One morning

Prescott had a good day today but he's not long for this world.  For some reason it's prompted me to recall the first time I lost a dog: 

It was morning; although one that started so much earlier than usual the boy couldn’t guess the time; both darker and colder than it was whenever he awoke at his real home. It was never difficult to get up when he was here, which was fitting as it was also never easy to sleep. This wasn’t his room, his bed, or at that time even a ‘bed’ at all.  At least he had sheets now; but the sheets were washed with some soap that smelled decidedly different than anything he smelled at home. Sheets that were washed with a working man’s jeans, t-shirts and socks, then hung on a line to dry. They were neither soft nor smelled of anything pleasant like flowers or a mountain meadow. When he got up that morning, just like two weeks ago, these same sheets would be taken off the couch, roughly folded and put on a their shelf in the hall closet, ready for his next overnight stay in a couple of weeks. 

Unlike the boy, getting up in the pre-dawn was something the man had been doing his entire life.  Despite his best efforts he was being decidedly un-quiet making his coffee and breakfast in the adjacent kitchen. Sitting at a little yellow Formica table, waiting to start the boy’s day, the world already visible through the kitchen window, this contemplative time was one of the unique aspects to days he had custody visits with his son.  He liked these moments-the boy asleep, or pretending to be, while he drank his coffee. This was not a situation he had either planned or bargained for, and it was not something he enjoyed.  It was decreed. A judge said that the son should be a bi-monthly guest-so that he might get to know his father and his father not be deprived of knowing him.

Often the man told his son that when the boy was 13 he could make the decision to live with whichever parent he wanted. The man sincerely hoped the boy would come live with him permanently, and visit the mother bi-monthly. The thought always made the boy happy when he was with his dad but whenever he would come back home from a visit and tell his mother this plan she would begin to cry-so eventually he quit thinking about it and began only nodding when the man suggested it for the next decade.  By the time he was old enough to make the decision the man had moved on to another stage in his life-one for which there was less room for the boy and so the suggestions stopped.

The little house where they had awoken that morning sat on a rise in front of a now busy road that had, until recently, been red dirt. The attached carport making up nearly half the width of the little 60’s ranch style rental house. One of a dozen or so which stretched in the distance along the length of the road.  Each sat open to the road; nothing between but a rain culvert dug into the grass so that each of the driveways went downhill from the road before shifting to climb the short distance to the house. Because the house was only a rental, and because the area was getting “too civilized” the man was planning to find another road; one that was still dirt.

One of the best of these visits for the boy was the one when he got the pup. The pups lineage was part junkyard and part hound and to the boys recollection the dog was white, but the clouds have time have a way of obscuring the vision; all that does remain is the feeling of puppy kisses, and the happiness. Happiness because he wasn’t allowed to have a dog at his real house.  He wasn’t allowed because there was no fence. The fact that there wasn’t a fence at his dads seemed to hollow-out that argument.

The boy’s second indication that animals inhabited a different hierarchy in his dad’s world than they did in his other world was that the dog wasn’t allowed inside the man’s house.  In his other, real, world the cat could come and go whenever it wanted. His grandparents had a dog. It slept inside.

Wouldn’t the puppy get cold?  Wouldn’t he get lonely? The second question proved to be a resounding “yes”. It was harder than ever to go to sleep with the dog wistfully whining at the backdoor through most of the first night. He and the boy were both feeling the same-but separated by a wall that the boy didn’t understand.

The boy had begun to look very forward to being picked up on those alternating Friday evenings because the dog had been at his dad’s for the last two visits now. It was his dog. Because it was winter, and because his dad worked late, it was dark on those Friday nights when they arrived at the small house. He wasn’t able to play much with the dog. He would have to wait until the next day to play. 

Buy they couldn’t play on this Saturday morning because they had somewhere to be. Somewhere that has long since ceased to be important, but at that time was so.

In the early morning light the boy climbed in the truck and closed the creaking door.  The truck started, but heat was a long way from coming from the engine.  The truck backed down the driveway towards the road, but stopped with the concert of a scream and bump.  The boy didn’t know what had happened but the man told him to stay in the cab.  The man got out and walked around the back of the truck.  The only sound was a rumble from the engine of the truck that had never been turned off-seconds of waiting later the man came from the back and opened the passenger door, reached across the boy and pushed the release button for the glove-box.  It’s thick steel door dropped down on it’s hinge and he reached in, bringing out a revolver. 

What happened?

I hit the dog.

Is he ok?

No.

What are you going to do?

Don’t look back.

Can’t we take him to the doctor?

DON’T LOOK BACK UNTIL I TELL YOU IT’S OK .… cover your ears.

The man left. The door was shut and the boy was afraid.  Afraid because he knew what had happened but didn’t know what had happened, didn’t know what was next, afraid to look back, afraid to disobey.  Afraid…then there came that sound. 

The boy had never heard a gun that loud before; never that close; never in real life.

A few seconds later there was a thud in the bed of the pickup. The boy kept looking forward, just like he was told to.  

The father silently opened the driver’s door, got back in the truck, and returned the revolver to the glovebox.  Tears now streamed down the boys face, but he didn’t want the man to see him cry. 

On the way to wherever they were still going the father tried to explain that sometimes there is nothing that can be done. The boy didn’t believe him. He didn’t want to go to the dumpster, he wanted a funeral; but there wasn’t one.