The living room was dark, save for a triangle of pale green light. Audrey’s glow-in-the-dark panties. They seemed to float across the room, past Ken, who watched from the couch. He held his breath, trying not to make a sound. The panties moved into the kitchen, and a moment later he heard the refrigerator door open and close, followed by the pop and fizz of a soda can. Outside, Marko began to bark. The dog could see Audrey through the sliding glass door, had been jealous of her since she moved in. The panties moved back through the living room and down the hallway. A square of light briefly illuminated Audrey as she stepped into her bedroom and closed the door.

Audrey was Ken’s stepsister. Six years ago, their parents met at a singles Bingo night and got married a couple weeks later. This was right after Ken left for college. Audrey was maybe twelve or thirteen at the time. She once told Ken how they used to talk about buying an RV and driving cross-country. As soon as Audrey’s out of the house, one would say, glancing regretfully at her. So as soon as she turned eighteen, she packed her things and moved out, came to stay with Ken in his one-bedroom cabin at the edge of Raymond.

Raymond was a small Mississippi town, with a square surrounded by old-fashioned brick buildings and a water tower with the town’s name printed in tall block letters. Farmland and secluded meadows surrounded Raymond, the site of several skirmishes during U.S. Grant’s operations against Vicksburg. Ken had been introduced to this town a couple years ago, straight out of college, when one of his former professors from the Cobb Institute at Mississippi State tapped him to participate in an archaeological dig, unearthing musket balls and brass buttons. Ken was instantly taken with the peaceful, rustic life the town offered, decided this was where he wanted to settle down.

Ken had agreed to let Audrey stay with him on the condition that she take some courses at the community college. Doesn’t matter what, he said, but you have to finish what you start. His stepsister had a history of leaving things unfinished. In high school, she’d quit the cheerleading squad after one semester, the band after two. Her room at their parents’ house had become a shrine to her abandoned hobbies, packed with half-finished embroidery patterns, a photo album half-filled with pictures of sunsets and picnic tables, and most recently, sketchbooks full of half-drawn charcoal landscapes. Thankfully, when she moved in she only brought the sketchbooks.

The smell from repainting the house earlier that day still lingered. Audrey had wanted something cozy, romantic, a burgundy or a maroon. Ken had wanted something breezier, homier, a sea-foam green or an ivory. In the end, they settled on peach. Even with the windows open, the paint fumes still gave Ken a headache. And Audrey moving through the room had stirred up the smell, made it unbearable.

He’d taken the couch and given her the bedroom. It was a warm spring night, and the green vinyl had made him sweat through his thin white undershirt and his boxers. The heat, along with the headache and Marko’s barking, kept Ken from sleeping. As he stood up, his feet stuck to the plastic sheets that still covered the living room’s hardwood floor.

“I’m not decent,” Audrey said when he knocked on her door.

“Didn’t stop you earlier.”

He tried the knob. The door was unlocked. Since Audrey had taken over the bedroom, it had begun to smell of strawberries and peppermint. The walls were decorated with half-finished sketches of the forests and fields around their house. A drawing of the creek behind the backyard fence caught his eye, beautiful if only she’d finish it. She lay on her stomach across the red cotton bedspread, thumbing through a worn copy of the American Horticultural Society’s Encyclopedia of Gardening. Her sketchpad lay discarded, one corner of its gray cover peeking from beneath the bed. She had her feet kicked up in the air, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail with a zebra print Scrunchy. She wore only those panties and a Walk for Cystic Fibrosis t-shirt.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t prance through the house naked,” Ken said.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were asleep,” Audrey said. She got this sly look, an arch of the eyebrow, a curl of the lip, a look that reminded Ken that she was still a teenager. They were almost seven years apart, and he was rusty when it came to teenage girls, all his knowledge on the subject outdated.

“How long has it been since you’ve seen a woman’s body?” she asked.

His face grew warm. He weighed answers. None of your business? Too defensive. Just the other night? An obvious lie. So long ago that I can’t even remember? Too honest.

“Just put on a robe or something is all I’m asking.”

She rolled off the bed, came so close he could feel the air around her body like a bubble of electricity. “You’re not the boss of me, Big Brother,” she said. Then she put the tips of her fingers upon his chest, shoved him playfully out the door. He allowed himself to be shoved, and once he was in the hallway, she told him goodnight, closed the door, and locked it. He was left in the dark, inhaling the scent of paint.

***

Marko was still carrying on in the fenced-in backyard. As Ken turned on the back porch light and slid open the patio door, Marko crawled out of his red and white doghouse, beneath the pecan tree next to the old weather-warped fence. Marko was a mutt, part blue heeler part something with long floppy ears. Once, he’d been a handsome dog, but now his fur, white with dappled bluish-gray marks, had become patchy with bald spots. He’d developed a flea problem, and nothing the vets prescribed worked. The dog padded into the middle of the backyard, which was dotted with holes and strewn with the rubber and rawhide remains of chew toys.

Ken had found Marko as a puppy in a Texaco parking lot shortly after moving down here from Starkville. Marko had been malnourished, living off the garbage strewn around dumpsters. Ken felt sorry for him, brought him home, and the problems started right away. Marko dug up the fern Ken had gotten to brighten up the living room, chewed the legs of the bamboo TV stand, and somehow he was able to get on the kitchen counter and steal food when no one was looking. This became more of a problem as Marko grew larger, and eventually Ken was forced to exile him to the backyard, where he got worse. He dug up wide swaths of lawn, barked at strange noises at all hours of the night, and most recently he’d started killing small animals that came into the yard. When Ken came out to feed Marko in the mornings, he’d find squirrel heads or moles bitten in half in the dog’s green plastic food dish.

Marko had never harmed a human, but he hated Audrey, and Audrey hated him back. She’d once sworn that Marko was foaming at the mouth, that he probably had rabies, maybe a brain tumor that had made him crazy, violent, dangerous. Ken was convinced it was Marko’s jealousy of Audrey that had driven him insane.

Ken started down the back steps, and Marko growled at him, baring yellow fangs. Ken stopped at the bottom step, holding out a hand. He stepped into the patchy grass, and immediately his toes and ankles began to itch from the fleas. The dog moved closer, stretching his muzzle to sniff Ken’s hand. Then he moved closer still so Ken could pet him. The dog locked eyes with his master, growled. Ken averted his gaze. He’d read somewhere that making direct eye contact was a challenge for dominance.

Once the dog had calmed down and stretched out on the flea-infested grass, Ken handed him the Milk Bone he’d brought him. Marko snatched it from his hand. Ken started back up the steps and stood in the doorway, watching Marko, who watched him back, a low rumble in his throat. At least he’d stopped barking. Ken said, “Goodnight, Crazy,” and pushed the sliding glass door shut.

***

It was probably sometime between four and five when Ken fell asleep. The last time he remembered glancing at the VCR clock was 3:31. When Audrey came into the living room and woke him, the black sky outside had been replaced by the dark blue of approaching dawn.

“I had a nightmare,” she said as she stretched out beside him.

She pressed herself against him. Her hair smelled of Herbal Essence. She was warm against him, and his body reacted: muscles tensing, heartbeat rising. She put her arm around him and, before he could protest, she kissed him. She rolled onto her back, pulling Ken on top of her. He reached between the two of them and pushed her panties down. She helped, kicking them the rest of the way off. Then he was inside her.

It had been a long time since Ken had done this, and it was over in a matter of minutes. After, Audrey pulled his face down to hers and kissed him. He lay his cheek upon her chest, pushed the top of his head into the hollow beneath her chin. He fell asleep like that.

***

He normally woke at ten or eleven on Sunday mornings, but it was just past nine when the weight on his arm and the tickle in his nose brought him around. He opened his eyes to find his face buried in a curtain of blonde, fruit-scented hair, streaked with the sunshine pouring through the windows. Audrey had her back to him, pressed tightly against him, warm. In the light of morning, curled up as she was, she looked so small. He tried to think of anything but her heat, her softness, what they’d done. She lay atop his right arm, which tingled with pins and needles. He focused all his attention on that.

Ken didn’t want to wake her. Too awkward if she were awake. He began to extricate his arm, slowly, holding his breath and counting to thirty between movements. He was reminded of newspaper stories in which hikers pinned by rockslides amputated extremities with pocketknives. Suddenly she rolled over, her forehead coming to rest against his cheek, her breath hot on his neck. He’d mostly freed his arm by now, so he yanked it the rest of the way out as she moved.

He held his breath, waited to see if she’d wake up. After a minute or so, he clambered over the arm of the couch and crept into the kitchen. It was a small kitchen with pea-green linoleum that curled at the edges and a rust-spotted refrigerator that was almost the same shade of green as the floor. The sun shone through the window and the patio door, and somehow the light of day made this morning seem more normal. Outside, Marko pawed playfully at something near the base of the fence. Ken got the Bisquick out of the cabinet above the stove, got a couple of eggs and the carton of skim milk from the fridge, and began mixing everything in a blue plastic bowl.

Audrey walked in, yawning. She had put back on her panties and her cystic fibrosis shirt. She asked what he was doing. Without looking at her, Ken said that he was making pancakes. She took a seat at the dining table. He could feel her staring at his back, decided he’d spend the morning avoiding direct eye contact.

“Know how to make blueberry?” she asked.

Ken went to the fridge, got a Zip-Loc bag full of blueberries, and dumped a handful into the batter. He said, “Why don’t you go get dressed? They’ll be ready when you get back.”

“I’d rather eat first. I’m starved.”

He shrugged, poured the batter into the frying pan, and put it on the burner. Then he fetched the college catalog pinned to the front of the refrigerator by a red racecar magnet. He took a seat across from Audrey at the dining table, flipped open the course catalog to a random page, and looked it over. Then he pushed the catalog into the middle of the table.

“Have you picked what courses you’re taking?” he asked, his eyes still fixed on the catalog.

“I think I still need some time to think about it,” she said. “Maybe it’d be best if I wait till next semester.”

Ken banged his fist upon the table, surprising even himself. Staring at her hand resting upon the open catalog, he said, “You promised.” He hated how childish he sounded, wished he was more eloquent, wished he knew something better to say, but before she’d come to stay with him, he’d spent his days silently digging up relics and his nights in an empty house.

“Your pancakes are burning,” she said.

For the first time Ken noticed the smell filling the kitchen, the smoke rising from the frying pan. He hurried over to the oven and flipped the burner off, examined the blackened mess stuck to the bottom of the frying pan.

Marko, lazing in his doghouse, lifted his head and growled when Ken slid open the back door. Ken dumped the contents of the pan into the grass. The dog stood, walked slowly across the yard, head low and hackles up, growling as he approached. A deep, rumbling, dangerous sound.

“Your dog is crazy,” Audrey said, standing behind him in the doorway. “You should have him put to sleep.”

“He’s lived here longer than you,” Ken said, “I’d have you put to sleep first.” He brushed past his stepsister and into the house. She stood on the top step, stared for several seconds at the crazy dog crossing the yard, drooling, sniffing at the ruined pancake. As he began to gobble it down, she stepped inside and closed the door.

***

Audrey had really been looking forward to blueberry pancakes, so Ken decided to take her to Shoney’s. They sat in a booth near the door. The place smelled of grease and floor cleaner. It was just past eleven on a Sunday morning, and people in their church clothes were beginning to file in.

Their waitress was a slender black woman with an accent that Ken couldn’t place. Jamaican maybe? She asked what she could get them to drink. Ken ordered a Coke, Audrey a green tea. The waitress wrinkled her brow, scratched the bun on the back of her head with the eraser of her pencil. “Young miss,” she said, “we do not serve green tea.”

Audrey frowned. She glanced back at the breakfast menu for maybe the tenth time.

Ken wanted this to be a good breakfast, so he said to the waitress, “Are you sure you don’t have any specialty teas? Most places have a selection of specialty teas.”

The waitress stared at him for several seconds. “Sir, we have water and we have teabags,” she said. “Lipton, I think. You can also have your tea with ice, sugar, and lemon, as you choose. These are your tea options.”

Audrey ended up ordering a sweet tea with no ice. They were silent until the waitress brought them their drinks. Ken ordered a breakfast plate with bacon, eggs, and toast. Audrey had decided she wanted regular pancakes, not blueberry.

As soon as the waitress left their table, Audrey said, “So, about this morning.”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Ken said, staring at the half-empty ketchup bottle on their table.

“Is it wrong to comfort your sister when she’s had a bad dream?”

“It’s inappropriate,” he said.

“What’s inappropriate? It’s not a crime. We’re not blood related.”

For the first time all morning, Ken looked his sister in the eyes. “I need you to move out,” he said. She looked like he’d just pointed a gun at her. He was doing the next worst thing, kicking her out on the street, no job, no place to go. He wanted to take it back, and in the silence before she spoke again, he almost did take it back. A dozen times he almost took it back.

“Because of this morning?” she asked.

“Because you broke your promise.”

She leaned back against the cushioned bench, crossed her arms over her chest, looked away from Ken’s face. “So,” she said, “throwing your own sister out on the street. What if I become a prostitute or something?”

“I’m sure you can take care of yourself,” he said, which wasn’t true. She’d spent her whole life living under someone else’s roof. Maybe he was actually doing her a favor by giving her the boot. Making her learn self-sufficiency.

“Fine. I’ll take some classes,” she said. “What should I take? You’re the boss of me, so you decide.” She fished the course catalog out of her oversized denim purse and tossed it into the center of the table. She stood up, leaning over it like a general poring over a strategic map. “Philosophy?” she shouted, pointing at the book. People stared.

“Philosophy is useless these days,” Ken said, glancing at the surrounding tables, the concerned faces of white-haired people in suits and Sunday dresses and cowboy boots.

“Oh, I see. Then how about Photography? Physics?” She flipped the page. “Oh, here’s a good one,” she said. “Retailing!”

“Whatever you choose,” he said. “It’s your choice.”

“No! It’s your choice, seeing as you’re my adopted father now.”

Their waitress came over and touched Audrey on the shoulder, told her she’d have to leave, that she was disturbing the other guests. That’s what she called them. Guests.

“Oh, don’t worry. I was already leaving. I’m going to sell myself on the streets.” Audrey stormed out the door, leaving the course catalog on the table, her purse in the booth.

Ken fished a pair of twenties from his wallet and handed them to the waitress, thanked her for her patience and told her to keep the change. Then he rolled up the course catalog and tucked it under his arm, stood and fetched Audrey’s purse, and followed his sister out into the warm spring morning.

***

At home, Ken sat down at the dining table to pore over the survey report for the dig next week in Vicksburg. Audrey breezed into the kitchen, holding her horticulture book tucked under one arm and a shiny new gardening trowel and a couple of packets of seeds in the other hand. She brushed past Ken as if he wasn’t there, moving fast enough that her wake caught the top page of the survey report and sent it sailing off the table. Ken watched it float down to the peeling linoleum. The temperature in the room felt as if it had plummeted twenty degrees. He bent to retrieve the paper and tried to concentrate on it, but his eyes kept drifting to Audrey’s back. She stood in front of the refrigerator, perusing its contents. Finally she selected an apple and opened the back door.

“You’re crazy,” Ken said. “He’s going to kill you.”

She went down the steps, slid the door shut again behind her.

He’d just gotten his mind back on the survey reports when the back door opened again. Audrey stopped in the doorway and said, “Marko is dead.” Ken looked at her, thinking she might be joking, ready to scold her. Her eyes were focused on him, not a hint of humor in them.

Ken followed her into the backyard. There was no sign of Marko. His plastic doghouse was empty. Audrey led Ken over to the fence line and showed him the dead water moccasin. It had probably come up from the creek and crawled through a gap in the ill-kept fence. Next to its body lay its severed head and Audrey’s garden trowel, the edge bloodied.

Ken asked where his dog was and Audrey pointed back towards the house, at the narrow gap under the back steps that opened into the crawlspace beneath. He walked over to the opening, knelt and looked inside. Something glinted far back in the gloom. Marko’s eyes. He called the dog. No movement. Tried again. Already knew there’d be no response.

He felt a twinge of guilt that he hadn’t spent as much time with the dog as he should have. He hated to admit it, but hidden beneath the guilt was relief. Now he could have his backyard back, didn’t have to worry about the dog barking all night or biting him. Or biting Audrey.

Ken had to lie flat on his chest to fit through the opening. The crawlspace was two and a half, maybe three feet high. Claustrophobia made his heart beat faster. The soil was moist, sour-smelling, and it stuck to his arms, his face, his hands, his shirt. He had to brush away spider webs. The worst part was the strange arrhythmic patter coming from the darkness before him, a sound like drizzly rain on a wooden roof.

As Ken moved closer, the pattering grew louder. Then he began to feel something landing on his arms, neck, and face. He began to itch all over. Fleas. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands. So many you could hear their leaping bodies striking the bottom of the house. He considered retreating, going back to enlist Audrey’s aid. But Marko was his dog. So he grabbed the front legs, grimacing at the feel of the slick fur, the lack of warmth. Then he began to shimmy backwards, gritting his teeth at the itching. As he neared the edge of the house, he yelled for Audrey to get the hose.

Once in the open, he stood, and the freezing water hit him in the back, making his vision go dark, his head spin. He stripped out of his clothes, dropping them in a soggy pile next to Marko’s remains, spinning in the water so she could get every inch of him. When she was done, he wore only a pair of soaked boxers and stood in a puddle of muddy water. Under less grim circumstances, him soaking wet and naked in the backyard might have been a laughing matter. In fact, it looked as if Audrey was fighting to suppress a smile already.

“Have some respect for the dead,” Ken said.

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” she said, taking a deep breath to compose herself.

They decided to bury him behind his mud-spattered doghouse, right next to the fence and under the pecan tree. Ken picked up the bloodstained trowel and got started, wishing he owned a real shovel. What a shame, he thought, an archaeologist without a shovel to his name. It was late spring and already hot, and the sun was at its peak, burning the back of his neck, rapidly drying his boxers and the mud that caked them. The soil was loose and dusty, and it coated his hands and face. It got in his mouth, gritty and bitter.

Audrey knelt behind him, her hands on his bare shoulders, kneading, telling him what a good job he was doing. With the little trowel, it took him quite a while to dig a grave big enough and deep enough for Marko, and by the time he was done, only the topmost sliver of the sun was still visible over the trees. His neck and back throbbed.

The dog felt like a loose sack of tree branches, as if every bone had come apart inside him. He was impossibly heavy. Ken tried to lower him, but ended up dropping him unceremoniously into his grave. Replacing the loose soil was a much faster process. They used their feet to send great mounds raining down upon Marko, covering first his face, then the rest of him, until only a patch of white fur on his side was visible, and then that was covered too. When they were done, they were both tired, sweaty, dirty. Ken felt like he should say a few words, but he wasn’t religious, and didn’t know anything appropriate.

“Maybe I should start my garden right here on his grave,” Audrey said.

Suddenly Ken felt lightheaded. He knelt next to the grave and she knelt next to him, put her arm around his shoulders.

“You’d never finish,” he said. “You never finish anything.”

“I’ll finish this. I promise.”

Their eyes met. She took his hand, helped him to his feet, and promised him that everything would be okay. Then she pulled him towards the house. Ken glanced back over his shoulder at the mound of freshly turned soil. He tried to imagine what Audrey’s garden would look like growing there.

About the Author

Billy Middleton

Billy Middleton is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. His work has previously appeared in Vestal Review, Kennesaw Review, Word Riot, and other publications.