Drew. I was nearly incoherent with panic but eventually he
understood. He said I should leave, right now, and he’d meet me
halfway. I can’t, I said. At this moment things are calm. If I try to run
off in the middle of the night, I don’t know what will happen.
I went to bed but not to sleep. I waited until six in the morning, then
I found Mother in the kitchen. I’d borrowed the car I was driving from
Drew, so I told Mother something had come up unexpectedly, that
Drew needed his car in Salt Lake. I said I’d be back in a day or two.
A few minutes later I was driving down the hill. The highway was in
sight when I saw something and stopped. It was the trailer where
Shawn lived with Emily and Peter. A few feet from the trailer, near the
door, the snow was stained with blood. Something had died there.
From Mother I would later learn it was Diego, a German shepherd
Shawn had purchased a few years before. The dog had been a pet,
much beloved by Peter. After Dad had called, Shawn had stepped
outside and slashed the dog to death, while his young son, only feet
away, listened to the dog scream. Mother said the execution had
nothing to do with me, that it had to be done because Diego was killing
Luke’s chickens. It was a coincidence, she said.
I wanted to believe her but didn’t. Diego had been killing Luke’s
chickens for more than a year. Besides, Diego was a purebred. Shawn
had paid five hundred dollars for him. He could have been sold.
But the real reason I didn’t believe her was the knife. I’d seen my
father and brothers put down dozens of dogs over the years—strays
mostly, that wouldn’t stay out of the chicken coop. I’d never seen
anyone use a knife on a dog. We shot them, in the head or the heart, so
it was quick. But Shawn chose a knife, and a knife whose blade was
barely bigger than his thumb. It was the knife you’d choose to
experience a slaughter, to feel the blood running down your hand the
moment the heart stopped beating. It wasn’t the knife of a farmer, or
even of a butcher. It was a knife of rage.
—I DON’T KNOW WHAT happened in the days that followed. Even now, as I
scrutinize the components of the confrontation—the threat, the denial,
the lecture, the apology—it is difficult to relate them. When I
considered it weeks later, it seemed I had made a thousand mistakes,
driven a thousand knives into the heart of my own family. Only later