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33 The Inheritance Mother, in the snow-bright kitchen, my bucking adolescent sister takes a swing at you, and though you bark a laugh on impact like you’ve found some long-lost thing, I do not think of your father. Instead, I see his half-wolf guard dog, a mongrel traded to Kroll BrosTires by some itinerant, its starved, snarling lunge at a new master, and that first afternoon he spent beating it, length of rubber hose whistling through the air, till it no longer growled, no longer got up. Afterward, he carried it, whimpering, to the back room, fed it by hand till it stood again 34 to turn its vicious face on anyone who was not him. When he fell to the floor of the tire shop, bullet hole howling through his chest, the dog stood over him, paced the bloody trail he’d dragged toward the phone. But I do not think of your father. In the kitchen, my sister’s rage-crazed lunge has you cornered in a mongrel body, ears laid back, livid eye moving in your face like a snarl, bare eyeteeth shining with something like love— the thud of your father’s hand still darkening your face— as your daughter takes another swing, hackles raised, and you teach her nothing but loyalty. ...

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