Frisbee

by Eric Bergreen

SIXTY-TWO

  It was Saturday, July 12th, when Jason and I decided to retire from the bottle redeeming business. At around seven that morning we rounded up the nine remaining bottles from our stash on the side of the house and loaded them onto my blue wagon to take down to the 7-Eleven. There were two Orange Crushes, two Coca Colas, and five Millers in all. At ten cents a piece we’d make just under a buck.

  We started our way up Cottonwood and when we were halfway we heard a soft padding behind us. I turned first to see Frisbee two houses back, his head low, his tail moving like a flag in a cool breeze, tongue lolling, the bandana hung loosely around his neck.

  I said, “Hey, look.”

  As Jason turned to see who was following, we both stopped and waited for him to catch up. When he did, we both got down and petted him, scratching his head and back and he licked us, returning our affection.

  “Should we take him with us?” I asked Jason.

  He looked at Frisbee and looked at me and said, “You know Fris. It’s not up to us, it’s up to him.” He then turned back to the dog, stared into his awesome eyes. “You want to go to the store with us, boy?”

  He wagged his tail once and we took it as a yes.

  “You think Steve will worry about him?” I asked.

  Jason only shook his head. “We’ll be back in an hour. He’ll be fine.”

  I wasn’t sure if he meant Frisbee or Steve but took him at his word anyway.

  We continued on our way, the dog in tow, and talked about the little things, the things that make kids, kids: which team would be going to the World Series that year, what teachers we thought we would get when we went back to school in the fall, should we start growing our hair long so we’d look cool come September? Would our mom even let us grow it long in the first place?

  The morning was nice. It was clear and crisp and birds flitted from trees to telephone wires with bugs in their beaks. The sky was clear and bluer than any sky had the right to be. It was warm but not hot and we didn’t break a sweat on our walk, though, Frisbee panted the whole way.

  When we got to Lincoln Elementary we decided to take the back way, the alley, just for the hell of it. It was all asphalt and not as smooth as the sidewalk and the bottles jingled and bounced the rest of the way. When we came to the bike rack in front of the 7-Eleven it was me who spoke first.

  “We didn’t bring anything to tie him up with. You think he’ll be okay out here?”

  Jason nodded and said, “Yeah, Frisbee’s a good boy.” And then to the dog: “You won’t go anywhere will you?”

  Frisbee sat down on his butt and cocked his head at us. In the light of the morning sun his coat was radiant, his eyes glimmered and the gold flecking of his irises seemed to swim with a life of their own. I knelt down next to him and wrapped my arms around his furry neck.

  “You stay here, okay. We’ll be back out in a minute.”

  He licked my face and touched my forearm with his paw.

  Jason grabbed five of the bottles from the wagon and I grabbed the remaining four. We went inside and placed them on the counter in front of the cashier. He was a fat man with a salt and pepper beard, in his late forties. I had hoped to see the lady I’d talked with last time we’d come down to turn in our bottles, Diane, but she wasn’t there that day. We asked the clerk to hold our money while we grabbed a couple of Big Gulps. Jason filled his cup up with ice and 7-Up while I filled mine with Coke flavored Slurpee.

  There were two teenaged boys playing the Donkey Kong game by the beer coolers and when we placed our drinks on the counter one of them swore loudly as the electronic death lull played. Mario must have gotten hit by a barrel.

  “Watch the language,” the cashier said as he rang us up. “I need to get rid of that damn game.”

  Jason handed him a dollar and with the money from the bottles it covered the drinks. The cashier rang it up and handed him back eleven cents. He was about to put it in his pocket when I nudged him and pointed to the jar on the counter. Even though Donald was now gone, donations would still be collected in hopes of finding a cure for Canavan disease. The two coins made clinking sounds as they joined their kin at the bottom.

  Drinks in hand, we walked back out to discover Frisbee gone. Steve’s red bandana lay discarded next to my wagon. It looked sad and lonely.

  After looking at each other for a moment, not believing what we were seeing (or not seeing), Jason suggested that one of us take to the alley and one of us walk down Fullerton to look for him. I grabbed my wagon and hurriedly made my way up to the street while Jason took the back way. I called out the dog’s name and could hear Jason doing the same from the backside of the houses and when we met back up by Lincoln Elementary it was obvious that we had lost our friend. Or maybe he had lost us, vanishing just as mysteriously as he had come; out of nowhere.

  “Maybe he’ll find his way back home,” I said to Jason with hope in my voice.

  He was silent for a time and when he finally looked at me I could tell in his eyes that we would never see that dog again. Frisbee had come to help us, by that we were sure. But now, with his mission fulfilled and his journey complete, he had moved on. We had lost our friend or maybe it was he who had lost us.

  We weren’t sure what we would say to Steve when we got back and only hoped that he’d understand that it wasn’t our fault for the dog’s leaving. Slowly and with an heir of loss we made our way home.

  When we reached the top of Cottonwood, Jason asked, “What do you dream about at night?”

  I had been staring at the cracks in the sidewalk as we walked but now I turned to him in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” he said, “for the last three nights you’ve done nothing but toss in bed and mumble. When you wake up I watch you.”

  “What do I say?” I asked, “While I sleep.”

  “Sometimes I can’t tell. Sometimes you seem like your crying and trying to talk to someone. But last night I heard you say, ‘Just let them go’ and ‘It’s never too late, He can help.’ What did you mean by that?”

  I told him about the dreams I’d had about the burning houses and the children trapped inside, but I didn’t know who it was I was talking to in my sleep. That part I couldn’t remember. I thought I might have an idea, but kept it to myself.

  I never had the Dark Dream again. I didn’t need to. Those couple weeks in 1982 had been my real Dark Dream.

  “Do you think we’re going to Hell when we die, Jason?” I asked. “For what we did. For killing her.”

  He was silent a long time, rolling the question around in his head but in the end he only shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I hope not. But if we do, at least we’ll all be together.”

  And that actually made me feel a bit better.

  We walked on, down our street, toward the rest of our lives and our future things to come, past the mimosa trees that lined the block and Jason said to me, “We never did oil those wheels did we?”

  I shook my head. He had mentioned working on it together, weeks before, but ‘things’ had come up.

  “Can you help me with it when we get home?” I asked.

  “Sure, come on.”

  At just past eight in the morning on the second Saturday in July, my brother and I walked into our garage and headed for the oil can on our dad’s workbench, the wheels on my wagon chirping like lost birds as I pulled it behind me.

  The End

  From the author: Thank you, reader, for downloading and participating in this adventure. I certainly hope you enjoyed this story as much as I did writing it. Feel free to email me with any comments, questions, suggestions or badmouthing. I enjoy all feedback. Email Eric Bergreen: shawshankbg@gmail.com

  About the author:

  Eric Bergreen lives in Corona, California. One wife, three kids, one dog and a whole lot of bills. He is currently looking for a Publisher. This is his first book and it was based loosely on childhood experiences. Frisbee was a real dog.

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