The Dig - Boston's Only Newspaper
Her hair was up in a ponytail and I took the opportunity to savor every taut muscle and tendon in her neck. This was next to the last day. I had thought I would use the week to have a few one-night stands and just have a good time.
ONE DECEMBER SUNDAY, just two weeks before Christmas, Rose and Mark came home to discover Gretl alone in the yard, surrounded by trails of sticky black hair and a tangle of grayish, gnawed up bones. Hans’s rat-like skull, the eyes picked clean, poked out from under a deck chair on the far side of ...
“Tough life out here, huh, boy?” She stroked his ears, his thoughts moving up through her hands. He was old, and it hurt to swallow. He had run away from a man who came home drunk some nights and kicked him. It made her throat tighten and her eyes wet. “That’s bad. I’m really sorry.” Some people fed him, but mostly he ate garbage, and he hurt every night when it got cold. He hurt all the time. He wanted peace, and he looked right into her face to say it.
