The Power of the Dog

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The baby is dead in his mother’s arms.

Art Keller can tell from the way the bodies lie-her on top, the baby beneath her-that she tried to shield her child. She must have known, Art thinks, that her own soft body could not have stopped bullets-not from automatic rifles, not from that range-but the move must have been instinctive. A mother puts her own body between her child and harm. So she turned, twisted as the bullets hit her, then fell on top of her son.

Did she really think that she could save the child? Maybe she didn’t, Art thinks. Maybe she just didn’t want the baby to see death blaze out from the barrel of the gun. Maybe she wanted her child’s last sensation in this world to be that of her bosom. Enfolded in love.

Art is a Catholic. At forty-seven years of age, he’s seen a lot of madonnas. But nothing like this one.

“Cuernos de chivo,” he hears someone say.

Quietly, almost whispered, as if they were in church.

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