Wild Dogs

It was Grace’s last week in Chile and she was headed to the Andes with Rachel. The environment morphed from the wide, flat desert plains of the Atacama Desert to gray, chilled hills, and then the snowy passes of the mountains. It was dusk when their new friend Diego wound the wheezing Toyota through the narrow roads of the pueblo. This was a place out of Grimm’s fairy tales: fir and pine towered over the road, weighed down with a thick coat of snow. Every now and then a truck passed, wheels churning through the muddied snow, sometimes carting cattle. The animals huddled together and in the darkening light all Grace could make out were their eyes, blinking and bright. Rachel was silent in the backseat. Grace thought she had fallen asleep, but then she heard a soft, gentle hum. Rachel’s face was pressed up against the cold glass of the window, breath fogging up her reflection, eyes full of an emotion Grace could not quite place.

When Rachel had announced her plans to tour South America volunteering as a vet tech with Veterinarians Without Borders, Grace dismissed it as she had so many of Rachel’s other “ideas.” Rachel hadn’t moved to Alaska with her flight instructor, nor had she dropped out of school to pursue professional rugby. This time, though, Rachel had followed through. She’d started in Chiloe, one of the southernmost islands near Patagonia, and had made it as far as Santiago with VWB. Three months in, with her volunteer stint concluded, Rachel wasn’t ready to leave Latin America. Instead she wandered through deserted coastal towns, picking up friends along the way and stopping in Internet cafes to share her coordinates with Grace and others back home.

Grace, meanwhile, worked as an office administrator for a travel agency based in the Napa Valley. Sometimes she’d place Rachel’s coordinates into Google Maps, waiting for the picture to brighten as she zoomed along the Chilean coast, winding through the colorful streets of Valparaiso—paradise in its name—and through Andean back woods. What possessed her to buy a ticket? Maybe it was watching so many tourists file through her office, dazzled and wine-drunk by California’s beauty, many traveling from Europe or Asia to taste a single varietal. Grace had never been impulsive; she’d always created a plan and stuck to it—she’d made it to Cal, hadn’t she, and double majored in English and Spanish. But then the plan tapered off. She’d worked so hard to get into a good university, studied her ass off to maintain a strong GPA while juggling an internship and a part-time job—but for what? To book other people’s itineraries?

No. If Rachel could solo backpack the length of Chile, then Grace could squeeze in a visit. She watched the airline prices daily and strategized the cheapest route—so what if she had a two-hour layover in Mexico City, or if the red-eye wouldn’t get her there till midday—and bought a round-trip flight to Santiago. Grace cashed in on her two weeks PTO, even though it was late August, the height of Chilean winter. She welcomed the venomous chill after a long summer shepherding tourists through Napa.

When Grace arrived at the airport bearing a jar of crunchy peanut butter—the one item Rachel requested from the States—she shouldn’t have been surprised to see her long-lost friend accompanied by a wiry gray dog, its muzzle bitten and eyes startled by the hypnotic click of the baggage claim.

“Ven, Zorro, ven!” Rachel held the dog back by its makeshift collar, a knotted hemp rope. With one hand on the dog, she rushed in to hug Grace, her body muscular and toned from months of travel.

Grace felt the familiarity of their embrace: first she stiffened, but then, as Rachel’s hug grew tighter, her biceps pulling her in like a reptile swallowing its prey, she let her body fold. Her friend emanated body heat despite the clouds gathering outside. They used to joke she was cold-blooded, for wherever she went, Rachel blurred into the environment with sensory camouflage. This, despite her unapologetic voice, drew people to her. Grace often shrunk alongside her louder, more courageous friend, preferring to catch the ride of Rachel’s exuberance from the safety of the shadows.

The dog shared Grace’s reluctance to engage. Its nose prodded at her knees. The dog was missing half of its upper lip, exposing its teeth in a semi-permanent smirk.

“This one of the VWB strays?” Grace asked as they waited for her luggage to arrive. Rachel opened the jar of peanut butter and dipped her thumb in, gathering up a cluster of crushed peanuts and oil before licking it off her hand.

“Didn’t I tell you about Zorro?” Rachel asked between audible grunts of satisfaction. “We found him in one of the villages of Patagonia. He was the only member of his pack to survive an avalanche. You should have seen his face! Blue-black and covered in ice. Ay, si, mi amor.”

She dipped her thumb back into the peanut butter and let the dog lick the treat off her hand. Grace tried not to gag.

“He didn’t have an owner?” Grace tried not to sound hopeful.

Rachel laughed. “Most of the dogs you see in Chile don’t have owners, Grace. They’re just—free.”

When the dog approached her, its nose sticky with peanut butter, Grace bumped backward into a kiosk of travel brochures. “Like, feral?”

“Isn’t that yours?” Rachel pointed to Grace’s overstuffed duffel. “You’re only here two weeks, right?”

“Yeah, but you never know.” Grace reached for the bag, which was covered in neon stickers that read “OVERSIZE.”

“Always the girl scout!” Rachel laughed. “Come on, chica, let’s get to the hostel. I’ve got so much to show you.”

“Him too?” Grace nodded toward the dog.

“¡Pues, claro!” Rachel offered up her signature guffaw, warm and loud and kind and familiar. Grace let herself be led, as she always had, by this roving, wonderful force of nature. She’d do her best to ignore the beast alongside.

Santiago’s bitter cold and smoky skies were punctuated by the consistent patter of music, cumbia, cueca and the hypnotic thump of reggaetón. Rachel introduced Grace to pisco sours, hot pink and chartreuse cocktails punctuated with the bite of Chilean liquor and squeezed lemon, topped with foamy egg whites—the first one delicious, the second one a mistake when paired with a medium-rare steak, the third one a pool of regret that left Grace sweaty and curled around the hostel toilet. It was hard not to fall for Rachel’s thousand tricks—her ever-present smile, which attracted the attention of the bartender, the waiter, their fellow travelers, the bus driver, the dogs. Grace could’ve done without the steady stream of animals, both on the streets and in the hostel. Everyone had dogs—even big dogs had smaller dogs that trotted behind them, picking up the scraps of whatever trash they’d devoured from the gutters.

Grace assumed there would be fewer dogs in the Atacama Desert, where they planned to visit the geysers del Tatio, the third-largest geyser field in the world, located 24 hours away by bus. After three days of cold and smog in Santiago, she was ready for a change of scenery. Once aboard their bus, she watched Rachel brush Zorro’s matted fur.

“Don’t you worry about rabies?” Grace asked. “Or worms?”

Rachel cocked an eyebrow. “I already treated this dog, remember?”

With what? Grace wanted to ask, but didn’t. Instead she said, “Why did you adopt Zorro? Honestly. I don’t get it.”

Rachel was quiet, her eyes on the changing landscape outside the bus window. The road was endless, though Grace could sense a subtle shift in altitude.

 “He was lost and alone.” Rachel rubbed the dog under his chin. “He was the sole survivor, Gracie. I couldn’t leave him stranded. Not the way—” Her voice grew small.

“The way what?” Grace whispered. It had been years since she had seen this side of her friend. “Wait. Is this about Yosemite?”

“No.” The edge in Rachel’s voice was familiar. “Dunno what you’re talking about.”

Grace nodded, recognizing their old argument. No matter how many times she tried, Rachel would never accept her apology for what happened that summer after they graduated high school. They had been accepted to colleges hundreds of miles apart and were determined to spend every day of that summer together, biking the back roads of their country town, skinny-dipping at the lake, riding horses in the paddock behind Rachel’s family home. They spent weeks planning a backpacking trip in the John Muir Wilderness, marking up California maps with yellow and pink highlighters.

Everything was fine until they arrived in Yosemite, their bodies strong and lithe under their packs, the California sun piercing overhead. Grace was overtired and dehydrated, ready to recuperate before they journeyed on, but Rachel was unperturbed. They squabbled over where to camp, one or both of them misreading the map, and eventually parted for the night, agreeing to sleep on opposite sides of the meadow. The next morning, when Rachel failed to show at the trailhead at the appointed time, Grace had blundered on through the wilderness without her, assuming that her fearless friend had forged ahead. Their paths would have crossed eventually, Grace would later reason, if not for the rainstorm that followed. By the time they found each other, Rachel was drenched and shivering. Grace had forgotten she’d been carrying all the raingear.

“For the last time, I never meant to leave you behind,” Grace said. “We made it out, didn’t we?”

Rachel bristled, not looking at her as she pulled a neon Nalgene out of her bag and took a long swig. “You brought up Yosemite, not me.”

Grace placed a palm on Rachel’s arm. “I’m not going to leave you stranded.”

They traveled on in silence, watching a dubbed version of “27 Dresses” play on a VCR above their row of seats. Zorro remained mercifully quiet, getting up when the bus driver exited the freeway for union pee breaks. As they traveled, rest stops gave way to Porta-Potty shacks on the side of the road, where husband-wife teams sometimes sold elotes or roasted potatoes. There was so much Grace wanted to ask. Why, after she’d completed her volunteer work, had Rachel stayed in Chile? For years, Rachel had talked of applying to veterinary school, then nursing school, then doula training, and yet to Grace’s knowledge she’d never submitted a single application. And how could she claim to be stranded when Rachel had chosen this isolation? Grace fell into listless sleep, waking when she felt the unnerving rough edge of Zorro’s tongue scraping her cheek.

“Gross!” She pushed the dog away, his ears folding backward as he slunk under Rachel’s chair.

They arrived in the desert the following afternoon. Grace was disappointed to discover that, despite the desolation of this flat, brown place, San Pedro de Atacama had a dog population of its own. Lean, grisly dogs, animals that if they were trees, would have been cacti; their bodies covered in bristles, their souls old, rooted to the desert floor. A geothermic plain set in a sea of volcanoes and ruins of the ancient Mapuche, Atacama promised new adventures—one of them a smiley man named Diego. A native of the Andes, he’d trekked to the desert to escape the Argentine winter.

He had a gap between his front teeth and hair that fluttered when he nodded. Grace counted the hours until he had fallen in love with her friend. Rachel never acknowledged it, though her cheeks grew redder and her laugh ran higher and longer into the night. This was always how it happened.

By the end of their first day, they had become a tight trio. Diego tagged along when the girls rented bikes and cycled out to the Valle de la Luna, a canyon with ridges so high, its peaks gestured toward the stars. They boarded in the same hostel, their beds separated by thin clay barriers. Even Zorro took a shine to Diego, probably because the man let him lick his fingers clean at the end of every meal, a habit Grace abhorred. At night she wanted to speak to Rachel in English, but her friend was adamant about practicing Spanish. Rachel rattled on into the late evening, pausing at the end of each sentence to see if Diego would respond. He always did.

Their second day together, they rode their bikes along the desert mountains, stopping to stage photos of each other appearing to jump off the edge. Diego entertained Rachel’s stories of backpacking along the Pacific coast and shared his ambitions of taking over his family’s farm. That night, while sharing plates of pork empanadas and potato bread, he told them about waking up at midnight to help his father’s horse deliver a foal. Rachel listened, rapt, as he recalled the smell of the baby horse, soft and new and covered in its mother’s protective fluids.

“Rachel could handle that,” Grace said. “She’s going to be a veterinarian.”

Diego clapped his hands. “¡Qué bien! And you, Grace, what do you want to be?”

Grace hesitated, eyes on her plate. It was so much easier to talk about Rachel. “I work for a travel agency.”

“Grace is a fabulous artist,” Rachel interrupted. “She does everything. Watercolor, oil, charcoal, and my favorite—cartoons.”

“Comics,” Grace couldn’t help correcting. “And that’s just a hobby. Nobody pays me to do that.”

“Not yet.” Rachel reached a hand across the table to Diego. “Ask her to draw your portrait, seriously.”

“Please don’t.”

Rachel was the only person who’d ever offered to buy a piece from her—a mixed media collage meant to depict the alfalfa fields of their hometown—but Grace hadn’t accepted, obviously. Rachel was her best friend. She was obligated to like whatever Grace made. But Diego regarded her with sincere interest, pulling her aside later to ask if she had a card. Blushing, she said no but offered him her Instagram handle instead.

At the end of their third day, Diego announced that he had to check on his farm on the Argentine border. There were woods to clear, animals to feed, fires to stoke. At least, this is what Grace heard. Rachel heard something different. That night, the girls walked out under the desert stars, a rare moment together. The stars were brilliant and bright, reminding Grace of an old Navajo legend. A bird had once pecked a series of holes in the sky, a great black blanket, to let the sun shine through. The shining holes that remained became the stars. In the desert, the stars dominated.

They walked out beyond the hostel, where the sand whipped little eddies as the wind bustled. In the desert, Rachel let Zorro wander leashless, watching the dog dig holes or chase invisible insects. There were some benefits to having a dog of their own, Grace conceded, because when other, stranger dogs approached, Zorro would head them off with a low growl and swipe of the tail. Grace unearthed a case of hard crackers and a tin of Chilean condensed milk from her pack. Dulce de leche was her favorite part of Chile so far, its texture thick and creamy, its honey-like flavor soft and smooth.

“I think we should go with him.” Rachel interrupted her thoughts.

“Go with who where?” Grace’s fingers were sticky with sweet crackers.

“Diego. We should go with Diego to the Andes.”

Grace watched the sand spin around her shoes. “Was there an invitation in there somewhere? Because if there was, I didn’t hear it.”

“Oh, sure.”

Sometimes Grace couldn’t tell when her friend was telling the truth, or if hers was a fluid truth.

“Is this because you don’t want to be left stranded?” Grace asked. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

Rachel’s eyes narrowed. “Careful.”

“You’re telling me to be careful?” Grace laughed. “That’s a new one.” Zorro ambled over to where they sat and leaned sideways into her thigh. “I don’t get how following some guy we just met to his cabin in the woods is careful.”

Rachel stood up and brushed off her pants. “You think you’re better than us, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question. It was their age-old argument, the cat and mouse game they’d played since they were five years old.       

“If by ‘us,’ you mean you and that guy who wants to bone you and this mangy dog, then yeah, I do.” Grace pushed Zorro away, a gesture she realized a moment too late was cruel. The dog hung its head.

Rachel walked a few yards away from Grace, her figure growing darker under the blue-black sky. Before Grace could follow she heard her bellow, long and loud and low. Her voice was guttural and prehistoric, mimicking the geometry of the volcanic rocks that lined the plain. Rachel hadn’t used any words; she was, as always, one hundred percent, raw unadulterated feeling. Grace watched, envious that her friend could access and express so much emotion. The only way she’d ever expressed her frustration was through clingy hot tears, which she hated, or through drawing. Nothing as glorious or unafraid as Rachel’s yell.

A minute passed, then Rachel returned, her face calm. She took a measured breath and approached Grace, hands tenting in a conciliatory triangle under her chin.

“This isn’t about ‘boning’ anyone, and my dog is not mangy.” She exhaled, voice cracking as if it weren’t the former that bothered her so much as the latter. “I’m a vet tech, right? I take care of my animals.”

“Of course, I’m sorry.” Grace lowered her head. “And I don’t think I’m better than you or anyone.”

Rachel cocked an eyebrow, her smile blossoming in the dark. “That’s TBD, my friend.” She reached down to pat Zorro’s head. “Look, we have only a few days left together in Chile. Let’s do something we couldn’t do anywhere else.”

It was as if there was a script embedded deep in Rachel’s body and she was reciting it rote. Grace had heard many of her speeches: the one in defense of homeopathic medicine, the one about how sexuality is a spectrum and monogamy overrated, the one linking astrology to dietary needs. This was different, though; Grace sensed danger where Rachel did not.

“We’d have the whole place to ourselves! He says the farm hands go back to their villages this time of year. It would be our own quiet retreat in the woods. Not the woods—the Andes! You do realize these are some of the most beautiful mountains in the world, don’t you?”

“Rachel—”

“Raquel!”

Grace blinked. This was new. “Okay, Raquel—what part of this is a good idea?”

Rachel sputtered, withdrawing her hands and regarding the heavens. She stared upward. “Look where we are. The universe is out there waiting.”

Grace looked up. The stars overwhelmed her in their abundance. She could never distinguish the constellations.

“You’re sure he’s offering?”

“I knew you’d say yes!” Rachel leapt at Grace, jumping up and down and hugging her. “You’re the best.”

Once Rachel stopped jumping, Grace slid her arms out and gave her an awkward pat on the back.

“How far is it from here?” Grace asked as they approached the hostel.

“It’s about a day’s drive,” Rachel said. “And it’s on the way to Santiago.”

Grace’s flight home departed Santiago in four days. They’d be pushing it, she knew, but she’d already given in. Before she knew it, she was nodding like it was a reasonable thing.

The cabin was not what Grace had expected. It was approaching darkness when they arrived, bumping off the freeway onto a slick unpaved road. Zorro whined as Diego maneuvered the idiosyncratic twists and turns of the old road, pulling to a stop before a tiny cement shack.

“Is this an outhouse?” Grace asked.

“Home sweet home,” Diego said. “Here, take these. You’ll need them.” He handed Grace and Rachel flashlights.

When she opened the car door, Grace felt her body temperature drop. She yanked on the zipper to her hoodie, teeth chattering as they crunched over hail and hard balls of melting snow.

“This can’t really be it, can it?” she whispered to Rachel. It looked like a shack out of a horror movie, the remnants of an abandoned mine. Where was the barn where Diego had delivered the foal? The cattle, the hay, the warmth?

But Rachel didn’t answer. She was too busy twirling on the fresh snow, pumping her arms and opening her mouth to let the snowflakes fall in. Zorro shook out his shivering body, his tail whipping furiously against the cold.

Diego forced open the wooden door with a swift kick and carried their bags inside. There was no running water, no electricity, but neither Diego nor Rachel seemed to mind. Panic rose in Grace’s body. Diego instructed them how to pump water from the well, boil water on the stove for yerba mate, and open the fireplace flue. Grace got as close to it as possible, although nothing burned inside.

She aimed her flashlight through the cabin’s cold belly, peering from the makeshift kitchen to the bedroom, her breath visible in the night air. The cabin was somehow both spare and crowded: a wood burning stove, blackened with years of use, took up much of the back wall, while the main room was decorated in braided rugs with frayed fringes that reached out like yarn fingers. Even in the darkness Grace could see that the home was well-loved. There were stacks of woven blankets, a bookshelf crowded with dusty titles and a kitchenette, complete with an ancient ice box and a collection of mason jars.

Diego went outside to gather wood.

“Isn’t this amazing?” Rachel said. “It’s vacán!” Vacán, which meant “cool,” was her new word. She pranced about in her sole pair of hiking pants and a flannel shirt, feather earrings spinning in both ears. “Come on, let’s catch snowflakes!”

“Would rather be grabbing rainbows,” Grace muttered as she followed Rachel outside. It was nearing eight o’clock at night and her face and neck were itchy with cold. That’s when she noticed the dogs. “Watch out, Raquel!”

Waiting on the doorstep, huddled in the falling snow, were six or seven stray dogs of varying breeds, many with matted, soiled fur and ragged, worn-out eyes. One of them, a yellow lab with grizzled fur, had a lame back leg, but that didn’t keep him from humping the small black and white dog, her eyes furrowed in submission. Grace stepped back.

“Hola, beautiful,” Rachel cooed, approaching the dogs. She held out her hand.

“Rachel, no!” Grace snapped. “I mean, Raquel. They’re wild. We shouldn’t touch them, right?”

“For the last time, they’re harmless,” Rachel said, though she withdrew her hand. “They’re just dogs. Right, Zorro?”

But Zorro had disappeared. Grace waited, suspecting that their canine friend had slipped into the crowd. “Zorro?” Rachel called into the darkness, her voice betraying fear for the first time.

Diego reappeared with an arm full of wet sticks. “There’s not enough here to start a fire. I’ll drive to the general store and buy a box of wood.”

“Great, we’ll come with you,” Grace said in a rush, eager to get into the warm Toyota.

“Not without Zorro!” Rachel said.

Diego glanced between the two women. “The store closes soon. If I don’t go now, the road could freeze.”

How had they not thought of this? Grace’s heart pummeled her ribcage. “Take us with you, please.”

“What if he’s lost?” Rachel asked, voice small. “We can’t leave him stranded.”

Exasperated, Grace threw up her hands. Should she trust her best friend, the girl who knew all her secrets, who had backpacked the length of this country, or should she follow Diego, a man of indeterminate age who, a few days ago, was a stranger?

“I’ll be fast.” Diego snapped his fingers. “The store is just up the road.”

Grace and Rachel watched him back the Toyota down the snowy driveway, windshield wipers working overtime as the snow grew thicker. The only sound more terrifying than tires crunching on ice was the silence that followed. The darkness swallowed them as the forest dogs circled the girls outside the cabin. Now both Zorro and Diego were gone.

“Zorro!” Rachel called, a manic edge to her voice. “Ven, Zorro, ven!” She put two fingers in her mouth and let out a long, high-pitched whistle. “I have to find him.”

“Are you crazy?” Grace asked. “It’s snowing.”

“Exactly!” Rachel grabbed Grace by the hand. “He could freeze.”

“Or we could.” Grace tried to resist but Rachel was already pulling her forward. She brushed past the dogs, her hair decorated with a soft crown of snow.

“We’re safer together,” Rachel said. “C’mon, Grace.” She wove her arm in the tight space between Grace’s arm and ribcage, pulling her onto the soft crunch of the snow.            

“Good thing we have flashlights,” Grace grumbled. She zipped up all available zippers and tugged a beanie against her ears. Her fingers had grown numb and she had to warm them one by one by putting them in her mouth before pulling on her gloves.

“Hurry up!” Rachel called, growing frustrated. “He could freeze out here.”

“Gimme a sec.” Grace fumbled with her jacket and hat.

The growing darkness made it hard to see even a few feet ahead. They ventured a few yards from the cabin and had ducked under the cover of sturdy evergreens when Grace felt Rachel let go. It was a second but it was also a lifetime, a childhood and an adolescence and a young adulthood spun into the parting of frigid fingers amidst the frantic search for a lost dog. Grace’s hands were so cold, sweat slick and freezing on her neck and she stepped over roots and rocks, that it took a moment to register that Rachel was truly gone.

Grace was surrounded by a vacuum of darkness and swirling snow. She looked back at the cabin—maybe Rachel had forgotten something. All she could make out was a solitary candle lit in the window. She couldn’t have been that far from the cabin, but as the pressure of the snowfall increased, her visibility diminished. The world was translucent. In her haste she dropped her flashlight in the snow.

“Wonderful.” She dug around on the ground, her gloved fingers scraping the dirtied snow to no avail. Her gloves were wet and she couldn’t risk freezing her fingers. She stood up, breathing hard. Rachel couldn’t have gone far. She considered her options. If she went back to the cabin, maybe Diego would be there waiting, his arms full of fresh, dry firewood. Or she could wander in the direction Rachel might have gone, listening in vain for Zorro’s mournful whine.

She shook her legs dry and plodded forward into the darkness, eyes beginning to adjust. She fell into a rhythm, shuffling through the snow with the intention of being a human Zamboni, zigzagging back and forth along the makeshift trail, stopping under trees for shelter. It was hard to distinguish the freestanding sticks from the roots hidden under the snow, but after careful prodding she collected a few pieces of firewood. She told herself that Rachel was around the next bend, hiding behind the next tree. Grace was sweating in spite of herself, the effort of moving forward a tax on her slim frame in the driving wind. When she heard the crunchings in the snow multiply, the insistent breath of something puffing around the next tree, she thought Rachel was playing a prank on her. Grace looked to the place where her friend might be, but the forest was eerily silent. Her blood thundered in her ears. Go, her body told her. Run.

Running through snow at night was like treading water in a fast, rocky stream. Grace stumbled over rocks and tripped over exposed roots. Trees blended together. Instead of seeing the path in front of her, she saw a series of snapshots of all the places she and Rachel had gone together: the geysers del Tatio, the funicular car that wove through the streets of Valparaiso, the shantytowns along the Chilean coast. Her mind calculated how far she was from the biggest city, how many hours until her flight home, how long she’d spend in the air. How many of Rachel’s speeches would she hear again?

It couldn’t be much farther, Grace was thinking, as she fell. The ground was sturdy and the dirt grainy with snow beneath her. She weighed the relative effort of lifting herself back up against the appeal of curling up in a ball. And then: she felt a weight on her leg, smelled the familiar rot of food on doggy breath. She opened one eye. Zorro.

“Jesus!” The word escaped Grace’s lips as she embraced the dog. He licked flecks of snow off her pants. “Rachel! I found him!” she called. Her lungs hurt. Her sounds were muffled by the snow, which fell so steadily she could only see an arm’s length in front of her. “Oh, what the hell, Raquel!”

Zorro licked her exposed cheek. Her eyes closed and when she opened them again, there were more dogs. The black and white one was back, with a little terrier, a mutt, a large German shepherd and its puppy. They looked nothing like the dogs Grace knew back home. These were dog soldiers, all of them bearing some obvious wound or scar. All of them hungry.

She pushed herself to her knees. The dogs moved in as a collective unit. Zorro circled her, sniffing the outline of where she’d fallen. Had she plopped down in the middle of a dog board meeting? Or a situation room? The German shepherd advanced. Zorro headed him off before he could touch her. Grace was grateful. She felt the need to participate.

“How did you find me?” she asked. In her exhaustion she half-expected the shepherd to lift his regal jaw and talk back. He stared at her with intensity, his voice a rumbly growl, alternately charging and backing away. Zorro noticed the black and white dog shivering behind a mutt, her tail low to the ground, ears lowered. She sensed that she was witnessing a negotiation.

“Do you know these dogs?” she asked Zorro. “From a previous life?”

The shepherd circled her and Zorro, each time growing one step closer, close enough so she could see thorny pine needles embedded in its tail. She was freezing and afraid to move, and though she wanted to cry out for Rachel something told her to wait. And then, without warning, the shepherd barreled into her, a flurry of fur and loud, gnashing barks.

The shepherd shoved her backward with one paw on each shoulder. She shielded her face with her hands and tried to knock his nose out of her face. His breath on her neck was hot and hearty with spittle and adrenaline. And then the sloppy bites got more focused, his teeth breaking through the pillowy down of her jacket and grazing her collarbone below. Though her body had grown weary, her arms and legs never stopped moving.

Instinct overcame them both: what was left of the shepherd’s dirty fur was upright, almost rigid. Grace kicked and flailed. Her limbs began to fail, and just when she was ready to surrender, she heard the black hollow pop of a gun, followed by one long, strangled cry as the dogs disappeared into the darkness.

Snow broke loose from a nearby tree and crashed onto the ground. She tried to sit up, but her muscles were sore. She heard movement overhead, and as the snow settled a form materialized out of the clearing. Rachel’s pale skin glowed in the darkness, her beanie wet with snow. Her eyes looked dark.

“Grace! Are you all right?” Rachel stuffed something deep into her jacket pocket and ran a gloved hand over Grace’s face. By now the chill had set in and Grace recoiled at her touch. At the sight of her friend, something inside her broke free as she started to sob, the adrenaline and energy of the past hour releasing as tears poured down her face.

“Breathe,” Rachel murmured. “Deep breaths. That’s it.”

Grace’s gasps began to slow, her lungs heaving and her sides sore from holding in so much tension. “Are they gone?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about them,” Rachel said. “Here, let me help you. Slow, now.”

The snow slowed to a soft, watery drizzle, leaving more room for the cold. She accepted Rachel’s hand and got up, putting weight on one leg, then the other. Grace expected one of Rachel’s hugs, but instead her friend held her out at arm’s length and surveyed her face.

“I’ve got some antiseptic back at the cabin,” she said. “Could’ve been worse.”

Grace lifted a hand to the gash in her jacket, which exposed a sliver of broken skin on her neck. “Where did you go?”

Rachel didn’t respond. She ran her hands down Grace’s body, searching for more injuries. The trees shifted, wind rustling the highest branches, causing teardrops of snow to plop in circles on the ground. There was something new in Rachel’s face: a calm determination, an expertise and familiarity with danger that Grace hadn’t recognized before. At long last, Rachel stood upright, her smile returning.

“You’re all right.” Her voice was soft. She leaned in and enveloped her. Grace loved that hug, its ferociousness and its long, tight grip.

“So are you,” Grace whispered.

“Let’s go.”

When they turned to leave the clearing, Grace noticed a trail of blood wandering off between the trees. She hesitated. “You have a gun, don’t you?”

Rachel pretended not to hear. Her grip on Grace’s hand was fierce, almost bone-cracking, but Grace needed to know.

“Rachel! Do you have a gun?” Her voice was thick as sludge.

Rachel plodded forward, pulling Grace by the gloved hand.

“Where is it?” Grace asked. “The gun?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rachel said.

“Wait! We forgot Zorro!” Grace felt frantic. “He was just here.”

“He’ll live,” Rachel said. “Come on. Let’s get you warm.”

Would he? Wasn’t he the reason they were out here in the first place? Grace relented. Rachel led her back through the snow to the cabin. It was a short distance—not more than a quarter mile—but every step was painful. Grace stayed quiet. Every now and then they would pass a pair of blinking eyes and she’d insist she’d seen a wild dog.

“Inside,” Rachel commanded. She put her arms around Grace and picked her up, the way a parent might scoop up a child, and carried her to the cabin door. Out of the corner of her eye Grace spotted Diego’s Toyota, and the relief was so palpable that she almost didn’t see the heap lying beside the cabin door.

The evening was a swirl of senses. Grace would later recall the piping hot chocolate, which Diego heated over the fire in a small pot, and the mound of blankets that Rachel piled atop her as she bundled into bed. Late that night she thought she heard barks. It was so cold that the three of them shared one bed, something Grace wouldn’t normally agree to, but she was relieved to be sandwiched between two warm bodies.

When they awoke in the morning, everything was too bright. Grace kept blinking to take in the sheer whiteness of all that snow, which blanketed everything, including the Toyota.

For the first time she could see where they were, the vista of craggy cliffs and the winding road dotted with silver-topped fir and pine. She was standing in the kitchen, admiring the view, when her gaze fell from the treeless skyline to the steps below the front door. The black and white dog inspected something in the snow.

Rachel and Diego were stacking the blankets in the bedroom. Grace put on her coat and walked outside. The snow covered up signs of last night’s struggle. She heard the slap of tail against wood and turned to see the mutt and the shepherd smiling up at her. In the morning light she could see how young and timid they were. The black and white dog saw her but her gaze did not budge. Grace leaned down.

The huddled mass was Zorro, fur matted dark red. There was a new wound on his leg, a hole covered in icy dried blood. He hunched over the lame leg, tracing the deep gash with that long tongue. Grace fell to her knees and looked at the dogs, expecting an explanation. The cabin door opened, revealing Rachel in her pajamas and a puffy winter coat, a first aid kit under one arm. She didn’t look surprised to see Zorro.

“He’s back, is he?” Rachel knelt alongside Grace and opened the kit. “Hola, mi amor,” she whispered to Zorro, who eyed her suspiciously as she wiped the ice and dirt away from his wounded leg. She unscrewed a small bottle of iodine and prepped a wad of gauze.

“What happened?” Grace asked. “Last night he disappeared.”

Rachel leaned close to the dog, then reached for a pair of tweezers. Zorro whimpered as she drew in close, the pitch of his whine climbing as she pulled out a tiny pellet. “Got it.” Zorro began to lick his leg again in earnest.

Grace couldn’t believe how calm Rachel was. “Did someone shoot him?”

Rachel placed the pellet back in the first aid kit and began to dress Zorro’s leg. That was when Grace noticed something gleaming in her friend’s jacket pocket. Her hand darted out to retrieve the object, but when she realized what it was she hopped back, letting the air pistol fall to the ground.

“They were fighting over you.” Rachel didn’t take her eyes off Zorro. “I had to do something.”

“When were you going to tell me about that?” Grace asked. The pistol was small and finely made.

“Shh.” Rachel addressed the dog, whose whimper had attracted the attention of the other animals.

Regarding Zorro, she wondered how many of his other scars were Rachel-inflicted. She pushed the pistol across the ground until Rachel pocketed it again, still not meeting her eye.

“We’re safe now,” Rachel murmured. “That’s all that matters.”

Diego appeared in the doorway. “Ah, the veterinarian at work.”

Grace bristled. “She’s a tech, not a trained veterinarian. There’s a difference.”

Diego nodded, his eyes on Zorro. “What happened to him?”

Rachel gave the dog one last once-over and sat up. “He’s fine.”

“Want to go snowshoeing?” Diego asked. “There’s a nice path up the hill.”

Rachel shook her head no. “Thanks, but we should really get back to Santiago.”

“I thought you wanted to stay another day,” said Grace.

Rachel shook an alcohol swab free from her kit and wiped down her hands, face resolute. “We’ve done enough.” She packed up the kit and strode past Grace and Diego inside, where she began stuffing clothes in her bag. 

Grace turned to Zorro, whose back leg was now bandaged in gauze and tape. Gingerly he stood up, testing the strength of his injured leg. The shepherd and the mutt watched from a respectful distance.

“She got the wrong one,” Grace whispered. The dogs nodded their assent.

Julia Halprin Jackson's work has appeared in Manifest-Station, Berkeley Fiction Review, Tahoma Literary Review, MAYDAY Magazine, Roi Fainéant Press, Okay Donkey Mag, Cutleaf, The Racket, West Branch Wired, Oracle Fine Arts Review, Fourteen Hills, California Northern and elsewhere. A graduate of UC Davis' master's in creative writing program and alumna of Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Mendocino Coast Writers Conference and the Tomales Bay Writers Workshops, Julia is the co-founder and publicity director of Play On Words, San Jose's collaborative literary performance series, and a recent graduate of the Lighthouse Book Project.

Published April 15 2024