The Power of the Dog

by Thomas Savage

Summer and winter that wind howled, shrieking down the slope of the hill over the graveyard at the base where rusty barbed wire and rotting posts kept stray animals from trampling the graves and toppling the fruit jars that often held flowers—Johnny-jump-ups in spring, Indian paintbrush later, but only the recent dead could be certain of flowers.

Peter stood wondering what words he would use to tell her he had found his father upstairs, and had just cut him down from where he had hanged himself from one of those ropes coiled by the window for escape, in case of fire.

some loudmouthed scissorbill of a barfly;

Phil needn’t have worried, but you do wonder sometimes if people are what you think they are, or if you only think that they are and they are what they are and not what you think.