The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [87]
“Open it,” Emer said. Seanie peeked inside. “Oh come on! Open it up! Have a good look! These are as much yours as they are mine!” He dumped everything onto the bed and shook his head with disbelief.
“Now,” Emer said, “let me show you what’s in the other one.”
She took out the figurines and the daggers, adding them to the pile of jewelry on the bed, then sat up and reached for the emerald, asking Seanie to close his eyes. When she had freed the stone from the cloth, she gave the signal. Seanie fell forward several inches with awe.
Emer held the emerald up in the lamp light, where it shimmered and glistened them both back to Ireland. Seanie reached for her free hand and she squeezed his fingers, like she used to when they were mute children.
“I wonder what Connacht is like now,” he daydreamed.
“I wonder, is Mary still alive. And the others.”
“I hope my mother is. I hope everyone is.”
“Listen to us! Out to sea for a few years and acting as if one hundred have passed!”
Seanie took the emerald from Emer’s hand and held it out in front of them. Something about it made them both sigh and feel happy. Something universal, like music or love. Without words, without even looking at each other, their plan was forged.
As I waited for everyone to go to bed, I packed and walked through my plan. After I did that a hundred times, I sat and looked at the two bags I’d bought that morning, which would soon be full of treasure. How could I possibly pull this off? How could I possibly get away with it? I felt such a mix of fear and anxiety that I found myself stuck in the same old wish. Oh, to be a dog again! Oh, if life was as simple!
On top of everything, Emer Morrisey’s feelings ate me whole. I longed to kill everyone. I longed for someone to love me. I longed for treasure. I felt like a sniveling idiot.
When the time came to leave my room, I was shaking. I waited until the roots were turned off, for the cook to close the kitchen for the night, and for Hector’s bedroom door to close. Then I heaved my small backpack over my shoulder and quietly slipped down the stairs and along the dark road. A thumping bass, from the tiny dancehall bar next door, echoed off different landmarks as I walked, and I felt scared and full of jumpy adrenaline. As I neared the glass house, the high-pitched buzz from frogs in the nearby pond deafened me.
When I got to the fan-shaped bush, I took a long, deep breath and tried to relax. I jumped the fence, snagging my foot in the wire at the top, but wiggled free. By the time I reached the tree line only fifty paces from the road I was sweating harder than I ever had. I wiped my face with my shirt, crouched down, and walked slowly—counting—through the grape trees. I found my other landmarks and continued on into the dark forest until I could see the light coming from the house. It was television light, flashing and twisting the background of the grove into a psychedelic hallucination. I stopped and caught my breath.
I aligned myself with the patio door and with a tree I remembered from that afternoon, but somehow I was in the wrong spot. I walked slowly toward the house, careful not to make a sound, but the Doberman heard me and barked. Then, I heard his big pointy nose sniffing toward me. When he got there, I stroked his chest and he licked my ear.
“Where is it, boy?” I asked.
He kept licking my face. I cleared leaves from the ground where we were and moved the sand with my hands. The dog understood. He got up and trotted toward the correct spot, five feet away. He sat patiently while I started to clear the ground and pull out the first sapling. Trying to be quiet while pulling whole trees from the ground was tricky, and I stopped a few times to make sure I could still hear the television sounds