Big Bad Love by Larry Brown Read Free Book Online

in the yard and looked at him and there he was, dead as a hammer. Boy, I hated it. I knew I’d have to look around and see about a shovel. But it didn’t look like he’d been dead long and there wasn’t any hurry, and I was wanting a drink somewhat, so I went on out a little further into the yard to see if my truck would crank and it would, so I left. Thought I’d bury the dog later. Before Mildred got home. Figured I had plenty of time.
    Birds were singing, flowers were blooming. It was just wonderful. I hated for my old dog to be dead and miss all that, but I didn’t know if dogs cared about stuff like that or not. I didn’t have a whole lot of gas in my truck. I didn’t figure I needed to get started riding and drinking. I thought I’d just ride over and get something to drink and then ride back, siton the porch and maybe cut my toenails until Mildred nearly got home, then start burying the dog to occupy myself.
    Joe Barlow wasn’t home. I sat in front of his house for three minutes and blew the horn, but nobody came out. I left there and went to U.T. Oslin’s house. The whole place was boarded up, looked like nobody had lived there for three or four years. Weeds were all up in the yard and stuff. I left there and went by Manley Musgrove’s, but I figured he was asleep and didn’t want to wake up, so I just spurted on past his house, didn’t stop.
    I’d had that old dog for a long time, from way past my first marriage. I was sure going to miss him. He had a few little idiosyncratic oddities about him that didn’t exactly endear him to some people, like rolling in fresh cattle droppings and then climbing up on somebody’s truck seats if they left the door open. Mildred had always been after me to shoot him, but I never had. He was bad about pointing baby possums and then catching them and dragging them up into the yard and then eating them, and Mildred was always so tenderhearted she never could stand to see a thing like that. She just never had seen her cat in action, though, the one she’d let in the house to pet and sleep on the couch, get hairs all over the throw pillows. That thing had a litter of kittens last summer, and I was standing out there in the yard one day while she had them stashed under the corn crib for safekeeping. I’d been out in the vegetable garden cussing and mashing cutworms off my tomatoes. I’d cuss those little fellows and pick them off and mash each one under the heel of my tennis shoe. Those little things were green and they had greenguts. That cat went out in the garden for a minute and come back carrying a little baby rabbit in her mouth. It wasn’t dead. It was still kicking. What she was doing was training her babies to be killers. She laid that baby rabbit down right in the middle of those baby cats, and they didn’t know what to do with it. Of course the baby rabbit was squealing right pitiful and all and it ran off first thing. The old mama cat ran out there in the yard after it and caught it again. Brought it back. Set it back down in the middle of those kittens. They started trying to bite it and stuff, growling these little bitty baby growls. That baby rabbit jumped up and ran off again. I stood there and watched that and thought about cats in general, and about what that baby rabbit was going through. She caught it and brought it back again and laid it down in the middle of her litter. They had enough sense to bite it some then, and it squealed some more and then jumped up and took off running out across the yard. Only it couldn’t run too good by then. She ran out there and caught it again, brought it back. They went to gnawing on it again. It jumped up and ran off again. She brought it back again. It was getting slower each time. I thought, Yeah, I ought to just go in the house here and get me about four rounds of Number 6 shot and load up my Light Twelve and clean these sadistic creatures