Yellow Shutters
by Cindy May Murphy
My wife gives me a somber nod and then shuts the screen door behind her to go turn on Saturday-morning cartoons that aren't real Saturday-morning cartoons but a tape from a year ago the kids watch now that we don't have cable and whose ribbon is so worn we have to turn the volume almost full blast so they can hear it but today my wife will turn it all the way up and then decide to come back again and shut the storm door with a bang so that her children will not hear the louder bang of the rifle that usually broods silently in the corner between the kitchen and the porch.
I look away and recall Old Yeller and the other one about a fern and any other silly allusion to man's-best-friend I can conjure up to make this moment as humorous as my partners in the office back in Chicago would have found it, to picture me in coveralls in the backyard of a farmhouse with peeling yellow shutters, standing erect, rifle-in-hand over the old, arthritic black Lab I used to cuss at, while he sprawls in the grass and occupies himself with a horsefly that keeps landing above his left eye, as I consider this clichéd scene once more before lifting the heavy barrel to aim directly at the fly, and in the split second that I pull back the stiff, cold trigger his eyes turn to me:I know. I know that we live too far from the nearest vet and that my back legs can't keep me away from the coyotes anymore. You have a rock in your stomach, and when this split second is over it will move to your throat and there it will explode and pour from your eyes. You will be surprised at the brightness and warmth of my blood on your hands as you bend over my stiffening body, your tears will wet my fur, outnumbering the single tear you quickly wiped away at your father's funeral a year ago before your children could see. I know how after that everything mixed and emptied and lost color and how you began to laugh too much and too loud at work, how you began to notice the curve and bounce of your colleague's breasts under that particular white blouse and how you and Anne sat in silence during dinner. You eventually tried to save it all by moving everyone to this little plot of land and buying a tractor; you wanted to escape but the starkness followed and you heard Anne crying at night while you pretended to sleep. I know that as my head crumples into the grass you will cry, and that the sound will draw your children to the window and they will see their father on his knees, rocking back and forth, covered in my wonderfully red blood, as you despair over what you could not escape.
Cindy May Murphy is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Oregon. Her work has appeared in Sycamore Review, New Delta Review, Briar Cliff Review, and elsewhere.