The Boy's meetings with the Dog were much more exciting than the Girl's, maybe because she did not travel very much at night. Sometimes she would see him at the "edge of dark," usually just before or shortly after the death of some local person. Her stories were always gruesomely connected with death.
While these tales were spinning out in the kitchen where the fire burned low in the iron range, the children, who had heard them a hundred times before, huddled closer and closer together. Their eyes shone round and bright, and, if the flame of the lamp flickered, they jumped and drew away from dark corners. When the Girl had washed and dried the last dish and set the morning rolls to rise behind the stove, the Boy took his hat from its peg and prepared to depart for his nightly visit to the store.
Hours later the children, snug in their beds, were aroused by music. In that delicious stage between sleep and waking they lay half-dreaming and unaware that they were listening to some unwritten bars of a blues melody that were being created and lost to posterity on the still night air. They only knew that the perfect notes were being produced by the Boy on his jew's-harp and accompanied by the yeast powder bottles, mouth organs and guitars of his companions, the Nehemiahs, Daniels and Zechariahs of the neighboring farms. (Bible names were popular then.)
The children knew, too, that their friends were wending their leisurely way home from the store where the nightly session was over. Their interest was not in music, but in the hope that the Boy had met with adventure in that marshy, ferny and woodsy-smelling place known as the bottom.
The lower section of the Neck was evidently a favored land at that time. Besides being a hideout for the Headless Dog, a white mule and a Headless Man, it also furnished a routine route for another interesting Dog. This Dog had a head. Furthermore, the head was punctuated by glaring red eyes. According to good authority, he was as big as a calf, brown in color except about the mouth which was patched with gray. His neck was encircled with a chain which dragged on the ground and rattled as he moved. He was a methodical animal and traveled always at night, and only between Cockrell's Neck and Heathsville, and only before or after the death of some local person. Instead of appearing suddenly and fading out like the Headless Dog, he had a disconcerting habit of trailing moving vehicles.