In Western Counties Read Online Free

never came for her. She found him in bed the next day at noon, asleep and snoring.
    She scooped the dead dog from the bathtub, wrapped it in towels, and carried it down to Crawfish Creek, where she let the body drop through the water to the bottom, the towels gently moving in the current. She spent the next three hours tossing large stones onto the sunken body until it was covered entirely. An underwater cairn and headstone. When she finally turned to walk back to the house, there he was, right behind her. He struck her across the head with the back of his hand. She went down, holding her mouth as it filled with blood.
    â€œOnce a month those men come out, lay their bets, pay me money to fight their dogs,” he said over her, savagely. “Once a goddamn month. You never have to
see
it or even know it, okay? You can just go ahead and forget what you saw. They’re just animals.” He breathed quickly, put his hands on his hips, and scanned the fields as if for witnesses. Then he leaned down to her, touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that. But damn it, girl. I told you to stay away from the barn.”
    He turned away from her, striding over the desiccated corn stalks. Thereafter she could not be unafraid of him, and the dogs sensed it. She suspected him of training them against her. She kept steak in her pockets, fed them whiskey when he was away. Sang them lullabies as they lounged on the kitchen floor, drunk and full. She did love them, their big eyes and long tongues, felt safer in the house with them beside her, her protectors, their bodies warming the drafty old house through the long, quiet winter. They curled around her on the couch as she read, the heat of their bellies resting atop her cold feet.
    She was afraid to run, had no friends, and nowhere to go. Most of that fall, winter, and spring they lived quietly, taking walks, cooking. A week in Corpus Christi eating fresh shrimp and crab, him having his way with her in a seaside motel to the steady soundtrack of warm, crashing surf. She’d kept her eyes shut or focused on the shifting shadows of other guests walking past their window blinds.
    She was trapped, his viciousness and kindness meshed together to form their own cage. She tried steadily to separate the dog killer from the man who was her lover and companion, but the two figures constantly came together into one and it unnerved her. She did not understand killing at all. No one in her family had ever even hunted. On the nights of the fights she tried to be away, to make the whole thing disappear. Those evenings she spent driving the prairies, breaking at truck stops to pee and buy snacks, soda. She took solace in the country music played in such places at low, comforting volumes. In the mornings she found handwritten notes that he’d left on the kitchen table:
    Who was I before you? Love, Bret
    She called the police one day from the pet store, anonymously. Reported that there was an illegal dog-fighting syndicate operating in a barn off the Crawfish Creek. It was late spring then, and she wanted it all to come to an end. She hoped that the police would scare Bret and he would shut down the operation on his own accord. The officer on the other end of the line listened to her and kept asking her name. She repeated the information and hung up. A day later a police car rolled up their gravel road and two officers knocked on the door.
    â€œWe’ve got a report of some dog fighting on these premises,” a woman cop had said, her long red hair flowing out from behind a brown patrol hat. She was tall and lean, her skin very pale and freckled in places.
    Bethany shook her head, shrugged her shoulders. “No idea,” she said. “We’ve got some dogs, sure. But I don’t know about any fighting.” She leaned on the door, her body weak.
    Officer Aida Battle looked at her, removed her hat, smoothed back that fiery