Free Dog by Bruce McAllister Page B

weren’t together. She didn’t need more to disturb her own nights. She loved cats, but was always shy with dogs.
    *   *   *
    A week later, just before our three-day weekend—when we were planning to rent a car and travel happily, romantically, to towns and villages—we were returning at sunset through the colonia to our house. Just beyond the first gated place, we saw the body in the gutter. It was a big dog, but barely recognizable because of what had been done to it.
    Something had torn out its throat, filling the asphalt by its head with blood, but that was nothing compared to the stomach.
    Jennifer sucked in a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry, David, but I can’t look at this. I’m going to get sick.”
    â€œSure.” I took her by the elbow and aimed her away, down the street to the first colonia houses. “Go on home. I’ll catch up.”
    She looked scared. It was a dead dog, I told myself. Nothing more.
    â€œWhy can’t you come with me?” she asked.
    I was curious. I wanted to understand better what had happened. Only human nature, wasn’t it?
    â€œI want to check—” I started to say. “Just go over to the corner and wait for me. Look at the sunset. I’ll be just a second.”
    She went to the corner. She looked beautiful standing there, with her long hair and skinny legs. The girl I loved. She didn’t look at the sunset. She didn’t look at the mountains. She was looking at me as if the disemboweled body might jump up and grab me, or the wild dogs that had killed and eaten it (what else would have done this?) might suddenly reappear, and I’d be their next meal … or both of us would.
    I looked down at the body in the dimming light. Something had eaten the entire belly. White ribs were showing. There wasn’t an entrail left, as if a big hand had scooped it clean. There was also a smell—rancid and feral—but I didn’t think much of it. Death had its smells.
    I crouched down.
    What showed of the dog’s collar in all the blood looked pink, with big rhinestones. It was familiar. I’d seen this dog and its two siblings—heavy, sleek Dobermans—behind a gate in the colonia .
    *   *   *
    We took our rental, an old sedan, and drove first to San Luis because we’d heard the architecture there was pure colonial-frontier. It felt like Spain—the conquerors—and yet it was rough, what you’d expect of a frontier. The way, I’m sure, even upscale New York had seemed to British royalty back in the day, and certainly how the houses of the wealthy in the San Francisco Bay Area must have seemed to those who owned mansions in Newport, Rhode Island.
    In an alcove just off the cathedral there, there was a chapel—one you had to visit, everyone said. When we stepped into it, we didn’t understand what we were seeing. It was maybe 10’ by 10’. In each corner there was a life-sized, painted plaster saint. But this wasn’t the crazy thing. Each of the four saints—all of them in Bible dress—was bleeding more blood than any human being should. One had a plaster axe cleaving his body at the shoulder. Blood poured from the wound, covering the saint’s body and pooling at his feet.
    To the right of that saint was one we knew. Saint Sebastian. Full of arrows. Blood running like faucets from each arrow—a physical impossibility, of course, but this hadn’t mattered to the craftsman who’d made it centuries ago. The story here, everywhere in this little room, was blood —how much blood there was in the world—how much the world could and perhaps should bleed. A symphony of blood, filling rivers, seas, draining every human body—
    I shook my head, feeling dizzy and delirious and wondering if I were sick—food poisoning or another bug.
    The dizziness didn’t fade when I looked at the other two