So, you remember Stephen? The old fella across the lane from Beryl? Well, they found him on Tuesday morning, and his dog had been howling since the night before. Beryl could hear it from two gardens away, but she didn’t go out. Thunder howled all the time, she said, and she’d long since stopped getting up for it. It was a low, drawn-out sound, no gaps, and by midnight it just became part of the night, like the wind or the water gurgling in the pipes.
The copper came round about lunchtime, sealed the house, and drove off. He wrote everything up on the bonnet of his car, smoked a cigarette, and kept glancing at the dog, but he didn’t go near it. He shouted over the fence to Beryl that the body had been taken off to the district hospital, and someone was going to have to track down the relatives. Then he slammed his door and went back down the lane, leaving two deep ruts in the mud. And the dog was still there. Sat on his chain, nose pointed up at the sky, and the noise coming out of him was steady and low, like a pipe someone had forgotten to turn off. Not a bark, not a whine. A proper howl. The kind that makes something under your ribs ache if you listen too long.
Beryl stood at her gate, looking across the road at Stephen’s place. The ground was muddy from last night’s rain, all shiny in the tracks, and the smell from the earth was heavy and damp, like a freshly dug bed. The fence was wonky, three pickets had fallen into the nettles, but the gate was done up with a bit of wire, twisted neat, four turns around. Stephen never bothered fixing the fence, but he always fastened that gate at night. Beryl knew because she watched him from her kitchen window, coming out at dusk and twisting the wire with his thin old fingers. So she crossed the road, undid the wire, and went into the yard. It smelled of wet soil, dog, and something sour, like old water sitting in the rainwater butt by the shed.
Thunder stopped his howling and turned his head. Ginger coat, a black saddle over his back, a big lummox of a dog, sort of German shepherd but with a bit of collie in there somewhere. His muzzle was grey, and his eyes were yellow and clouded, the way old dogs get when they’ve seen a fair bit more than they should. The chain ran from a post to his collar. Thick, chunky links, about five metres long. Beryl had known that chain for seven summers. She’d watch from her window while Thunder paced his arc, wearing a groove into the dirt.
Over the years, that groove had got proper deep, up to your ankle, with rainwater pooled in it. In winter the chain would ice over and the links would rattle together in the wind. But this time Beryl noticed something she’d never clocked before. On one side, where the chain pulled tightest, the metal was worn shiny. Polished as smooth as a door handle someone grabs every day. The dog had always strained in the same direction. Not charging about, not spinning in circles. Steady, one way, always the same.
There was a bowl next to the post. Aluminium, dented, with dried porridge stuck to the sides. Buckwheat, by the look of it, with a skin of fat over the top. And a second bowl with water, a leaf floating in it. Stephen must have fed him the morning he died. Or maybe the night before. Beryl looked at that bowl and tugged at her headscarf, just something to do with her hands. For seven years she’d told everyone the old man was cruel to that dog. She’d told Edith at the shop, she’d told Mavis the postwoman, she’d told her daughter on the phone. Chain, kennel, porridge, no walks. And she always felt so certain. That righteous feeling, you know, warmer than any radiator, doesn’t need proof. It was obvious, wasn’t it? Dog on a chain, owner never says a word, he’s got to be in the wrong.
Mavis turned up about an hour later, carrying bread and milk, because she’d always brought them for Stephen and didn’t know who else to give them to. She said she’d seen him on Saturday, collecting his pension, and he’d bought two bags of buckwheat. One for himself, one for the dog. Beryl asked if Stephen had any family. Mavis thought for a moment, hugging her postbag to her side, then said there was a daughter. Tracy. Lived over in Bramley, across the motorway, twelve miles or so. Hadn’t been to visit in ages. Then Mavis said, quieter, “She offered to take the dog, you know. But Stephen wouldn’t hear of it. I might still have her number written down at the post office.” Beryl didn’t say anything. She just thought, greedy, couldn’t even let an animal go when he couldn’t look after it. Then she walked over to the post.
The clip on the collar had rusted up, and her fingers kept slipping off the wet metal. She rubbed it, twisted it, pressed her thumb on the catch. Rust got under her nails, and her hands smelled of iron, sharp and cold. Thunder stood perfectly still. No whimper, no fidget. Just waited, like he knew exactly what was coming and had put up with seven years of that chain for this one click. And then the clip gave. The collar slipped off, and underneath there was a strip of fur all flattened, pale, almost white, like the mark from a wedding ring. He gave himself a good shake, from his nose down to his tail. Then he looked at Beryl. One second. And off he went.
Not to her. Not to the food bowls. Not to the house. Straight through the fence, between the pickets, out onto the road, and away. Beryl saw his ginger back flash past the elder bushes, and then he was gone. She went up to the post office to get the number from Mavis, to sort out Stephen’s daughter.
The dog, meanwhile, had already crossed the motorway. At the point where the road bends and cars slow down before the bridge over the ditch, he waited for a gap and trotted over. Then he turned up the lane that leads to Bramley. Bramley starts with three poplars and a bus stop that’s seen better days, no shelter, just a sign. Thunder went down the second street, past the village pump, past a garden full of dahlias, and stopped at a house with a green roof.
The porch was low, just two steps up, and the wood had gone dark with damp. The door was covered with leatherette, and in one corner the covering had come loose, hanging down like a little triangle. Thunder sat down by the door and whined. His tail went thump, thump, thump on the step, the only cheerful sound anywhere that day.
The door opened. A woman stood there, thin, dark hair scraped into a bun, flour all over her hands. From inside came the warm smell of baking and vanilla, drifting out and mixing with the wet earth. She looked at the dog. Then she crouched down, cupped his face in her hands, and the flour dusted white marks on his ginger fur. Thunder pushed his nose into her wrist and closed his eyes.
That’s exactly when Beryl rang. She broke the news that Stephen had died, and that the dog had slipped his collar and run off. “He’s here,” the woman said. “My name’s Tracy.” Beryl could only gasp. Twelve miles along the motorway. Then Tracy told her everything.
Thunder was a puppy when Tracy still lived with her dad. She’d brought him from town, barely a month old, ginger, with one ear up and the other floppy. She raised him, fed him with a dropper, slept on the floor beside him for the first week because he cried otherwise. Then she got married and moved to Bramley, and Thunder stayed with Stephen. But the dog kept running to her. Across the fields, over the motorway, twelve miles each way. He’d turn up at her door in the evening, flop down by the porch, and wait. She’d feed him, fuss over him, let him sleep in the kitchen. And in the morning, he’d run all the way back. Twelve miles again. First time he got hit was about six months later. A wing mirror clipped him and dragged him along the gravel. Stephen found him on the verge and carried him home four miles in his arms. Tracy hitched a lift, and they took the dog together to the vet at the district hospital. He had a scar down his left side, a long one, from his ribs to his leg.
Thunder got better, and a month after that, he ran off again. Same stretch, same bend. Got hit a second time. Cracked his pelvis, three months without moving. Stephen changed his bedding twice a day and carried him outside every morning, just so the dog could see the sky. And after that, Stephen got the chain. Tracy begged him to let her take the dog home. Stephen said no. He said one thing: “He’ll come back. He always comes back. And he won’t survive that motorway a third time.”
Tracy argued. Then she didn’t visit for six months. Then she came less and less. Then she stopped altogether. For seven years, Thunder sat on that chain. Stephen cooked him porridge every morning and evening. Buckwheat, sometimes millet, mixed with meat offcuts he got cheap from Edith at the shop. He’d check the collar, oil the clip so it never seized up. And he’d sit on the old log by the post, not saying a word. Thunder would rest his head on Stephen’s knee, and they’d sit there together until it got dark. Two old boys, one on a log, one on a chain. Beryl saw it from her kitchen window every single evening.
Thunder stayed with Tracy. He was where he’d been walking to all those years. Later, Beryl went back over to Stephen’s place and stood by the post. The chain was lying in the mud, coiled up like a hoop. She picked it up. The links were heavy, cold, and one side had been polished smooth as glass. She hung the chain on the nail in the post. Then she did up the gate wire in four twists, the way Stephen always did. She stood there a moment, looking at the empty yard, at the groove worn into the earth, at the log by the post. Then she crossed the road back to her own house and closed the gate behind her.
She washed the dog’s bowl and put it on her porch, just in case. If Thunder ever came back.
