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Now I raised the blind at that sa a black hole in the moon-silvered lawn This was peculiar, because he was a well-behaved dog and never a digger

As I looked on, Orson abandoned the patch of earth at which he had been furiously clawing,a new hole A quality of frenzy marked his behavior

"What’s happened, boy?" I wondered, and in the yard below, the dog dug, dug, dug

Onheavily in one into the backyard to sit beside the rew as thin as the whistle-hiss of a glassblower shaping a vase over a flame, so soft that they did not even disturb the nearest of our neighbors, yet there was such wretchedness in the sound that I was shaken by it With those cries he shaped a er in for a blower could blow

He was uninjured and did not appear to be ill For all I could tell, the sight of the stars the that filled his is as poor as we are taught, they can’t see the stars well or at all And why should stars cause Orson such anguish, anyway, or the night that was no deeper than other nights before it? Nevertheless, he gazed skyward andvoice

When I put a hand on his head and stroked his back, I felt hard shudders passing through hi to his feet and padded away, only to turn and stare at me from a distance, and I swear that for a while he hated , after all, and could not escape loving me; but at the same time, he hated me intensely In the war off hiaze as only he a at the sky, now stiff and shaking with rage, noeak andhat seemed despair

When I’d told Bobby Halloway about this, he’d said that dogs are incapable of hating anyone or of feeling anything as coenuine despair, that their emotional lives are as simple as their intellectual lives When I insisted on oing to keep coe crap, why don’t you just buy a shotgun and blow my brains out? That would be ly slow death you’re dealing out now, bludgeoning me with your tedious little stories and your moronic philosophies There are limits to human endurance, Saint Francis--even to mine"

I knohat I knoever, and I know Orson hated ht, hatedin the sky tormented him and filled hi he iined

Can dogs iine? Why not?

I know they dreas kick as they chase drearowl at dreaht did not make me fear him, but I feared for him I knew his probleht have erous to me, but was instead a malady of the soul

Bobby raves brilliantly at the mention of souls in ani incoherence I could sell tickets I prefer to open a bottle of beer, lean back, and have the whole show to ht, I sat in the yard, keeping Orson colowered at me, remarked upon the vaulted sky with razor-thin cries, shuddered uncontrollably, circled the yard, circled and circled until near dahen at last he came to me, exhausted, and put his head in my lap and did not hate me anymore

Just before sunrise, I went upstairs to my room, ready for bed hours earlier than usual, and Orson came with me Most of the time, when he chooses to sleep to my schedule, he curls near my feet, but on this occasion he lay on his side with his back to me, and until he slept, I stroked his burly head and smoothed his fine black coat

Iabout the hot su beyond the blinded s The sky like an inverted blue porcelain boith birds in flight around its rim Birds of the day, which I had seen only in pictures And bees and butterflies And shadows ink-pure and knife-sharp at the edges as they never can be in the night Sweet sleep couldn’t pour into

Now, nearly three years later, as I opened the kitchen door and stepped onto the back porch, I hoped that Orson wasn’t in a despondent ht, we had no time for therapy either for him or for me

My bicycle was on the porch I walked it down the steps and rolled it toward the busy dog

In the southwest corner of the yard, he had dug half a dozen holes of various diameters and depths, and I had to be careful not to twist an ankle in one of theed clurass and clods of earth torn loose by his claws

"Orson?"

He did not respond He didn’t even pause in his frenzied digging

Giving him a wide berth to avoid the spray of dirt that fanned out behind his excavating forepaws, I went around the current hole to face hi kept his head down, his snout in the ground, sniffing inquisitively as he dug

The breeze had died, and the full hest branches of the hthawks dived and soared and barrel-looped, crying peent-peent-peent as they harvested flying ants and early-springOrson at work, I said, "Found any good bones lately?"

He stopped digging but still didn’t acknowledge ently he sniffed the raw earth, the scent of which rose even to ht him outside to toilet, but I was sure that she would have returned him to the house afterward

"Sasha?" I asked nevertheless

If Sasha were the one who had left hi to rat on her He wouldn’tthe hole he had just dug, he returned to a previous pit, sniffed it, and set to work again, seeking cos in China

Maybe he knew that Dad was dead Anis, as Sasha had noted earlier Maybe this industrious digging was Orson’s way of working off the nervous energy of grief

I lowered rass and hunkered down in front of the burrowing fiend I gripped his collar and gently forced hi with you?"

His eyes had in theli darkness of the starry sky They were deep and unreadable

"I’ve got places to go, pal," I told him "I want you to come with me"

He whined and twisted his head to look at the devastation all around hireat work unfinished

"Co to stay at Sasha’s place, and I don’t want to leave you here alone"

His ears pricked, although not at theI had said He wrenched his powerful body around in o of his collar, he raced across the yard but then stopped well short of the back porch He stood at attention, head raised high, utterly still, alert

"What is it, fella?" I whispered

From a distance of fifteen or twenty feet, even with the breeze dead and the night hushed, I could barely hear his lol

On my way out of the house, I had dialed the switches all the way off, leaving lightless rooms behind hostly face pressed to any of the panes

Orson sensed soan to back away froility of a cat and raced toward me

I raised my bike off its side, onto its wheels

Tail low but not tucked between his legs, ears flattened against his head, Orson shot pastin the reliability of canine senses, I joined the dog at the gate without delay The property is surrounded by a silvered cedar fence as tall as I aravity latch was cold under ers Quietly I slipped it open and silently cursed the squeaking hinges