Ever McMillan

Dust to Dust

Novel extract

Extract from end of Chapter Eleven followed by Chapter Twelve

The syringe was a long, thick tube. It was bigger than any I’d ever seen. Mario had told Shawn where to find it, and he went to get it while I waited, taking small sips of water from a half-crushed bottle, standing at the threshold of the barn. My limbs felt like paper, but I couldn’t sit down, I couldn’t move at all. The sheep’s baas carried from the pasture. The clean song of bluebirds began as the heat was washed from the day. The syringe was filled with a chemical called Xylazine, which looked hard to pronounce but was actually simple to say out loud.Zihe-luh-zeen– I said in my head over and over. I took one slow step at a time back to the stall where Minty was lying. Shawn held the syringe in his hand with one rubber glove, like a surgeon or something. I wondered where we had been keeping this stuff. Wherever it was, it had been there all along. I knelt close to Minty; I didn’t care if I got blood on my clothes. I lifted her leg, and it was heavier than I thought it would be. Her muscles were slack; they had given up. Shawn gave her the syringe, and when it was empty, I could feel the pain leaving her body, everything in her relaxing as the drug entered her bloodstream. In this state of painless purgatory, we shot her. The gun didn’t have bullets, just a thick bolt that would shoot out from the barrel and hit her skull, her brain. But holding the gun in my hands, I felt evil, like a murderer. I hesitated, staring at it.

“She won’t feel it,” Shawn said. “She’s numb, you know? From the drugs. She’s dying already. We have to put her out of her misery now.” His voice was raspy. He kept leaning forward a little, like he wanted to hold the gun. I imagined he would have liked to. But he didn’t take it from me or even ask for it.

I wondered if the Xylazine was to make her feel better, though she was already nearly dead, or to make us feel better about what we were doing. The gun shook, the bolt slid out from the barrel, and I felt it reach bone. There was a crack, like dropped porcelain. We killed her. 

Chapter Twelve

Shawn had driven his truck up to the barn entrance. I tucked one arm under Minty’s shoulders and cradled her head with the other. Her eyes weren’t closed all the way, so I closed them myself with my fingertips. I pretended she was just sleeping. Shawn took her back end. He looked at me expectantly. My legs felt heavy, but I pushed myself up.

“Okay, uh, one, two, three,” he said. We heaved her body from the ground onto our shoulders, grunting. I had learned from movies and books that dead bodies were heavier than living ones. It was a little bit harder to carry her than I expected, but I was stronger than before. With all the manual labor I had been doing, it was almost as if I had been practicing for this moment. We lay her body on the big black tarp that Shawn had set up in the bed of his truck, and we folded it over her, tucking the sides in. I thought of the time I had laid in the truck bed after our night at Rusty’s, looking at the stars.

“So, where are we taking her?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know.” 

“Huh?” 

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with the body,” Shawn said. “I just don’t want it to attract animals overnight. I can cover the truck bed to like, hide the scent.” 

I took a deep breath, trying not to be sick at the thought of wild animals finding their way to Minty’s body, flies and maggots feeding on her flesh.

“I’ll text Mario and ask him what to do,” Shawn said.

“Okay. I have to bring the other sheep back in.” 

“Cool. I’ll be here.” 

“Why?” 

“Uh, to like, wait for you.” 

There was a pause.

Shawn cleared his throat. “We need hella stuff from the grocery store. After you bring the sheep in, we’re going.” 

“With Minty in the back of the truck?” 

“What else would we do?” Shawn said slowly as if he were talking to a child.  “Hurry up.”

I brought the sheep in from the pasture and fed them. I wondered if they noticed that Minty was missing, or if they could smell what had happened in the birthing stall. I shoveled the blood-stained hay out of the barn and into a trash bag as quickly as I could, tucking my nose and chin under my shirt so I wouldn’t have to smell it. But the stench from earlier lingered in my mind. The other sheep were as eager as they always were to be fed. Regardless of whether they were capable of grieving, food was still their biggest motivation. 

We stopped in the house to get our jackets before heading to the store, although it wasn’t very cold outside. It was night then, and if it weren’t for my Campito searches, I would have felt disoriented by the darkness. But I had gotten used to relying on my other senses to ground myself and find my way when I couldn’t see anything. I pulled on my jean jacket despite the stubborn heat, needing its weight for comfort. On the way down to the store, we could only see as far as the headlight beams. The route had become so familiar to me that I knew when each road sign would flash in front of us, and what it would be. I stared at the two solid yellow lines on the weathered asphalt. We didn’t play any music.

“Did Mario reply to your text?” I said after we had passed the deer-crossing sign. Once we came up to the sign, it meant we had about ten minutes left in the drive. 

“Yeah.” 

“And?” 

“The scientists want to look at the body to see how she died. Since they’re doing that experiment about altitude and all.” 

“Oh,” I said. I couldn’t hide the emotion in my voice, and I hated it.

“What?” Said Shawn. “Did you want to eat her or something? You sound disappointed.” 

“I dunno, I just thought…” I paused, feeling dumber by the second. I had already started talking, so I spit the rest of my sentence out. “I thought maybe we could, like, bury her.” 

Shawn didn’t say anything. He breathed out through his nose and kept his gaze straight ahead. We arrived at the store. There were only two other cars in the lot, which was normal for a remote shop like this. Still, I worried that we would look suspicious with a body in the back of the truck. I felt like I was trying to cover up a murder as I walked stiffly into the store with my hands in my pockets. Then I remembered that no one really cared about sheep dying. People killed sheep and farm animals all the time, for food, or after all the animals’ resources had been used up. My work had shown me that sheep had different personalities, could experience joy and fear, and cared deeply for their young. They obviously weren’t as smart as some other animals, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t sad when they died. Before I took this job, I hadn’t cared about sheep dying at all. I missed those days. If I didn’t care now, everything would be much easier. Instead, I felt responsible for everything that happened to them. Not just for the sake of my job, but for the sheep themselves. All my days revolved around them, and their days revolved around me. I saw how vulnerable they were, and how they had no say in what their lives would be like. I felt that I owed it to them, in a way, to make their existence as comfortable as possible. I had never felt like that before. I didn’t like it. It was silly, honestly.

I wandered down the packed, narrow aisles one by one. I couldn’t think of anything I needed. Meanwhile, Shawn was taking what felt like one of each item in the store. Just as we reached the cashier, I noticed a small stand with thin boxes in various colors arranged on it. The smell that permeated the whole store, and that I had come to associate with food shopping, intensified. Incense. There were a few different types on display: cedar, juniper, and sage. I had never done a ritual before, but I knew that incense was sometimes involved. This felt like as good a time as any.

We loaded our groceries— six-packs of beer, boxes of cereal, underripe bananas, into the truck bed next to Minty’s body. I was holding the cedar incense in my hand since it was the only thing I got from the store, and I brought it into the truck with me. It smelled like new pencils.

“You still have to pay me back for those groceries,” said Shawn. “Even though you didn’t get anything.”

“I know.”

We turned back onto the road. We kept the windows up.

“Owen?” Shawn asked after a few minutes.

“Hmm?” 

“What are you doing with that incense?” 

“I—” 

“We aren’t burying Minty.” 

“I know—” 

“We can’t bury her. We have to keep her body for Mario.” 

“I know that.” Shawn finally shut up when I said this. “I just thought maybe we could do some kind of like… ceremony for her. Or a ritual or something. I don’t know the difference. It just feels like it’s what you do when someone dies.” 

Shawn didn’t answer. I didn’t care if he was ignoring me. It didn’t matter if he did the ceremony with me or not. But I wondered if it would feel more like a real ceremony if there was another person around, even if they were just part of the audience. I doubted Shawn would participate anyway. If he did, he would make fun of it the entire time.

“So?” 

“What.” 

“Would you be down? To do a ceremony.” 

“Uh, I don’t know anything about that stuff.”

A large moth flew into the headlight beam and disappeared under the tires.

“Me neither. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal.” 

“I dunno.” 

“We can drink while we do it,” I offered. “I mean, in church they drink wine and stuff, right? Drinking can be part of a ritual.” I didn’t even know what kind of church I was referring to, but I had been growing up a few times, for funerals and weddings. A vague memory of “the blood of Christ” came into my mind.

“Okay, fine.” 

We got back to the house and unloaded the groceries in the kitchen. Shawn took one of the six-packs of Coors, and at the last minute turned back and grabbed a dusty bottle of whiskey off the top of the fridge.

“Beer isn’t strong enough for a ritual,” he said.

It was just after ten. Waves of cricket song lapped through the trees. My bag was already packed for a night hike with everything we needed. I wanted to bring a candle, but it felt too risky with the dry brush and all. At this hour, the night was as dark as it could possibly be. All I could see was Shawn’s nose and forehead, illuminated by his phone screen, as we walked from the house to the truck. I didn’t need to turn on my flashlight to find it, though, and I led us there on muscle memory. We removed the tarp from Minty’s body, and I used Shawn’s knife to slice a small clump of her wool off. It made a thick swishing sound as I sheared it away. I felt less sad than I did before, as I focused on each movement I made and listened to the crickets on the wind. Taking Minty’s wool seemed a little bit wrong, like we were stealing it from her, so I whispered, “Thank you.” Even though I couldn’t see him, I could tell that Shawn hated this.

“Let’s just get on with it,” he said from the total darkness.

We used one of the industrial flashlights and trekked through the mass of pines next to the house. Shawn opened a beer, and the hollow crack sent what sounded like thirty small animals scurrying in the opposite direction.

“This is far enough,” he said eventually. We were about fifty yards away from the house, and we could still see the kitchen light glowing through the uneven windows. “Let’s just keep the lights on our right. So that we don’t get lost.”

“You’re scared,” I said.

“No, I’m not.” 

“Okay.” 

We stopped there, and I knelt and dug a shallow hole in the dirt with my hands, wishing I had brought a shovel with me. The dirt was packed and dry, and it wedged under my nails instantly. There were chunks of rock embedded in it, and I had to pull them out to make a space big enough.

“Incense,” I said, holding my hand out to Shawn. He passed me a thin stick from the box. “Lighter,” I said. I held the tiny flame to the tip of the incense. It caught, and the fire flared out, startling me.

“Aah!” 

“Blow on it, moron!” Shawn shouted.

“Ohh.”

I blew on it, and the flame went out, leaving a gentle ember behind. A velvety plume of smoke rose from the tip of the stick. It smelled like the little grocery store, or some of the girls’ dorm rooms in college. I stuck the incense into the dirt next to the hole. Then I stood up in front of it and opened a beer.

“What now?” Shawn said.

“Um, would you like to, like, say a few words?”

“Dude, no.”

“Okay, I will then.” I cleared my throat, feeling ridiculous at first. “Minty, we miss you. You were a good sheep. Um… if I had a mint with me right now, I would also bury that for you, but I don’t. Also, I think a bear would probably find it. Anyway, I’m sorry. Also, I’m sorry that you died. And…”

I cleared my throat again. If I cried in front of Shawn, he would never let me forget it. My eyes welled up, but the absurdity of the situation kept me from letting the tears fall. If someone had told me a few months ago that I would be holding a funeral for a dead sheep in the middle of nowhere, I would have laughed.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.” I said finally.

“Damn,” said Shawn. “Dark.”

I covered the bundle of curly wool with dirt and patted it flat with the palm of my hand. The incense was halfway burned. I stuck it into the dirt on top of the hole. The smell of smoke combined with that of the upturned soil and fallen pine needles. It was comforting. Shawn and I stood in silence for a moment. Up in the pines, an owl hooted twice. The sagebrush rustled, and I thought I heard the tiny squeal of a deer mouse. Then Shawn opened another beer and immediately dumped it upside down, its contents hitting the ground with an ungraceful smacking sound.

“What are you doing?” I said. “You’re killing the vibe!” 

“I’m pouring one out,” Shawn said, his face completely serious. “It’s what you do when someone dies.” After the entire can had been emptied, he opened the whiskey and took a pull from the top, wincing and shaking his head. “R.I.P Minty.” He held the bottle out to me. I didn’t really like whisky, but it felt like something that the guy who had the jean jacket before me would have done. Taking a shot of whiskey in the woods after burying the dead. It sounded pretty cool. So I did it, too.  

“R.I.P Minty,” I said, trying not to gag.

We waited until the incense stopped burning. The orange gem of light shrunk into the night and then blinked out like a firefly.

There was a lightness to our steps as we made our way back to the house after the ceremony. The drinks made it easier for me to ask Shawn questions.

 “Hey, why do you have cell service outside the house? I can never get a signal.”

 “Uh,” Shawn hesitated. “Mario got me a better phone plan, since I’m always making calls for him.”

 I didn’t feel like that was the real reason, but I let it go. “I see. And who were you on hold with?”

“The UCLA people, actually. They’re coming to pick up the rams tomorrow. Funny that you have to be on hold with a bunch of sheep scientists, like you’re calling the bank or something.” Shawn was definitely a little bit drunk; it was making him chatty. “Anyway, perfect timing, I guess. They can take Minty’s body when they come up here.”

“Oh.”  It was good. I wouldn’t have the stress of caring for the pregnant sheep, and I wouldn’t have to feel like their fate and the fate of their babies was in my hands. It was all a lot to handle. But if the scientists were coming tomorrow to take the rams, then that was it. I wouldn’t get another chance to help a sheep give birth, to fix what I felt like I had failed that day. I didn’t know how to feel about it. I should have been relieved, and maybe another version of me would have been. The old version, who had normal emotions and logical thoughts. But instead, I was sad. With only one lamb and no rams, the sheep wouldn’t feel like a real flock. It reminded me that I was only here to do a job, a job for someone else. They weren’t my sheep, and the work was only temporary.