Quee by John E. Branscum
We all loved dogs. After all, a kid without a dog is like a kid without a heart. Beagles and Labradors and Cocker Spaniels, and the mutts of course — the unlikely couplings of Chihuahuas and Rottweilers, Poodles and Dobermans. Then one morning, a few days after the last day of school, we find she who belongs to no one — sleeping on the porch of the abandoned house at the end of the street. She’s golden with glossy eyes like a sick child’s. Her right front paw is wounded so that she limps — tap, tap. We approach her bent over, hands extended. She does not growl but simply watches.
“What is it?” I say to Tony. “Girl or boy?”
He pushes his hand at her and lets her sniff. When he sees that she’s accepted him, he drops to his knees and looks beneath her. “Girl. Pregnant.” He points to the pink grab of her swollen nipples.
That night, we petition our parents to add her to our respective menageries. But once we admit that she is pregnant, the answer is no, no, of course not. We do not understand the ways of the world, they say, the dangers of proliferating species. We don’t mention her again. When they ask about her, we say we found someone to take her. Secretly though, we rebel.
We take turns according to a pact that is never spoken but comes into being out of the force of its own rightness. We each donate an old blanket or pair of pants or pillow to make her a nest inside the old house. We feed her like a queen. A quarter of a package of bacon, filched cans of dog food, crackers, steak. Queen, we call her, Queenie, and sometimes, foreshortened, Quee.
She doesn’t move much when we visit except to walk circles or to pace. Her head is heavy with alien thoughts. She doesn’t show whether she is happy to see us or sad to see us go. Still, in awe of her swelling belly, we pledge our lives. There’s sightings sometimes when she limps out to explore. We deny them. Say that she is long gone. When asleep, we dream of her pale belly and each of us hanging from her nipples like bats.
The end of summer and the heat grows half-hearted. One day, we go to see her and she growls. There is yelping and wiggling from beneath her belly. A blind face pokes from the sleeve of my father’s shirt, another from the hem of Tommy’s mother’s dress. We stand back and gaze, hearts beating, mouths dry, grinning drop-jawed and nodding at each other. “Yeah! Oh Yeah!” We shout and slap each other’s back.
Three weeks later, Quee disappears. We don’t know where. The puppies are still there though, eyes newly opened, jaws goggling at the world. We look for her body. Of course, we don’t find it. We didn’t expect to. This is after all a miracle.
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About the Author
John E. Branscum
Born: Indio, California, USA
Now Resides: Tusculum, Tennessee
Online: www.facebook.com/people/John-Branscum/100000536720756
Bio: John Branscum hails from a long line of migrant labor with semi-permeable membranes. He was once mistakenly arrested for attempting to rob a convenience store, and likes to get lost in foreign countries on purpose. He’s published work in such magazines as the North American Review and won such honors as the Ursula Leguin Award for Imaginative Fiction. He’s just finished the darkly comic redneck spiritual memoir, One in the Head, and is shopping it around, as well as trying to pimp it to Oprah. A former Cajun cook, he now joyfully toils as an Assistant Professor of English at Tusculum College.
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image by ByStarrlight.
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