Appalachian Review, Fall 2021

                     When Jemma got up, Berger was sitting in the red wingback chair by the open window with a stack of legal briefs in his lap.

                     “Where’s Lila?” said Jemma.

                     “Out back.”

                      “Did you clean up?”

                      “I put the sheets in the washer. I think the blood will come out.”

                      Jemma shook her head. “I can’t believe I slept this late.”

                     Berger gathered up his papers and set them in the floor, then patted his thighs. Jemma sat down on his lap and leaned into him. A shelf of cool air pushed in through the window, along with the earthy scent of pine mulch. “You were upset,” said Berger.

                     “I’m still upset.”

                     “I know. But Jem, you know, dogs will be dogs.”

                     Jemma didn’t say anything.

                     “Hey, look at me,” Berger said. Jemma turned toward him. Wisps of blonde hair, escapees from her short ponytail, framed her face. Berger brushed them back. “It was just a rooster. It’s not like she tore apart a kid or anything.”

                     “I know Berger. But it’s sad. And what am I supposed to tell the neighbor? Oh hi, by the way, my dog ate your pet rooster, sorry about that.” She stood up.

                     “Where are you going?”

                     “To clean up the front yard before she sees the evidence.”

                     “I’ll do it,” said Berger. “I just needed some coffee first.”

                     Jemma waved him off. “Just make me some coffee,” she said.

Outside the dew was still heavy on the grass. A smattering of white and brown feathers littered the walkway, like someone had ripped open a down pillow and shaken out the contents. Long threads of gut and muscle, spaghetti-like, glistened in the early sun. A wave of nausea rolled over Jemma as she peeled open a garbage bag, gathered up the feathers, and dropped them in. Then she picked up a stick and speared the bloody innards. No sooner had she dropped what was left of the rooster into the bag than she heard her neighbor across the way calling him.

                     “Cockadoodle-doo!”  The neighbor waited several seconds, then called again: “Cockadoodle-doo!” Jemma could see her turning round and round, scanning the perimeter of her yard for the rooster, who came running every morning on his spindly little legs, squawking loudly in anticipation of cracked corn.

                     “Cockadoodle doo! Breakfast!” the neighbor called, still turning in her yard, one hand over her eyes, shielding them from the sun. When she caught sight of Jemma she dropped her hand and headed over.  Jemma’s heart started to pound. What would she say, really, when the neighbor asked whether she’d seen her rooster. Cockadoodle-doo got into my yard last night, seemed a good beginning. Not only was it was true, more importantly, it put the onus for what came next on the rooster rather than on Lila. She threw the stick and the garbage bag into the bushes and walked up to the road.

                     The neighbor wasn’t that old, maybe sixty-five, but she walked with a pronounced limp, like one leg was shorter than the other. Her pants were baggy and she wore an oversized man’s t-shirt which, Jemma could see when she got closer, appeared not to have been washed in some time. Jemma felt sorry for her. As she waited at the mailbox for the neighbor to get to her, she thought what a bad idea it was to name an animal the sound it made. Lila’s name wouldn’t be Lila but something ridiculous and embarrassing to call out, like Broof.                       

         “Good morning,” said Jemma when the neighbor finally got to her. The neighbor grabbed the mailbox for support. She was breathing hard. “You seen my rooster?” she asked.

                     “Um, not lately,” Jemma said, which was sort of the truth, if you didn’t count seeing the rooster’s insides as seeing the rooster.

                     “Lord I hope nothin’s done got’ im.” The neighbor turned back and scanned her own yard again from the vantage point of Jemma’s mailbox. Her husband had died a few months earlier, of a heart attack, right in their driveway. Jemma was getting ready for work when she heard the neighbor scream. She ran to the window and saw the husband flat on his back on the ground, his wife crouched beside him, screaming and smacking at his chest and arms. Jemma ran over to help but it was already too late. A coffee can lay on its side next to the husband, corn fanning out in a wide arc like spilled marbles, while Cockadoodle-doo, frightened by the commotion, ran in circles beside them, flapping his wings and squawking loudly. Jemma decided it wouldn’t hurt to let the woman hold out hope that Cockadoodle was just out wandering the neighborhood and would come home soon.

                     “I just know one day he’s gonna get in the road and get hisself hit,” said the neighbor.  People drive too fast through here, I don’t know what’s their hurry.” She gave her head a fierce right-left shake and spit something hard and whitish into the grass. “Who’s that?”

                     Jemma turned toward the house just as the door slammed. Berger was making his way to the end of the driveway. “My boyfriend Berger,” she said.

                     Berger extended his hand to the neighbor a full four steps before reaching the end of the driveway. The neighbor looked at it, then took it with three fingers and wiggled it.

                     “I done lost Cockadoodle-doo,” she said.

                      “Berger’s a lawyer,” Jemma said. “Right, Berger?” She gave him an exaggerated, wide-eyed look, wordlessly imploring him not to say anything about the previous night’s events.

                     “Well I sure would like to sue whoever’s done got my rooster,” the neighbor said.

                     “He’s a car-accident lawyer.” Jemma knew Berger hated when she called him that, but she only did it to shorthand conversation with people who might not otherwise understand what it was he did.

                     “Personal Injury,” Berger always said, biting down on his words. “There is more to the world of injury than vehicles.”

                     “That rooster’s all I got,” said the neighbor.

                      Jemma told her they’d keep an eye out for Cockadoodle-doo. When they got back in the house, Berger sat down at the kitchen table with his papers and Jemma pulled bread and eggs out of the refrigerator. A wave of exhaustion washed over her, and she put the eggs back. She didn’t know how long she’d slept before the rooster attack. She remembered hearing the rustle of brush beneath her window and Lila’s low, guttural growl. She’d hovered on the continuum between sleep and wakefulness, her mind indecisive about a call to action, when the bushes exploded with Lila’s vicious surprise attack and the screeech screeech of the terrified bird. By the time Jemma got outside, Lila had the rooster pinned, and was ripping him open like a present. Jemma screamed at her, pushed her off the crumpled, quivering bird and crouched over him, her heart pounding in her ears. Steam from the open body cavity warmed her face as blood seeped into the grass. The next thing she knew, Berger was pulling her up off the cold, wet grass, saying, “Come on Jemma, come on, it’s over,” and she let him lead her back into the house, following the trail of bloody paw prints through the kitchen and down the hallway, past the spare bedroom where Lila, satisfied she’d done her job, was already curled, loop-de-loops of blood on the cream flannel sheets where she had turned three times before lying down. The whole attack lasted all of five, maybe ten seconds.

                     Jemma poured a mug of coffee and dropped the bread in the toaster. She turned around and leaned against the counter. “I have to tell her at some point,” she said.

                     “No you don’t.”

                     “It seems cruel to just let her wonder.”

                     “Sometimes a lie is kinder than the truth.”

                     “This from a lawyer,” said Jemma.

                     “You know what I mean.”

                     “If I don’t tell her the truth, she can’t grieve properly.”

                     “People grieve loss, not detail,” said Berger.

                     Jemma sipped her coffee. The last thing she remembered before being pulled away from the rooster was hovering over his warm insides, sickened at the sight of the gelatinous, quivering organs. She had only seen two other dead things up close: the dog she’d put to sleep two years earlier, and her father. She’d held the dog in her arms as it died, so the transition had been gradual, but her father had already been dead a full two hours by the time she made it to the hospital. She knew it would haunt her if she didn’t get all the facts so she made her mother recount the timeline of events as she’d gotten them from the hospital staff: how her father had gotten up in the night without calling a nurse, hemorrhaged in the bathroom, then fallen and hit his head on the toilet. At some point in the timeline (no one, not even the doctor knew when exactly), errant blood cells  crowded the narrow hallways of his heart like Friday afternoon commuters rushing for the first train out of the city, causing a blockage. As her mother told her the details, the doctor pushed into the room.

                     “This is my daughter,” Jemma’s mother said.

                     “Your father was out of bed against doctor’s orders,” the doctor said, looking at Jemma sternly, as if she were somehow responsible. Jemma’s mother glared at him for several seconds and then, without warning, grabbed her key ring from the bedside table and hurled it at him. It glanced him in the forehead and opened a small cut just below the hairline. The doctor put his fingers to it, stunned, and then, as if Jemma’s mother had literally knocked sense into him, said, “We’re very sorry for your loss,” and left the room.

                     “People grieve both,” Jemma said.

                     “What?” Berger said.

                     “People need resolution. Their grief needs a destination. It’s why they pull drowning victims from lakes and mail home the bodies of soldiers.”

                      Berger nodded. “Tell her then,” he said.

                         Lila was in the back yard, curled under the rose bush. Jemma got her leash from the hook by the door and fastened it to her collar. Of course people needed resolution. Cockadoodle-doo might not have done much beyond showing up for breakfast on time, but who was Jemma to sentence the one person—to whom that meant so much—to a lifetime of uncertainty? Of all people, Berger should have understood this. He was right, there was a world of injury beyond vehicles. Other people, if they weren’t careful, were that world.

                     As Jemma and Lila made their way up the neighbor’s driveway, Jemma could see a tiny light on in the kitchen window. Her heart was heavy in her chest as she knocked on the door.

                     The neighbor looked surprised to see her again so soon. The morning newspaper sat on the kitchen table, unopened, next to the coffee can full of cracked corn.

                     “Cockadoodle-doo–” Jemma had rehearsed what she was going to say, but suddenly she couldn’t remember the line, the one that said the rooster made his own bed.

                     “You seen him out there?” asked the neighbor, her face brightening, reaching for the can of corn.

                     “No.” Jemma closed her eyes. “Yes. Actually, I saw a car hit him.” She had no idea where the words came from. “Last night, late. It was going really fast, there’s no way Cockadoodle could have felt a thing. I doubt the driver even saw him.” If she was going to stage the ending of least pain for Cockadoodle-doo and the neighbor, she might as well take precautions with the fictitious driver’s feelings as well. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I knew how upsetting it would be.”

                     The neighbor’s eyes, which had widened, brimmed with tears. She held her hand to her mouth for several seconds. “Poor Cockadoodle-doo,” she said, shaking her head. “Well I can’t say I’m surprised.” Then she looked at the floor and smoothed her t-shirt. “I know people think I’m crazy ‘cause I got a rooster for a best friend.”

                     “I don’t think you’re crazy,” Jemma said. “I’ve got a lawyer for a best friend.”

                     To her surprise, the neighbor looked up at her and laughed a shallow, smoky laugh. She wiped her eyes with the hem of her shirt, then bent down and cupped Lila’s chin. “I bet you’re a very good dog, aren’t you?” she said softly.

                       Lila sat.