Chapter One
"You said you wanted to know when the bitch dropped them. And if you want to see them before I put them down, you'd better get over here fast."
Clyde had jolted Ken out of a deep sleep. It had been a rough day. Classes at the college, followed by football practice. Then he had to stop at the pharmacy on the way home and pick up Laurie's prescriptions and tend to her needs and get a meal ready for her. And then straight over to Clyde's to help with Daisy. She was about to whelp and was having a difficult time with it. He thought Clyde was breeding her too close together. But that was Clyde. Always the bottom line with Clyde.
Ken was in such a hurry to get out of bed and over to Clyde's, up the block from his mom's house, that all he did was pull on his jeans and pause at Laurie's bedroom door to make sure she was sleeping OK before he left.
Good thing he checked, because she had a live cigarette lying on the nightstand. It wasn't close to anything flammable, but one never knew. It was close to an open bottle of bourbon standing on the floor between the bed and the nightstand, though. If the cigarette had dropped in there, chances were Laurie's bed would go up in flames—with her in it.
As much as Laurie demanded of him, Ken wouldn't want anything like that to happen to her. She was the only one he had left in the world in the way of family. And family had always been important to Ken.
Laurie coughed in her sleep and turned away from Ken as he stubbed the cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray and picked up the bourbon bottle. He had half a notion to pour it out and tell her in the morning she'd drunk it all. But they couldn't afford it, and Ken knew she'd just open another bottle—or send out for another one. Ken couldn't get the booze for her, but that's what she kept Suzy around for—why she still held onto Suzy as her last friend. She didn't need the friends so much as someone to buy her booze for her.
Ken exploded out of the house and padded up toward Clyde's along the grass lawns in his bare feet.
Clyde lived in the original farmhouse that had been on this tract of land, where cheap bungalows had been built as close together as county code would permit around the farmhouse. Clyde had kept a sizable chunk of the land running back of his house, though, including the original barn area, where he'd installed fenced pens and a couple of dog runs. He had pens inside the barn too, and an office.
Clyde bred Labrador Retrievers. And Ken had been helping him part time since he was a junior in high school. Ken had been there when Daisy was born, and she was his favorite of all the Labs Clyde kept.
Clyde wasn't big on affection with his dogs—for him they were just dollar signs—or debits. When they got to be debits, he had them put down. He wasn't sentimental about them. Half the reason Ken stayed with Clyde was because he didn't want that to happen to Daisy. When she came close to that, Ken wanted to be there to tell Clyde he'd take her, which would be less trouble to Clyde than putting her down.
Ken had tried to provide the dogs with what Clyde wouldn't. Clyde worked him hard in the few hours he paid him for, but Ken had stayed on for extra hours and given the dogs exercise and affection. Daisy had been the one that returned the most affection to him.
When it was time for Ken to go away to college, he'd had several options, having been a state standout on the football field and an outstanding student as well. But there were impediments to him leaving home. It was just he and his mother—had been for years, his father having died in a trucking accident on a snowy mountain road—and his mother was plagued with illnesses real, imagined, and self-induced and was incapable of taking care of herself. She also was a holy terror to anyone else who tried to help her other than Ken, which was one reason her circle of friends was down to just Suzy, who wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer and would just as easily accidentally kill Laurie as to keep her going. And another big reason Ken couldn't leave for college was Daisy and the other Labs at Clyde's.
Ken knew if he didn't help give the dogs at Clyde's some attention and affection, no one else would. Ken even could have gotten some better jobs, ones with better pay and better hours. But then there wouldn't be anyone to help take care of the dogs. And Ken liked working with the dogs.
As fast as Ken had rocketed out of the house and displayed his running skills in covering the distance between his house and Clyde's at three in the morning, he wasn't in time. Daisy was already dead when he got there.
She'd whelped five pups, two of them stillborn, in a wrenching delivery during which she hemorrhaged so much blood that she had lost the ability to sustain her strength.
Ken found her lying on a gunny sack in one of the pens in the barn, all five pups around her. She was alone. Clyde was off in another part of the barn, running water into a galvanized tub the size of a small bathtub.
Ken knelt beside Daisy and ran his hands across her cooling body. He lowered his face to her neck and cried. He'd seen dogs die here before at Clyde's. But none of them had been Daisy. Daisy had been born the first day he'd come to work for Clyde, back when he was barely out of elementary school and felt he needed a job because his father had just died. It was the first day Ken had seen the wonders of another living being coming into the world. He'd followed her all through what was an entirely too short life. She had been bred too close together. He knew that.
"Sorry, Daisy," he mumbled through his tears. "I should have been here. Oh, god, I wished I had been here." He sniffed and then continued, "But don't you worry. I'll take good care of your pups."
That's when he looked up to see that Clyde was reaching down and had the tiniest of the pups, the runt, by the scruff of the neck, was lifting it from where it had instinctively been trying to find a nipple, and carrying it toward the tub of water.
"What? Whatayer doin', Mr. Snepp?"
"Putting them down. They've got to be put down."
"No! Why."
"There's no bitch around ready to take them on. They have to be put down."
"No, no, you can't. Please."
"I'm not taking care of them," he said. And with the hand he wasn't holding the new-born puppy with Clyde put a hold on Ken's shoulder and let it move down to where he was palming Ken's shoulder blade.
That was when Ken realized he had only come out in jeans. The palm of Clyde's hand on his back felt hot, and at the same time Ken felt shivers raiding out of the center of that and down his spine. He could tell by the look Clyde was giving him that this had not been a good idea. Not a good idea at all. Clyde had been increasingly showing interest in Ken—the kind of interest Ken didn't want shown to him by Clyde, although he'd been doing so ever since Ken had turned eighteen.
There was a time when Ken had substituted Clyde as a father figure, when Ken's life at home was rotten, and he needed someone to confide in. Then Clyde had been all sympathy and compassion. That hadn't been the real Clyde, though. Clyde had been interested in being more than a father to Ken even then. And Ken had let it slip—what his interests and inclinations were. And this had fit into Clyde's plans perfectly. Ken had even told him about Lawrence—the friend who lived further up the block and had gone through school with Ken and then enrolled in the same local college and played on the same football team.
