Stray dog

Somewhere near Paris, Kentucky. c 1999

The brochure said the self-guided driving tour would take about three hours. We left the campground and drove down a rural highway past sprawling horse farms, this was bluegrass country, Lexington, Kentucky.

Before we found the dog, we stopped at a small cabin where President Lincoln was said to have spent the night. No one was around and the cabin was locked up tight. We wandered the grounds and moved on to the next stop in the brochure, a covered wooden bridge over a muddy creek.

The pull off before the bridge was deserted. We hadn’t met anyone else on this self-guided tour, but it was noon and hot and sticky. Most tourists were probably in hotel pools or buying themselves an ice cream. The heat was getting to us, too. We’d make this our last stop and head back to the campground. We peered into the covered bridge and took a few photos of its long and black interior. We stayed on our side of the creek.

I took out my camera to take a few photos, brushed away a loud fly by my ear, and…