Albuquerque

The sun lay over everything like a heavy blanket as the dust from the construction choked the air with smoke and dust. Concentrated into two lanes, the traffic was slow and tight, the sound of the trucks and machines deafening, construction workers sweltering shirtless in jeans, covered in sweat and filth, like something out of Dante's Inferno.

Finally, sweat beads forming on my face and hot air rushing out of my vents, I was forced to admit that my air conditioning wasn't working. No surprise. That's what you get for driving a ten-year-old blazer; you're more likely to flip, and the air conditioning quits working in Albuquerque. In August.

Rolling my windows down, I glanced over at the passenger seat to where my three-legged dog lay passively, calmly. Other than maybe a slightly heavier breathing, she did not seem affected by the heat. Concerned that she might be having heatstroke, I reached one hand over and patted her side, but she just raised her ears and looked up at me like she always does.

The hot air whipped through the wide-open windows of my Blazer, fluttering papers around in the back seat, blowing through my hair and left ear. There was not a cloud in the sky, yet the sun was obliterated in the haze of traffic and construction. Even the colors of the vehicles seemed subdued in the dust, the orange and gray of construction being the only colors that shone through. Lanes ended or merged, exits were blocked.

It was sometime late in the afternoon, and I had spent at least an hour and a half navigating through the construction of Albuquerque, when I pulled into the truck stop just west of town. My dog drank from the plastic margarine tub of water I gave her while I filled gas and munched on a banana from the cooler. Compare to the construction I had just endured, the truck stop seemed like a calm oasis. A trucker's paradise. Didn't I once hear truck stops called just that? I paid with my card, then pulled my Blazer off to the side so I could walk my dog.

She sniffed and tugged at her leash as I doused my system with an entire 20 oz. bottle of water. Most people would be surprised at how much water I actually drink in one day. It is said that you should drink at least eight eight ounce glasses of water each day, but I probably drink at least sixteen, if not twenty.

It may also surprise many people to learn that a twenty-five pound terrier with three legs can tug at her leash.

When my dog was finished, I pulled my vehicle into a parking space and, leaving the windows cracked and plenty of water in a dish, I went into the truck stop to quickly use the restroom. I had to pee like nobody's business, probably due to the immense amount of water I was consuming. When I was finished, I bought a half gallon of grapefruit juice and a small bag of mixed nuts to eat while I was driving.

"Hey, man, is that your dog?" The hitch-hiker, a guy maybe in his twenties, was wearing skin-tight blue jeans and a faded black t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He had been leaning up against the fence surrounding the landscaping (mostly consisting of river rock) that surrounded the perimeter of the truck stop's main convenience store, but stalked towards me as I opened the drivers' side door. It took me a while at first to realize the guy was a hitch-hiker.

His question seemed rhetorical, so I continued to get into my blazer with my dog as the hitch-hiker continued to walk towards me. I'm the kind of guy who likes to think I can get along with just about anybody, but I have little patience for panhandlers and hitch-hikers. I had a friend once who bragged to me about how he hitch-hiked all over the country, panhandling and stealing from convenience stores along the way, finding people to buy his alcohol for him. That was the last conversation I had with that friend, about his hitch-hiking. What I am trying to show here is that having this hitch-hiker walking towards me about to ask for a ride was not exactly a situation I enjoyed.

The guy walked right up to my open window and said, "Are you going through Albuquerque, or are you headed the other way?" Something in the way he asked and the way he made eye contact made him seem suddenly much more sincere than my panhandling, alcoholic friend, and I was take off-guard by his indirect approach. The only thing I could think to do was to try to make an excuse.

"You know," I said, "there's not much room in my blazer. I have my sleeping bag and a few boxes on the floor, and my dog is sitting on the passenger seat."

"That's all right. I love dogs," said the hitch-hiker. "So are you heading into town?"

"Nope. Heading the other way, heading for Arizona. There's no room for you though, with the dog."

"Just need a ride downtown, it's not that far. I can hold the dog and sit up in the seat with my legs crossed. Is it a girl or a boy."

"Girl." I hesitated. My weak spot. People who care about dogs. It occurred to me that the guy would make a great salesman.

"It'll only take ten minutes, there and back." He kept looking at me expectantly. I sat thinking, but I was hot, tired, and I had run out of good excuses.

"You know, there's no a/c in here."

"Better than sitting here in front of this truck stop."

"If I drive downtown, I'll never find my way back."

"It's easy. Just two turns there and two back. I'll direct you."

It was three o'clock in the afternoon. The sun was blazing. My dog had been standing the whole time we talked, but didn't get too excited, just trying to follow what was going on. "Be careful how you hold her or she will bite," I warned as I motioned for him to get in. "It's just a little sensitive where her leg is missing."

The hitch-hiker broke into a huge grin as he crawled up onto the passenger seat, avoiding the stuff on the floor, and gently took my dog into his lap. "Take a right out of the parking lot. What's her name?"

I decided to tell him her entire name, even though some people found it foolish. "Sandra Louise."
"Sandra Louise," he repeated softly. "I used to have a dog," he said, absently. "What happened to Sandra Louise?"

"Bone cancer," I said. We were heading down some sort of side street with no houses. It seemed like we were headed out into the middle of nowhere. I was struck by the thought that I had uttered the words bone cancer for the first time since her diagnosis. Osteosarcoma, bone cancer. I decided to change the subject. "I've never been to downtown Albuquerque. Is it nice?"

"Oh, man! It's real nice. Too bad you have to get to Arizona tonight. You could check it out for yourself. Take a left up here at this stop sign."

It was a strange drive from the truck stop to downtown Albuquerque because there was a long road with little to no traffic, and suddenly you made a left turn and found yourself in the middle of a city. It almost felt like driving in a midwestern town, like the time I took a wrong turn in St. Joseph, Missouri, and suddenly found myself driving through cornfields. Like that. It didn't fit my notion of a southwestern city. "Now what?" I said, taking the left.

"Now what?" The hitch-hiker softly echoed, and his countenance completely changed. For a minute, he seemed almost wistful, meditating on the phrase now what?

I kept on driving straight. I could see this street would eventually lead us into the downtown. Traffic was changing. There were more stops. Pedestrians were walking on the sidewalks. "Do you live here?"

"Huh? Oh, no," said the hitch-hiker, his face getting brighter again. "Just visiting. I live up north in Denver. I hitched here, mostly. Just wanted to get out of Denver and see the world, I guess."

"So have you seen it? The world?"

The hitch-hiker screwed up his face. "Hmmm. No. I guess so far, in the nine-hundred-some miles between Denver and here, I've seen a whole lot of the same. Met some interesting people though. Sometimes I wish I could take all of the good people I've met and get them together to form one big city of our own."

"Yeah," I agreed, "but I always think if I had all of the people I've been friends with together in one big room, there'd be a fight."

The hitch-hiker cackled. "Ain't that the truth! So many different personalities. You can pull over any time now and let me out. We're downtown."

Easing my car to the side of the road, I turned to the hitch-hiker, who was extending his hand. As we shook hands, he said, "I'm sorry, but I didn't get your name."

"Jeremy," I said, "Jeremy Storly."

"Jeremy...Storly," he repeated, and then did something that surprised me. He took out a small tablet and pencil from his pocket and started to write my name down. "St-o-r-l-y?" he said softly to himself as I nodded my head.

"I guess I didn't catch your name, either."

"Bill," he said, "Bill Baldwin." Smiling, he added, "I know that it sounds like a made-up name, but my name really is Bill Baldwin." He gently laid my dog back on the seat as he stepped out of my car onto the sidewalks of the streets of downtown Albuquerque. He stood there leaning against the frame of my passenger side door for a while, looking me right in the face with this kind of thoughtful smile, like he had something he wanted to say, yet was debating about walking away without saying it. I just sat there with my hands on the steering wheel.

Finally, the same kind of sad, contemplative look on his face, he said to me, "I have to admit something." He swallowed, trying to force some thought out that was stuck to the back of his throat. "As I sat there in front of the truck stop, I saw your dog in the window of your car, and I looked into her eyes, and I knew right away that you would give me a ride downtown, even if you were headed the opposite way. Any guy that has a three-legged dog, I thought to myself, would give a guy like me a ride.

"But I also knew something that would happen along the way. I knew you would tell me she's dying of bone cancer. Osteosarcoma. Don't ask me how I knew, 'cause I just knew. I just want to say thank you for the ride, and I'm sorry about your dog." Then, before I could even respond, he closed the door and walked away down the street.

It wasn't until later, at a rest stop on the Arizona-New Mexico border that I started to cry. I had just finished using the restroom, and was in my Blazer ready to drive away when I lost it. I cried about my dog, about the exhausting drive, about the lost time in Albuquerque, about the coldness and the kindness of the human race. The tears came for maybe a minute or so, and then I wiped my face with my t-shirt, smiled and scratched my dog behind the ears, and drove on.

The mystery is: what has become of my name, recorded so carefully in a hitch-hiker's tablet? In the miles he has traveled, has Bill Baldwin forgotten that I once gave him a ride from a truck stop to downtown Albuquerque? Does he look at his tablet every now and then and remember that Jeremy Storly had a dog who was dying of osteosarcoma? Does the tablet even exist anymore, with no phone number, no address, just a name and a shadow of a memory of one small occurrence of many that once took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico?

feng shui

Ah such is Hope! as changeful and as fair!
Now dimly peering on the wistful sight;
Now hid behind the dragon-wing'd Despair;
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Sonnet: to the Autumnal Moon"

the fucking neighbors kept me up most of the night. this was the last night i would tolerate it. i would phone management in the morning, i decided. not that i wanted to do it.

the thing is, the head of my bed must always face east. it is my lucky direction. if it faces west, it will bring financial ruin; if it faces south, it will bring ill health. so it has to always face east. even though that means having my head almost right up against the wall between my bedroom and my neighbors' apartment.

my entire unit has been painfully arranged to perfect feng shui specifications. for example, although most people would be tempted to place a plant in the southwest corner of my living room, i know that doing so would result in an influx of overwhelming energy which would cause insomnia and anxiety. instead, i have a spider plant hanging in the west window of my kitchen, which creates a great sense of peace and well being when i am sitting at my dining room table because, although i am facing east and the plant is behind me, i can feel the flow of positive chi from the plant washing over my body as it passes around and through me.

i can tell without looking that my neighbors had not been so scrupulous in selecting furniture, much less arranging it in a positive way. i can tell just by the loud volume of their voices that they have not arranged their items as carefully as i. this is why i am constantly sweeping the sidewalk to my place while my neighbors have mounds of fermenting cigarette butts piled in front of theirs.

it is only my tolerance for my neighbors' lack of a proper education regarding furniture selection and arrangement that allowed me to let the problem go for so long. but tonight i decided i would no longer suffer due to their ignorance. management would be called.

pouring myself a glass of water, i sat cross-legged on my living room floor. my eyes were sleepless and bleary. when i finally focused, i could see by the clock on my vcr that it was after one a.m. this annoyed me further still, and though i tried to relax my mind, i was unable to set aside the reality that i was wide awake at one in the morning, and that i would be teaching classes at eight. middle school. you can't be tired when you teach middle school.

softly growling, i got up, went to the kitchen, and juiced myself a grapefruit. this helps battle insomnia, and acts as a general tonic for good health. i try to eat as much grapefruit and drink as much grapefruit juice as i can. my students leave grapefruits on my desk instead of apples. i eat them before school lets out.

quickly downing my glass of juice to avoid the oxidation of enzymes, i immediately felt better. by the time i grabbed a pillow and pulled my sleeping bag out of my closet, i was starting to feel quite relaxed and tired. i lay down on the living room floor with my tv remote, and flipped through all the channels, evaluating each bit of programming in a dreamlike stupor.

i was vaguely aware of an infomercial for a type of personal blender, a reality show with a loud man on a corner shouting obnoxious things, a local program involving two adults and a child walking through the desert with a gps device. finally, i settled on a weird religious program in which a conservative minister was giving impromptu answers to letters sent in by viewers. this ought to do the trick, i thought. and it didn't take long before i drifted off to sleep.

upon waking, i could see that there was a fair amount of light shining through my living room window. my second thought was that the tv was still on, and had been creating chaotic energy in the room all night as i slept. the third thing i realized was that my head had been pointing west the whole night, instead of east. on tv, a woman was kneading bread dough. annoyed, i turned the tv off and sat up.

6:36

good. so i still had time. but i was running about an hour late and would have to miss my morning run and yoga. no problem. i did thirty push-ups and thirty crunches; made myself a banana/soymilk smoothie; combed my hair; shaved; put on a shirt, tie, and jacket, and headed for the door.

7:40

shit. where did the time go in the morning? it took at least ten minutes to drive to work, and i was supposed to be there by 7:45. oh well, couldn't be helped.

i stepped outside. it immediately struck me that something was slightly irregular about the world today. or rather, something was completely off, sending everything else slightly, almost imperceptibly off balance. was it a new smell rising up from the earth? was it the sun's position in the sky? it did seem that the pattern of the sun's rays falling over the sidewalk was imperceptibly askew. but neither of these things explained just what i felt at that moment, the sensation of finding myself in a completely foreign land.

regardless of its cause, this unexpected change in the atmosphere struck me for several seconds. it was like visiting hong kong and finding a friend you hadn't seen in years. just this sudden, inexplicable sense of surreality.

blinking, i turned around to lock the door. i then realized i had forgotten to grab the keys.

7:42

by the time i stepped back outside, one of the neighbors was standing in front, carelessly overweight, wearing shabby pajama pants and a t-shirt that was stained and torn. the breeze was blowing just so the cloud of smoke from her cigarette wafted right in my path. not that it normally bothers me, but because i was constantly picking up her butts and sweeping stray ones from the sidewalk, i immediately grew contemptuous. although i gave her a friendly nod, i couldn't help feeling that i glowered at her at the same time.

7:53

i stepped out of my car and walked through the gate of the school. immediately, i realized today i was scheduled to monitor the front sidewalk.

what made me realize this was the sixth grade teacher approaching me, saying, "mr. storly, did you forget that you had sidewalk duty?"

of course, the teacher scheduled for sidewalk duty is supposed to arrive at 7:30, which meant i was exactly twenty-three minutes late for my job. the requisite apology given, i took my post. the sixth grade teacher walked away, muttering something about knowing who to ask the next time he needed his duty covered.

"mr. storly?" fantastic. it was the sixth grade language arts teacher who is always trying to get students entered into my reading program even though they don't qualify. i honest-to-god hope that as she approached, my eyes didn't roll. "mr. storly, i placed a note in your box about that student. you know, the one i had talked to you about. i talked to the principal. i hope you don't mind."

"no, of course not." of course i did mind! if the student doesn't qualify, he doesn't qualify. how is talking to the principal going to change this?

"well, have you had a chance to look at his records?" she looked up at me with thickly painted eyes. my eyes felt as heavy as hers looked. i felt tired and irritable.

"yes, i reviewed the student's test scores, and i am afraid he doesn't qualify for my program." the sun was in my eyes. i had to pee. i heard the bell ring. it was five after eight, and i didn't have my room ready yet. students would be waiting in the hall as we spoke.

the language arts teacher was just beginning to ask what she was supposed to do with this ill-behaved student in her classroom, when i felt a tug on the sleeve of my jacket and my name enthusiastically repeated in a sing-song voice. it was jorge, one of my sixth grade students. he had fashioned origami freddy krueger fingers from sheets of notebook paper, placed one on each finger of his right hand, and was now shoving them in my face, manipulating the tips of his fingers while speaking incoherently in what he apparently thought to be an exact likeness of freddy's voice. the teacher continued to speak at the same time. i watched my first hour students filing into the hall on their way to my classroom. turning to jorge, i exploded.

"excuse me! would you stop annoying me!"

jorge withdrew his fingers. his face drooped, and he walked sadly away. jorge was sort of a misfit, and i felt it was important to give him positive reinforcement. some positive reinforcement. he had created something, and i had blown up at him.

at least the language arts teacher was finally silent. she said something like, "well, we can talk about this later," and walked away.

well, whatever. at least i had given myself something to agonize over for the rest of the day.

i arrived late for my first period class. the door to my classroom had already been opened, apparently by another teacher. fortunately, i had a trustworthy group first period, and nothing appeared to be missing or damaged. there was even a grapefruit already on my desk by the time i arrived. good kids.

"mr. storly?" the principal stood in the door with an adult i did not recognize. "sorry to interrupt, but this is ms. adams. she will be shadowing you today." he gave me a look that said, we'll talk later, as i shook ms. adams' hand. i noticed she was dressed professionally, in blacks and grays, hair nicely styled, carrying a clipboard under the same arm that held a stylish tweed handbag. yet, her eyes seemed strange, distant. it seems rude to say it, but her eyes seemed vacant.

after introducing her to my seventh grade class, ms. adams took a seat at an empty table in the back of my room and immediately commenced to writing on her tablet, jotting down notes. it is always slightly unnerving to have an adult in your classroom jotting down notes about you, especially when you are not completely certain of her intentions. i proceeded with class as normal, with the usual middle school mixture of the academic and the insane.

ms. adams continued to sit at the back table, legs crossed, jotting down who-knows-what in that notebook of hers. she never looked up. not once. it occurred to me that she was not writing about me or my class at all. she couldn't be. she wasn't even looking up. as i circulated around the room, helping students, i kept glancing out of the corner of my eye at ms. adams. she had a vague smile on her face, and she never looked up. not even once.

at one point, after questioning a group of students, i called on ms. adams -- you know, to try to get her involved. she did not seem to hear me, so i tried again. "ms. adams?"

"hm?" her tone was pleasant, and she looked toward me expectantly. you have my full, undivided attention, that look seemed to say.

"i was just asking this group of students where they would look in a book to find the year of publication, on what page." i looked expectantly at ms. adams, whose face continued to peer expectantly back at me.

"oh," she said, and looking back down at her tablet, resumed her writing.

speechless, i returned to working with my group of students, ignoring a few chuckles as i helped my students locate the title page.

later that day, ms. adams sat reading a copy of alice's adventures in wonderland. at least she was doing so as class started for my eighth grade group. my ea, ms. macgregor, red-faced and imposing, came into the room from playground duty with a flourish, holding a small styrofoam cup of coffee. "what's the matter, ms. adams?" she declared with great cheer.

this is when i noticed that ms. adams was sitting at a table across from one of my eighth-grade students, who was quietly and uncontrollably laughing. ms. adams had both hands pressed against the table top, her eyes fixed on its surface. of course, the entire room soon noticed this as she announced, "oh, nothing. i'm looking at the pattern," she stuttered. "the pattern on the table is so interesting."

indeed, the burled printed wood veneer made many twists and turns, repeated as the cheap print repeated itself. interesting? the entire room grew silent with the strained suppression of laughter as ms. adams raised herself from the chair to exact a closer view. "ms. adams," said jose as he walked by, "that one looks just like a flower."

what was happening to me? did i walk through the looking glass, or had the looking glass passed through me? the afternoon was slow. the air conditioning was cold. it was 100 degrees outside, and i could be wearing gloves.

as my last class left the room, i called jorge to my desk and offered a quick apology for telling him he was annoying as he tossed my grapefruit from hand to hand. i had forgotten to eat it for lunch. "do you like those things?" i asked.

"i lo-o-o-ove grapefruit," said jorge.

"it's yours," i said.

jorge happily took the grapefruit and left the room, i had a strange urge to call him back and warn him to sleep with his head pointed in his lucky direction. but instead i sat at my desk sipping a cup of tea, lukewarm and bland. i was exhausted. i had forgotten to call management about my neighbors, but no longer felt inspired to do so.

the room was empty. i slowly stood and walked to the table ms. adams had examined earlier that day. jose was right. it did look like a flower. as i looked more closely, i could also see the shape of my entire day outlined in the repeated pattern of cheap burl. here was the white rabbit, here was the cigarette butt i had noticed on the sidewalk this morning, here was the shape of the teacher who had spoken to me earlier, here indeed was me. you can see anything in that table that you want. if you look long enough, shapes may begin to appear, connections made, that are not really there at all. or perhaps they are there, and the illusion is deeper than it seems, the shape of unreality concealing reality, the tough rind of the grapefruit not showing the truth beneath.

the rudest, cruelest person

sometimes i feel like the rudest, cruelest person.

perhaps i started to feel this way when she said to me, "you're the rudest, cruelest person!"

but this cruel man would like to pull the comforter of dirt up over his head to shut the coldness out, to plant himself like a seed in fertile soil. what more can one ask for than the warmth of the sun filtering through the rich black layers of earth to heat one's bones, to lie peacefully as up above the muffled voices of worry and pain carry on the unending morality play?

nature can be cruel, but not as cruel as i, not as cruel as the invented censures of those we love, and not half as cruel as when they hit the mark.

i am the rudest, cruelest person.

because you say so.

he, part one

his life seemed so cyclical. in fact, probably the number one thing that was so frustrating about his life was that he could predict his thoughts, his feelings, what he would become, months from now.

in high school, he spent most of his time playing nintendo and reading stephen king novels. although he enjoyed reading shakespeare in school, he never found time for it during his independent time. even then, he knew his friends, like most people, were obsessed with entertainment and other people’s lives. ironic, he thought, that the same people who neglect the very mechanisms that cause beauty in a frustrating world were also obsessed with so-and-so’s car accident or hip operation or football injury. what was the point, he thought.

but he was the same. his brain was polluted with gossip and friday the thirteenth flicks, and he would spend hours walking around town with his headphones plugged into his walkman, listening to anthrax. during high school, he felt a pervasive sense of waste, of something passing him by, but dismissed such feelings as the faint paranoia all teens seemed to feel.

in some ways, he was completely alone. he struggled with feelings, then guilt over the feelings, and this froze him, moved him to inaction, chained him to a wall, closed him in behind cold bricks and mortar. he hung there from his metaphorical wall waiting for things to change, feeling that things had been quiet for so long that ultimately things were building up toward some big change, a real turning point in his existence.

when he was nineteen, he got drunk for the first time. his younger brother procured a bottle of everclear. he mixed it with orange juice, then coke, then water, and then took several shots straight out of the bottle before demolishing a potted plant and passing out on the bathroom floor. the next day, he felt as if all the pain, all the guilt, all the bitterness and loneliness of the years before had reached their climax in this one miserable day. of course, how was he to know then that this was very wrong, that this was but a small complication in a much larger plot.

college was like high school without the friends. he worked at a fast food restaurant and started smoking cigarettes. he would smoke several on break. he took classes and passed them with little effort, but lost or forgot much of what he could have learned during this time. he felt poetry, but did not pursue it, did not live it.

after college, he moved to a small town and started teaching. he quit drinking and smoking and found god. he became involved with a church run by the parents of some of the students he taught. besides becoming involved in outreach projects with the church, he began to define for himself behavior that he would consider acceptable and biblical. however, these expectations extended beyond himself, and he became obsessed with spreading his enlightened message to others.

a blessing

he steps out of the shower and steps in front of the mirror to shave. using a brush, he just gets the shave cream on his face, when a movement catches his eye. this is a split-level house, and the bathroom window is at ground level. there are no blinds on the window because he is miles from town.

close to the window, a rabbit is sitting in the snow. the rabbit is eating the pieces of strawberry thrown out the day before. his little gray mouth moves as he munches the tiny bits of berry.

suddenly, from behind a tree, another rabbit dashes in bounds toward the one eating. both hop playfully about the yard in the april snow.

as the rabbits play, a rooster pheasant strides, head bobbing, from behind the silver propane tank in the yard. the rabbits don't seem to notice him as they stop in an exposed patch of grass to nibble some more. the pheasant begins to peck at the ground.

the man looks at the clock, finishes shaving. while driving to work, he feels very blessed.

the two roosters

last night, two pheasant roosters were fighting in the field at the end of the road. they leaped at each other for a little bit, but mostly there was just a lot of head bobbing and posturing.

this morning, when i looked out the south window, i saw two pheasant roosters eating grain in the field across the road. i wondered if they were the same pheasants i had seen the night before. they seemed to be eating peacefully, neither one getting in the other's way. had one come out dominant? did the one rely on the other? just how solitary are pheasants, anyway?

having grown up in south dakota, you would think i would know a lot about pheasants. turns out, there is not much knowledge out there about the pheasants themselves -- only how to successfully hunt and kill them. i do know they are not native to south dakota.

the rain, part two

i don't know how long i stood there, completely lost inside my head, but by the time i came to my senses and decided to close the door, my front right side, the side facing the rain, was completely soaked. it was the silence, or maybe the sound of the rain in the midst of a thick silence, that brought me back. it was then i realized i was being watched by a boy standing out in the rain. it was a boy who i had seen around the apartment complex, and who sometimes pet my dog. he stood as silent and invisible as the air.

honestly, i was a startled and a little embarrassed to be caught in my reverie. the boy was soaked, arms crossed, shivering in the rain. what the hell was he doing out here in the rain?

"where's your dog?" he asked.

i caught my eyes automatically shifting to the ground, scanning. i didn't say anything for a minute. just stood there. the boy had seen her, had pet her when she had three legs. for some reason it didn't bother me that he had asked, i had to talk about it, if only for a second. "she died," i said, "remember she was sick? she died."

he stood in the rain. neither one of us spoke. i was starting to shiver myself. was it the rain?

the conversation must have ended somehow. i don't remember him saying, "i'm sorry." i don't even remember closing the door and going back inside. i just remember sitting on the floor of my apartment, reading my richard adams novel, and feeling better.

looking back, when i try to remember that moment, i always remember the boy saying something about the rain washing things away, making them new again. but he was a little boy, and lacked that kind of insight. i remembered thinking about something c.s. lewis had written. we may never meet those we love again, but if we don't, it is because we no longer need them. at that moment, for example, i didn't even need a friend. i just needed someone to whom i could say, "my dog is dead; i killed my dog."

the rain went on until morning.