Note: This story is directly inspired by a bit from Craig Thompson's beautiful graphic novel, Good-Bye, Chunky Rice. At best this is an homage; at worst this is plagiarism. I hope to make the story mine upon future revisions.

When Ma died, Pa got me and Leland a dog. We named her Diana, after Ma, though we knew it weren't no good name for a dog.

Diana was a good dog -- a lab, or something near enough. She had a number of years on her, but she hardly let it show. We played in the yard sometimes, but mostly she followed Leland around from chore-to-chore, through the woods, down to the creek, down to the beach -- it was as if she knew he might need some looking after.

One summer, Diana, she got knocked up by Old Man Kesey's mutt. She gave birth to a litter of eight pups on the floor of the barn. Pa was gone, bucking logs for a crew out of Bandon. It was me and Leland who found them, in a corner, caked with dirt and hay, like a swarm of adobe pups. We sat up late, by the light of the full moon, watching them squirm. The moon shone blood-red, its light tainted by the smoke of early-season field fires up the road a ways.

A single crow flew among the rafters, flitting from beam to beam, watching us.

Pa come home two weeks later, on an evening when the new moon was setting, a sliver of silver chasing the sun west into the sea. Leland was still out, fishing for Old Man Kesey. I took Pa to see the pups. They was playing on the barn floor, tumbling and falling on unsteady paws. Diana, limp and spent, was laying under the old tractor, covered in grease.

Me and Pa watched them pups play. Then we watched them go to their ma to eat, digging and pulling to each find a teat. Pa got to counting. "There's eight of them," he said. "Diana only got six nipples. Look how weak she become. Them pups be the end of her."

Pa pulled a feed bag from the wall. "They gotta go," he said.

He plucked one puppy from its momma's teat and plopped it in the burlap sack. And another. It was like he was picking peaches from a tree. The grey puppy, the runt, tumbled out of his reach, rolled under the blades of the cultivator. "That one's loose," said Pa, pointing.

I squeezed around the cultivator, pulled the pup free. It yelped once as I held it in the air, looked at it in the fading light of the red sunset. Then the pup, it licked my face. "Pa," I said. I had in mind to keep this little grey dog. Weren't no big deal for Diana to suckle one pup. Pa bent over and plucked the last pup from its teat.

"Pa," I said.

"Come along," he said, reaching to take that grey pup from my hand. I chose not let go. Pa walloped me upside the head and I dropped the pup. "Come along, Alex," Pa said. He snatched the runt from the ground and put it in the sack.

Pa handed me the bag. It was heavy. It writhed and kicked like a thing alive. He took a shovel from the corner, turned to me, and nodded. "Come along," he said.

Pa led me through the barnyard and the dying light to the darkness of the woods. Pa didn't need no light to find his way; even in darkness, his feet fell easy on the well-worn trail. He'd walked this trail all his life, had it mapped someplace inside his heart.

I dragged the sack of pups behind me. They yelped and squealed. Diana followed at a distance, feeble-like, her yellow eyes two tiny candle flames marking the trail behind. Ahead, I could see the dim outline of Pa's body, could see he carried the shovel over his shoulder, like a soldier carrying a rifle.

When we reached the creek, Pa found a soft spot and he begun to dig. Diana ambled into the clearing; she stood at attention beneath the old cypress tree. I felt her watching me while I dragged the sack to the edge of the creek. I looked at the water what rushed headlong from the hills toward the bay, slicing through this mass of trees. A small stream, but deep, and swift, and of all accounts cold any time of the year.

Pa stopped his digging and he looked at me. "Come along," he said. "You take care of them now, Alex."

I glanced back at Diana, but she didn't seem to be paying me no mind, only watching. I dragged the tumbling sack into the muck at the edge of the creek then into the icy water -- it knifed through my shoes and clothes, hundreds of tiny cuts that would not bleed -- dragged the sack out into the center of the creek where the bottom was solid from a layer of stones and the water came to my waist and the sack boiled and the pups squealed and Diana moved from the cypress to the edge of the stream and with both my hands I held the sack below the water felt the boiling of the bodies intensify.

Rage.

Simmer.

Subside.

I turned my back to Pa, to Diana. I looked west toward the sea, or where the sea would be but for the fir and pine before me. Something -- a deer, most likely -- moved among the brush. My hands were numb, cut to senseless bloodless ribbons by the icy current.

I cried.

"That's right. Be a man," Pa said on account he could not see my tears.

When I was sure my part was finished, I carried the sack, soggy and limp, to the shore. I gave the bag to Pa, but would not look him in the eyes. I went over to Diana, where she sat by the creek. I had in my mind to apologize, but she moved away, sat herself back under the cypress. We stared at each other, eye-to-eye, as if we each had something to say but not the words to say it.

We walked home all quiet-like. Pa walked ahead, I walked behind. Diana did not follow; she remained by the side of the creek, contemplating what we done.

In the yard, Pa gave me the shovel and the sack. Leland was at the barn, waiting. He saw the wet sack and the shovel in my hands, and he knew the score. He set upon me. "You killed the pups," he said. He grabbed me and threw me to the ground. "You killed them all."

Leland kneeled on my back, ground his weight into my spine. He grabbed me by the neck, wrapped his beefy arm around my throat. His breath was hot and quick against my neck. His sobs came choked between grunts as he struggled to hurt me. "You killed them all," he said.

I struggled free. I stood to face him. The crow from the rafters, he fluttered to the trough. When I licked my lips, I tasted dirt and blood. "Pa made me," I said.

"I don't care what Pa said." And Leland moved like fire, punched me in the face. "Puppy killer," he said, and he slugged me again. Leland might have whipped me for an hour but that Diana appeared, and for that he stopped the hitting. He lumbered to her side, threw his arms around her, and sobbed.

Diana, she never behaved angry-like toward me, but she was never the same after her pups died. She was aloof. She roamed the woods. She sat for long spells by the cypress at the edge of the creek, staring at the spot where them pups was buried.

On Christmas Eve, me, Pa and Leland -- who had no words with me then -- drove down to the beach. The night was cold and clear, but windy. The sea was rough. Diana walked beside us, weak-like and frail.

Leland picked up a chunk of driftwood and held it for Diana to see. He threw it. Diana kind of half-trotted and returned the stick. I gave the stick a toss, but it wasn't much, and Diana made no effort.

Pa picked up another piece of wood. "Come along," he said, and he lofted it toward the sea. He could throw as fine as he could wallop. He threw the stick far out into the ocean. Diana moved quick-like now, she ran after, and she pranced into the water like a good old girl, and she swam, and the waves spilled upon her and BAM there weren't no more Diana.

We stood and waited. But Diana, she was gone.

"It's the sea what stole her," said Pa, quiet-like. And Leland believed him.

Leland moved off alone, embraced by the roar of the waves. But even so, I heard him mutter, "From here on, the sea will be my only friend."

I left them both, walked back to the pickup. I sat on the bumper and looked east, toward the hills, toward the mountains. I numbered the constellations and the stars. There was Orion, the hunter, rising to give chase, Betelgeuse a prick of blood upon his shoulder, Rigel a beacon by his side. Just above the treetops, and brighter still, shone fiery red Sirius, the dog star, the brightest of all the stars in heaven.