Ebb McRae traveled light – just a duffel bag, a cooler full of orange Gatorade Zero, and his old mutt, Trammel. That dog loved two things more than all others, riding in a car, and sniffing things so long and hard you'd swear he was solving a murder.
Most nights they stopped at little motels on blue highways – the kind of places with half-empty vending machines in the ice room and barely enough landscaping dollars for a few scraggly Yaupon bushes and a doggy waste bin. This was plenty enough for Trammel to “check his pee-mail,” as Ebb called it, watching him snort at the base of a bench or lift a leg to a hedge. It was a ritual. If Trammel didn’t get his sniffing in, he’d pace the motel carpet like he was trying to wear it down to the concrete.
But this place, just in the edge of Tallatippah County, Mississippi, where the pan-flat Yazoo delta meets the pinewood hills – this place was different.
It was technically a motel, but fancier than usual – maybe more like what they used to call a motor court. White gravel parking lot, units arranged in a U around a fountain that wasn’t running. Ebb paid for two nights and the clerk gave him a real key instead of a plastic card and told him breakfast ended at nine sharp.
Out back was the usual fringe of patchy-but-functional grass. Trammel made a half-hearted circle, peed on the corner of a drainpipe, then froze. His ears went back.
Ebb followed the dog’s line of sight to a stand of trees about twenty feet past the gravel, denser than it should’ve been – not landscaped, not mulched. A small copse tucked away in the back corner of the property. The shadows looked wet, like rain never quite dried in there.
“Go on, boy,” Ebb said. “Bet there’s plenty of things to smell in there.”
But Trammel didn’t move. He tucked his tail. Not scared exactly, more like he was insulted.
Ebb looked for signs – discarded poop bags, fire ant mounds. But the space was weirdly clean. No dog smell, no Coke cans or cigarette butts.
Untouched, almost primeval. Like no dog had ever set paw there and none ever would.
That night, Trammel refused to sleep by the door like usual. Instead, he curled tight on the bed beside Ebb, eyes fixed on the window. At 2:17 in the morning, something woke Ebb up – some sound. Outside the window he could hear footsteps crunching in the gravel. Slow and steady, crunch, crunch, crunch.
Trammel growled low in his throat, the way he used to when the neighbor’s kid would sneak through the back yard. Ebb sat up, got up and with the lights still off inside, he pulled back the blackout blind. Nothing – just darkness.
At breakfast, Ebb asked the desk clerk if the little ring of trees behind the building was part of the hotel property.
“Depends who you ask,” the clerk said, without looking up from his crossword.
Ebb waited for more, didn’t get it. When he asked where the nearest dog park was, the clerk circled a place on a map and said, “I’d take him there. That patch out back ain’t good for dogs.”
Ebb frowned. “Why not?”
The clerk just tapped his pencil twice. “What’s seven letters long and means…”
Some deep-down part of Ebb told him to check out right then, grab Trammel and his bag and be gone, but he had paid for two nights and he wasn’t about to be run out of town by footsteps in the gravel and shadows in the trees. Anyway, he’d feel real silly trying to get his second night’s money back from the clerk just because his dog was acting weird.
Ebb tried walking Trammel behind the hotel again that evening but the dog bolted for the car. When Ebb tried to coax him toward the trees with a piece of sausage left over from breakfast, Trammel whined, a deep, keening sound, and looked away like he felt sick.
Ebb walked into the trees a little ways himself – just far enough so he could lie to himself about how he wasn’t really spooked. It was cooler inside the ring of trees. Not just shade-cool, but damp. Below his feet the ground felt soft, spongy. The air had the sort of stillness you only get in basements or closed-off hospital rooms. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck was crawling.
No birds. No bugs. He bent down and pressed a palm to the dirt. No ants. No worm castings. He stood up fast and his head swam a little. No mosquitoes – this had to be the only place in Mississippi where there were no mosquitoes. His throat felt dry and scratchy. Back at the car, Trammel waited, one paw lifted like he had somewhere else to be.
They left at daylight the next morning – didn’t wait for breakfast.
At a rest stop thirty miles farther south, Trammel leapt out of the car like he’d been fired from a canon. He sniffed at a signpost for two full minutes, peed three times, and pooped in the weeds behind a garbage can.
Ebb let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Pee-mail server is back online,” he muttered, rubbing the dog’s ears. Trammel licked his hand and wagged like he hadn’t just spent the last twelve hours staring at shadows.
That night, at a motel with fake palms and a broken vending machine, Ebb sat outside while Trammel checked his pee-mail. Other dogs and their people had left their signs here: scuffed dirt, paw prints, a used poop bag tied in a knot and perched on a fencepost. This place was normal.
Ebb lit a cigarette and stared at nothing till it burned down in his fingers. Eventually, he said to himself, “Somewhere out there… it is a place where no dog ever pissed.”
Trammel came back and leaned against his leg. They sat in silence for a while – the dog and his man. Then the mutt’s ears flicked. From somewhere towards the highway came a faint sound, like gravel shifting under slow, deliberate steps. Ebb held his breath. For a moment he thought he heard it again — crunch, crunch, crunch — but the night stayed still.
Creepy! I love the ending. Slight "The Hitchhiker" vibes.