For me, the story seems to end here:
Neither spoke until they saw the dog and that was very near to the pike, on the last turn above the gate. They had overtaken it and even in the few minutes in which he was allowed to watch it alive Gifford was struck by its behavior. It was walking in the wheelruts with an exotic delicacy, like a trained dog on a rope, and holding its head so far back, its nose near perpendicular, that Gifford looked up instinctively to see what threat might be materializing out of the sky. The shovel bounced in the road with a dull bong and when he turned it was in time only to see Legwater recoil under the shotgun and to recoil himself as the muzzleblast roared in his ears. He spun and saw the dog lurch forward, still holding up its head, slew sideways and fold up in the dust of the road. (p. 241)
The Orchard Keeper begins with a man walking down a dusty road, and at the time I read it, I had the feeling and remarked that amid the expanse of horizon and the wide split of earth and sky, the story would come down to the fine grains of dust that were the reality of life. And so it would seem to be true.
The man’s ashes, his dust, is shoveled and blows in the wind to cover the digger as well as the trees that surround the burial pit. This same man, who has been a part of the lives of all the main characters has lain silently throughout the story as it unravels in their walking around him, by him, to him. Sylder has buried him, Uncle Ather protects him, and his son finds him a boyhood fascination until his identity is discovered and still, he ends up a lie.
Who is the cat? And who does the new watcher, the faithful hound, Scout, represent as he leaves his own bones in the trail?
Lots of other meanings here, lots of layers of dust. Now dust piles up, but dust also blows away. What’s constant lies beneath it all, and yet it is hidden, revealed, and never looks quite the same.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology