by Bobby D. Lux
“Who’s there?” I said, facing my shadow.
Just me.
“Who are you?” I said.
You know who I am, my shadow said.
“I’m getting real tired of playing these talking games that everyone else seems to enjoy. I ask a question, you answer. And you answer with a statement, not some other question asking me why I asked that or why I’d want an answer.”
You’re awfully testy.
“I’ve had a bad day.”
No, you haven’t.
“This has been the worst day of my life.”
You learned something about yourself, right? How bad could it really have been then?
“There’s no lesson in what I learned today.”
I don’t believe that for one second of one second.
“How can there be a second in a second?”
I don’t know. You’re giving yourself a headache here. Don’t you have enough aches?
“You don’t know anything about my aches.”
I know that these aches of yours define every breathing moment of your life.
“Who asked you?” I said. I imagined what this shadow looked like: sagging face (especially below the jaw), bright spots of decay on the nose, fallen ears with a reaction time south of a molasses drip, faded fur sprinting from the nose to the eyes, broken teeth, a shrinking gum line, bony arms with nasty veins showing from paw-to-shoulder, hips with the stability of shattered glass, and a tail with all the efficiency of a frayed shoelace.
You asked me, my shadow said. I don’t want to bother you, so if you want me to shut up all you have to do is just turn back around and do your best to pretend that I’m not here. In the meantime, I’ll stick around and just get bigger. Should you ever want someone to talk to, I’ll be here. Great plan you have going on, by the way.
“I don’t have any plan,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”
Make no mistake, Fritz, not having a plan is no different than executing the most detailed course of action. Not having a plan is your plan. You may not know where you’re running to, but as long as you run from something, that’s good enough for you, am I right?
“Who says I’m running from anything?” I said.
I do. I knew that the moment I saw you. That’s why I’ve been following you. If you’re running towards something, there better be something you’re running from. The farther and faster you run, the bigger I get.
“I’ve never seen you before.”
But you know I’ve been there. You’ve just been too afraid to turn and face me.
“You’re crazy.”
Says the dog talking to a shadow. Whatever you say, pal.
“You have a better idea?”
It’s not my place to have a better idea. You get on a train to ride the rails and find somewhere new, and I just happened to be in the same car as you.
“You wouldn’t understand. I used to be something.”
We all used to be something. So what? Some of us were cops. Some were firedogs. What’s your point? You used to be a puppy. You used to be this. You used to be that. What are you now? That’s the only thing you should be worrying about. So, what is it? What are you right now?
“I’m nothing. I’m an ex-cop with nothing else to live for. Everything I’ve been was ripped away from me and there’s nothing, not a thing, that I can ever do about that.”
Is that it?
“I’m a broken and crippled dog with nothing left to offer anyone, not even myself.”
And?
“You know if that ramp wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have been able to get into this car.”
But here you are. Now what?
“There’s only one thing left for me to be that I haven’t been yet. The sooner that comes, the better.”
What are you waiting for?
“Pardon me.”
Get it over with. If there’s only one thing left to do, do it. If you’re nothing, it should be easy.
“You don’t scare me.”
I’m not trying to scare you. All I wanted was for you is to realize that I’m here. If you want me to go, all you had to do is look at me. Since you’ve done that, I suppose it’s time for me to get off this train. What do you think?
The car jerked and I sprung back to my feet. It crawled along the tracks as the engine sputtered to life. I didn’t want to sit down anymore. I walked over to the side of the car and looked out. Grand City slept in the distance. I had to be there when she woke up. I had to.
I backed myself against the cold railing on the opposite side of the car. My chest rippled with anxiety. The final train whistle blew and the engine rumbled through the floor into my feet. The rumbling shook me loose. My legs pushed away from the rail and off I ran towards that opening in the train car. The light reflected into the car as we passed a blank screen at the drive in. My shadow was gone. I sprinted towards the moonlight that beamed through the door. I jumped.
Everything was beautiful. I looked down and saw myself glide above the ground as the moon’s spotlight blurred everything around me. There was nothing except me. I was in the air and was something greater than a dog who jumped from a moving train. I couldn’t feel anything on my body. Not the air on my hanging tongue. Not my ears pressed down along my head. Not my tail perfectly aligned with my spine. Not my outstretched arms reaching for everything. And certainly not my wonderfully damaged leg.
I took a breath through my nose and it was the greatest air ever inhaled. It was air created for only me as if it knew to be there and to wait for me until I needed it more than anything else in the world. It washed my lungs and inflated my body as the train ricocheted behind me, stabbing through the still night.
I landed hard on the ground into a patch of grass and soft dirt. I exhaled every bit of that magical breath. The flashing light from the last train car turned off towards the mountains. A slight breeze caressed my extended ears. Air reentered my nose like data entry and everything shifted back into crystal focus. I felt my body again. My face was warm and healthy. My arms, embedded into the ground, pulled themselves free. My chest and ribs expanded with plain old air like they always had. My tail hovered above the ground, ready to guide me back to life. My leg waited for me to buckle under the pain. It hurt. I won’t pretend it didn’t, but I stood there in the darkness and I was going to keep it that way. I’d be damned if the pain didn’t respect me. If it was a fight that the pain wanted, I would be thrilled to oblige.
If you listen to enough advice, you’ll inevitably hear that you have to live like it’s your last day. I’m telling you right now, that is the single biggest line of nonsense ever uttered. Living everyday like it’s your last is how you wind up on a train headed to nowhere.
I shook my leg out to let it know that I knew it was still there, but that I had other things to concern myself with. I had no idea where I would end up at the end of this, but when I finally rested, it was going to be at home.
CHAPTER 23 - The Lady in the Backyard
The sun was up by the time I returned to Officer Hart’s house. I took cover behind the boat in their neighbor’s driveway. Mrs. Hart flung the front door to the house open with a swollen duffle bag in each hand. She tossed both bags in the back of the Intimidator and slammed the trunk closed with the fury of a game show contestant spinning the big wheel. She adjusted her sleek dark dress and pushed her hair down. She grabbed a cigarette from her purse that hung high off her shoulder. She lit the thing and took an obnoxiously long drag off the stick, savoring as she held her breath. Mrs. Hart exhaled and wiped the smoke away from her face.
Simon came out of the house and looked the best I’d ever seen him. His shirt was clean and tucked in.
“I told you to leave the game in the house,” Mrs. Hart said, as she snuck another quick, concealed puff.
“But it’s just for the car ride,” Simon said. “I won’t bring it inside. I promise.”
“I told you no,” she said, with an exhale that she wanted to enjoy m
ore than she did. “We’re only going to be in the car for fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen? That’s forever. Please, Mom. That’s like half of a whole cartoon. Come on.” She ignored him and dropped the partially-finished cigarette under the front tire. She drove the point of her heel through the lit end like a corkscrew and took out two pieces of gum from her purse. “Can I have a piece of-”
“No. Not in the car.”
“Come on-”
“I’m tired of cleaning your gum off the seats. This car is worth a lot of money and every time you do that, it ruins the value.”
“Okay, Mom. Sorry.”
She revved the engine and honked the horn, which startled a sulking Simon. After a second series of honks, Officer Hart came out of the house looking great from the neck down in a light suit. From the neck up, he was a wreck.
He held Missy in an oblong crate in his left hand. His right hand pleaded with Mrs. Hart to calm down while he locked the front door. Missy spun inside the crate and forced Officer Hart to carry it with both hands as he placed her in the back seat next to Simon. A crate within a crate.
They drove away southbound from the house. As they curved out of sight, I walked over to the fence to the back yard. I looked in through a break in the fence posts. Nipper and Ernie sat and ate at their bowls.
“Was it just me,” Ernie said, “or do they seem particularly more mad at us than usual?”
“It’s not just you,” Nipper said.
“How long you think it’ll last?”
“Hard to say. We’ve never done anything this bad, she said. Which, come to think of it, what did we do that was so awful anyway? Okay, sure we shouldn’t have escaped, but we came home.”
“We didn’t all come home,” Ernie said.
“And whose fault was that?” Nipper said.
“Maybe they’re mad because Fritz didn’t come home? She didn’t seem to care, but he didn’t sleep last night. He was up watching the TV and just pacing across the house. He was even punching the air a few times and then it looked like he was crying. He’s probably worried about Fritz.”
“He’ll get over it,” Nipper said. “You heard the kid. He was hoping we’d not come back so he could get a rhino in the yard.”
“Nipper, you smell something?” Ernie said.
“Just a fresh meal. I know we weren’t gone long, but man, you miss the simple things.”
“No, not the food. Hey, where do you think Fritz went? You think he’s gonna get that dog?”
“He had his chance, Ernie. Remember? As in yesterday? No, I don’t think so, and no, I don’t have the faintest clue as to where he’s headed or where he went. Sorry.”
“I don’t get why you don’t like him so much.”
“You’re right. I didn’t like him when he first got here. This is our home and he just shows up and expected us to welcome him because he’s some cop. But then I trusted him and went along with his ridiculous plan because I could see how important it was to him and you liked him and I didn’t want to lose you as my friend, so I played along with his scheme. Then what happened? He left us high and dry, Ernie. Strung us up and threw us to the wolves. And you know what, yeah, I did start to like him, but he went his way and we went ours. There’s nothing we can do about that now.”
“Hey,” I mumbled, through the fence.
“It’s weird though,” Ernie said. “It’s like I can still feel him. Like he’s here.”
“Ernie,” I said.
“Like I can hear him. I can still hear his voice, calling out to me.”
“You’re crazy,” Nipper said. “Wait a second, I heard him too. Ernie, I think your strangeness is finally rubbing off on me. Or maybe we’re just famished and hallucinating.”
“Hey!” I said.
“Fritz?” Ernie said, as he stepped towards the fence.
“It’s me,” I said.
“I knew that was your scent,” Ernie said. “What’re you doing here? You come back home.”
“Not yet. We still have a case to put on these dogs and I can’t do it without you guys.”
“No dice,” Nipper said. “I’m done playing your games.”
“You better watch out,” Ernie said, as he pushed his face right up to the fence to sniff my nose, then he tilted his head sideways and put his eye and all its darting lines across it up to the fence. “They’re going to see you standing out there.”
“They just left,” I said. “This is our chance to get out of here.”
“Did you ever think that maybe we don’t want to leave this time?” Nipper said.
“I want to go,” Ernie said.
“That’s because you always want to go,” Nipper said. “Nothing’s ever good enough for you, Ernie. We’ve got it all here. Food, water, when it rains we can go inside, they pamper us with toys and treats, and on their holidays we get the leftovers.”
“And it’s boring!” Ernie said, with more passion and fury than I’d ever heard from him. “It’s the same thing around here every day. You get up, you walk around, you take a nap, you eat the same food from the same bowl, the exact same little dry chunks of food, you can’t get a good run here, you get to play with the little spazz from inside, which to him playing means hitting you and throwing robot parts at you and then him wondering why you don’t feel like chasing them. If you do anything fun like dig or bark or try to climb the wall, you get yelled at, so sorry if that sounds like the good life to you, Nipper, but to me it sounds like a life spent wasted. I agree, we’re safe here, but it’s way more fun out there.”
“I didn’t know you feel that way,” Nipper said.
“I do and I can’t help it,” Ernie said.
“So, what are you going to do about it?” I said.
“I’m out of here,” Ernie said, as he flickered between the fence posts and went to the front corner of the fence that separated Officer Hart’s house from the neighbor’s. The fence gently wiggled in front of me. Ernie cursed and barked and kicked the fence.
“He fixed it?” Ernie said. “That plank has been broken ever since I’ve been here and he picks now to fix it? Did you know about this, Nipper?”
“I didn’t even know the fence was broke to begin with,” Nipper said.
“How do you think I’d get out to visit Saucy all those times when you were sleeping?”
“Ummm, because I was sleeping.”
“Nipper, we have to go with Fritz. Whether you want to or not. They came here looking for us. They’re gonna come back.”
“Who came here?” I said.
“Your friend and his racing dog,” Nipper said. “They were waiting for us, or they followed us, or I don’t know, but they showed up out of nowhere last night and he came out from inside and hosed them off and they disappeared.”
“Is this for real with you now, Fritz?” Ernie said.
“It is,” I said. “It’s my fault that the two of you were in danger. And I’m going to fix that. I’ve never been in the habit of putting my friends in harm’s way. I’m not starting now. We’re ending this.”
“Stand back,” Ernie said, as his voice echoed back to the other end of the yard. I moved to the side and lost peripheral vision on Ernie through the breaks in the fence posts. After a couple of deep breaths, Ernie’s paws slammed into the ground as he hurled himself towards the fence. Nipper shouted as the impact of Ernie crashing into the fence split the air. Shards of wood blasted into the front yard while Ernie pulled the rest of his body through the hole made by his shoulder and skull. As Ernie climbed through the hole, he pushed out the rest of the broken fencing.
“Whew,” Ernie said, as he shook himself off. “My head’s spinning a little bit.”
Nipper stood at the opening in the fence and looked at us on the other side of the smashed fence. He knew Ernie just gave him no choice.
“You coming?” I said. “Ernie did the hard work. It’s plenty large enough for you to walk through. It’s up to you, Nipper.”
I expected
another righteously indignant speech from Nipper. I expected more coaxing from Ernie. But there was none of that. No hyper-dramatic moment of should I or shouldn’t I, no trepidation in his face, and no inner monologue as far as I could see.
“Let’s go,” Nipper said. He walked through the hole Ernie made the fence, even breaking off a piece of fencing that wasn’t necessarily in his way. “It is more fun out here.”
“Wait a second,” I said, as we escaped out of the maze of homes. “You had a way of out there the whole time I was here?”
“Yeah,” Ernie said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said. “It would’ve been a lot easier than escaping from the park.”
“Yeah. It would have, Ernie,” Nipper said. “Would have a lot easier. On all of us.”
“But how much fun would that have been?” Ernie said. “I thought your plan sounded cool. Besides, I didn’t think I’d ever have gotten Nipper to just sneak out through the fence.”
“You’re probably right about that,” Nipper said.
We navigated our way out of the neighborhood at a brisk pace, not quite an all out run, but we weren’t dragging our cans either.
“So where were you?” Ernie said.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“Come on,” Ernie said.
“I was on a train talking to my shadow. I finally faced it and it went away. Then the train started to move, so I went to one end of the car and I jumped off when the train was going. I flew through the air and walked all night back here”
“Okay,” Ernie said. “I get it. Yeah, and I was driving a car too. A real nice one. Power steering with the top down and music blasting. You’re right. I guess it doesn’t matter.”
We were a block away from the main street out of the neighborhood when Ernie abruptly turned right and sprinted towards a nondescript single story residence on the corner.
“One condition for all of this,” Ernie said, as he stopped behind the house. “Saucy comes with us. And don’t even think about giving me the ‘It’s too dangerous’ speech or a ‘we don’t have time for this.’ If I’m going to risk the worse trouble I can think of back home by wrecking their fence, and you know what I’m talking about, I’m making sure she comes with me.”