Excerpt:

And sure, he knew this was coming. Death isn’t hard to spot, whether it’s the trunk of a birch tree or the hind legs of a Labrador. It’s a funny thing though, death. You can know it’s coming years ahead of time, but that doesn’t make it any easier. No, it doesn’t. You can bury a dozen dogs and it’ll still feel the same as the first. The only thing it offers in succession is a cold madness that dries out your eyes and flattens your lungs. It doesn’t make it a damn bit easier though.

The dog’s hips got so bad the past month that he had to carry him up the back step. Sometimes Redman Maxfield could hardly look at the dog. Sometimes the dog would look up at him from the floor with those big black eyes and he could hardly stand it. Those eyes seemed to apologize for his hips and cheap lifespan. When he’d struggle, exhale the slightest whimper, Redman put one hand down to soothe his ears while his other hand reached for the gun he didn’t own. He was battling the idea of his death in his head, torn between wishing him peace and his own selfishness. A battle we’ll forever fight at dying beds. It’s either a great heart, or a false one that is able to forget their own wants and wish nothing but peace.
He knew it was coming.

II

They found him in the morning. Under their bed. He never slept under their bed. He always slept outside their room, on the soft part of the carpet that he’d worn in near their door. It might have been days before they found him. There would have been no reason to go under the bed. It might have been the eventual smell that gave him away if it weren’t for his tail. The golden tail that Redman Maxfield saw when he put on his slippers that morning. The unexpected tail that let him know without words, that his friend was gone. Some dogs hide their death away, and some greet you with it in the morning.

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She could hardly stand it. His eyes were cold. He was lost. He was somewhere she couldn’t be. Her eyes welled the way lost children cry for fear of abandon.
Bee tried to hide it. She tried not to blink, but it was no good.
The soft heat that radiated from her eyes returned Redman Maxfield to the world that morning.
Sometimes she was the only person who could.

VI

He looked down at the dog in his lap, and turned until their eyes met. She was really crying. He didn’t understand. She never cried. He realized just how much she loved the dog and smiled as he brushed his nose against her.

The nothing fog began to lift and evaporate. He was found. She was so grateful for his return that she forgot he’d never left the house. He never even stepped outside, but in her mind he’d been away, trekking through the Himalayas, making salt in India, tasting foreign lands. She knew how unskilled he was with a compass. She knew he did not know where to dig for water, and she quietly claimed it a miracle that he made it home. Yes, he’d been away, for years maybe, and he returned. He was home. Her face slowly lit up against his smiling nose.

Redman Maxfield smiled for her tears. He was grateful for them. He knew she loved the dog, and her heart would be sore, but he never suspected she might cry. Tears didn’t become her, and their common vulnerability was suddenly beautiful to him. He felt younger. The world was still a film and his heart was once again elastic. And this new elastic heart stretched him back into the now, back to their brown plaid couch, back to the dog he clutched in his lap, back to his crying woman.
And he remembered her tears as they smiled. “I know you love him,” he whispered.
She seemed startled. “What?”
Redman Maxfield turned his eyes down to the dog and gathered its golden hair tightly into his hands, “I know you love him,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
She understood and wiped the shock off her face as quickly as possible. “Oh, yes,” she said quietly, “yes, I did.”
As she turned her words into past tense she finally recognized the dog in his lap. It was his dog. It had died, and the entire morning began to make sense. It was the dog that brought on the nothing fog. She let her arm hang over him and bunched golden fur in her own hand and thought about the dog. She knew it would be sad later, and she knew she would miss him, but right now she was glad the fog lifted. She was just happy to have found him. She was happy he came back to her.
Bee sighed, and as she exhaled the entire morning seemed to avalanche with her breath.
Redman could not let it out. He did not want to. He still needed it.
“Do you know how it happened?” She asked.
“Oh, no,” he said. He’d not thought about that yet. He’d not thought how it may have happened. “I suppose he just died. I suppose he was just tired.”
“He was old.”
“Yeah, I know, he was.”
“And he was hurting,” she added.
“I know, I know. Just don’t say it’s a blessing okay?”
“You know I never would,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I know you wouldn’t. I didn’t mean that.”
She put her hand on his back and soothed him, “I know, darlin’, I know.”
“I was reminding myself, you know. That it’s not a blessing, I mean. I was reminding myself. Death, even when it’s kind, is never a blessing. It’s just death. It just is.” It was true, but he didn’t mean to say it. Not out loud. Redman Maxfield hated saying things like that. He hated the way they sounded as they came out of his mouth. He quickly searched for something real to say, “you know, his tail was between my slippers.”
Her hand fell from his back, “oh God, that’s horrible.”
“He loved me, you know. As much as a dog can love a man.”
“Yes, he did.”
“And I loved him,” he said. He didn’t have to, not for her. But e had to say it out loud. He had to cement his love out loud, and he needed someone to witness it. After twelve years, he owed the dog that much.

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XII
Hot breath on his neck brought Redman Maxfield back into the world and he realized he wasn’t dead. He could not open his eyes. The heavy weight on his chest and the warm breath on his neck scared him into submission. He sensed that as soon as he opened his eyes the world would smother him and he would be no more. His other senses took over and surveyed the situation. There was the strong smell of whiskey and his flannel shirt was wet with it. He remembered hitting his head, but it did not hurt. It was the vivid image of those amber eyes that kept his own shut, afraid they were what was caving his chest, the thing that breathed hot on his neck. “Redman Maxfield…” a throaty male voice whispered, “oh, Redman Maxfield…”
His heart stalled, “yes,” he answered, barely audible.
“Open your eyes,” the voice said.
And in the world behind his eyes, the dark nothing began to break and shades of red and blue waltzed in softly, slowly accustoming him to their brilliance. “What will happen if I open my eyes?” He asked quietly.
The hoarse voice laughed, a throaty belly laugh, and the thing shook his chest, “what will happen?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
His laughter shook itself down and the voice thought in the place where he was laughing, “I really don’t know, but I reckon it doesn’t matter much. You can’t keep your eyes closed forever.”
He thought about it in the reds and blues behind his eyes. He thought about a lifetime without sight. He thought about the trees behind his house, how he might know them if he could only feel them and no longer see them bend. He thought about Bees pretty heart shaped face, her curves, the way he might come to know her lips with only his lips for eyes. The way his hand might know her skin without the freckles he sometimes worshipped. He thought of the mountains and how he’d stumble in them without his eyes, and never know them again. It was a never ending moonless world of night he saw before him. It would be unbearable to live with so much beauty in the world, and without thinking of the possible death he faced, thinking only with his eyes, he opened them.
The amber eyes glowed in the dark. The hot breath on his neck came from the snout it carried. The heavy weight on his chest was its body, and under the moon there was a silvery blue sheen on his coat. His paws were the size of melons and bore a heavy weight on his ribs. He kept his teeth close to Redman’s throat.
“Are you going to kill me?”
The wolf’s throaty belly laugh shook Redman Maxfield, “no, no. I don’t eat people. Well, if I were starving I might, but I’ve never been that hungry before.”
“You’re not going to kill me?”
“No, no. I don’t kill for sport. It’s.. well, it’d be an abuse of power, and it’d not go over well, Redman.”
As he heard the wolf say his name he realized that he was talking to a wolf. He was talking to a wolf, and the entire situation became ridiculous. He almost laughed.
“Well?” The wolf said.
“Well, what?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged his big shoulders, “I just thought you’d be different I guess.”
“There are no wolves in New York.”
The wolf laughed and shook him again, shifting his weight on top of him. “No wolves in New York?”
“No. There haven’t been wolves in New York in ages.”
The wolf’s face turned serious, but the laughter was still in his amber eyes, “who ever said we were in New York?”
“This is New York,” Redman Maxfield said with a certainty that startled the wolf. He knew New York. Talking to a wolf couldn’t shake what he knew of these mountains. This was his home.
The wolf sighed dramatics on top of him, “she said you talk this way.”
“Who’s she?” With every reply he gave he began to feel more ridiculous.
“Well,” he said with more patience than he was used to, “if this is New York, then this is my New York. It’s not your New York anymore. Your New York is asleep.”