Written by RF Wilson – When the snow began to melt on the north side of the ridge that March, he knew he had to get busy. Although still covered with a two-foot deep blanket of white, he sensed the ground welling up under his feet. Soon the high meadow and nearby woods would be alive with trillium and lady slippers, dwarf iris and columbine.

Down in Asheville they’d had a few inches of snow and you’d have thought it was a replay of the blizzard of ’93. Up here, although there’d been over four feet, it wasn’t enough to replenish what the previous years’ drought had depleted. He wasn’t sure he believed in the whole global warming thing, especially with the record low temperatures this past February. But there was no denying that the melt had been coming earlier and earlier. What remained would be gone in a few weeks, maybe less.

In winters past, he and Elzbeth were like bears, hunkering down. Unlike bears, who ate as much as possible in the fall before falling asleep, he and Elzbeth kept on eating right along, as if it was their main hobby. He read a lot. They watched a lot of movies. Elzbeth would snuggle on the couch, her head in his lap. He wondered if she could see what was on the screen.

Without Elzbeth, this had been a lonely winter. Over the previous summer he’d decided he could no longer tolerate her neediness. She’d always been bossy. That was her nature. In the end though, it was her neediness that wore him out. When they’d returned from their season on the road, the trip to Alaska he’d always talked about, he knew what had to happen.

It hadn’t been easy. He’d gotten her out in the field a couple of times in the fall, the golden days, the last of the summer renters having gone back east. She’d looked at him, square on, as if she knew what was on his mind, like she was daring him. Instead, they’d kept on walking through the meadow. Things got worse and on the day of the first snow, they walked up the hill again. This time, he finished what he’d set off to do.

Getting the place in shape for the seasonal people also meant getting the camper ready for four months on the road. A lot of people thought it was nuts, traveling around in the warm months, coming back to the little cabin in the winter. But it was the warm-weather renters who paid for life on the road.

This year, thinking of Elzbeth, up there under her white blanket, he wanted to stay wrapped-up on the couch. On a day when the sun elbowed gray clouds for position overhead and the temperature reached nearly 50, he hoisted himself off the couch, pulled on his boots and his best worn-out flannel shirt. In the kitchen, he got a jug down from the high shelf. The “special occasion” jug. The jug never to be gotten down unless there were two or more people to share with. He sat it on the old wooden table and looked at it and seemed to gain strength in that effort.

Going out the kitchen door, he grabbed the moonshine, was almost out of the house before he turned back for one last thing. In the shed, he shoved a pair of tough leather gloves, worn soft by years of work, into his jeans pocket and hoisted a pick and shovel over his shoulder. The wind picked up on the way up the hill pulling a dark sky in its wake. He tightened the shirt collar around his neck.

The snow and cold had kept her from the attentions of scavengers. Except for being so scrawny, she still looked like Elzbeth. She weighed almost nothing. When the hole was big enough, he laid the blanket he’d taken from the couch onto the ground, rolled her on it, lowered it into the hole. Hefting the jug, he took a few swigs, then poured some over her, saying a prayer to whatever god it was that looked over Australian Sheep Dogs. He supposed he ought to note the place with some kind of marker so he’d have an answer when people asked, “Where’s Elzbeth?”

When there was no response to his knock on the cabin door, Buncombe County Sheriff’s Deputy Ernest Dillingham pulled on latex gloves before he turned the knob. He’d been dispatched to investigate, after the people who planned to come up later in the spring had called the department, worried that no one answered at the place, this being the time of year they always finalized plans with the man. The door was unlocked. Nothing looked out of place. Big screen TV, DVD and DVR all intact. The man’s wallet and cell phone on his dresser. Shotgun leaning against the rear door frame. Outside, the truck and trailer were unmolested. Nothing was obviously amiss in the shed. No sign of Elzbeth. Everybody around knew that he and that dog were inseparable.

The deputy headed up the well-worn path through the broad field, wondering how long he’d have to look before they called in a team. At the top of the ridge, a dark patch several yards off caught his eye. When he got closer, he could tell it was a body. Closer still, he saw the body was lying in a small rectangular hole, a pick and a shovel next to it. A whiskey jug lay atop the figure. It was only when the forensics people arrived and removed the man’s body from the hole that they saw the remains of a much smaller animal.

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RF Wilson writes in Asheville, NC, where he lives with his wife, Beth Gage. He is the author of the novel, “Killer Weed,” recently published by Pisgah Press and the short story, “Accident Prone,” in the anthology “Carolina Crimes” published by Wildside Press.