Memoir

 

My real father Joe wiped blood off the sharp end of his hatchet. I was eight years old, standing on a five-gallon bucket in the horse pasture, leaning over the wooden table Joe prepared for the puppies.

“Come on, now,” he said.

“I can’t, Daddy.”

“You gotta be tougher than that,” he said.

 I grabbed another puppy to hold still. The puppies moved around by using the momentum of their heads, swinging them around and side to side. Joe was tall and stood over me like a molded, stone statue, as if he were someone important who died. His hands were large as cow’s hooves, and his fingers so big he couldn’t wear a wedding ring. There was no way I’d tell him no.

Joe used the hatchet, rearing back, and with one clear motion, hacked off the puppy’s tail. Its cry was awful and contagious, making the rest of the litter scattered across the splintery plywood flinch and cry, too, as if they were all connected somehow. Even the cows and horses looked up from their grazing, glaring at us, twitching their ears and slapping flies down with their tails. Each time the ax fell, a whimper fled from the blood-stained table, echoing across the field towards the horizon.

I had already picked one out—a solid white one with a brown dot on her head. I’d name her Gurley. Her eyes were barely open as she tried squirming away. I wrapped my hands around her tiny body, turning her backend toward Joe, letting her face me. “It’s okay girl, it’ll grow back.” Which wasn’t true, but I thought it was a hopeful thing to say. I let her inch near me to the edge of the table, but Joe yelled, “Hold ‘em still!” And I did. Eyes shut, I prayed he didn’t miss and chop off more than the tail. By the time we finished, tiny brown and white furry tails covered the table. The puppies were spotted with bloody prints on their backs where I held them down. The whimpers faded, collecting somewhere beyond the field.

That’s how poor people took off their dogs’ tails. Most would take a litter to the vet for a procedure like that, but we didn’t. And Joe wanted to keep the bulldog breed’s infamous look—no tail. Joe said a dog won’t remember such pain or that a dog won’t remember what happened to its tail or remember that it ever had one. I remembered.

That night, when everyone had gone to sleep, after Joe tucked me in and sang “You Are My Sunshine,” I climbed out of my bedroom window with a blanket and pink Barbie van. I quietly made my way to the barn where we put the puppies. I crawled in, sat the van down, and spread out the blanket. The blanket brought warmth, some comfort after all that confusion. What I thought the van would be good for, I don’t know. Maybe my imagination reached toward an impossible way out for those dogs. The pups heard me, and I heard them, their grunts and whines moving around in the darkness. I found Gurley and wrapped her in my arms, her small black eyes reflecting the moon shining through a cracked wooden plank in the roof. Days went by, and her tail healed, crusted over with a black scab.

This chapter from Creatures Like Us was published as a special feature in The Florida Review. To read more click the link below to order. 

Last Bit of Sweetness

Brooke McKinney