{"id":16211,"date":"2019-05-02T10:03:32","date_gmt":"2019-05-02T14:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=16211"},"modified":"2020-05-04T14:43:23","modified_gmt":"2020-05-04T18:43:23","slug":"leaving-the-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/leaving-the-scene\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving the Scene"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"issuuembed\" style=\"width: 525px; height: 341px;\" data-configid=\"37604829\/69533084\"><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.js\" async=\"true\"><\/script><br \/>\nMay 2019 | view full story as a .pdf<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><em><span class=\"s1\">By William Hall<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-16190\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Fiction-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Fiction\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Fiction-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Fiction-200x134.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Fiction.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Y<\/span><span class=\"s1\">ou might wonder what kind of man would murder a dog. Leave it behind the guardrail of a rural road. Some psychopath, maybe, someone with evil inside, but judge for yourself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">The incident happened on my way driving from Maine to \u201cGraceland.\u201d That\u2019s how my wife talked about such excursions, no matter my destination\u2014as in \u201cElvis has left the building.\u201d Though to my way of thinking, and I told her so, any break was a healthy break. No harm in taking a drive now and then, except in this case for the mutt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Sheila and I were just marking time, anyway. I\u2019d gotten sober, little by little, and the Ninth Step says to make amends, but I guess the damage was done. Soon we\u2019d move on\u2014it was understood. Meanwhile, we snapped at each other like hungry strays. Trivial shit. On this day: Why hadn\u2019t I bothered to repair the something or other.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">We both needed to cool off. \u201cScrew it.\u201d I grabbed my keys to the pickup. \u201cI have to get out of here for a while.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">I had no place special in mind, but a half hour later I found myself in Peru, Maine, a couple of towns over from mine. Driving always seems to relax me\u2014even when I had a CDL and was making long-haul trips twice a week to the Carolinas. That was all behind me\u2014the closest I got to a commercial vehicle now was my receiver\u2019s job on the FedEx dock. But I like the feel of the wheel. As I tooled along I could almost forget the argument.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">The road was almost forgettable too, one of those back routes that looked familiar only at a certain curve or when I came up a particular hill. No signs to help navigate, just scrawny pine trees and clumps of birches and utility poles leaning like drunks. Every so often, a clearing where someone had left a trailer or tried to farm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">As I drove through the woods of Peru, admiring the fresh leaves on a bright spring afternoon, it occurred to me that I could keep going, see where Something-or-Other Highway would take me. Shelburne, New Hampshire, was my estimate. Franconia in under two hours. Boston, a straight shot down I-93. I\u2019d seen 27 states; I could go in a million directions. Put time and distance between Sheila and me, make a clean break of everything. And, God forbid, have an occasional drink like a normal person, which amounts to the same as leaving.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Sobriety has its place. I knew this. And being with Sheila was generally more good than bad. But small stuff can wear on you. A pebble gets in your shoe, and you end up walking barefoot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Around this point, I noticed something on the road ahead of me. Trash? Maybe something fallen off a tailgate and left behind. When I was closer I realized the debris was actually a dog. A big fella, sitting in a sunny spot where the pavement wasn\u2019t crumbled, itching himself. People let dogs run loose out there, but why he chose to be in that spot was beyond me. When I sounded my horn, he stopped scratching, stretched, and began trotting toward the side of the road.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Maybe he had a change of heart. At 40 miles an hour, I only gave him a second or two. First the Jesus Christ moment when I saw him turn back. Then my instinct kicked in. There was a thump. I felt it in the steering column.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">The dog wound up in the ditch, ten yards from where I pulled over. On his side, breathing fast. Some kind of shepherd mix, I saw, with a leather collar but no tags. A red tongue hanging out, next to a trickle of blood and a pool of dog piss.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">He was trembling and snarled when I tried to touch him. In shock. I got a tarp from the pickup\u2019s utility box, thinking a cover might provide warmth and prevent a bite. But when I returned, he was still and not breathing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">I looked around, east from where I\u2019d come and then over to where the sun was beginning to set in the hills. No one else was on the road. Nothing appeared different than it had been a few minutes ago. If you\u2019d come upon the scene, you might think I\u2019d just happened to pause there too. But I couldn\u2019t help but look behind me as I pulled the dog onto the tarp, dragged him from the ditch, and found a spot near the guardrail where he was out of sight.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Because I knew, from inside my skin, from the pressure I still felt against my right foot, that I\u2019d goosed the gas at the last second and deliberately killed the animal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">In my defense, this was not premeditated. Though it must have been more than a muscle twitch. Perhaps without knowing it, I was looking to stop and avoid what might lie ahead. Maybe accelerating put the brake on a bad turn of events that would only get worse, like when you counter-steer to come out of a skid.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">But it was no time for standing around. The pickup\u2019s grille was dented. There was blood on my jeans. I was suddenly very tired and wanted nothing more than to go home and get some sleep, at least for the night.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">I drove over to Peru again a week later. Morbid curiosity, I guess. And despite a sarcastic remark from Sheila, I almost laughed. If you only knew, I wanted to say.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">I had to retrace my steps, mile by mile, waiting to recognize one familiar tree or stretch of road after another. When I finally found the guardrail, I wondered if I was in the wrong place. But the ditch, the brush, the angle of the road were all the same. Only the dog and the tarp were gone, so there was no evidence of my crime, or of my possible redemption.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>May 2019 You might wonder what kind of man would murder a dog. Leave it behind the guardrail of a rural road. Some psychopath, maybe, someone with evil inside, but judge for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[379,23,127,323,160,322,378],"class_list":["post-16211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-authors","tag-fiction","tag-maine","tag-portland-magazine","tag-portland-maine","tag-portland-monthly","tag-storytelling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16211"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18614,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16211\/revisions\/18614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}