From the Hilltop

Still

The day after the third baby was born dead,the dog appeared at the end of the lane. I was sitting under the sycamore, had been there since just before sunrise. I was facing the canyon, not really looking at it, not really looking. He was as tall as a pony,with fur the color of sand.Shepherd mixed with something —dingo,maybe.He was homely and smiling and doing a whole-body wag. I said, Tánishi, Hello, and Your name is Henry,though I didn’t make a sound.He said,That’s fine,and I’d like to eat now if that’s all right, and he did make sounds, but not any that could identify him as dog, which is what he was, I guess. They were more like horse sounds—whinnying and snorting—and I half expected him to paw the ground or sprout a mane. I was just home from the hospital, and there was talk I’d have to go back. For observation, the doctors said. For your own good, Miller said. For as long as it takes, my family said. Still Still 46 The things I said to them can’t be repeated here,but they were along the lines of Stop and No and Give her back.I said them in English and in Michif, though I said them with my eyes, of course, and my hands and sometimes my knees. I stopped using my mouth when the doctor held up the last baby,when I breathed in her cool, dark smell, when I could see that she never would breathe in anything. It was just past dawn,and the morning colors splayed themselves out over the canyon. Usually I liked living way out here, nine miles from town, almost four miles to the nearest neighbor.I liked that we had Blanco Canyon in our backyard because the rest of West Texas is flat in a welcome-to-hell kind of way. Most mornings the view made me feel lucky, but this morning Henry was the only thing that seemed like luck. This morning, I was missing home, my crazy métis family, the Roubideauxs,who were scattered all over Alberta and the States now, with just me and old Aunt Bernice living down this way. I sat there missing them too long, and the sun was halfway into the sky when Henry and I followed the light toward the house and into the kitchen where Miller stood over the sink, facing the window,his back to us.He was finishing his second cup of coffee. This is not a good idea, Miller said. He used his cup to gesture backward, at Henry, I suppose, before running water into the bottom of it, swishing the water back and forth. Before he was finished, I knew he would swish once, twice, three times, then splash out the end of the coffee and send it down the drain like he did every morning. I might have said,What do you know about ideas, Miller? Still 47 I might have said, What do you know about good? But not even my eyebrows were talking. Technically,Miller’s first name is Tom,but I’ve been calling him Miller since the fourth grade, since I came down here to live with my aunt and my cousins.Miller came up behind me at recess while I waited for my turn to kick the ball and said, Gee your hair smells terrific. I could tell he’d been practicing in the mirror for the better part of a week, wearing those khaki pants his mother spent hours ironing. I kicked him in the shin so hard my tennis shoe deflated the crease. He walked around all day like that—his left leg perfectly creased, his right one dented. Ten years later, we were married in the Methodist church three blocks from the school. Beth, Miller said, someone is going to get hurt here. He said it to the window,and neither it nor I replied.Henry whinnied a little. Miller’s dress shirt hung out of his pants in back, and I tucked it in for him, pulling and smoothing before reaching my hands around his middle in something resembling a hug, something resembling please. It was the Friday before Easter, and classes only went half a day at the grade school where Miller was...