—IT’S A LONG WAY HOME

 

That Summer: A Hemlock

 

That summer, the dogs ran blind and rabid through the county and so I laid down on a small hill listening to wind type morse code through the limbs of bushy evergreens, branches like gnarly bones or skeletons stuffed back by a broken broom left in the closet. 

You were gone by then because no one trusted a seven-year-old who believed in fairies and mermaids instead of monsters, and of course afterward, Uncle moved in because Mother believed him, sister and brother sitting together on the couch like we once had, passing a bottle of clear between them instead of glitter and polish.

That summer, every living dog died in the fields from rabies, their lockjaws filled with what looked like blackened bath foam, and when Doc Loftis came round and said, That’s the strangest thing I ever did see, all them hounds just dead like that at once, I looked to the nearest hemlock for you, though you weren’t there, but a starling was, staring back at me expectedly, unblinking, her iridescent wings shimmering like a double rainbow.