Page 7 of Blacktail

Hate looked at his father, wide-eyed. “What…what was that?”

Father didn’t answer. Likely he didn’t know himself. But the damn things were everywhere, more so as you traveled south. Over the years Hate came to understand the ways of these things a little better. Some, like the ones that had laid waste to their home, were huge and lumbering. Those could move anywhere, give or take, but they were easy enough to outrun. The really fast ones were smaller, but rarely strayed from the road. He took to thinking of them a word that might as well have been Car. And why not? He had to call them something.

Over time Hate came to believe that Car was an abomination. It served not the Forest God, but men. It had no agency, no will of its own. Car—Cars? whatever—were slaves, just like horses, or those dogs on a rope you sometimes saw romping through the woods during the fall. Worse than slaves, really. Once Hate’s mother had told him a story about a slave dog who ran away to find salvation in the forest. Bullshit or not, it made him feel nice.

Ah, Father.

His father had been a fine hunter. But even before men came, new things in general seemed to make him grumpy. Mother once confided that thinking hurt the old lynx if he kept at it for too long.

That, Hate thought, ended up being the death of him. It was no real surprise. The real horror was that he managed to drag Mother down with him.

After a few days they’d taken to moving after sunset—Cars and such were less active then. One night they came upon a road. It was too misty to see well, but the foggy air carried sound farther than it might have on a dry night. Hate remembered hearing a low rumble echo through the canyons. It was hard to tell exactly where it was coming from.

He hesitated at the edge of the road.

Sensing Hate’s unease, Father paused in the middle of the road. He looked back over his shoulder at Hate. “What now? Just…come on,” Father said. “I’ll show you. It’s probably on the other side of the valley.”

“Father,” Hate said softly, “I don’t think—”

Father hiked his leg and pointed a squirt of piss in Hate’s direction, then turned to Mother. “Coming, dear?”

She looked at Hate.

“Don’t,” Hate whispered. Car was closer now, he was sure of it, but the echoes made it impossible to tell how close, or even the direction of approach. “Please. Please don’t.”

“Your son,” his father said, his voice thick with contempt. He stepped out into the road, Hate’s mother following after him. Father’s timing was impeccable. Car roared around the curve, white eyes blazing.

Hate could only watch, helpless.

Mother’s final act was an attack. She yowled, sprang, lunged through the air. Car swatted her, sent her flying into the dark. Father’s courage failed him under the headlights. He turned back, tried to flee. His eyes met Hate’s as Car crushed his hindquarters.

Car roared away, wallowed by darkness. Mother was silent, still in tall grass on the far side of the road. Only Hate and his father remained. A terrible silence settled upon them.

Father made a few faint attempts to drag himself to safety—what there was of it—on Hate’s side of the road. Hate assumed that Car would come back. Father was old, yes, but he still had a good bit of meat on his bones. Mother was still on the plump side, even after their days of travel.

But Car did not turn back. It didn’t even slow. Hate’s family was left to rot. Why? In the years to come, Hate wondered about that often. Even today, he could think of no answer.

Mother died outright. Hate had no clear memory of seeing to her body, of making sure…but he must have done. When Mother visited his dreams, she was gentle.

Father’s death was worse. After a shamefully long time—when it became clear that Hate himself was safe—he crept out into the road. He remembered how, cowardly and despairing, he had lifted his father by the scruff of his neck. Father moaned, then screamed, but after a few steps the pain knocked him unconscious

Four years later, safe in the crook of his elm tree, Hate squeezed his eyes shut. The memory of his shame was like drowning.

All that day and into the next night he and Father lingered by the side of the road. A few Cars zipped by—not many. There was never any question that Father might live. His hips were a crumpled ruin under the dirt-stained fur of his haunch. Sometimes Father was unconscious. Sometimes he screamed. Sometimes the two of them screamed together.

Hate brought him a mouse, licked Father’s wounds when he slept. They might have spoken, or not. Hate couldn’t really remember. He didn’t want to remember.

But at the very end, when his last breath was upon him, the old lynx prayed under the sight of the pale moon.

As my prey have fulfilled their duty,

so let me fulfill mine.

I would be the tooth and claw of Your will.

Use me as You see fit.

And that was really the end of it. When he was dead, Hate continued north. What else was there to do?