on the brink of becoming unmanageable. But Tucker said, “Nah, man, tell us your story,” a chorus of yeahs followed his statement, and Lawrence decided to remain seated.

“Go ahead,” Sam said.

Dave smiled. “Thanks, guys.” He drained the rest of his drink. “This is—I guess it’s four years ago. Pre-COVID. My parents have to be in the car, but I can drive to wherever I want to fish. I passed my test and am the proud possessor of a junior license. I spend the summer roaming all over the Catskills, mostly with my dad. While I look for trout, he sits in the car and reads or writes. He has this blue plastic travel desk Mom and I got him for Christmas one year. In fact, I’m pretty sure we bought it for him to use when we were out together. He writes all his stories longhand, on legal pads. For a couple of hours, sometimes longer, he works and I fish. We park at our destination in the early evening and stay there until the light is pretty much gone. On the drive home, we hit the drive-thru window of Taco Bell or McDonald’s, which I think for Dad is one of the highlights of the trip.

“Piper didn’t come with us. We tried once, but he was too restless, looking for Mom. Having her there—his person there—settled him, the standard poodle part of him. He would go with me, sit by me, if he knew she was waiting in the car, grading papers or reading. I didn’t have to put him on the leash. Mom told him to go with me and he did. The two of us hiked to the stream, which was sometimes a distance. Once we reached the spot, he kept walking, into the water up to his knees. He would dip his head down and lap the surface of the stream. Satisfied, he would walk to the shore, give himself a shake, and settle down to watch me. He pretty much stayed in one place, unless I moved too far for him to see, in which case, he would pick up and shift to a new position—a new observation post. When I trudged back onto dry land, he was waiting for me, his tail thumping the ground. Together, we returned to Mom. Every time we were in sight of the car, Piper would sprint the remaining distance to it and dance around the passenger door until Mom opened it. You would think he hadn’t seen her in years. To be fair, she was just as excited to see him.”

“He had done his job,” Sam said. “He kept you safe.”

“Yeah,” Dave said. “I wish I had done the same.”

To his surprise, Lawrence said, “What happened?”

“I decided to fish for catfish,” Dave said.

“Okay?” Lawrence said.

“Every so often,” Dave said, “I have the urge to switch things up. With the fly rod, I’m looking for trout. I pull in other fish, but everything I’m doing—the type of fly I’m using, the length of tippet, the weight of the line—is geared toward landing a trout. Sometimes, I want to simplify, change to the spinning reel or baitcaster and fish for smallmouth. Or see if I can convince a catfish to take my bait. It’s like deciding to play country after spending a lot of time with prog rock. It helps to keep you fresh, interested in what you’re doing.

“Done properly,” Dave said, “fishing for catfish takes place at night. You bait your hook with a chunk of chicken liver, or something the fish will find equally appealing, and you let it sink to the bottom of the water, to where the catfish hang out. Then you wait for the taste and smell of that bloody meat to thread its way to the fish. Catfish don’t have very good vision, but they make up for it with their other senses. Eventually, one of them will sniff its way to the bait and start chowing down on it. You want to use a spinning reel, so you can open the bail and have the drag loose, because even though the fish has the hook in its mouth, it takes a minute for the hook to be in position, and you don’t want to yank it out too soon. When you’re ready, you lower the rod tip, drop the bail, wait for the line to tighten, set the hook, and the fight is on. Did I mention there are two kinds of catfish? Bullhead and channel? In terms of the struggle they give you, there isn’t really any difference. That’s in the meat.”

“You eat them?” Marcie said.

“I don’t,” Dave said. “It’s just something I know. Bullhead flesh is pink; channel cat is white. When you get the fish out of the water, you have to watch for the spines on their fins. I wore a pair of light gloves to protect myself. I was super nervous about being stung. If the fish was distressed, it made this noise halfway between a croak and a bark, like it was calling for help.”

“Weird,” Lawrence said.

“It reminds me of those fairy tales where a man catches a magical fish that grants him three wishes,” Sam said.

“I’d imagine the fish would be the one wishing,” Tucker said, “for you to let him go.”

“A lot of my fishing for catfish,” Dave said, “was done close to home, about a mile and a half from my house. There’s a little pull-off there, on our side of a bridge over a stream that empties into a decent-sized lake. After I started fly-fishing, the promontory wasn’t so great. It was hard to get a long enough cast going. My dad, especially, had this ridiculous anxiety I would snag a passing car and, I don’t know, be dragged off like a cartoon character.

“For catfish, though, the spot was all right. You could find them where the streambed met the bottom of the lake. I had a light that had come in my stocking one Christmas, a pretty strong LED attached to a headband. You could stretch the band around a hat, or you could wear it on its own. I preferred it without a hat. The nearness of the place made it an easier sell to my parents for taking me out after dark. They favored Friday or Saturday nights, so the late bedtime wouldn’t interfere with school or work the next day. Did I mention all this was in September? Late summer, technically, but with the feel of fall in the air.

“Anyway, I spent a good two or three weekends improving my ability to land a catfish. Catching them didn’t take long to lose its appeal. Partly that was because none of the fish I brought in was very big: a couple of pounds at most. There were old guys I met those nights, setting up as I was leaving, who reported catfish much bigger, eight, nine, ten pounds. One man claimed his brother-in-law had pulled a fifteen-pounder out of the lake. I wasn’t sure if I believed him. Fishermen will tell stories to anyone, including other fishermen. But I didn’t care enough about finding out the truth of the goliath catfish to keep after it. I had an urge to fish for catfish, and I had scratched the itch. I was ready to return to trout.

“Before I did, though, there was one final thing I wanted to do, and that was take my gear up to the reservoir and see if I might be able to hook a bigger catfish—a seven- or eight-pounder, if not fifteen—where the Esopus River flows into the west basin.”

“Reservoir?” Marcie said.

“The Ashokan,” Dave said. “It’s beside Woodstock. The town, not the concert site. In the Catskills. They built it a hundred years ago, more. It’s where the City gets its water. Some of it.”

“I forget,” Marcie said, “you live in the fucking country.” Marcie, Lawrence remembered, was from Queens.

“Yep,” Dave said. “Where I wanted to go was about forty minutes from my house. Neither of my parents was thrilled when I floated the idea of driving that far to look for catfish under the stars. Technically, there’s no fishing at the reservoir a half hour after sunset. My dad read this online and said no way, we would be breaking the law. He’s really big on following the rules, gets super uptight if you don’t. Mom’s approach is more flexible, especially when it comes to this kind of thing. Dad says it’s because she was raised Protestant—he grew up Catholic—she says it’s because she was raised with common sense. She wasn’t worried about fishing past the cutoff time. She was concerned about sitting alone in the dark for a couple of hours, waiting for me. Yes, Dad said, she might run into a bear. He’s got a thing about bears. Bears she didn’t take seriously, but weirdos wandering the woods around the parking area she did. I said she could bring Piper with her. He would keep her company, and if a stranger appeared, Piper barking would scare them away. If we went, she said, emphasizing the if, she fully intended to take Piper along. But that was so he could go with me and stay while I fished. The same weirdos lurking in the trees might follow me, and while she wasn’t anxious about bears the same way Dad was, Piper’s presence would make her feel better about the possibility of a coyote or even a big racoon.

“The negotiations didn’t take as long as I was afraid they would. Eventually, we decided Mom would drop off me and Piper about an hour before the sun went down. There’s a Stewart’s fifteen minutes down the road from the parking area. (It’s like an upstate version of 7-Eleven, except they make their own ice cream and sell their own milk.) After she sent me and Piper off, Mom would hang around while the daylight lasted, then head to the Stewart’s, buy a cup of coffee and a muffin, and sit in one of the booths they have across from the cash register. She planned to grade papers until about ten thirty, when she’d return to the parking area for Piper and me.”

“What about your phone?” Marcie said. “Couldn’t you call her to pick you up? Or couldn’t she call you to tell you it was time to go?”

“Cell service sucks up there,” Dave said.

“Like I said, the fucking country.”

“It can have its drawbacks,” Dave said.

“Not to mention the bears,” Tucker said. “I’m with your dad on that one.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him,” Dave said. “He’ll appreciate the support.”

“Wait,” Marcie said, “are there really bears?”

“Technically, yes,” Dave said. His expression changed. “Bears and worse.”

“Fuck,” Marcie said.

“Yeah,” Dave said. “Mom and I joked about it. Every time I left to go fishing, she called, ‘Watch out for bears.’ Which Dad did not find nearly as funny as we did. Which did nothing to discourage us. It became a kind of ritual. ‘Watch out for bears.’ ‘Keep an eye out for the Catskill Devil.’ ‘Make sure Greasy Pete doesn’t get you.’”

“The what?” Tucker said.

“Greasy Pete?” Lawrence said.

“The Catskill Devil,” Sam said. “It’s a cryptid. Like a local version of Bigfoot.”

“Except more angry,” Dave said. “Hence, the name.”

“And Greasy Pete?” Tucker said. “Another cryptid?”

“More like a local legend,” Dave said. “Mom and I heard about him from a musician we went to see. This guy named Vinegar Jim Hardy.”

“Greasy Pete and Vinegar Jim?” Tucker said. “For real?”

“I kid you not,” Dave said. “Vinegar Jim is a famous harmonica player. He’s worked with everyone, the Stones, Neil Young, Norah Jones. He even cut a track with Sabbath. A few years ago, he was playing in Woodstock with David Amram. He’s a musician who hung out with the Beats, Kerouac and Ginsberg, those guys. I can’t remember how Mom met him. Anyway, Amram was playing at the Barn, which is Levon Helm’s old place, and Mom asked if I wanted to go. I’m glad I said yes. It was an amazing show. Basically, Amram oversaw a three-hour jam session. He’s an old man with crazy white hair. Wears all these necklaces, thirty, forty of them, long chains and strings with pendants and symbols on them.”

“Sounds like a wizard,” Tucker said.

“Yeah,” Dave said. “I guess you would call him a jazz musician, but he does his own thing. He invited a bunch of local people to sit in with him and his band. Vinegar Jim was one of them. He was another old guy, though not as much as Dave Amram. Incredible harp player, had a dozen different harmonicas. He kept some of them in a red waistcoat, the rest in his jeans. He wore a gray fedora with a bluebird feather stuck in the hatband. Long gray hair. Honestly, he looked like the wizard.

“Anyway, after the show, Dave Amram hung around talking to audience members. That’s the kind of guy he is. Mom wanted to say hello. Amram saw her and waved her over. I hung back, and that was how I met Vinegar Jim. I was wearing a Sabotage T-shirt. He noticed it, complimented me on it, and we started talking. Of course I asked him about recording with Sabbath. It’s like the six-degrees-of-separation thing. The process had its ups and downs, he said, but it went well enough for Ozzy to kick around working together some more, possibly doing an entire album together. They went so far as to lay down a handful of demos. He reeled off the titles. I knew most of them. Old blues songs: ‘Dealin’ with the Devil,’ ‘I’m Still Walking the Highway,’ ‘Motherless Child.’

“There was one I didn’t recognize, ‘Greasy Pete.’ This was something of his own, Vinegar Jim said. It was inspired by stories he’d heard throughout this part of the mountains about a monstrous dog named Greasy Pete. There were reports of him going back to the late seventies, a dog the size of an actual wolf, his coat filthy, matted with mud, blood, and other substances. You might see him trotting across your yard, or through the trees, or even crossing a road; always at dusk or after. When you live in the fucking country, as Marcie put it, pets go missing. Cats go out and don’t come back. Dogs—especially little ones—get snatched off their lines. Mostly, it’s coyotes; although a bear might eat one if it has the chance, and there are reports of mountain lions about. (Not everyone believes those.) Usually, the animals just disappear. The owner puts up some ‘Have You Seen This Dog?’ posters, waits a week or two, and realizes their pet is gone. Sometimes, the situation is more dramatic. You walk outside and find Fluffy or Fido torn apart, spread all over the lawn, surrounded by the footprints of a huge dog. Pretty horrifying stuff. According to the stories, that’s Greasy Pete’s work. Over the years, a few hitchhikers have gone missing, and they’re also rumored to be his victims. One of them was found—I think—in the eighties off to the side of 28, the main road up there. It was not a pretty scene.”

“Hell of a subject for a song,” another roommate said.

“As opposed to deals with the Devil,” Lawrence said, “or murder?”

“The songs about hellhounds,” Dave said. “That was what Vinegar Jim said inspired him. He played a couple of bars for me right there. It had the blues movement, the momentum, but it was high and lonesome, too. B-flat, I think. It would’ve made a great Sabbath track. It was still effective, though, with only him playing it. He sang one of the verses. It was about being stalked by this relentless thing, this thing like a dark cloud with claws and fangs.”

“This guy tell you about the Catskill Devil, too?” a roommate said.

“No,” Dave said, “that was a TV show. The Devil of the Mountains.”

“Oh, yeah,” the roommate said. “I saw that. On the Discovery Channel, right?”

“Yeah,” Dave said. “This famous scholar hosted it. Daniel? No, Dennis, Dennis Mitre.”

Now that they mentioned it, Lawrence thought he recalled the same documentary. His mind’s eye flashed to an image of a mountain of a man older than his father, dressed in a blue flannel shirt and jeans in a clearing in a forest, in front of a small cabin, one of whose walls had been caved in.

“The Catskill Devil and his hellhound,” Tucker said. “I thought the mountains were supposed to be a nice place.”

“You don’t think the Devil would choose the best vacation spots?” a third roommate said.

“‘The Devil’s Holiday,’” Lawrence said. “That could be our next song.”

“Maybe,” Dave said.

“What about the demos?” Lawrence said. “The ones the guy made with Sabbath?”

“Don’t know,” Dave said. “Obviously, the record never got made. Which isn’t a surprise. Ozzy was the only one who was really into blues. Everyone else was more interested in jazz and big band stuff. But yeah, those would be something to listen to.”

“They would,” Lawrence said.

“The point is,” Dave said, “these were the monsters Mom and I warned each other about in our see-you-laters. Including the early evening she dropped me and Piper at the parking area next to the Esopus.”

“You got what you wanted,” Marcie said.

“Naturally,” Tucker said. “Have you not been paying attention to what the man’s been saying?”

“His parents always give him what he wants,” Sam said.

Dave flushed. “Not true.”

“Oh?” she said. “Name one thing you asked for they haven’t given you?”

“Ice fishing,” Dave said. “For years, I wanted to go ice fishing. They flat-out refused to take me. Dad said it had something to do with a story a woman told him at one of those barn parties we went to, but Mom said story or not, she was not letting me go out on the ice.”

“That’s what you got?” Tucker said. “Your parents won’t let you freeze your ass off?”

“I’m sorry,” Sam said to Dave’s frown. “Sorry. Let’s get back to the story. What happened after you and Piper left your mom?”

“Okay,” Dave said. “Mom handed me Piper’s leash and said to him, ‘You’re going with David.’ Piper looked up at me, and it was like I could see him say, ‘All right.’ Mom said she would see us in a couple of hours. I told her not to worry: I had the alarm on my phone set. She warned me about bears; I warned her about Greasy Pete, which made her laugh. She always found that name funny. Piper and I set off. The parking lot is fenced in by trees, mostly young-growth evergreens. Trails through them lead to the Esopus. I was wearing a gray-and-black long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. I had on polarized sunglasses, which let you see down into the water. I had the headlamp, which is what I called it, in the right front pocket of my jeans. My phone was in the left pocket and yes, the alarm was set. I was wearing my red-and-black fishing backpack, which was crammed with everything I might need: boxes and bags and bottles of lures, extra line, scissors, surgical clamps, a knife, a couple of Gatorades (fruit punch), and a couple of Clif Bars (chocolate chip). I brought three rods with me. They were Velcroed to the left side of the backpack. Piper’s lead was in my right hand. In my left, I was carrying a white plastic bucket filled with chunks of raw chicken liver. The lid was secure, so I didn’t have to smell them. Yet.

“That stretch of the Esopus, before the river enters the reservoir, is wide and flat, the river studded with rocks of all sizes. Piper and I passed a dozen likely trout spots. To our right, the woods continued, the trees switching to larger spruce, oak, and maple, a few birch. Although their tops shone gold with the end-of-day sun, closer to ground, the spaces among their trunks were filling with shadow. On the left, across the water, the ground rose in a long bluff whose face had slid away, leaving a steep dirt slope capped with grass and a line of short trees holding on for dear life. Sunlight made the entire thing glow yellow-gold, and I felt as if I was looking over the river to another country. I went slowly, careful of falling on the rocks scattered along the shore. Piper trotted beside me, mouth open, tongue hanging out. A fire alarm rose in the distance and continued its wail. Ahead, a couple of guys who had been spin fishing packed their tackle box and headed toward Piper and me. They were older than I was, but not by much, and they were wearing dark blue T-shirts identifying them as members of one of the local fire companies. I had the impression they were responding to the siren, although they weren’t moving very quickly. We exchanged nods as we passed. There was a man standing in the middle of the river in his waders, the water up past his waist. His fly rod was parallel with the water, the line out and floating downstream in a white squiggle. He was wearing sunglasses and a fishing hat. He never raised his head, but I could feel him looking at me with my spinning rods and tub of bait, feel the disdain radiating from him. I wanted to stop and speak to him, explain this was only because I was fishing for catfish. But I kept going.

“I could see the insects swimming on the river’s surface and flitting above it, the evening hatch beginning. Caddis flies, mostly. A trout lifted and slurped an unlucky appetizer. The reflection of the bluff filled the water, a deeper yellow, as the sky grew a darker blue. The spot I had in mind was a trek, down to where the Esopus widened as it fed into the west basin. I took my time. The later it was when we hit the place, the better. As soon as we were far enough from the fly fisherman, I let go of Piper’s lead. Sometimes, he paused for an interesting smell, but after giving the ground and rocks a good sniff, would lift his head, see that I was no longer next to him, and run to catch up. Then the wind would change and carry an equally interesting scent from somewhere in front of us. He would trot ahead to inspect it. Once he had his fill of whatever odor he found there, he would walk back to meet me. I realized I didn’t mind having Piper with me. In fact, I kind of liked it, liked his company.”

“A boy and his dog,” Sam said.

“Kind of?” Dave said. “It was like, ‘Oh, so this is why Mom likes having dogs.’” He shook his head. “Anyway. By the time we arrived at the spot I had in mind, the Esopus was the flat color, sort of a gray-blue, it darkens to as the night arrives. The place we were, I might be talking about the reservoir, technically speaking. I’m not a hundred percent sure where the boundary line is. Around the wider Ashokan, the trees on top of the mountains were silhouetted against the sunset, like rows of soldiers keeping watch on ancient walls. It wasn’t too hard to imagine the Catskills here as the remnants of a gigantic barrier, a wall built against I don’t know what, giants, maybe, or dragons.”

“The Catskill Devil,” Tucker said.

“No,” Dave said, “he roams all over the place. This was—one of the times we were driving together, my dad told me about this guy who said his soul left his body and went soaring through space. This was in Poughkeepsie, up the Hudson—”

“I know where Poughkeepsie is,” a roommate said. “My cousin goes to Vassar.”

“Not everyone else does,” Marcie said.

“It’s where Vassar is,” the roommate said.

“Yeah,” Dave said. “In the middle of the nineteenth century, it was a center for Spiritualism. Like, the eighteen fifties. Séances and shit. There’s supposed to be some kind of gap between this world and the next there. This guy flew into the opening, over the Catskills, beyond which lay the beings the Lenape worshipped, manitou and such. Dad read the account while doing research for something he was writing. I can tell you, I’ve been to the other side of the Catskills, and all there is, is Oneonta, and you are not going to find any sacred spirits there.”

“Hey!” Sam said. “That’s where I live.”

“Am I wrong?” Dave said.

“No,” Sam said, “but you didn’t have to say it.”

“The point I was trying to make,” Dave said, “the way they looked in the dying light, I could have believed there was something unearthly waiting on the other side of them. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant. I guess it’s what religious people feel in church.”

“That’s what my grandma says,” Tucker said.

“I put down the plastic bucket, shucked off the backpack, loosened the Velcro holding the rods, and got ready. I already had the line rigged in the way I wanted, with a weight at the end to hold things in place, and a hook a little higher up to float the bait off the bed and increase its chances of attracting a fish. I opened the bucket, and the smell that rushed out forced me back a step. Fishing, you get used to all kinds of odiferous, shall we say, bait, but what rose out of that bucket was next level. Holy shit. I hadn’t bothered refrigerating the chicken livers, and it had been a couple of days since I’d pressed the lid on. I read online that catfish were drawn to powerful smells. Mission accomplished. I didn’t puke, but my stomach trembled, like it was saying, ‘Standing by.’ Piper wandered over to check out the intriguing aroma. I shooed him away. I didn’t adjust to the stench; it was more a case of, my nose gave up, checked out. The rods were next to the bucket. I dug out a piece of liver and pushed the closest hook through it. The meat was slimy, slippery. I almost stuck the hook into my thumb while baiting it. Which would have been no fun. Obviously. When all the hooks were prepared, I set the lid on the bucket—loosely—and went to the water to wash the blood and slime off my hands. Piper was nosing around the hooks. ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Knock it off. You’re gonna get a hook in your nose,’ a prospect I did not relish, since I would be the one who would have to tell Mom about it. Piper heard my warning as a command to sit. He did. I guessed that was good enough. I picked up the rods, carried them to the edge of the water, and cast the first one. The bait plopped into the river and sank. I left the bail open, wedged the handle between a couple of decent-sized rocks, and moved maybe fifteen feet along to cast the second. I propped that rod the same way I had the first and went another fifteen feet for the last. I was trying to place each bait at a different distance from the shore, out in the channel the Esopus cut as it entered the reservoir.

“Five minutes and I was done. I returned to where I dropped the backpack. On my way, I finally removed my sunglasses. Piper was still sitting where I left him. I called him over to me and rubbed his head. I said, ‘Okay, buddy, now we wait.’ I didn’t think it would take long for a catfish to be drawn to one of the baits. In the meantime, I withdrew a Gatorade and a Clif Bar from the backpack and seated myself on a decent-sized rock. I slid my phone out of my pocket and tried to open Spotify. The app wouldn’t load. Like I said, service in the mountains can be pretty bad. I put the phone away. One of the things I did not like about fishing for catfish, I had learned, was the amount of sitting around doing nothing it involved. A lot of people think that’s what you do when you fish, sit or stand with a rod in your hands, hoping a fish’ll bite. The kind of fishing I prefer is active. If you’re going for bass, you’re reeling the lure back in as soon as it hits the water, looking to provoke the fish into a strike. Fly-fishing is more nuanced, but you’re still manipulating the line, doing your best to trick the trout into believing the fly you tied is actually a delicious insect. In the case of fly-fishing, you’re also making adjustments for the water you’re standing in, its clarity and speed. There’s a lot to keep track of.

“Fishing for catfish is just…boring. For me, anyway.

“There was nothing else to do except sit there with Piper. Together, we watched the night come on. Darkness overtook the tops of the mountains, leaving them huge masses of blackness. The surface of the reservoir went from slate to ink, which made the space seem empty, and gave the impression of tremendous depth, as if the emptiness went down who knew how far. Above, the evening star—Venus?—appeared. Or it was a case of, I realized it had been there for a while, and I finally registered it. You know how it is when the stars come out. You stare at the first one, and notice another one near it, maybe not as bright, then a third, and suddenly there are all these stars shining in the sky where the last streaks of daylight are fading. There was no moon—or no moon yet.

“In the dark, the sound of the Esopus, the chuckle and splash it made rushing over and among the rocks, was louder. A branch snapped—somewhere close by, it sounded like. I swiveled to check. The trees at my back had merged into a single line of shadow, the ones at the leading edge like charcoal sketches on black paper. Somewhere within the woods, leaves rustled. Piper cocked his head to one side, but that was his only motion, so whatever was making the noise, I figured I was okay. Faintly, I heard a car engine revving. Some genius racing up 28, I guessed. The sound seemed to come from incredibly far away.

“It’s…an experience, sitting out in the night with only your dog. There’s the two of you in the midst of immense darkness, darkness like the bottom of a great well. It’s like moving along the borders of sleep. It made me think of all the time I spent driving after dark with my mom and dad, mostly after fishing. We had long, rambling conversations that felt like they wouldn’t have taken place under any other circumstances. Like they couldn’t have.

“Holidays, too—I mean, Christmas and New Year’s. Those nights…A few years ago, Dad and I went to midnight mass with his mom, my grandma. (I was twelve? thirteen?) What I remember most is when the service was done, walking out into the parking lot, into the cold and the quiet after all the sound and light. I thought, ‘Here I am, in Christmas,’ as if the holiday was really in the night and the flakes of snow trying to muster themselves into more than seasonal accents. New Year’s was the same. It’s usually just my parents and me. There’s a Scottish tradition that the first person to enter the house once the New Year arrives is supposed to come carrying a bottle of alcohol and something to eat, like a cake. You do it right after the clock has changed, to ensure a prosperous year ahead. When I turned fifteen, I decided I wanted to stand outside the front door cradling a single malt in one hand and a box of donuts in the other while the old year gave way to the new one. Waiting in the crisp dark, the noise of the TV faintly audible through the door, it was like I could feel time happening, gears the size of cargo ships pushing forward.

“Beside the reservoir was—not the same, exactly, but similar, in that general vicinity. The sky was filling with stars. I thought I recognized the patterns of a few constellations, but I couldn’t tell if it was only my mind making patterns where there weren’t any. Funny, the constellations are something I never remember, which is kind of strange because my dad loves all that shit, astronomy. My inability, I guess you could call it, may have to do with the stars being in a different place every night. That’s what it’s like in the dark. Nothing is where it’s supposed to be. Where it is in the daylight. Distances are off. Destinations appear sooner than you were expecting them. Or you’re afraid you missed them, because they take longer to reach than you remember. A gap between trees becomes a dark corridor. A house you didn’t know existed appears in the woods, its lights gleaming. Sure, Christmas is out there. And so is New Year’s. And Halloween, right? It has to be. And all kinds of other things, holidays we don’t have names for anymore, creatures we know only as pictures in storybooks, rumors and legends passed around in well-lighted places.”

“Dude,” Tucker said. “You’re freaking me out.”

“I slid the headlamp out of my pocket, slipped it around my head, and switched it on. The LED light threw a harsh white beam. I swung my head side to side, sweeping the light over my surroundings. Rocks stood out in sharp relief. Piper’s eyes glowed. I didn’t see anything else. To save the battery, I turned the light off. For a moment, the afterimage of the beam floated in front of me, a luminous green path. Behind me, in what sounded like the distance, something clattered on the rocks. ‘Bear,’ I thought. My heart jumped. I twisted around and hit the light, already picturing myself running for the water.

“Nothing. I moved my head from right to left and back again. Closer to me, the rocks, grass, and small bushes were clearly visible and bear-free. Farther away, where the light lost strength and the shadows were thicker, I saw no animal. I stood and turned in a full circle, like the world’s smallest lighthouse. The most interesting thing the beam revealed was a little tree beached upstream from my rods. Most likely, it had been carried there during a storm. The branches were twisted, like those of an apple or pear tree.

“Still no bear, though. I imagined Dad saying, ‘Oh, would you look at that: someone’s afraid of a bear.’ Which, fair enough.”

“Could’ve been the Catskill Devil,” Tucker said.

“Yeah,” Dave said. “The thing was, once again, Piper never reacted, which should have told me there was no reason to worry. You know those times you’re relieved to be alone, so no one can see how embarrassed you are? This was definitely one of them.”

“Except for Piper,” Marcie said. “He saw you.”

“He did,” Dave said, “but he was more forgiving. I was about to sit down and turn off the headlamp when one of the reels started to tick. That’s the sound they make when they turn. With that noise, the night changed entirely. All the self-consciousness left me, blown away by the excitement of the reel picking up speed, unrolling faster as the fish swam off with the bait. My heart was pounding again, this time with excitement. I ran for the water, careful not to slip on the rocks. Piper ran beside me. The line was spooling out from the rod on the left, the one closest to me. I bent down and grabbed the handle, keeping the tip of the rod low, trying not to do anything that would pop the hook from the fish’s mouth. I felt the reel spinning through the cork handle. I dropped the bail and waited for the line to tighten. The hook set and a second later, the fish realized what had happened to him and took off. I said, ‘Fish on!’ which is what I always say when I hook one. (I got it from a TV show, River Monsters, I used to watch with my dad.) The fish swam for the open water, making a break for the reservoir. I cranked the reel, angling the rod to the side to pressure him into swinging around in my direction. This was a big fish, bigger than any of the cats I’d taken out of my local stream. Back and forth, that was how it went, me turning the reel fast, then slow, then fast again, all my effort focused on keeping the line taut, maintaining the hook in the fish’s mouth, him fighting me the entire time. It’s difficult to explain to someone who doesn’t fish what it’s like, the…process of landing a fish. There are all these things you have to keep track of and respond to, and they’re happening so close together, it’s practically at the same time. If you let yourself be distracted, you can make a mistake that’ll cost you the fish. You have to be fully involved in the task at hand, which makes this very immediate experience oddly meditative.

“It’s not like playing a solo on the guitar, but that’s the nearest comparison I can think of, when you’re deep in your solo and you’re focused on where your fingers are and where they’re going to be while another part of you is keeping the entire song and the different parts everyone else is playing at the forefront of your mind.

“Sometimes, though, you can do everything right and it still doesn’t work out. I’m talking about fishing, but I guess it could apply to music, too. To a lot of things. I brought the fish all the way to me, to where the headlamp cast a white circle on the rushing water. I was struggling to turn the reel. The end of the rod was bent. The fish kept jerking back and forth. And then, like that, he threw the hook. The line went slack; the rod straightened. I spun the reel, which now required no effort. The fish might be gone, but my hope was not. Maybe he had just reached the end of his resistance, I thought, decided to give up. Only, there was no weight on the line I was almost finished reeling in, and I knew what that meant. The rig came into view below the surface of the Esopus, the hook clean. No fish and no bait.

“If I lose a fish, it’s not that I’m pissed as much as agitated. Like yes, I’m not happy the fish got away, but I hooked one, which means I picked a good spot. There are fish here; I just have to do a better job of catching them. I secured the hook to one of the leaders and headed toward what I was thinking of as my rock. Losing the bait meant another trip to the bucket of rancid chicken livers was in my immediate future. That, I was not thrilled about. For another catfish, though, a big one, it was a sacrifice I was willing to make. Could be, the cat who’d made off with the meal I’d offered was still hungry. Could be, he had bigger friends.

“I hadn’t gone very far, halfway to my spot, when the smell of the chicken livers hit me like someone sticking their finger down my throat. I coughed, stopped where I was. I heard the sound of slurping, of the plastic bucket clattering against the rocks. Irritation rolled through me. There was other bait in my backpack, sure, artificial lures supposedly as effective as what I was using, but I’d already succeeded with the chicken liver, so I didn’t want to switch to something different. I’m a little ashamed to admit, my first thought was, ‘Goddammit, Piper,’ followed by a string of complaints about having to take him with me in the first place. Not the case at all, I know, but I was upset, and you know the effect that has on rational thought. Well, mine.”

“Wait,” Marcie said, “wasn’t Piper next to you?”

“He was,” Dave said. “I was so focused on what I could hear happening with the bucket, I leapt to accusing Piper without seeing him right beside me. It was like my vision had tunneled. Crazy, right? It didn’t take me long to realize this—we’re talking a matter of seconds, one or two at most—but that was plenty of time for me to have found Piper guilty and subjected him, and my parents, to a stream of abuse. The instant my brain caught up to my eyes and I recognized him trotting beside me, the anger building inside me was doused by shame. Which congealed into fear as Piper stopped, lowered his head, and started growling. I want to say I could count on one hand the number of times I heard that sound come out of him. Unlike the other dogs, who growled all the time, usually when Mom played tug-of-war with them, Piper never growled. Honestly, he didn’t bark too much, either. Yet here he was, ears back, teeth bared, growling at whatever was gulping down my bait.”

“A bear,” Tucker said. “Or the Catskill Devil.”

“Neither,” Dave said, “although, once again, a bear was the first thing I thought of.”

“Your poor dad, man,” Tucker said.

“I grabbed Piper’s leash with my free hand just as his growls turned into barks. They were loud and they were angry. I used to think all barking sounded the same, but after living with a houseful of dogs, I can tell you, there are differences. Piper was furious. Which was kind of terrifying. His barks made the leash quiver. I swept the headlamp across the ground; although I didn’t know what I would do if it showed me a bear, or a bobcat.”

“Isn’t that a cat?” Marcie said.

“Bigger,” Sam said.

“Jesus,” Marcie said.

“Most animals will back off when they’re confronted,” Dave said, “especially if there’s a barking dog involved. Even a little one can be enough to send something much bigger packing. And Piper was anything but little. All the same, you can never be a hundred percent sure how a wild animal will respond to you. I couldn’t find the spot where my backpack was, where the bait bucket was. Part of me didn’t want to see what was eating the chicken livers; I just wanted it to finish them and go on its way. But if it decided to come my way to find out what all this noise was about, I needed to be able to see it coming. It was hard to concentrate with Piper barking and now pulling at the leash, straining with all his strength and weight toward the intruder. I dropped the rod so I could grab the lead with both hands. At the same time, my light flared on the backpack’s reflective straps and I saw what was standing over the plastic bucket.

“Or, I kind of saw it.” Dave looked down, as if, Lawrence thought, embarrassed. “The light wouldn’t stay on it, it kept…sliding off. I wasn’t moving my head, but the light kept shifting from one side to the other, so I could only see what was in front of me at the very edges of the glow. It was an animal, a dog, I guess you would say, but…It was tall, taller than Piper, maybe the height of an actual wolfhound, or a wolf. I was looking at it head-on, and it was narrow, closer to two dimensions than three, like it had squeezed itself here from another dimension of night. Its head was long and angular, like an origami version of a dog’s head. There were too many shadows on it. Its fur lay on it like a blanket, a mass of black-and-gray hair streaked and stained, tangled and clumped. In places, it shone in the light, as if whatever liquid splashed there was still wet.”

“Greasy Pete,” Tucker said. “Greasy motherfucking Pete.”

“Yeah,” Dave said. “Except, I mean, that’s a kid’s name, something out of a story you tell around a campfire to scare your friends from the city. It’s a name from a folk song. This…creature was…I had never seen anything like this before. Its legs were too skinny, like kindling. I could have believed it was a huge puppet, being controlled by a team of people dressed in black. Only, it didn’t move the way a puppet does. It shoved its weird, angled snout into the bucket the way any dog does when it’s trying to lick the last drop of flavor from it. When it withdrew its muzzle, it licked its lips with a long tongue the gray of old beef.

“In the meantime, Piper’s barking his head off like a lunatic. He’s foaming at the mouth. I always assumed that was just an expression, but no, there’s bits of white foam spraying out of his mouth with each bark. I’m trying to think, figure out what I should do, but all that’s running through my mind is, ‘No way, no way, no fucking way.’ Maybe that’s why you give a name like Greasy Pete to something like this. Because it’s terrifying. Seeing it makes your brain hurt, and the longer you stare at it—or try to, as the light shifts on it—the worse it gets. It looks as if it might fold up into the darkness around it, the darkness that seems to bleed into its fur, making it hard to tell where the thing ends. Then it lifts its head, casually, the way a dog does when it’s checking the air. And it notices us, the two of us, Piper enraged, pulling with everything he’s got against the leash, and me holding said leash, leaning back to keep him with me. With this attention comes a wave of stench, the most horrible smell. It surrounds us. Bad as the chicken livers were, this is worse. Think roadkill baked in the summer sun and mix in a leaking septic tank.” The collected audience vented noises of disgust. “It’s foul,” Dave went on, “foul in a way that goes beyond the physical response it provokes. It’s like the way corruption smells. I want nothing more than to return my Clif Bar and Gatorade outside my body, but the effort I’m putting into restraining my dog prevents this from happening. Instead, I’m stuck inside this nauseating fog that settles on my skin like a layer of oil.

“The creature—dog—looked at me. Its eyes were black. I couldn’t tell if they were empty sockets or full of something dark. Whatever lay in them was pitiless. And hungry.

“With no effort, the dog leapt toward us. It seemed to stretch, to elongate the way a leech does, and then it was right in front of us. I was so startled I threw up my hands to protect myself and let go of Piper’s leash. He lunged at the dog, snarling. It danced back a step and rose on its hind legs, but Piper dove underneath it and grabbed at its throat with such force I heard his jaws clap together. He missed. The dog tried push him over with its front legs, but he slid out from under them. All the while, he was snarling and yipping. The dog, though, was silent, aside from the rasp of its paws sliding on the ground and the snap of its teeth on one another. No growls or barks.

“Two dogs fighting—I mean, all-out, I’m-going-to-kill-you fighting, is terrifying. This wasn’t Piper romping with our other dogs. This was him doing everything he could to tear out the other dog’s windpipe. The same was true for his opponent. Leaping around Piper, evading his teeth, biting at him, the dog looked twice his size, bigger, this creature dragging the night around it like a cape. I was afraid for myself, yeah. The dog had jumped right at me. Not to mention, it was whatever the shit it was. I was more afraid for Piper, dread burning the back of my mouth. I was sure the creature was going to hurt him, kill him. Rocks skipped and clattered over the ground, kicked away by their feet. I had to intervene, had to separate my dog from this thing, this monster. There was no way for me to do so barehanded. I needed a weapon. The fishing rod I dropped was no use. Too fragile. I could pick up a rock and chuck it at the dog, but my aim isn’t the greatest, plus the two of them were moving so fast and so unpredictably, there was just as much chance of me hitting Piper as my target. There was a knife in the bottom of the backpack, but retrieving it meant crossing next to the dogs, which did not appeal to me. Even if I managed to lay my hand on the knife, the prospect of confronting this dog with a blade meant for cutting line and cleaning bluegill seemed a bad idea. The wading staff I used when I was fly-fishing would have been better. The dog shoved Piper with the top of its head. He staggered to the left and almost lost his footing.

“The apple tree beached upstream was all I could think of. Although it felt like betraying him, I turned from where Piper was fighting for his life and ran for the Esopus. The headlamp’s beam bounced up and down. I couldn’t really see where I was putting my feet, but somehow, I managed not to dump myself on my ass. The river was closer than I expected, and so was the apple tree lying on its side. None of its branches was very long, but there were a couple of heavy-looking limbs. I grabbed about halfway along one of them and pulled. Behind me, Piper was snarling. At the trunk, the branch creaked but did not give. The tree shifted with my effort. In the darkness at my back, I could hear teeth snapping on empty air. I braced a foot against a branch on the ground and pulled the one I had chosen. With a sharp crack, it broke from the trunk. I stumbled back a couple of steps. The strong odor of apple wood filled my nostrils. Piper yelped. The dog had tagged him. I ran toward them, adjusting my grip on the branch as I did. Its separation from the tree had peeled the bark and split the wood into a long point, like the blade of a spear. I gripped it at the opposite end, the way you would a baseball bat or a sword.

“Ahead, I saw Piper backing away from the dog. He was limping, favoring his right front paw. It was bloody with the dog’s bite. The dog—Greasy Pete loomed over him, like the Grim Reaper’s own hound. It was licking Piper’s blood from its lips with its dead gray tongue. In the midst of all the fear—and you can be sure I was quaking in my fucking boots—I felt heartsick at the sight of my big dog, my good boy, my happy Piper, cowering in the face of this monster. I shouted, ‘Hey! Hey you! Hey you fucker!’ Trying to catch the dog’s attention, to distract it from Piper. ‘Hey!’ I shouted. ‘Hey! You fucking fucker! Hey!’

“The weird head swung in my direction. The rest of the body followed with a fluid motion, like an eel. I knew—before it happened, or maybe I was picking up on it as it started to happen—the dog was about to jump at me. I stopped where I was as its front paws left the ground and its body stretched, freakishly long. Its jaws were open, the fangs and teeth bright red. I prepared to swing my improvised club and had the absurd thought that I wished my parents had signed me up for baseball.

“Just as the dog’s back paws were on their way into the air, Piper threw himself forward and caught the right one in his mouth. Surprised by the sudden attack, the dog twisted mid-leap, trying to respond to the new threat. But its momentum worked against it, carrying it to the ground with a sound like a bag of sticks clashing together. Piper released the leg, turning his head and coughing at what he tasted. The dog…retracted, I guess. Condensed from eel-shape to dog-shape. I stepped forward and brought the branch down on its head behind the left eye.

“There was an electric snap. For the very briefest instant, the headlamp dimmed. The wood bounced back so hard the club almost flew out of my hands. The dog jerked away from the blow and scrambled to its feet. I swung again. The jagged tip of the branch tore the dog’s lower jaw with another snap. The light dipped again. The dog yanked its head back. This close, I saw its fur was crawling with insects, small things fleeing the headlamp’s wavering glow. Where the wood tore it, black sludge oozed from the wound. I jabbed the club. The dog retreated. I had no expectation of seriously wounding or killing the thing. All I wanted was to run it off, force it to leave Piper and me alone. They say most animals would rather flee than fight, all things being equal.

“Greasy Pete, though, had not heard that saying. The dog kept its distance from me, out of range of my weapon, but remained facing me, making no effort to run away. I assumed it was waiting for an opening to attack. I wasn’t exactly delighted with that, but at least the thing was focused on me and not Piper. I could see him with his mouth in the dirt, eating soil and then hacking it out, as if he was still trying to clean the foulness from his tongue. Keeping the headlamp’s beam in the dog’s eyes as best I could, I circled to Piper, who met me with the most serious expression he ever showed me. ‘Hey, buddy,’ I said, or something like that. Something stupid. ‘Oh, fancy meeting you here!’ The dog turned with me like a compass needle holding to magnetic north. I let go of the branch with my left hand and patted Piper’s head. His skull had a ridge running up the middle, between his ears. It kind of weirded me out. I called it his Klingon crest. Now it seemed reassuring. I stroked the hair over it. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘it’s okay. We’re gonna get out of this.’ Which was maybe not a hundred percent true, but I didn’t want to consider the alternative. ‘Your focus determines your reality:’ where is that from? Sounds like one of those motivational sayings my dad brings home from his karate class. Corny or not, it was what I was thinking as I pushed against Piper, shifting him in the general direction of the parking lot where Mom would be arriving I had no idea when. He did not take his eyes off the dog, but he followed my instruction. I didn’t worry about the backpack, the rods. I could return for that stuff during the daylight, which seemed far, far away, distant as the other side of the mountains.

“We moved slowly, carefully. I couldn’t turn around to check the way we were going, could not risk averting my gaze from the dog, or moving the headlamp from its eyes, for an instant. I felt behind me with my left foot and if the way was clear brought my right foot to join it, then repeated the process. It was painstakingly slow. Piper kept pace with me. I didn’t have a hand free for his leash, but he didn’t appear inclined to charge the dog. He growled, though. All the way.

“Staying out of reach, the dog followed us. Sludge the color and consistency of tar dropped from its jaw. I thought about the stories old Vinegar Jim told me, those accounts of animals ripped to shreds. A person ripped to shreds. Maybe more. Definitely more. There was no doubt this thing was planning another attack, as soon as it saw an opportunity. I couldn’t say for sure which one of us it would go for, but I thought Piper. He was already injured. Plus, he wasn’t holding the stick with the pointy end. I could get no read from the creature’s face, from the black holes of its eyes. Whatever was driving it to put one sticklike leg in front of the other was opaque—I almost said, mechanical, but that isn’t right. I think empty is closer, if emptiness were a force, a cause. If I had more time to think about it, I would have been completely freaked out by everything. Like, huddled in a ball, rocking back and forth, crying with my thumb in my mouth. And I mean, my heart was pounding, my arms and legs shaking. But I could only come to the edge of freaking out. Which was hard, because I really wanted to lose my shit. In no time at all, I had gone from thinking I was dealing with a dog or possibly a coyote—diseased, rabid, even—to thinking it was a wolf—still sick—to I didn’t know what. Some monster the name Greasy Pete was only a placeholder for, for what it really was. But there was Piper, there was my dog, his limp growing worse with every step. There was no way I was going to abandon him to this thing’s teeth.

“We were a third of the way to the parking area, less, when the dog leapt. It was farther than I expected we’d get. I slid my left foot back and my heel hit a rock. I mean a big rock. A boulder. They’re all over the place in and around the shores of the Esopus. Other rivers in the Catskills, too. Some are pretty big. I didn’t remember this one from our walk in, but it wasn’t as if I marked the location of every rock we passed. From the corner of my eye, I saw Piper looking up at me, asking what was next. I let go of the branch with my left hand and reached back to try to feel a way around the obstacle.

“The dog was already in front of me by the time I realized it had leapt. It landed with its head down, inside my guard, ramming me full in the chest and slamming me against the boulder. Spindly as it appeared, the thing had some mass. My back lit up. I didn’t feel it so much as see it happening in my mind’s eye, a line of explosions up my spine. I dropped to my knees, flailing with the club at the dog’s general vicinity. The wood struck its snout as it was moving to bite. Not much of a blow, but there was the same electric snap and the headlamp faded. The dog recoiled, skipping back. Holding the branch pointed at it, using my left hand to brace myself on the boulder, I struggled to my feet. The impact had knocked the wind out of me. ‘Breathe,’ I was telling myself. ‘Come on. Breathe.’

“Piper snarled and lunged at the dog. His teeth clamped on its right front leg, just below the elbow. The thing turned its head to deal with him. In so doing, it exposed the entire left side of its neck. I forced my legs to take two running steps and stabbed the end of the club into Greasy Pete’s neck. The point drove in deep. The air crackled and went black. The dog pulled back, but I went with it, pushing the branch harder. The air sizzled and hummed, and for an instant it was like I was looking at a negative, everything dark now light, Piper’s fur like quicksilver, the landscape white as moonlight, the river a silver current, the branch blazing like a lightning bolt.

“Only the thing impaled on it was unchanged. Or, not unchanged, but not rendered in its reverse. Instead, the dog was a churning black cloud, an inky turbulence in the midst of which I could see a form like a chalk drawing, a series of simple white lines. I felt the monster fighting me, straining to turn its head enough to sink its fangs into me. I heard Piper growling around the thing’s leg. Doing his part. I set my feet and leaned against the branch.

“The air cracked as if it was coming apart around me. The world disappeared into darkness. The branch tore itself from my hands. My ears were stunned, ringing, but I heard something faintly, a distant noise like nails on rock. I assumed the dog was preparing for its next attack. Without my club, I didn’t know what I was going to do. Grab a rock, maybe.

“This time, when the darkness cleared it did so gradually, draining into the earth. Piper was standing beside me, panting. His jaws were filthy with what passed for the dog’s blood. I patted his head with its Klingon crest. It felt good. A wave of love for my dog as pure as anything I’ve ever known filled me. I would have wrapped my arms around him, buried my face in his coat, but there was still the matter of our mutual foe. There was no immediate sign of it. I swept the headlamp over the ground. It found the dog twenty feet away. It was lying on its right side, half on a group of rocks. Its front legs were sticking out straight in front of it. Its head was flung back, mouth open, tongue hanging out. The end of the branch jutted from its neck. From where I was standing, it did not appear to be moving. I bent down to pick up a decent-sized rock. Fireworks of pain burst along my back. Tomorrow was not going to be a lot of fun. Probably the next day, too. I had no desire to approach the dog, to check to ensure it was actually dead and not faking. Piper wasn’t growling. At least, as far as I could tell with my still-diminished hearing. That had to mean the thing was dead, right? But I had seen enough cheesy horror movies to know, as soon as you think the monster is defeated, it jumps up for round two. Blame it on my dad. I was not about to have the dog attack me or Piper while our backs were turned.

“We approached it cautiously. I kept waiting for it to spring to its feet. But Piper showed no sign of concern. All the same, I kept a tight grip on the rock. Where the light from the headlamp quavered on it, a fine, granular substance was rising off the dog. At first, I thought it was the insects I had seen, abandoning their wrecked ship. This was more like flecks of ash, lifting from a fire after you’ve doused it with water. I circled to the dog’s head. The sockets of its eyes shone empty. Piper sniffed the other end of the dog then, satisfied, raised his leg and pissed on it.”

For the first time in what felt like hours, Dave fell silent. Sam leaned against him and put her hand on his chest. Lawrence glanced at the windows, where their ghostly reflections hovered over a world reduced by night to silhouettes and shapes huge and strange. When they came, the questions arrived at the same time, everyone speaking at once.

Was he shitting them?

No, Dave said, with an expression halfway between a grimace and a smile, he was not shitting them.

For real?

For real.

What happened to Piper? What did he tell his mom?

They rushed Piper to the emergency vet in Wiltwyck, breaking the speed limit and a host of traffic regulations on the way. It was a good thing there were no cops about, because his mom would not have stopped for anything. The vet cleaned and stitched Piper’s leg, shot him full of antibiotics, and gave them more antibiotics to administer him for the next ten days. He recovered pretty well, but he would favor the leg, sometimes. Over the next few years, sometimes became all the time, and Dave’s mom had their vet check Piper. When the diagnosis of osteosarcoma came back, Dave wasn’t surprised. There was a price to be paid for killing something like Greasy Pete, and it looked like the bill had come to Piper. He was sure his parents were going to have Piper euthanized, but they made the decision to have the leg removed, which necessitated calling in a specialist surgeon. The operation was a success, though the specialist told his parents there were irregularities in the tumor he had never seen before. Piper healed from that, as well, albeit more slowly. But he experienced no further trouble until his death earlier today. He remained the same cheerful fellow he had always been.

Following their run-in with Greasy Pete, the sole change in Piper’s behavior was a tendency to eat dirt, a kind of canine pica. Especially when the dogs were out on the hill behind the house, running up and down it chasing the toys his parents threw, either his mom or his dad would notice Piper was not part of the play and would find him with his snout in the earth. Dave’s mom or dad would call the dog away from his muddy snack, reproaching him for his behavior, but Dave remembered Piper eating dirt and coughing it out after tasting the foulness of Greasy Pete’s shank. There were moments he imagined Piper still trying to cleanse his mouth of that terrible flavor. At other times, he thought of Piper consuming the soil of the place he knew as home as a way for him to resist whatever taint the other dog had left in him.

As for Dave’s mom—and his dad, when it came to him—he told the truth.

Really?

On the way to the emergency vet. He maybe downplayed a few of the more…over-the-top details, but they were racing Piper to be treated for his injury, so he had to be as honest as he could. His mom believed him—or at least, she didn’t disbelieve him—though she was the one who talked to the vet tech and then the vet and she described what had happened as an encounter with a wild animal, possibly some kind of dog. The vet was nonplussed, suggesting that Dave and Piper had run into a wild dog, possibly a dog-coyote mix. A coywolf, a cross of a coyote and a wolf, was also a possibility. Her primary concern was whether Piper’s rabies vaccination was up-to-date, which it was. The emergency vet notified the appropriate authorities, who reached out to Dave the following day in the form of a couple of DEP officers, who came around the house in the early afternoon. They chided Dave for fishing at night but in light of subsequent events, let the matter drop. The cops said they would check the place where Dave said he and Piper encountered the hostile animal. They agreed to let his dad come along to retrieve his backpack and rods. It took the three of them some time to locate the place where Dave and Piper had killed the dog. According to Dave’s dad, they found his improvised weapon, one half of which was covered in a black, tarry substance none of them cared to touch. The branch was lying on the ground beside a cluster of rocks whose round tops were smeared with the same thick sludge. Dave’s dad thought he could distinguish the shape of a large animal in the stuff, but the cops disagreed. It was just fungus, they said. He was seeing things in it the same way people did with clouds. Dave’s dad did not press the matter. The DEP put out a warning for a potentially dangerous animal, a large dog or coyote, and advised anyone who saw it not to engage with it and to call 911.

Dave hadn’t heard of additional encounters with Greasy Pete in the years since he and Piper had theirs. Nor had he ceased to fish in the Catskills, though he did not cast his line after the light was gone from the sky.

Was he—he wasn’t shitting them, was he?

He was not, Dave said. What he told them was just something that happened to him and his dog, who was now gone wherever good dogs go.

A second round of drinks followed, emptying what remained of the scotch. Lawrence, aware of the drive home when he left the apartment, the classwork awaiting him, opted for a Coke. Legs prickling with pins and needles, he pushed himself up from the throw pillow in time to join the room in a final toast to Piper. He nodded at Dave. “I gotta go, dude.”

“No worries,” Dave said. He went to stand, but Lawrence waved for him to remain where he was. “Nah,” he said, “don’t bother. Thanks, though,” he added. “Thank you for sharing that. For letting us be part of it.”

“You don’t think I was shitting you?”

Lawrence shook his head. “What do you think it was, the dog? Greasy Pete?”

“Beats the shit out of me,” Dave said. “My dad thought it was an animal, a dog or a coyote, that had been…taken over, I guess you would say, by something…else. Something bad. What, I have no idea. How, I also have no idea. From the stories about animals torn apart, he thought it sounded like the thing was suffering, tormented. I don’t know. Dad said there are traditions where the wood of a fruit tree, like pear or apple, is supposed to be effective against certain kinds of evil creatures. All of which is six kinds of insane.”

“Yeah,” Lawrence said. “I’m sorry about Piper, man.”

“Thanks,” Dave said. “Thanks for getting the scotch.”

“Of course,” Lawrence said. “See you at rehearsal.”

“Yep.”

Nods, waves, and goodbye’s carried him out the apartment door onto the landing. On the way, he deposited the mostly empty Coke can on the kitchen counter. The night was cool, almost cold. Lawrence hadn’t realized how hot the interior of the apartment had become. All those people. The light on this side of the landing was out, which wasn’t the problem it could have been, as the moon was out and full or almost full, casting enough pale light to allow him to descend the stairs safely.

The strip of greenery in front of the building was full of shadows. Dave’s story must have affected him more than realized, because for a moment Lawrence was certain one of them was a large dog, sitting with his head tilted up at the lighted windows of Dave’s apartment. He closed his eyes and when he opened them, the animal was gone.

The spot where it had been eating the soil, however, remained.

Well, Old Blue died and he died so hard

He shook the ground in my backyard.

Go on Blue,

You good dog, you.

—Traditional

In memoriam: Rascal, Athena, Piper, Egypt, Patches, Bingo, Holly, Archie, and all the good boys and girls who have kept us company this side of the darkness.

For Fiona 

“This Fleshy Side of the Bone” copyright © 2026 by John Langan
Art copyright © 2026 by Andreea Dumuta

Buy the Book

This Fleshy Side of the Bone

John Langan

Buy Book

This Fleshy Side of the Bone

John Langan

Buy this book from:

• Amazon
• Barnes and Noble
• iBooks
• IndieBound
• Target