Canis Major Read online

Canis Major

  Written by Jay Nichols

  Copyright 2012 by Jay Nichols

  All rights reserved. No parts of this ebook may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SWEET HOME ALABAMA

  Words and Music by Ronnie Van Zant, Ed King and Gary Rossington

  Copyright © 1974 SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC., EMI LONGITUDE MUSIC,

  UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP. and FULL KEEL MUSIC

  Copyright Renewed

  All Rights Controlled and Administered by SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. and

  UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP.

  All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

  Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation

  LOLA

  Words and Music by RAY DAVIES

  Copyright © 1970 (Renewed) ABKCO MUSIC INC.

  85 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003 and DAVRAY MUSIC LTD.

  All Rights for DAVRAY MUSIC LTD.

  Administered by UNICHAPPELL MUSIC INC.

  All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

  Cover art from Firmamentum Sobiescianum sive Uranographia by Johanne Hevelius, 1690

  For my cousin, Matt Judson, who has been more like a brother. This one’s for you.

  Canis Major

  by Robert Frost

  The great Overdog

  That heavenly beast

  With a star in one eye

  Gives a leap in the east.

  He dances upright

  All the way to the west

  And never once drops

  On his forefeet to rest.

  I'm a poor underdog,

  But to-night I will bark

  With the great Overdog

  That romps through the dark.

  Intro

  Those mind-numbing days, how they creep—no, make that slither—under your fence, across your backyard, over your porch, through your kitchen, up your staircase, past your bedroom door and into your room, where they kink up into a tight and tidy coil underneath your bed. If March enters a lion and leaves a lamb, then August slides in as easily and unobtrusively as a serpent seeking a cool place to lie. But it is always hesitant to leave. Once that cool, dark spot is claimed, nothing short of slaughter will get it to relinquish its position. It will hiss. It will strike. It will defend itself to its very death.

  Yet it’s funny how, over time, we forget that a snake is even there. It slips from our minds because we want it to slip from our minds. As we prepare for the world of routine and structure, the egress of summer propels us away from thoughts of snakes and slaughter. We now have more important things to worry about. And when September arrives, bringing with it Labor Day and the first day of school, we are left to wonder how we could have possibly gotten out of August alive. Until that, too, slithers from our consciousness. Now it’s only a matter of days before the leaves outside our windows turn to flame. And the moment they do, you can bet we’ll begin ravaging our cedar chests for the heavy, woolen clothes we probably won’t even get to wear. Then comes Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years…

  But wait—what about that serpent of August? Did it die when the seasons changed? Or is it still alive, waiting patiently, stealthily, for its month of glory to roll back around? If, say, in November, you were to reach under your bed for some wayward shoe, would August not spring forth and bite your prying hand?

  The sad fact is that August never dies; it is merely forgotten. A month without borders, many have experienced its doldrums in the middle of October, when the thermometer stretches its thin, red tongue to lap at the century mark. Yes, places like this exist, places where people talk slow and drink iced tea even slower, where good manners are not only charming but are de rigueur.

  August is cruelest to these people. Like certain mites, it burrows beneath their skins and proceeds to drive them slowly mad with itches they cannot sufficiently scratch. The things they say…things like: "How about this heat?" To which some poor schlub has to, must, mutter back: "It ain’t the heat, it’s the humidity." The truest of clichés. Knowing laughs all around. Because it is the humidity. And when the heat and the humidity combine: look out! Should you be so brave as to venture out in the middle of the day or climb inside your car after it has been baking in the merciless afternoon sun, sweat will drip down the small of your back in under a minute. Wait another five and the material around your armpits will darken and soak through. A damp shirt is the hallmark of the South. People wear their sweat-soaked shirts with pride. Then again, why fight it? September is right around the corner and on its heels, October. Hey, it’s starting to feel cooler out already. Hell, Christmas’ll be here before we know it!

  Does this train of thought sound delusional to you? If it does, then you’ve never dipped your soul below the Mason-Dixon Line. In the South, Better Days are always a week, month or growing season away. It’s a type of optimism that began long before General Lee lifted his pen in an Appomattox court house and…well…let’s just leave it at that. The truth is you can actually feel those Better Days coming, and the feeling is like no other in the world. It’s a feeling of arrival, a light hearted, bubbly sensation, like a pixie flitting about inside your belly, kneading your solar plexus with fists too tiny to imagine.

  Perhaps you will dream of your exciting future—a future filled with popularity, lavishness, subservient female companionship and, if you’re lucky, canine loyalty—you know, those sticky, summer dreams that seem more real than dreams dreamt any other time of year. Then as you wake the next morning, primed to explode with sanguine anticipation, you reach under your bed for that missing shoe and that…fucking…snake. Those blissful hopes and dreams of a bright new world? Gone.

  Yes, these are the Dog Days, my friend—a period of lassitude and lethargy that oozed in when we were least expecting it, though we should have seen it coming all along. You’d be well-advised to remember that August is a month of disease, death, and mosquitos. Drought, heat, and rot. Incessantly drumming cicadas, aggressive cockroaches that won’t take no for an answer, and insidious termite invasions. And raccoons. Yes, raccoons. Should you see one of those creatures in the light of day stumbling along a backwoods dirt road as if drunk off of seventeen paw-fulls of grandpa’s best corn hooch, run like hell.

  It shouldn’t be stumbling around like that. In fact, it shouldn’t even be out there in the daytime. Then again, in all honesty, neither should you.

  Part I

  The Dog Days of Summer