Page 33 of The Perfect Blend
Zach didn’t say anything, but an expression of focus came over his face.
The noise came again.
“Over that way,” he said. We trudged through mud towards where a crumbled down wall circled a copse of trees. In the darkness, the bare boughs seemed creepy and haunted, and the dark shadows pooling around their base even more so. The harsh light of the headlamp made me aware of how much I could see in its beam, and how pitch black everything seemed beyond it. I was very glad I had called Zach and wasn’t here alone.
“Thank you for coming,” I whispered.
He reached out and squeezed my gloved hand, “Anytime.” I held on to his fingers a beat longer before letting go, feeling very aware of his presence next to me. He watched the surroundings carefully, but every now and then I felt his gaze fall on me and I held back the urge to glance up and meet his eyes, focusing instead on my footing in the uneven field.
We reached the crumbled border of the wall and looked in. I couldn’t see anything besides the trees and a pile of boards that might at one time have been a shed or lean to. The tree trunks had the telltale smoothness of ones used by sheep to scratch themselves, and little bits of wool fluttered from where it hung on branches and brambles. If the wall had once been to keep the sheep out, it certainly wasn’t doing its job anymore.
The sound came again, closer. A scraping.
I took a step closer to Zach and tried to keep my imagination under control.
“I have an overactive imagination,” I whispered. Now seemed the perfect time for this confession. “I can’t watch horror films alone and sometimes even crime shows in case there's a murderer under the bed.”
“Why are we whispering?” he whispered back
“In case there’s a murderer in the sort-of-shed.”
He snorted softly next to me.
“It’s not funny!” I hissed.
Another scrape, and then a whine, louder this time. Zach stepped right up to the collapsed shed and started looking through the gap.
“I think it may be a murderer,” he said seriously. “A murderer of stuffed toys and chicken treats.”
He reached under a board and hauled it away.
Beneath was the fluffy, dirty form of the missing dog herself.
“Beanie!” I squealed, stepping forward. Her tail thumped dully against a board as she spotted me.
“Wait a sec, let me pull some of this debris off her.”
Zach made short work of the boards on top of Beanie. When he was done, the dog heaved herself up to a seated position and panted up at us, her tail had never stopped wagging the whole time.
I burst into tears and threw myself down next to her, patting her all over to check for injuries and to reassure myself she was really okay.
“Oh Beanie, you silly girl!” I cried. “I was worried sick! What have you got yourself into? Chasing those damn sheep! How many times have I told you! And now what, how did you manage this? Are you hurt, where are you hurt?” Beanie whined and licked my face. I felt all along her, and when I got to her left hind leg she whined and jerked it away from me. I sobbed harder.
“Alright, alright,” said Zach, hand running soothing circles on my back as he crouched next to me. “She’s alright, nothing a little trip to the vets won’t fix. It's all okay now Robin, it's okay.”
I sniffled and wiped my tears, feeling embarrassed. “Sorry for being overly emotional,” I said.
“Nah. Don’t be sorry for your feelings. It would be much worse if you didn’t have any!”
I laughed through my slowly drying tears.
“I’ll carry Beanie,” he continued. “I don’t want to make her walk on that bad leg. Do you think she’d be okay with that?”
I nodded. “She’s a good girl, really.”
Five minutes later, after reassuring Beanie that Zach's arms were a perfectly fine place for her to be, we were off trudging back across the fields.
“Wait!” I called, just before they got to a stile. Zach turned back with Beanie looking at me too. I whipped out my phone and snapped a picture. The flash erupted into the darkness, blinding them both. The picture would probably be no good but I’d wanted one as a keepsake.
