Winter 2022 | Pamela Painter Reads "Dog in the Night" – MQR Sound
In every story’s evening and every novel’s night there is only the one bark, by one dog, alone in the night. Tell me: where is this dog that barks in the night? The dog that races from story to story, lopes from novel to novel, streaks into flash. The dog whose bark never disrupts a family argument, foils a break-in, or halts a drug deal, and never prevents a murder.
And why, why does the dog bark only once? This sad and sorry “once” makes it impossible to locate the dog, to race toward the mayhem, to speed to someone’s rescue. Surely, it’s not a tiny, yappy dog that nestles in a Fendi or Louis Vuitton tote, welcomed at posh restaurants. The dog must be large, its chest a barrel, its throat a tympanic bell, its bark—not a yip, not a howl—able to travel from doghouse to a place where something dire is afoot. Afoot by the light of the moon, or stirring on a moonless night.
Did I say doghouse? The dog could be tied by a frayed length of rope to a tree or abandoned on the side of the road. Maybe the dog is in trouble. Where are the other dogs? There is never an answering bark, a howl, a snarl of outrage, no Lassie to the rescue. I worry about the dog. I worry about us.
For more from the Winter 2022 issue of MQR, you can purchase the issue here.
