It was cool standing over the dying dog as the full moon rose, drawn to blood. She was a black dog on a night of shadows, the whole thing inevitable as the tide. There had been no screeching tires, just the doppler rush of a passing car, a loud thud and a yelp of pain.
From our homes around The Hollow, we bore the motley lights of our brief vigil, the diffuse and brilliant smartphone glow, the erratic and faithless flickers of a broken headlamp, the penetrating beam of a Maglite fit for fending coyotes and Kung Fu bandits. The moon, now just over the trees, was bright enough to reveal the faces of the children as they came down the long yard. Yet not even she could shed light on why, or how long, or what to do.
The dog whimpered and tried to rise, so he sat, cross-legged on the grass, held her head in his lap, and spoke in tones of love, peace, reassurance. His words mingled with the meaningless murmur of the brook beneath the bridge.
With nothing better to offer, I asked, “Should we try to move her up to the house?”
“I don’t think she’s going to make it.”
We waited there, just a few feet off the road. Cars with faceless drivers roared past, their headlights a sacrilege cutting through our somber watch. After a few more minutes I said, “Do you want me to go get your gun?”
“I keep hoping she’ll just go on her own.”
“I know.”
The children stood looking on, and shivered. No tears yet, no experiences sufficient to map out the loss to come. “Daddy, I’m cold. Can we go up to the house?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
`The day’s last warmth seeped out of the ground and drifted into space. It was cold standing over the dead dog so I said, “I’ll go get my hat and a shovel.”
When I returned, someone had procured a pale-yellow plastic toboggan and an old white sheet for the funeral march. We dragged her up to the corner of the pasture, beneath the overhanging branches of the hedgerow. The ground there was hard-packed clay crowded with rocks and tree roots. For a while the boys held the lights while we dug (“Hold it there on the edge of the hole. No! Keep it still. Right there!”) but the coyotes started howling at the moon and the boys ran off to howl back. Then we took turns, one digging while the other held the light, needing no guidance but the shared experience of shaping many stony graves. Even taking turns, it got warm enough that I took off my battered felt fedora and ancient green sweater and hung them in the dappled moon shadow on a low elder branch.
As we eased her down, the moon had already begun her change. Blood on the faded yellow sled, blood on the old white sheet, blood on the white and yellow moon. At the mention of blood one of the kids came over, “I wanna see”, she said. Little girls and their fascination with blood. But then, we wouldn’t be gathering in the yard tonight if not for the rare blood moon.
The women brought blankets and spread them out on the grass, the various pastels bleached to white in the moonlight. We curled and sprawled like puppies on the blankets watching the shadow of our world creep across the face of the moon. We talked and laughed. “Stick your hand up and see if you can see its shadow”, someone said. Up went several shadow puppets and we chuckled.
As the eclipse approached totality the stars began to appear. Mom said, “I’m glad I came out here. This is my last chance to see something like this.” We stared at her in the strange orange light. What dread pronouncement was this? “Well, they say there won’t be another eclipse like this for thirty years.”
We all thought to protest but she was sixty-eight and probably right. At that moment I began measuring my own life by the dance of the spheres: In thirty years I’ll be seventy-six. Will I come out with my family and lay in the yard to watch my last eclipse?
Now with the moon completely veiled in red, the stars lost their shame. They came out in force and began leaping across the eastern sky. “There’s one!”
“Did anybody else see that one?”
Soon everyone had seen one except Mom. We stayed up a little longer to find a shooting star for Mom. There, at last streaking towards the Pleiades!
The dog buried, the moon turned to blood, the stars fallen from the sky, we hugged each other one by one. Then we walked to our homes, each a distinct point of light in a familiar constellation under a blood red moon.
