Some stories arrive quietly. Others scratch at the back door and refuse to leave.
In Momma Girl, S. Thorne Harper delivers a raw, haunting short story about what survives violence — in bodies, in memory, and in the unlikely bonds that form between the wounded. When a solitary veteran living in rural isolation encounters a brutalized pit bull on his porch, the meeting sets off a chain of reckonings: with war, with guilt, with loyalty, and with the quiet ways love shows up when it isn’t invited.
Unflinching yet deeply human, Momma Girl moves between the scars of combat and the slow, stubborn healing that can come through care, connection, and responsibility. This is a story about protection — who gives it, who needs it, and what it costs.
There was a scratching at the back door. James listened, and heard it again. His landlord told him the old farmhouse had been burglarized twice before he moved in. James thought about that. He was alone in the country.
He walked quietly to the bedroom and picked up his Mag-Lite, the only weapon he possessed. Gripped by the neck and supported on the shoulder, it served as both light and club. James approached the storm window and looked out. Clouds glowed a faint orange and violet; the sun gone behind the pines.
There was nothing on the porch so James opened the door. It creaked. Something scurried just out of his periphery. His light scanned the grove of budding azaleas, stopping on a set of dark eyes in an oversized black head.
“God damn pit bull,” James said under his breath. He held his ground, showing no fear. The dog made no move, so he turned the light off and walked back to the steps. He squatted and lit a cigarette. “Hell.”
He took a few moments to think. The moon was full, its light diffused by clouds. James allowed his eyes to adjust to its ambience before walking back to the azalea grove. The dog moved deeper in the bushes as he did. “Come on out. Let me have a look at you,” he said, squatting a few feet away. The night clicked, buzzed and croaked with mystery. The pit bull emerged in a slow belly-crawl.
James extended his left hand but kept his right on the Mag-Lite. The odor arrived first, something like airplane glue and burnt, wet scrambled eggs. “Damn,” James said, not quite a whisper. The dog neared and sniffed his hand. There was a ragged band of white around the neck. The paws and tail were also dipped in white. The rest of the dog was black and looked as though it could have been wearing a mangled tuxedo. It nuzzled the back of James’ hand. He caressed the blocky head. His fingertips found a patchwork of scabs. He resisted the impulse to pull away.
“It’s OK.” James clicked the light on, put it on his shoulder, and moved the beam slowly over the dog. Ribs and spine defined by starvation. Freshly opened gashes, some exposing bone, mingling with old gray scars and skin-tight fur. The white ring of the neck was worn and stained with the pink of old blood. Drained teats drooped in dark folds around her.
“Well, hello Momma Girl.” She stopped panting and cut an eye up at him. James smiled. There was a peculiar scratch, still raw, just beneath her ear. It bothered him more than the rest. He didn’t want a dog. “Why the hell did you show up on my back porch?” She cut an eye at him again.
James walked in the house and returned with a week-old pan of grilled fish he had planned to throw out but never got around to it. He scraped it on the ground and backed up to give the dog space. Cautiously, she made her way to the fish. She sniffed it, devoured it, and then looked up at James. “That’s all I got.” He stroked her again, went inside, and closed the door.
Long spikes of rain came that night in a roar, hammering the farmhouse’s corrugated roof. James half-hoped the storm would drive the dog away, but she was on the back porch the next morning. She cringed when he opened the door and tucked her tail tightly between her legs. He stroked her and she rolled on her back.
He got an old pan and filled it with water. He thought about her at work and what to do with her if she were still there when he got home. He had a hard time concentrating on the band saw and nearly slipped a finger through the blade. But he came up with an idea. He figured he’d keep her as a security dog. He would give her food, water and a place to stay and, hopefully, she’d keep the burglars away. He’d keep a working relationship only. And he resolved to put her down if that peculiar scratch turned out to be carrying rabies. He bought a bag of dog food on the way home. She was on the front porch when he pulled up.
The dog’s cowering vanished after several days. She ate pans and pans of food and gorged herself on water. James treated her wounds; she didn’t flinch when he pushed the pasty ointment deep into the bone-bared gashes. When he was done, the dog looked him in the eye for the first time. They were big, brown and almond-shaped. James saw longing. He didn’t want to be needed.
The dog made a remarkable recovery. Other than the odd scratch beneath her ear, the cuts and gashes were healing fast.
James met Billy Ray Newsome about this time. Billy Ray showed up at the lumberyard during a fierce afternoon thunderstorm that had knocked out a transformer and James’ saw. He was taking a break to smoke a cigarette when he spotted Billy Ray struggling to load wire fencing and two-by-fours in the downpour. James snuffed out his cigarette and charged through the rain.
“Need some help?” James said.
“Wouldn’t turn it down,” Billy Ray said, looking at him beneath the dripping brim of a baseball cap. “It’s rainin’ like a cow pissin’ on a rock,” he said, the cigarette in his lips the only dry thing about him. James smiled. They talked as they loaded the pickup truck. Billy Ray liked
fishing and baseball. James liked baseball, but fishing never did much for him. Billy Ray also liked dogs. He had four of them and was going to use the wood and wire fencing to build a pen for them.
“What kind are they?”
“All shapes and sizes, no particular breed,” replied Billy Ray. “They’re just old country dogs. But I have to keep ‘em in now when strangers come. They think everyone’s a meth head these days. They chased some off a few weeks ago tryin’ to break in.”
Billy Ray seemed to know a lot about dogs, including fighting dogs. James told him about the pit bull and the odd scratch. “She’s prob’bly been rolled a few times. They either turned her out or she escaped. They don’t feed ‘em if they ain’t fightin’.”
“You think she’s dangerous?”
Billy Ray stopped loading, thought for a moment, and then looked at James.
“Dogs don’t ever want to bother anybody, unless someone makes ‘em do it. They’re not born that way. People got to take care of ‘em. If you don’t, they can be dangerous.” Billy Ray resumed loading the last bit of lumber. “There’s a little bit of dog in everybody. Includin’ you, Jimmy.” Nobody ever called James Jimmy, but it had a playful country sound coming from the smoking lips of Billy Ray Newsome.
They learned much more about each other by the time the truck was loaded. They had taken remarkably similar paths: both were in their early 30s; both had joined – and gotten out of – the Army about the same time (and for similar reasons); both had left as sergeants, and both had been part of the invasion of Iraq.
“Fuckin’ kismet, man,” Billy Ray said. “Who were you with?” James asked.
“A Hundred-and-First Airborne Assault. Screamin’ Eagles, baby. How ‘bout you?” “The Third Infantry Division. Rock of the Marne,” James said, adding: “And the
Sledgehammer of Baghdad.”
They laughed. Billy Ray said James should bring the dog over to his house because he wouldn’t mind taking a look at her. James agreed. Billy Ray dug out an old receipt from the clutter in his truck and scribbled a map to his house on the back. He had a mischievous spark in his eye and only the hint of a smile when he handed the paper to James. He said he would pen up the dogs and expect him that Saturday before noon.
“And I’ll tell ya something’ right now. I don’t like pit bulls. No sir. They got the eyes of a bear and the balls of a man. But I’ll look at ‘er.”
Billy Ray raised his face to the sky and was assaulted by 9-millimeter drops. “Well, a god damn small craft advisory has been issued: ‘All large craft are on their own.’ Better be gettin’ on down the road.” They shook hands.
“See you Saturday morning, Sergeant Sledgehammer.” “See you then.”
It was a perfect April morning when James and the dog turned down the dirt road to Billy Ray’s place, a modest old house, set back off the paved road in a shady thicket of newly blooming trees. Billy Ray was in the back, in a sun-lit vegetable patch, bent over with a cigarette in his lips, pulling grass beneath a row of what James recognized as string beans. He was shirtless, indistinguishable tattoos on his biceps and shoulders, thickened within sun-baked skin. Like James, he was wiry and fit, though a bit hairier. Billy Ray stood as the truck stopped, exposing a small beer paunch. His dogs barked from a pen beyond the garden.
“Ah, Shut up!” Billy Ray said, silencing them, and then turned toward James. “How ya’ doin’ pard’ner?”
“Fine. Just fine,” James said, admiring the rows of beans and tomatoes and okra and other produce in the patch.
The dog followed James out his door. She ran a few steps and spotted Billy Ray. She stopped, abruptly, on guard. Billy Ray stood still. The two of them studied each other through similar spheres of black ice. It occurred to James that both had the eyes of a bear, but only Billy Ray had the balls of a man.
“Yeah, you got them killer eyes, too,” Billy Ray said squinting through a sunbeam of cigarette smoke. “But you’re a hell of a lot prettier ‘n I am, and nothin’s meaner than ugly.” He broke the stare and grinned at James. “Come have a seat in my office, Jimmy.” He sauntered toward a bench in the barn. James joined him and lit a cigarette.
The dog found shade a few feet away. She lay down and watched the two men as they talked the talk of getting acquainted. They learned that they both liked George Jones, James Brown and Radiohead.
“The fuckin’ kismet continues, man,” Billy Ray said, producing rolling papers and a bag of crop grown in an exclusive part of his garden. James began to feel at ease. His senses grew acute. Birds sang above a troubled world. The aroma of the new season wandered into his head.
Billy Ray noticed the dog inching toward them. “Come on over here you ugly, big- headed bitch. Let me have a look at you.” She walked slowly to him. Billy Ray caressed her head and neck. Her eyes warmed and she rolled on her back. He rubbed her stomach. “She was prob’bly a schoolin’ dog by the looks of her. Those sons of bitches prob’bly bred her for pups
and then rolled her with the males when she wasn’t breedin’, but it looks like she fought back. All her wounds are on the front, ya see? I’ll bet she’s a gamer.”
Billy Ray began examining the wounds. “Looks like they put a heavy collar and a chain on her. They have ‘em haul around logs or somethin’ else heavy. It builds strength and stamina.” He didn’t like the scratch marks beneath her ear either. “Dogs don’t make scratches like that. I had a dog get into a fight with a raccoon. It looked a little like that. The damn thing had rabies and I had to put the dog down. You might want to keep a close eye on ‘er. Make sure she keeps takin’ water. If she’s got the fever, you’ll know. But if she’s got it, she might run off too. They do that sometimes.”
James pushed that out of his mind. Something else had begun working on him. It had been a day much like this when he entered Baghdad with the vanguard of U.S. troops, and James was inexplicably overcome with the urge to tell Billy Ray about it. He didn’t know what he was going to say until the words left his lips.
“Fuckin’ dogs and flowers.”
Billy Ray stopped stroking the dog. “What’re you talkin’ about?” “Dogs and flowers in Iraq, man. I just can’t get that out of my head.”
Billy Ray’s eyes grew more serious. “Go on then. Get it out of your head,” he said. It put James more at ease. Billy Ray pulled a leg over his knee and sat back. “Go on, brother.”
He didn’t know where it was going, but James began to talk.
“We rolled in on a blue spring morning, like this one. Air support had wiped out most of the tanks and artillery. But it was strange, there were flowers everywhere along the road – bright red and yellow and purple, all colors, blooming everywhere – right in the middle of war. The
Iraqis love flowers. I didn’t know that before I got there.” James lit a cigarette without looking at Billy Ray.
“We practically waltzed right into the city. Then the Fedayeen started coming at us, driving those damn little pickups right into Bradleys and even the god damn Abrams tanks. Some of ‘em ran right at us with bombs strapped to ‘em. We called ‘em the Nissan Division. We thought it was funny, but thinking about it now, they were pretty badass.
“I killed I don’t know how many of them. I’m pretty sure I killed some civilians too.
They were people like you and me, just trying to get out of town. But we had no way of knowing who was who. You know what happens when you shoot someone with a high explosive shell from a 25-millimeter Bushmaster chain-fired gun?” James took a pull on his cigarette and exhaled. “He explodes into red dust…Crazy ass Fedayeen, man. They didn’t care who got killed.” James looked at Billy Ray. His gaze was cool, revealing nothing. James continued.
“There were dogs everywhere. They ran in packs. They fed right on the dead, man. I guess I was sort of oblivious to it at the time. It didn’t really bother me then. I was in warrior mode, you know. Everything was clicking. I could see, hear and smell everything so clear. I could even taste the air. It tasted like smoke and metal. I was a fuckin’ killing machine. I didn’t even think about what I was doing. But things keep coming back to me now.”
The words were just coming out. James still didn’t know where they were taking him. “By the afternoon, the sky wasn’t blue anymore. It was gray with smoke and damned if it
wasn’t snowing ashes. Bodies, man. Everywhere. The roads were lined with ‘em. There was a woman and a baby on the roadside. They were dead but she was still holding on to her baby. There were flowers scattered all around ‘em. She still had some of ‘em in her hand. For some reason she’d been carrying ‘em before she died. What the hell was she carrying flowers for? God
damn. Then the dogs came, and damned if they didn’t start ripping into that woman and her baby.” James sighed. “Shit, man.”
And then he was quiet. He suddenly understood where he was going. He became aware that he was on uncertain ground. He’d been around soldiers who refused to negotiate with their conscience, preferring to leave the guilt of killing locked up and segregated far away. He had been one of them before this very moment. He risked rejection if he broached it with Billy Ray, but he couldn’t help it.
“It was all some random fuckin’ shit, man. We killed all those people. For what?”
Billy Ray exhaled and leaned forward, looking down. “Who knows, Jimmy boy? The big dogs ‘re gonna have their reckoning for that someday. It’s on their heads, not ours. We were the property of Uncle Sam. We did what we had to do. And it’s as simple and final as that.” He paused and looked James in the eye. “It’s good to get that shit out of you. It’s good to talk about it, man. You got too. I’ve known some brothers who’ve gone crazy. I’m here if you need me.”
“And I’m here if you need me, brother,” James said. They popped hands together in a spontaneous wrist-shake. It was brief. The sudden warmth was uncomfortable. Billy Ray cooled it.
“So what did you do about those god damn man-eating Iraqi dogs?” he said, stamping out a cigarette.
“I turned the mother fuckers into red dust,” James said.
Billy Ray’s brown eyes glowed playfully serpentine. He lit another Winston. “God damn Sledgehammer of Baghdad.”
James laughed. Billy Ray grinned. The dog walked slowly to Billy Ray. He squatted and stroked her. James heard him talking to her but couldn’t make it out. Billy Ray’s voice had taken
on a soothing, muffled tone. He released the dog after a short spell. “Now get on outta here you anvil-headed bitch.” The dog got in the truck.
They agreed to meet again. “Yeah, maybe I’ll tell you a few things about the siege of Samawah,” Billy Ray said. “Screamin’ Eagles, baby.”
“See you soon,” James said, putting the truck into gear. “God damn right,” Billy Ray said as he pulled off.
The dog limited her patrols to the front porch. She was always lying there when James got home. He’d never even heard her bark. “You’re one hell of a security dog,” James told her. She wagged her tail.
But she wasn’t there the next day. Thunder and lightning blasted the sky as James went looking for her. He heard something rattle by the barn and found her huddled beneath a deep heavy bench in the lean-to. She shivered with each boom of thunder. She saw James and wagged her tail but wouldn’t come out. James tried to coax her, but she lowered her eyes.
James was going leave her there, but she bolted toward him when he took the first step toward the house. She stopped when he opened the back door, looking up at him through the soaking rain.
“Come on. You can come in.”
She didn’t want to. It occurred to James that she might never have been in a house. James propped the door open and walked into the kitchen. She inched her way in, stopping at his feet.
He walked back to the door and closed it. She remained at his feet, fixing her burnt almond eyes on him as he cooked eggs and sausage.
“You hungry?” She looked up at him. He had a package of grilled deer patties in the refrigerator. He crumbled them up in the dry dog food, put it in a Tupperware bowl and placed it on the floor by his seat at the kitchen table. She ate it up and then watched him as he ate.
James retired to the recliner when he was done to read the newspaper. The dog followed and sat next to him. He looked at her. Her eyes burned into him. This shook James. It occurred to him that, without him, she was alone. She lived for him.
This was sudden, and unwelcome. He wasn’t interested in loving anything. He had done that. But something was nagging at him. He couldn’t turn this dog out. That was it. He decided to name her. “Momma Girl” was the only thing he could think of.
“But I’ll tell you what. I still expect you to work around here.” Momma Girl was lying down, but she wagged her tail.
James built her a doghouse from scraps he collected from the lumberyard. He set it off the ground to keep the floor from getting wet and put an old couch cushion and a fading blanket inside. The rain, wind and thunder came in the middle of the night. James
got up and looked out the window. A flash of lightning comforted him, revealing Momma Girl dry and sleeping in the doghouse.
Days grew warmer and bluer as May approached. James took the dog on walks through the woods. Squirrels and turkeys crossed their path, but she ignored them. He tried to get her to chase a tennis ball, and then a Frisbee, but she wouldn’t chase anything. “Damn, girl. You’re not really good for whole helluva lot, are you?” They spent evenings together on the porch. James heard the call of the whippoorwill on those nights. Chip-off-the-white-oak, someone had once told him it said, and he could make that out in a stretch. He hadn’t thought of that since he was
very young. The nights were like that, hopeful and new. Sweet honeysuckle rode the soft breeze; stars upon stars dusted the black sky.
James awoke one morning to white flashes, roof-rattling thunder and the wind whipping the sky into frothy charcoal hues. Sheets of rain pelted the bedroom window. James got up to check on the dog. She wasn’t in her house. She wasn’t in the lean-to either. She wasn’t there when he got home from work. He put food and water out. A day, then two, then three passed. It went untouched. He remembered what Billy Ray said – she might run off if she was rabid. He ate dinner by himself. He missed Momma Girl.
A week later, James awoke in the middle of the night to a commotion outside. A man was shouting, screaming in agony. “Get it the fuck off me. Oh God! Shit! God” There was violent, sputtering growling and fighting. “Shoot the mother fucker. YAHHHH!” James grabbed the
Mag-Lite and raced out the front door on to the porch. Three loud blasts sent him instinctively to the ground. He looked up as a car started. A man said, “Get in! God damn it! Let’s get the fuck out of here!” James smelled gunpowder as the headlights came on. Another man whipped up coils of gun smoke as he staggered through the lights, supporting a mangled arm. The car door slammed and the engine revved. Headlights panned over a dark heap in the grass as it sped off.
James’ scalp tingled and his bowels felt like emptying. He tried to swallow, but there was no saliva. He got up slowly, turned on the flashlight and walked into the grass. The light found the dark, lifeless heap. James went cold.
His mind reeled. He still had to check the house. He walked around back and found the storm door on the back porch jimmied. They got caught just before they got in. “I guess I was wrong about you, girl.” James retrieved the worn blanket from the doghouse and wrapped her in it. He placed her by the azalea grove. He began to dig, and tears streamed down his cheeks. He
hadn’t cried in years. He was making up for it. He lowered the dog in. In the gray of the emerging dawn, he filled the hole.
A peace came over him as he finished. He felt rested and clean. He walked to the azalea grove and opened his pocketknife. By the pale light of the new day, he cut vines of flowers from the grove, some pink and some white. “Thank you, Momma Girl,” he said, placing them on the mound. He put his hand on the moist soil, as if checking the pulse of the earth. Birds sang the first songs of the spring morning, the last of the stars vanishing in its light. James watched the sunrise. A soft honeysuckle breeze caressed his face just as the sun peeked over the trees.
More from S. Thorne Harper is coming soon. Follow Genius Books for future releases.