“He doesn’t like everyone,” Rae said.
“Is that so?” I stayed crouched while King stuck his snout up at my face, and I let him sniff me with his cold, wet nose. Then he set his chin on my shoulder and promptly drooled on me. Rae giggled.
“But he likes you.”
Well, shit. All of a sudden I felt like a heel, wasting that poor dog’s time, wasting poor Rae’s time. I hadn’t really come here to get a dog, after all. But that look on her face…like I was some kind of hero, letting this dumb dog drool all over me. Couldn’t hurt to ask a few questions.
“How old is he?”
“He’s almost three.”
“And his last owners?”
She looked away for a moment, the first time I’d seen her hesitate so far. “It’s a sad story, actually. He had a nice family, just outside of town, two kids. But dad got in a wreck and the two kids didn’t make it. Dad was on life support for a couple months. Parents stayed together—I barely know how—but they just couldn’t look at King without seeing their kids, so they brought him here. To be honest, we’ve had a hard time finding him a home. He’s great, most of the time, but he gets withdrawn and isn’t much for playing. He’s been through a lot for a three year old and he’s definitely no puppy anymore. You ask me, he just needs some TLC. Someone who won’t mind his quiet spells.”
“I’ll take him,” I said. I didn’t even think about it. I probably should have. But some things don’t take thinking, they just take doing.
“Let’s you and me take him outside first,” Rae said. “Go for a short walk with him. Size each other up.”
I humored her, but I was just humoring her. If I needed a dog, and maybe I did, then King was the dog for me.
There was a small fenced-in yard out behind the shelter, the kind of little spot of nature you’d never expect out among the strip malls but are all over the place if you take the time to look. King had a routine out there, and he walked with his bloodhound nose to the ground, following scents as they zig-zagged around the yard. He stopped to pee on pretty much everything. There must have been a lot of competition for that territory.
He ignored me in peace, and I let him do his thing. Then he came over and sat and looked up with his brows knotted, like he was asking me some kind of question, and I gave him another pat. His tail wagged once, twice, and then beat the ground in a steady thump. If I didn’t know any better, I might even think he was smiling at me.
Sure. A big, low-key dog. He was probably going to drool all over everything I owned. But that kind of thing never really bothered me, not any more than getting dirty on the job did.
“Yup,” I said. “He’s the one.”
“He does seem to respect you,” Rae said. “Which is half the work of training him, right there.”
“I’ll take him.”
But when we got to the front desk and I was filling out the forms, I started actually thinking it through. A dog is a lot of work. You can’t let them down. You can’t skip days. Emily and I hadn’t even been sure we were ready for a dog, and there’d been two of us.
“Do you have dog bowls?” Rae asked. I was glad she’d come up to the front with me. The other woman was nowhere in sight. One less person to admit to that I had no idea what I was doing and probably wasn’t fit to care for the poor beast.
“No,” I said.
“Leash? Harness? Collar?”
I was having second thoughts. It must have crossed my face, because Rae picked up on it and flashed me a reassuring grin.
“Look, we’ll sell you everything you need, we have it all right here. He’s had all his shots, he’s fixed, so that’s taken care of. And here’s some information to take with you, everything you need to know about what to feed him, all of that.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking over the paper she’d handed me.
“Are you a vet?” She looked up from the forms when she asked me that.
“What?” I got confused. “No, I’m not a vet. I’m a contractor. Well, I’m tending bar right now, but I’m a contractor.”
“I mean a veteran,” Rae said. She was smiling again. She had a beautiful smile. “We’ve got a veteran’s discount.”
“I can’t say I am,” I said. “You? You a vet?” I put on my best smile, hoped it looked charming and sincere.
Rae laughed a little. “No, I’m a technical writer. I just volunteer here.” She turned her attention back to the paperwork. “It’ll be $150,” she said. “Because he’s all grown up. Puppies are more. That includes the harness and leash and bowls and everything...”
“Yeah,” I said. I still couldn’t believe I was doing this. “I get to take him home today?”
“You get to take him home today.”
She showed me how to put on the harness, and we walked him out to the truck. I opened the passenger door, and he hopped up onto the passenger seat like he’d spent his whole life there.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Look, you’ll be fine. Dogs aren’t that fragile. Just...” Rae looked at me, right at my eyes. “Just love him.”
King was already drooling all over the passenger seat of my truck.
“What if we don’t get along?” I asked. A dog is like a girl you can’t break up with, my brother had told me. What if…
“Here’s my number,” Rae said. She wrote it down not on the forms she’d given me, but on a separate piece of paper. “If you need anything, just call.”
I took her number and put it into my back pocket. It was probably just professional courtesy. I didn’t know if I wanted it to just be professional courtesy.
“Thanks,” I said.
“And yes,” Rae said, “you can bring him back. We’ll still be here. But just do me a favor and try.”
I could try.
CHAPTER FOUR
The first thing the damn dog did when it got in the house...
I’d barely got the harness off, with its fiddly little clips that weren’t made for fingers like mine, and I turned around to hang up the leash and harness on the coat rack by the door. That’s when my phone rang—I checked the screen, saw it was my mom making her weekly check-in call, and as I picked up and said hello I heard a heavy thump behind me.
“Hey, sweetie,” my mom crooned. “How you holding up?”
“Uh, the usual I guess,” I said as I turned around, searching for the source of the sound. “Well, shit.” The jade plant by the back door was on its side on the floor, dirt all over the hardwood, and King was just sitting there next to it drooling.
“Luke? Everything all right?”
“Yeah, but I gotta go. My dog just made a mess all over the floor.”
“Your what?”
“Love you, Mom. I’ll call you back.” I hung up.
We had these talks all the time—the kind of heartfelt, difficult conversations where she’d try to subtly check in on me and see if I felt like coming back to church, or else she’d speak in uplifting platitudes and I’d try to pretend I was getting better. I think it hurt both of us.
“Get away from there,” I commanded King. Instead of listening, he sniffed at the dirt and then flopped himself happily down onto it. “Git, now,” I tried again, to no avail. Guess I would have sounded more like I meant it if I hadn’t been laughing so hard. Not really a “this is so funny” laugh, more of a “what the hell am I doing with a dog” laugh. Thanks a lot, Rae. Thanks a lot, Emily. The two of them, they were conspiring against me.
But it’s just dirt. And jade plants, well, the reason I still had a jade plant anyway is because it’s the only damn plant that survived those dark months when Emily was in the hospital and those darker months when she first went into the ground. That jade plant had outlived my marriage, and it was probably going to outlive King and me both.
I set the pot upright, but didn’t sweep up the dirt on the floor. It’s just dirt. I’d get it later. Not like anyone was going to see it.
King was on the couch, drooling into the cushions, lo
oking cozy enough. I wasn’t really angry, I just wasn’t sure it was going too well, whether he’d really be comfortable here, if he’d feel safe. And then I realized—I was worried about King, which meant I wasn’t bothering to worry about me.
The Royals didn’t have another game for a couple days, but the White Sox were up against the Orioles in Baltimore. I wouldn’t normally root for Chicago, right, because they’re in the same division as us. But no one was around to see my treachery, and watching Chris Sale strike people out was always worth doing. Even better, he did it left-handed, like me. Well, like I used to.
King moved over to let me down on the couch, without me even asking, and he started off sort of bored and slobbery. But by the time LaRoche knocked one into the stands in the third inning, I was cheering and King was howling louder than me.
After the game, I went for a shower, and when I came out, my dog was lying curled up at the foot of my bed. Snoring. I gave his head a pat, and he breathed in happy. I smiled. It felt good to take care of something.
The second letter sat there waiting for me, like a prize. Almost a punishment. I had half a mind to just not open it. Not today. Not when I was doing okay. I wasn’t ready to fight back tears again, not really. But I knew I was going to open it. I knew there wasn’t anything on God’s Earth that was going to come between me and opening that letter. I’d earned it, by getting King.
The sun was starting to get low in the sky, casting its rays in through the sliding back door and lighting up the wood flooring spectacular. I was getting hungry. After the letter, I was going to get some of that deer out from the garage. Some for me, some for King. A dog like King needs a meal that lives up to his name, especially on his first day.
Hell, I needed a meal like that.
I sat down on that chair, picked up the second letter. Took a deep breath. I didn’t want to overthink it. Overthink anything, you’ll lose your nerve. Got my folding knife out, cut it open at the top. That’d be my ritual about it. Folded the knife shut, put it away. Another deep breath. Took a shot of whiskey. Took out the letter. Unfolded it.
Emily had scented it. It was that perfume she wore, the one she never let me know what the name of was. I’d spent half a day once at the mall looking like the crazy man in blue jeans and a ball cap, trying to describe the scent to the woman at the perfume counter so I could get her a bottle for her twenty-first birthday. I’d given up and gotten her a stuffed bear. That wasn’t one of my best present-giving years, I have to admit. But she’d been buried with that bear and its “I love you” stitched across the belly. Guess it really is the thought that counts.
Hold it together, Jesus, you haven’t even read the letter yet.
“Not to criticize, Luke, but you’re a slob. An adorable slob, but still. A slob. So I want you to clean the house. Go through the closet, fill up a trash bag with everything you don’t wear and take it down to Goodwill. Neaten things up. Get the wet towel off the end of the bed, put it in the hamper at least. I can’t imagine how many empty cans of beer are sitting on the table by the couch.”
The answer to that was only two, I thought with a sort of half-pride. Only two right now.
“Put on some music while you work. Something we used to like. Don’t torture yourself, don’t put on the stuff we played at the wedding or anything, and don’t play nothing too sappy. Put on something we listened to when we were happy. Anyway, the first step to feeling better is to start taking care of yourself. Yourself, your truck, the house. Clean out the clutter.”
I looked around. Yeah, the place was a mess. Bachelor pad. No, that wasn’t right. A bachelor pad was an apartment that had never been inhabited by a woman. This was worse. It was the house of a happy couple, overlaid with the house of a tragic couple, overlaid by the house of a bachelor-in-mourning. There was a candy jar by the door full of stale candy, and the keys to the garage were lying in it.
“I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Your specific task is to clean the house. But do yourself a favor and go above and beyond on this one. Make it like a place you’d live in if you were happy. Clean the gutters. It’ll do you some good to do some real work. Clean the toilet—my heavens, I bet you’ve never cleaned the toilet.”
I hadn’t.
“I hope you like your new dog. Rescues can give you hell, a little, but you’re tougher than any old mutt and I bet you’ll get along great. I bet I’ll be able to see the look on your face, I bet I’ll be looking down on you and see you grinning with that dog.”
I liked the idea of that. I’d never been so sure heaven was as literal as that, and I wasn’t really sure about anything at all anymore. But even if it was just a pretty image, I liked it. I liked the idea of her up there having to be nice to my granddad, having to thank him for the house. I liked the idea of her looking down on me and smiling.
I liked that idea so much I started smiling, but then there were those tears creeping up on me a little bit again. Not as bad as the first letter. Glad Mike wasn’t around to see me. My older brother probably would have punched me on the arm. And he’s the only man alive I’d let get away with it, too.
“That’s it, my love. There’ll be more in the next letter. I love you madly, even still.”
No signature except her perfume. What was that smell?
Alright, the house was a mess. There was no denying that.
First thing, I found the broom and the dustpan. Which took me awhile. Last time I’d cleaned, I’d been on a bender, and apparently drunk me had thought the broom belonged in the downstairs half-bath and the dustpan belonged under the sink in the master bathroom.
It took me a minute to disconnect the good speakers from the TV, hook them back up to the stereo. I plugged in my phone, set it to play Hank Williams—the classics—and Lee Brice—something good and modern. I cranked it up loud enough to hear in every corner of the house.
I swept up the dirt from the potted plant while King stared at me indignantly.
“I know you put that dirt there on purpose,” I told him, “but I’ve gotta pick it up.”
I moved from there to the rest of the ground floor, sweeping. It felt good. Sure, I swept at work, at the end of the night, but this was more fulfilling.
The sun was down, so after I finished a quick surface-level clean, I put the dustpan and broom away in the broom closet and went out to the garage for a hunk of venison. That went into the cast iron—Emily had loved cast iron. I started some frozen vegetables next to that, and King started begging but I knew better than to reward him for that.
I was drooling as bad as King by the time the meat was done. Medium-rare, or as close as I could get while hungry and out of practice and working from game meat instead of something from the butcher.
“Sit,” I told King. He didn’t know what that meant, or maybe he didn’t care. I held up a chunk of deer and tried again.
“Sit,” I said, slower this time.
That got his attention, and he sat. He ate out of my hand, licked his lips. Then he looked up with those mournful eyes, that creased brow, his glance darting back and forth between the pan and my face.
“Okay, but just one more,” I said. He ate the next piece, just as happy, and then I sat down on the couch—I didn’t want to disturb my altar of letters on the kitchen table—to eat.
I was just starting to lick my fingers with the last of it when my phone rang. It was Maggie. The ring cut through Hank Williams’ crooning and out the speakers, since my phone was plugged into the stereo. Damn.
“What do you think, King?” I asked.
King just kind of stared at me.
“Good call,” I said.
I answered anyway.
“Hello?”
“Hey Luke.” There was bar noise in the background. “Guess I should thank you for the extra work.”
“Sorry about that,” I said. I even meant it. Wasn’t right that she’d had to fill in on short notice because I let my temper get the best of me. And it’s not like I could afford
to miss much work myself.
“It’s alright,” she said. “But it’s kind of slow tonight and Warren’s going to let me out early, let Jake tend bar. Monday night, the kid can handle it.”
I knew where she was going with this. King must have too, because he nestled up to me, protectively.
“Anyway, I was thinking, wondering, I don’t have nothing else to do tonight since I thought I was going to be working all of a sudden and now I’m not, and I know you don’t have nothing else to do tonight...”
I almost cut her off. I’m not totally sure why I didn’t. Maybe because part of me wanted her to ask, because part of me wanted to be tempted. It felt good to be wanted, even by the wrong person for the wrong reasons.
“Anyway I was thinking you could come over to my place, watch something, or go out and get drinks.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“Why not?” she asked. She was irritated. I can’t recall the last time I’d turned her down. If ever. “Got some other date?”
“I’ve got to stay home and clean my room.”
“Okay, whatever,” she scoffed. “If you don’t want to go out, you could just say so.”
Maggie hung up on me.
I looked down at my phone, stared at the little “call ended” screen. A month earlier—hell, a few days earlier—I would have called her back. But this time I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see her at all.
“Alright, mutt, get off me.” Funny how I never talk to myself, but there I was talking to my dog. “I told the pretty girl I was going to clean my room, so I better go clean my room.”
I plugged the phone back in and turned the music up even louder, loud enough for me to hear upstairs. Cracked open a beer, found a trash bag from under the sink, then went at my closet. Jeans I never wore, T-shirts I’d worn to hell and back. Four pairs of khakis, and I couldn’t even tell you why I owned four pairs of khakis. It’s worth keeping around some dress pants, I get that, but four pairs of khakis? I wasn’t going to throw out any ball caps or flannels, though. You couldn’t toss a hat that’d been with you for years just because it was too beat up to wear.
9 Letters Page 3