Page 10 of What Rough Beast

“Let me see,” Widow insists, shifting Panda. She reaches out and grabs my wrist, rolling it over. “Can you move your fingers?”

I unclench my fist, revealing the white mass I found in the compost pile, now streaked with blood and the whorls of my fingerprints.

“What the hell is that?” Widow leans closer.

The muscles in my jaw creak as I summon them back to life, out from under the blanket of numbness, to this place where I am being asked a direct question.

“I found it in the compost,” I tell her.

There’s more than that, but communicating is hard, and the concepts complicated. I think the skunks were warning me, and that Panda was terrified. I think it moved in my hand, and I felt a pulse inside of it, syncing up with my own. But Widow told me not to anthropomorphize animals, and fear seems like a faraway thing, something I might have felt for a few moments about an hour ago, but not something I can’t conceive of at the moment.

“Come on,” Widow says, pulling me toward the main office. She puts Panda in the wheelbarrow by the front door, tucking his legs up against his belly and curling his chin down onto his paws. He looks like he’s sleeping, except for a patch of fur that was torn away.

“He’s not even bleeding,” I say, some of my thoughts making their way out.

“He’s only broken on the inside,” Widow says.

“Sounds familiar,” I say, and—weirdly—I start laughing. “Sorry.”

“You’re in shock,” Widow says, flicking on the overhead light.

Widow peels the thing away from my hand, blows black flecks of compost away, holds it up to the light, my dried blood dark against the white.

“What is it?” I ask. “A mushroom? Those can look weird sometimes.” It’s similar to the touch, spongy and soft, with a little bit of give to the skin.

Widow snorts. “You’re telling me. Should’ve seen the look on my mom’s face when a whole patch of devil’s dipstick came up in the family graveyard. Don’t google that,” she adds sternly, glancing over at me. She tilts it to the side, and light passes through it.

“Is it an egg, maybe?” I ask.

“Why would you think that?”

“Because there’s something inside,” I tell her, pointing toward the center where a dark mass rests, the light not penetrating. My finger brushes against it, skin reuniting with blood.

The dark thing twitches.

“Holy shit!” I scream, yanking my hand away.

Widow jumps, almost drops the egg, bobbles it for a second before recovering. She lets out her breath slowly and looks over at me.

“I think . . .” I swallow, shake my head. “I think it moved.”

Widow glances back at the thing in her hand, then tilts her head. “If there’s something moving inside of it, it must be an egg. And an egg needs to be kept warm.”

She hands it to me.

“I’m not sitting on this,” I tell her as she slips past me.

“No, because that would be weird,” Widow calls from the back room. She reappears, carrying an incubator, which she puts on the counter next to an outlet, wiping down the glass walls. She pulls on the side with the ventilation hole, opening it, then shows me how to turn on the lamp and adjust the temperature. Widow sets the egg inside, bunching a towel around it to create a nest.

“Don’t let it roll,” she says, then turns the overhead light off, the incubator bulb washing the room in red. “Keep the temperature around a hundred degrees, humidity fifty to sixty percent, you might have to add water trays. It’ll need to be turned about six times a day.”

“And then what?” I ask.

“We wait,” she says, with a shrug. “And I bury my dog.”

“I’ll do it,” I say. “It was my fault.”

“It’s called an accident for a reason,” Widow says. “So get that out of your head and get on home.”