On the second Wednesday after she bought the car, Dana filled two bowls with water and a third with enough food for a day, and set them on the kitchen floor in a row. It was ten-fifty, and the house had held on to the heat of the afternoon. The fan in the bedroom window moved it around without doing anything about it.

"I'll be back before it's light," she said to the dog.

The dog stood in the kitchen doorway and watched her empty the coffee grounds into the trash, on top of the card Brian Tuttle had left in her screen door on Monday. Dana had torn it in four without turning it over. When she took the bat from behind the front door, the dog didn't follow, and at the curb Dana looked back at the house. The dog was up in the armchair by the window with her front paws on the back of it, which she had never done before. The torn ear had healed with a notch in it.

She still hadn't given her a name. She had come close once that week, the morning Yesenia texted that Deb had driven down from Yucaipa for Bruno. Dana had been half asleep in the armchair, and a word had started to come out of her, and she shut her mouth on it before she heard what it was.

The Taurus was parked behind the van, where it had stood since the Friday she brought it home, with the seat pushed forward as far as it went. Two five-gallon cans rode in the trunk, bought at two different gas stations on two different days, and they sloshed against each other when she pulled away from the curb. She took Cedar south toward the freeway with the window down. The car pulled to the left, and she let it.

It had pulled to the left that first day too. She had walked the four blocks to the yard by the tracks with the yellow flyer in her pocket. The man had walked her down to the car between rows of dead cars, with his old dog going a few steps ahead of them. He was heavy through the chest and carried his belly high, and he had looked at his dog before he looked at her. His shirt had been washed so many times that the collar lay flat and thin as paper. When he lifted a hand to shade his eyes, the fingers stayed curled. Dana knew hands like that from the shelter, from the retired men who came in on weekday mornings to walk dogs until the year they couldn't close a fist around a leash.

He said twenty-five hundred and let her look at him while she thought about it. It was twice what the car was worth. When she asked about the title, he said it would stay where it was. A man who kept the title was charging for all the questions he wasn't going to ask. Fine. She counted the money out on the hood in twenties from the coffee can over her refrigerator, and he didn't count it after her. A felt apple hung from the mirror on a loop of red yarn. The stitches were so big that a child must have sewn it, and she left it where it was. A car with a kid's apple in it was a car nobody looked at twice.

She had driven out to Haney's place three nights that first week and sat at the end of the dirt road under the eucalyptus with the engine off and the notebook on her knee. Somebody had patched the hole in the fence with baling wire. She wrote down what she saw, as she always did: the time, what moved, and who. On Saturday trucks were parked along the road back to the pavement, and there was music and men's voices from the barn until three in the morning. Twice the whole row of kennels went off at once and stopped. Monday night there was nothing. On Wednesday the black pickup came out of the drive a little after ten, with a new left headlight that was whiter than the right one, and turned toward the freeway. The house went dark. The truck didn't come back until after two, and she sat there until it did.

Wednesdays, she wrote. Gone 10–2. Barn empty.

The kennels were full every night. She could hear them from the car with the windows up.

On Sunday evening the man from the yard had come down her street again with his dog. It was the same hour as the first time, but he didn't stop at the mailboxes. At her house the old dog stopped on her own and turned her head toward the window. In the living room the brindle dog was already up on her front legs with both ears forward, the notched one too. The two dogs looked at each other through the screen for a long time. The man stood and waited without pulling on the leash, and he didn't look at the window. He looked at the Taurus. The leash was wrapped once around his right hand, and the hand was closed on it all the way. The old dog was done looking before he was. Dana stepped back from the window, out of the light from the street, and stayed there until he had turned the corner toward the tracks.

The cans knocked together in the trunk as she came up out of the underpass, and the smell of exhaust gave way to dry grass. To the north the orange glow hung over the cities where it always did. At eleven-ten she turned onto the dirt road, and the felt apple swung out on its yarn and back. She cut the headlights and let the car roll the last stretch to the eucalyptus. The house was dark, and the drive was empty.

She carried the cans to the fence one at a time and went back for the bat, the bolt cutters, and the flashlight with the red plastic over the lens. Her shirt was stuck to her back. She cut the fence ten feet down from the baling wire, and this time she didn't count the links. The kennels woke up as soon as she was through, the whole row at once, and the noise went into her teeth. She didn't go to them. She didn't put the light on them either, because if she looked at them she would start choosing, and there was nobody here she could choose.

The barn's back door had a new padlock. The bolt cutters slipped off it twice before she got a good bite, and when it went, the sound was loud enough that she stood still and listened to the house. Nothing came on. She leaned the bat against the wall beside the door and left the bolt cutters on the step.

Inside it was hotter than outside, and close. It smelled of dog and spilled beer, and under that of old blood soaked into the wood. The red light showed her the place one piece at a time. A square of plywood walls stood in the middle of the dirt floor, waist-high, with carpet remnants laid inside it. The inside of the plywood had been stained dark, scraped pale, and stained again. A scale hung on a chain from a beam. A stack of plastic chairs stood against the wall. Somebody had brought chairs, so people had sat on them and watched. There was a folding table with a cooler under it, and on the table a coffee can full of cigarette butts.

The male in the ditch in June had come out of that ring. She stood and looked at it until the light started to shake, and she put the flashlight in her teeth.

Sheet metal had been screwed over the boards along the back wall, from the floor to the height of her head. The dogs were on the other side of it, so close she could hear them breathing between the barks. She put her palm flat on the metal. It was warm from the day. Metal didn't burn, and she took her hand away and unscrewed the cap on the first can.

She poured it along the plywood, all the way around the square, and over the carpet. She took her time so it wouldn't splash on her shoes. The second can went over the table, the chairs, and the cooler, and up the posts as high as she could reach. The scale was for weighing them before a fight, so the bets came out fair. She poured some on that too. By the time the can was empty, the smell had filled the barn and her mouth, and her eyes were running. She dragged one of the big front doors half open for the air and backed out through it into the yard.

She had a book of matches from a bar in Colton that had closed years ago. The first one broke. The second one caught, and she held it and watched it burn down toward her fingers. The anger came up in her as it did when she found a wound somebody had made on purpose, hot and steady. She threw the match. The barn went up with a sound like a sheet being shaken out, and the heat hit her in the face. She laughed out loud, once, alone in the yard.

It was eleven-forty when the headlights came around the bend on the road. There were two of them, and one was whiter than the other.

Her heart kicked hard. She ran around the barn for the bat and had it in her hands in the dark at the corner before the pickup stopped. The driver's door opened with the engine still running. Haney came out yelling. He was bigger than he looked in the pictures where he held his puppies up by the scruff, thick in the neck and soft in the middle, in a T-shirt and unlaced boots. He had a tire iron in one hand and his phone in the other with its flashlight on, and he ran toward the open doors and the fire. The light swung across her corner and away and back. It stopped on her.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"You know who I am," she said. "You drove by my house."

The first swing caught his forearm, and the tire iron went somewhere in the dark. She felt it in her own arm up to the shoulder, and it felt right. He turned toward her with his mouth open, and the second swing caught his knee from the side. It gave. She felt it give through the handle. He went down on his back, and the phone landed face up in the grass beside him. On the screen the yard was gray and grainy, seen from high up on the house, with the barn burning white in the middle of it and two small figures in front of it. The camera. She had seen a picture from it in the neighborhood group, and she had walked right in under it, and she didn't care. He got an arm up, and she hit the arm. She hit his ribs twice. When he rolled, she hit his shoulder.

She was swinging from the hips now, with the whole of her back in it. Every blow came back up the handle into her hands, and she wanted the next one more than the last. She was yelling. She could hear herself from a distance, hoarse, saying the same thing over and over.

"Go on, hold one up. Hold one up now."

He held his hand up in front of his face, open, the fingers spread.

"That the hand? That the one you hold them up with?"

She hit it. Something in it went, and he screamed. The fire had gotten into the hayloft behind him, and the light moved over his face. There was blood coming out of his nose, and his arm lay wrong at the elbow. He was saying okay, okay, okay. He was still trying to crawl.

"Stay down. Stay down."

She lifted the bat again and didn't count. She stopped when her arms stopped. She stood over him with her shoulders heaving and the bat hanging from both hands, and the sweat ran into her eyes. Her arms were shaking, and she couldn't make them quit. She felt light, better than she had in a year, and that was when she heard the dogs.

Behind the barn the whole row was screaming.

Her stomach went cold, and she ran. When she came around the corner, the sheet metal on the back wall had gone dull red in the middle. She dropped the bat at the back door and grabbed the bolt cutters off the step. Smoke was rolling out under the eaves. The heat came off the wall like an oven door left open. The first kennel stood right against it, and the dog in it was throwing himself at the chain-link. Get out, she was yelling, come on, get out. The padlock was too hot to hold. She held it anyway and cut it, and the skin of her palm stuck to the metal and stayed there when she pulled her hand back. The dog went past her into the dark without looking at her. So did the second one. The third wouldn't come. He was down in the back corner with his eyes shut, a big red male, and she went in after him. Come on, buddy, come on, please. She got her hands under his chest and dragged him out by the front legs. The smoke was down to the ground now. She couldn't see the fourth lock, so she found it with her fingers. Her sleeve caught somewhere, and she put it out against her side and didn't feel it. She got the fifth one open. The sixth kennel was empty, and there was a hole in the back where the dog had gone through. The seventh lock gave. Then the last three were quiet.

She went down the row to them on her knees. It was a quiet she knew. It was the hallway at the shelter after a Tuesday. She heard herself talking. She was talking to them low, about nothing, as she had talked in that room so they wouldn't hear how quiet it was.

"I know," she said. "I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Her burned hand was flat against the chain-link of the eighth kennel, and the wire was hot. Nobody in there was listening. She looked at her other hand. Haney's blood had gone tacky in the creases of the knuckles. She tried to get up, and her legs wouldn't do it. She sat down in the dirt by the eighth kennel and stopped talking.

Then she was up.

She didn't decide it. Her body was on its feet and backing away from the wall before she had thought anything. The heat that had been on her face was inside her now, in her chest and in the backs of her hands. Her heart hit hard enough to move her shirt. She looked at her right hand. The palm was a wet sheet with the skin gone, and it didn't hurt. Nothing in her hurt. All of her was pulled tight in one direction, around the corner of the barn, toward the front.

The smoke was thick, but she could smell every dog in it separately: the scorched coat of the big red male, the ones who had run, and the last three kennels, where nothing was alive. She could hear their hearts. The red male lay on his side a few yards off, and his heart was fast and light and kept missing. He would be dead before the sun came up. She knew it as plainly as she knew it was night. It tugged at her, but it was the natural order of things, and she let it be. The three in the kennels were the same. Under that, the hallway at the shelter after a Tuesday was quiet. She had always been the one in the room. The others would live.

She called them. She didn't make a sound. They came out of the smoke and the dark one at a time, the dogs she had let out, scarred and wide in the chest. The night she took the brindle dog, they had thrown themselves at the fence to get at her. Now they came with their heads low and their eyes on her face, and not one of them went for another. They stood behind her and waited.

They went back around the barn together. She picked up the bat from the back step as they passed. Her fingers opened and closed on the grip and wouldn't take hold.

The fire had the whole roof now, and the front doors were a square of light. Haney was lying where she had left him, on his side with one arm across his chest and his face turned toward her. She heard his heart before she saw him breathe. It was fast and thick, the loudest thing there, louder than the fire, and she knew how little it would take to stop it.

She walked up to him. The dogs came behind her and stopped when she stopped, in a half circle, his own dogs, silent. She raised the bat in both hands. She had talked all through the beating, and she had nothing to say now. It all came up through her arms: the ring, the chairs somebody had brought so they could sit and watch. It was hotter than what she had felt the first time, and it had no words in it. She held the bat high, and her whole body shook with holding it there. A low sound ran in her throat that she hadn't made on purpose, and her lips were drawn back off her teeth.

Haney looked up the length of the bat at her face. He had stopped saying okay.

The smell of the three in the back kennels was in her sleeves, and the smell of the red male was in her hair. Four by morning. She stood in the light of the fire with a bat over a man who was already down. Her fingers had been opening and closing since the back step. Now they opened and stayed open.

The bat dropped into the grass beside his phone. She stood with her hands empty, and the pain came back into the right one all at once. It was her own pain. She was standing on her own legs, with her sleeves stuck to her forearms and her eyes running from the smoke, and she was so tired that her knees shook. Over the roar of the fire she could hear herself breathing like anybody else.

She looked at him. She didn't say anything, and neither did he.

Behind her the dogs had their ears up and their eyes on her, waiting to be told where, and they were the ones she could do something for. She turned her back on him and faced them.

The heat hadn't gone out of her. It had gone down into her spine, and with the dogs in front of her it rose with somewhere to go. It took her all at once. When it let her go, she was on all fours, and the dogs came no higher than her chest. Her forepaws were wider than both her hands had been together, and when she spread them, the claws slid out of the fur, longer than her fingers had been. Two of her teeth hung down past her jaw, long and curved, and she carried her mouth a little open around them. Her coat was black, blacker than the dark past the fire, and when the light from the barn moved over it, faint yellow stripes glimmered in it and went out. Nothing hurt. Her chest rumbled, and she felt it in the ground through her paws.

She looked back once. Haney had his face up, and his mouth was open with no sound coming out of it. His good heel dug at the dirt, and it moved him a few inches and stopped. Beside the bat, the phone lay face up in the grass with its screen lit. In the little square the barn burned white. Haney was a small figure on the ground in front of it, and the one standing near him was the wrong shape.

She ran. The dogs came after her, and the firelight showed their backs and lost her. The grass had caught along the fence, and the fire ran beside her, low and bright, and she was faster than it. At the end of the fence, under the eucalyptus, the Taurus was burning. The windows had gone. The tires were burning, and fire was coming up through the hood. Before the mirror went, she saw the felt apple hanging in the middle of it, turning on its yarn.

She went over the fence in one leap, clear of the wire by a man's height, and past the car without slowing down. To the north, toward the cities, a siren started up. The dogs came through the hole she had cut, one at a time, and she didn't have to turn her head to know how many. On the other side of the road the ground dropped away into the wash.

The sand down in the wash was dry and still warm from the day. She went down into it and turned north with the fire at her back, and the dogs came down the bank after her.