EAST NEUK OF FIFE, Scotland — 2021
The weather had been building since Dunbar. Low and grey. Mac had stopped checking his phone somewhere around the third time it lost signal. The map app had given up before that. He was on the right road, more or less.
The rental was a Vauxhall Corsa, the smallest thing on the lot, and the gusts shoved it around on the narrow road between the stone walls. He kept both hands on the wheel.
The third time the pub came around he pulled in. Stone and timber. Lights inside that made the windows amber against the afternoon.
He nearly missed the dog.
She was moving along the hedgerow at the edge of the car park. Nose down, then up, then down again. Scavenging, he assumed. He had watched dogs scavenge in most parts of the world. This was different, and he couldn’t have said how. A substantial animal. Low. A big dog with shortish legs. Shaggy in the way of dogs that were built for weather. Her tail rode high as she went along the hedge — abnormally large, Mac thought, and as she turned he saw why he’d thought it: the back of it was white, and it caught what light there was like a flag. She looked at him once as he got out of the car. Then back to the hedge.
As he came up to the door he heard a sawing creak. He looked up. The sign rocking in the wind. A painted plough. THE PLOUGH. Below it hung a smaller board: THE KEEPER. Harmless names. Not the Slaughtered Lamb, anyway.
He took hold of the brass handle and pulled the door open, and she slid through past him. Mac stepped in and put a hand up in apology toward the barkeep.
“Laddie.” A pause. “Afraid you’ve got it the other way around. Come on in — what can we do for you on this fine day.”
The pub was empty save the two of them and the dog. Mac settled onto a stool. The barkeep poured without being asked — a local ale, dark.
Mac looked around the room the way he did in new places. Cataloguing. Stone walls. A large open fireplace, wood stacked inside it and not yet lit. On the wall past the fireplace, a big framed photograph. A team, or posed like one. Not in uniforms. Work clothes. Enough of them to hide most of the building behind them — he could see part of a roofline and a stone chimney with an odd cap on it. Smaller frames around it. Smaller groups, the same kind of setting. A dartboard by the door. The usual bottles behind the bar.
He had a rough scale for bars. College dives at one end, where they aired the mats on the sidewalk and you could smell it a block off, and hotel bars at the other, with fresh flowers on the counter. He had been in a lot of both, and everything in between. This one smelled of old wood smoke and wet wool, and under that, beer that had gone into the boards a long time ago.
His eyes found the dog.
She had taken up a position in a booth by the far window, looking out toward the field across the road. The light was getting low. Whatever she was looking at out there, he couldn’t see it from the stool.
He watched her for a moment. Picked up his ale. Then went around the room again — turning his head, not his eyes, like operating a camera. Framing. A habit from the old work.
As the dog came into the frame she turned her head, as if she’d known where the frame was going and had been waiting for it to arrive. Her eyes locked on his — as if she were looking back through the lens, into the works.
He looked away. He took a long pull of the ale.
He looked back.
Her head was still turned toward him, but the eyes had changed. Or seemed to have. Not through him this time. She’d adjusted her depth of field, he thought — him as the subject in a setting, the room in focus around him.
Outside, the real heavy stuff had arrived. Mac could hear it against the glass.
The barkeep set down the glass he’d been polishing. It made a small, definite sound on the bar. He looked at the dog. Then at Mac.
“What is she?” Mac said, eyes still on the dog. “I mean — what breed?”
The barkeep smiled.
“We’ve got weather coming,” he said. “Do you like stories?”
“I do. I used to cover them. Serious ones. Before — well. Before things changed.”
“She —” The barkeep reached for Mac’s pint, stepped back to his left, and squared himself up to the taps along the back of the bar. “Why, she’s a Spacklerdog.”
He topped off the pint. Placed it exactly where it had been, next to Mac’s left hand.
Then, as he walked to the hearth, he said, “Now then. I’ll tell you how she got here.”
He reached for a wood match and snapped it alight.
