Except from "The Straw People"

 

We went back into her house and started on our project. We waited until her parents went to sleep and went back to the shed. “I think I'm going to name him Eric,” she said.

“Why Eric?” I asked.

“I don't know. He just looks like an Eric.” She pushed open the door and the first thing we saw was that the bowl of water was empty but all of the chicken was still there. It hadn't been touched. And Eric was nowhere to be seen. Presley stepped into the shed and started to look around.

“Eric,” she whispered as though the dog already knew his name even though she had just thought of it. She overturned boxes and looked through bins like he could have somehow crawled inside one. All I did was turn to my right and I found him. He was curled up on the seat of her dad's riding lawnmower and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how he had gotten up there.

“Presley,” I said. “He isn't breathing.”

Presley rushed over to him and put her hand on his back just to make sure. He wasn't. Eric was dead. She didn't say anything. I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't know what the appropriate level of emotion was for the situation. We hadn't known Eric long enough for him to make an impact on our lives. But he had lived a sad and unloved life and that was tragedy enough. I walked over to Presley and stood next to her.

She had her chin resting against her chest and tears were running down her face. “He just needed someone to care about him,” she said. “Just for one day he wanted to feel loved. Then he could die in peace.”

“Well, it's a good thing he chose you,” I said. Presley wiped her face.

“We need to give him a proper burial,” she said. So we did. We dug a hole behind her shed and buried Eric in it and she made a headstone with a permanent marker and a large rock we found. It read Eric ?-2003 he finally found love. I don't think her parents ever found out it was there. It's probably still there. Presley would periodically begin to cry over the next two weeks about Eric. She would ask me why I thought he didn't eat the chicken or why he felt the need to die on her dad's lawnmower. She told me that every time her dad mowed the lawn she felt nervous because now it had the curse of death on it and she really was scared that there would be a freak accident and her dad would die and wasn't that a terrible way to die? In a freak riding lawnmower accident?