DOG MEATWOOD STRUCK deftly, deadly on the head of the dog, now held by thick electric wire the small-town power company left behind, and brought
forth a brief but agonizing cry, and he, hidden behind a sparse screen of cogon, had felt the blow vicariously strong on the nape, and almost at once he wanted to cry – not as briefly, yet
with as much agony as the beast’s with as much hatred for the man holding it and the other fellow that struck death. There was a final whimper: a strange lingering whisper of fatal pain; and
he, behind the grass, heard it very distinctly in the dry air that did not blow but burn, so that he felt seared by it sharply, and suddenly he felt sickened inside him. He had made sounds with the
cogon blades that scratched his bare legs; the sharp grass cut his feet,
