It stood there, its tongue lolling out, and looked directly at him. It was a brown and white mutt with friendly eyes. It gave a hesitant wag of its tail and took a step toward him.

“Waddaya think, Hop?”

Hop responded to his whisper by tickling his hand.

The man squatted on the edge of the road and the dog trotted up to him, giving his stubbly face a quick lick with his hot tongue. It nudged his hand with its nose and sniffed. Hop slid through the small gap and hopped on the dog’s nose, pausing as the two looked each other in the eye, then up on the dog’s head and finally rested on his back.

The man looked the dog over. It had no collar nor tags and its ribs were beginning to show. He petted it for a full minute, then got up and began walking again. The dog trotted sometimes beside him, sometimes nosing into the grasses along the road, then catching up again, Hop clinging deftly to his back.

He watched the dog and its tiny passenger, riding now backward and watching the man as he walked behind them. The ghost of a smile crossed his lips. Nothing had changed. The cicadas still sang their buzz saw song, the sun still beat down its white hot light and the lilies responded with carefree orange faces. Yet he began to feel different; a small excitement somewhere in his gut, a repressed hope he’d denied. He closed his eyes and breathed in the hot air.

“What’s yer name? Shep?”

The dog stood still, looking back at him.

“Brownie? No? Look here, I’m no good with names.”

He licked his dry lips. He could feel heat radiating from his skin, his body a stove. The dog trotted ahead of him. Dust rose and settled. The sun began its slow descent. One mile. Two. He began to breathe harder. Either he was growing weary or the dog was trotting faster. Every so often the dog would stop and look back, waiting, then trot on again.

One foot in front of the other. Always onward. Why did he do this? Always. His life was a pattern of stay and leave, a wandering mission of disconnection. Five miles farther on, its sound began to wind its way into his subconscious until he heard it: water running over rock.

His life was a pattern of stay and leave, a wandering mission of disconnection.

He quickened his step and came to it, a river half a mile back from the dusty road, hidden by a dry meadow and a sudden drop from the tree line at its edge. The dog rushed its descent as the man followed him, hanging onto a bush here and there for balance. By the time he reached the bottom, the dog was splashing in the cold river, lapping the welcome water, then laying in the shallow edge, panting. He removed his boots and socks, stepped into the shallows, cupped his hand and drank. The cold water sent coolness through his tired bones. Looking down, he saw Hop, tickling the tip of his toe. The man felt hopeful, the first in a long time.

Man and dog lay on a bed of soft pine needles and slept as the moon rose and stars blinked on one by one.

A moist tongue on his face woke him. The sun was just peeking over the horizon, turning the sky from gray to violet to pink and orange and yellow. He waded in the now still water and drank freely, then pulled on his socks and boots. Rising from the piney bed, he stuck his hands in his pockets as he watched the sun’s early morning display.

“Hey. Where’s the key?” he asked, searching the ground.

The dog trotted up to him.

“Did you see it, boy? Did you see the key?”

The dog barked.

“Key?”

The dog put his front paws on the man.

“Your name’s Key?”

The dog jumped around in a circle, then lowered himself in a play bow.

“Waddaya know. Well, boy, it didn’t matter anyway, did it? Whatever that key was for might be long gone by now.”

The man began following the path upstream, then slowed to a stop.

“Key! C’mon now!”

The dog trotted up to him, looking at him expectantly, then back from where they’d come. He hesitated, looking at the man.

“Ah. Where’s Hop? Is that it?”

Key lay in the river, his head on his paws.

Maybe the mutt was more of a key than in name only. How had he gotten to a point when an animal cared more for connection than he did? He suddenly felt – he didn’t know – sad, he guessed. Lost. It was a feeling he’d not had since he’d left home at sixteen and never looked back. He’d not been acquainted with it in the twenty years of his wandering since then. He sat down, resting his arms on his knees.

What did it matter? It was just a toad, for pete’s sake, hardly as big as his fingernail. But the thought of trudging ahead without Hop – he shook his head. You had to let someone – or something – in to feel the emptiness when they were no longer there. He didn’t like it. He started on again, then stopped and looked back. Key waited, cocking one ear. He shook his head at his own weakness. A new knowledge pushed its way through his stubbornness and wouldn’t leave. He sighed. Maybe it was time. Perhaps he’d been a loner long enough. And, hard as it was to have the thought, it was possible it wasn’t weakness after all. Maybe it was strength. Maybe it was a source of strength he’d missed along the way.

Turning the other direction and starting back, he called, “Okay, Key! We can’t leave our pardner!”

Key bounded ahead of him, then began nosing along the water’s edge. The man jumped. Yanking up his jeans, he saw it perched on the top of his boot. He scooped up the toad with one hand and covered it with the other. Its tiny presence tickled his hand and he smiled.

It scooted out of his hand onto Key’s nose, hopped onto the top of his head, and found his place on his back.

Down the river’s path, they walked; one talking, two listening, three together.

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Lilies bloomed with glad abandon along the gravel road. The high sun shone bright and hot, bronzing his neck and arms as he trudged along. Dust, kicked up by his worn boots with every step, hung in the air long enough to cover his jeans with its brief touch. The circular saw buzz of cicadas grew louder, then quieter, then louder again.

He hadn’t decided where he was going. He just knew he needed to leave. He needed new air to breathe, fresh scenery. What was the purpose of life anyway? Not in his work, at least not the work he did. Friendships? Ha. Greetings on the street or at the corner store didn’t prove anything beyond good manners. There was that one old woman at Johnson’s Foods check-out. He’d always waited to go through her lane. She was nice. He didn’t s’pose he had any obligation to anyone. He’d paid his bills. Done his job. Didn’t poke his nose where it didn’t belong. His eyes roamed over the road ahead. It’s undulating path told him nothing of what was ahead.

He kicked an old pop can into the ditch, then stopped. Something was off with the empty sound he had subconsciously expected as the toe of his boot had made contact. Turning back a few steps, he walked into the high grass of the ditch and nudged it with his boot. A lead-like thud answered and a tiny tree-toad hopped to get out of his way. A snake slithered silently through the tall grass. Reaching down, he picked up the can, turned it upside down, and shook it. With a rattle, the noisemaker fell into his hand.

It was a key. Maybe it was to some vehicle. Probably. He slipped it into his pocket and looked around. An old junker roared past, leaving a trail of dust in its wake.

The man made his way out of the ditch and trudged on. Who would put a key in a pop can anyway? Why not just throw it away or sell it for a nickel at one of those sales so popular in the summer where one person sold old stuff and another one bought it? If it was to a car, where was the car – in a junkyard in some other county? Maybe it fit the lock of a house, but he didn’t think so. Sweat trickled down his temple and he wiped it away with the palm of his rough hand, then jumped. Yanking up his jeans, he saw it perched on the top of his boot. He scooped up the toad with one hand and covered it with the other. Its tiny presence tickled his hand and he almost smiled.

“You saw that snake too, did ya?”

He was quiet for a moment.

“Hop. How’s that for a name?” he asked the toad. “You ‘n me, Hop. I got your back. You got . . . you got . . . my hand.”

He reached the next rise of the road when he saw it.

to be continued . . .

Image: http://uploads/2014/07/standard-key-wikipedia.org_.jpg, the-back-of-a-fowlers-toad-frog_w725_h483-public-domain.jpg

I backed up and stepped on the threshold again. It creaked. I took little baby steps along the width of the entry. The old hardwood yielded slightly underneath my weight and creaked slightly every so often along the boards.

I walked back to where I had stood at the window and looked at the threshold. Was there something amiss with the lines of the house? Maybe what I had imagined was actually a bulge here and there. It was an old house, an old neglected house. I willed the spot I had peered at earlier to bulge. It didn’t.

I let out a deep breath. I wasn’t the kind to be spooked. I was probably just tired. It had been a long, empty week for so many reasons. The relationship that had prompted my escape from what was familiar as an adult to what had been slightly familiar as a child was without a doubt behind it. I had done everything I could, hadn’t I? Tried to change myself, him, and past arguments to no avail. Tried to make him see things my way, myself to see things his way. Tried. Tried. Then tried to just forget it all and found instead mice nests and cobwebs and dust enough to make another galaxy in making this house inhabitable again.

I always said I believed in possibility more than probability, but maybe that wasn’t exactly true. Maybe what I believed was that if I managed something enough – problems, relationships, dreams – I could move them from one column to the other. Anyone who didn’t believe Henley when he said, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul, was a fool. I filled the teapot, then jumped and nearly dropped it as I placed it on the stove. Whoever designed the jangle of the old phone here should be arrested! Who in the world would be calling since no one in the world knew I was here?

“Hello?”

“Oh yes! I had been trying to change it when the power went out.”

“Um, what?”

“Proof of . . . oh. I will come in person then. Thank you.”

I replaced the receiver with slightly more force than necessary. Really? Proof of my existence? Maybe their so-called policy should be put in a time capsule along with the old black phone. I stared at the old phone, my mouth going suddenly dry. My eyes darted to the cell next to it, the one I had placed there when I’d lost contact. I slowly picked up the receiver and listened. There was no dial tone. I clicked the little knobs up and down. How in the world . . .? I picked up my cell and tried turning it on, but it remained black. It probably needed recharging. I plugged it into the outlet and laid it on the kitchen counter.

The house still held my dead uncle’s furnishings, a good thing since my few possessions fit into the back of my pick-up truck. I eased into his soft, dusty armchair, sipped my tea and stared out the window. I found myself wondering where they had found him – my uncle who’d been dead a week before anyone knew it.

I must’ve dozed, for when I opened my eyes, my cold tea pooled on the floor and the slightly cracked cup lay beside it. The storm had died and left behind a damp stillness. I felt a slight, cold breeze filter from the direction of the kitchen and shivered. The day’s light had truly been stolen by the storm and by this time the trees blended into the starless night.

I grabbed an old quilt and wrapped it around my shoulders while I went to start the water boiling for a cup of tea I hoped this time to finish. As I waited, I scanned the bookshelf replete with my uncle’s old books, selected one, and took it with me and my now hot tea to the armchair. The story was benign, really. It was of a silly girl whose efforts in controlling everything and everyone around her irritated me. I was beginning to tire of it, when the pace picked up slightly. She finally encountered a situation that resisted her efforts and wandered away into the night. Two weeks later the few who cared enough to search were on the brink of finding her. I turned the page. The next chapter would finally give some satisfaction! She would get her comeuppance or learn the error of her ways, though I doubted the latter. The page was blank. What? I examined the book. Nothing appeared to be torn out. I turned the next page and the next, suddenly frantic to know what happened. There was nothing. What cruel trick was this?

I turned toward the sound of a sudden creak and felt a slight, cold breeze on my cheek. Then the lights went out.

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I was just beginning to think I could make out the form of a person standing in the entry of the kitchen. It was slightly taller than I and lacked the rigidity of the doorframe. It seemed like a person, but that would be crazy, right? It wasn’t really all that clear, after all; just a nearly transparent image – more of an outline, one that I could easily be, for who knew what reason, imagining. The dark made it impossible to actually see anything anyway.

There it was again. Another creak. The form, or whatever it was, hadn’t moved. It was as still as the wall, itself. Maybe it was just my imagination after all. I glanced out the window again. Lightning danced across the sky momentarily revealing some downed branches and an overturned lawn chair. I loved that chair! I’d rescued it from the dumpster of my apartment building the summer before and replaced the ripped nylon webbing with heavy muslin in a chili pepper print. I hoped it wouldn’t be carried too far before the wind died.

I turned to check the kitchen doorway again, and my heart, which had begun beating more rapidly since the last loud thunder, seemed to be of two minds because now it stopped completely. There was no form any longer; only the faint outline of everything that had slowly been growing familiar over the past week of my living there. So had I seen something?

The lights flickered on again, though the storm raged on outside. My eyes surveyed my surroundings. Nothing had changed. All was well. Tea. Tea would be good company for such a night. I started over to fill the teapot. I would have at least two cups, and who cared if it was caffeinated on the edge of evening? The floor creaked just as I stepped on the threshold of the kitchen.

to be continued . . .

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“What? Louder! I can’t hear you! There’s something – crackling or something – on the line. What?” The static ceased as did every other sound. I hung up and dialed. No tone. No anything. Maybe the landline would be better. I walked into the kitchen, muttering to myself and picked it up. It was silent. Maybe it was the storm. Beyond the window glass I could see the trees bending in the greenish sky, branches lashing one way and another all at once. The rain had determinedly increased since the storm had begun nearly an hour ago, and the angry sky was gradually changing daylight to dark.

I jumped at a cannon-fire rumble as lightning flashed just in front of the window. The lights in the living room and kitchen went out at once. I knew flicking the switches would accomplish nothing. I flicked the switch.

It was my way, I admitted maybe for the first time in my life, flicking a light switch back and forth. If something wasn’t the way I thought it should be, I always tried to fix it even when I knew the likelihood of my changing things had somewhere near the same probability of the Kardashians going into hiding.

The truth was I’d always lived my life on the basis of possibility rather than probability. That was the reason I’d been on the gymnastics team in middle school. It was the reason I had graduated from high school even though I could tell my science teacher thought dark thoughts every time I entered his classroom. And it was why I was here in the first place. A relationship, one I valued beyond reason, had soured and, after more than a few unsuccessful, unreasonable attempts on my part to force it back to what I believed it should be, I had run away. At twenty-eight I had actually run away.

I’d known about this old run-down place for many years. It had been my uncle’s old house, one he’d lived in and died in. That he’d actually been dead a week before anyone knew it was something we didn’t talk about. No one in the family wanted the house and no one in the world wanted it either, so it had sat alone and ignored for the eleven years since he’d been gone. It was four miles beyond the edge of a dying town: one of those towns that has a gas station; a church with twenty pews, one for each parishioner and a few to spare; a bar with the same customers every night; and no police force.

I’d been here exactly one week, arranged for the utilities to be turned on, a surprisingly easy thing to do, and had unpacked all my earthly belongings. And swept. I had swept the building from bottom to top to bottom again. There was a lot of dirt. I’d been in the process of changing my mailing address when the phone had gone dead.

I hadn’t gotten a job yet, the nearest job being the factory ten miles south, but I wasn’t in a hurry. I had some money stashed away. It was in a manilla envelope under the silverware in a drawer in the kitchen.

As I stood peering out the window, I heard a creak; but it was different from the storm-related creaks and groans the old structure had been emitting for the last half-hour. I turned my head slightly and squinted into the dark.

to be continued…

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A fine mist fell, illuminated by the lights surrounding the football field. It was the beginning of the fourth quarter and the game had been one of those contests that was a battle from the very start. The stands were packed, faces tense, as the teams hustled back onto the field from a timeout. The tight end ignored his pulled muscle, the halfback rolled his right shoulder and the quarterback breathed slowly and deliberately, anticipating the snap. From the sidelines their coach called to them a phrase they repeated to themselves at every practice and every game. “All In!”

The student stood looking over the faces of her philosophy class. The professor was a persuasive fellow, likeable, handsome, and hateful of Christianity. First she had made an effort to gently question a few of his barbs. He was not one to back down, though, and the class had continued day after stressful day until it had reached the week of their final presentations. She didn’t know what made him think and feel so strongly, but he did. A few times she had asked herself if it was worth it to refute someone who appeared to be as immoveable as a boulder. Then she asked herself how she could sit and watch the face of Jesus be spit on one more time. As she took the podium, she whispered to herself, “All In”.

The mortar fire had been relentless. Company C had been reduced by a third, but the little town must be protected at all costs. They would keep defending while ten men drove out of the opposite side of the town and looped around to approach the aggressors from behind. They pushed every thought from their minds but one: All In.

They asked her one more time. Refute your faith in Christ or be whipped and hanged. Leave your children motherless, your husband a widower. Such a simple thing. Merely words. She looked back at her captors and said, “I will not”. The prayer she had prayed over the brutal weeks and months echoed in her mind. All In.

He laid on the bed, his breathing difficult and rough. He’d known this was coming as had his family. He’d known, but all the knowing didn’t make it easier, didn’t make it better. He’d lived his life as a Christian. He was by no means even close to perfect, but he was redeemed and that counted for everything. One other thing kept him calm and determined and curious. What was it really like on the other side of the curtain called mortality? He looked at the faces around him. Then he smiled and with his final breath said, “All In”.

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The painting in front of which the two children stood was awash in colors of black and rust, with splashes of red, and was a montage of well-drawn images. In the center stood a man, his foot on a copy of the Constitution of the United States of America. He was dressed in a shirt embroidered with many words, among them, “women’s rights”. He was smiling and waving to five happy men with turbans on their heads as they flew away to freedom. His back was to a woman being lashed one hundred times by a man resembling the ones flying to freedom. A noose hung slightly ahead of the woman. Her small child and newborn baby, held back by others, watched the scene. Over two hundred school girls sitting silently and guarded by soldiers with guns also watched.

In the upper left side was a scene of an embassy, lying in charred ruins. Four skeletons lay at its base. Slightly below that scene were guns, many guns with legs, running fast and furious toward a Mexican sombrero. One dead man in uniform lay between the guns and the sombrero.

Giant forms and tax records had been molded into iron gates to restrict some citizens from moving freely. A pregnant woman with hair the color of snow, each strand banded with jewelry that spelled ‘fear’ was giving birth to cameras and listening devices so numerous that they spilled out of the birthing room, down the hallway, and out the doors of the hospital where she lay. A picture of the hospital she had wanted to use instead hung from her limp hand. A giant eye in the corner of the frame seemed to follow onlookers, in this case, the two children, regardless of the angle from which they observed the painting.

A school building was marred by graffiti, with CC in bulging, garish letters. Tests were stacked neatly on each desk, while textbooks lay scattered on the school rooms’ floors. The school’s entryway held a picture of a gun with a line through it. Two dots on the top and a half-circle on the bottom made it into a happy face.

Reporters in a busy newsroom stood against a wall while a few important looking people looked through their phone records and emails, patiently crossing out whatever did not suit them.

Throughout the painting in small, nearly imperceptible drawings, was something else. Sprinkled all throughout the scenes was something like golden dust. Tiny images though they were, they drew the children’s eyes to them. A soldier stood stick straight, talking to the few who would listen. A woman bent down to help some fearful children and gave them sweet pieces of fruit with wrappers labeled ‘truth’. Some people were on their knees, their hands lifted in prayer. There were many, many images of many small, good things. It seemed, almost, that the painting pulsated with the golden dust; the tiny pictures growing more numerous and larger at times, then fading again to their infinitesimal size.

And the two children watched while the museum visitors around them toasted the great building’s success.

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Hundreds crowded the steps and spilled onto the sidewalk, waiting. It was opening day at what was touted as the finest art museum in the Midwest. The Museum of Artwork and Vision, MAV, had been six years in the making; from the first meeting of ideas, to argumentative meetings regarding design, to the ground breaking, to more meetings filled with debate, to the final MAV committee private tour. As opening day visitors paused in front of everything from hand thrown pots to busts to paintings, two children wandered from one room to the next. Their steps led them in an arbitrary tour of things that held little of their interest until they stopped in unison in front of a painting. Small and hung in an obscure spot, it had garnered little attention from most in the crowd. It, however, held the twins with an unaccountable pull, as though they could not move from their spot had they wished. The two understood, in that fuzzy place between mind and heart, that the story behind the painting was one that could change a life. The story had at the very least changed the lives of the ones who lived it, the ones who were in the small painting hung in an unimportant spot in one of the finest museums around.

to be continued . . .

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How it caught his eye, he didn’t know. He bent down and picked it up. It was a misshapen stone about 2 inches in diameter. It was the dark gray of river rock, but on one side silver, red, and blue stripes ran up and down along its surface. He turned it over; but no, it was just the one side where the stripes covered the otherwise dark gray. He put it in his pocket and looked at the sky.

The sun would be setting within the hour, he guessed. The air was already becoming that tempered color of dusk, a subtle dimming of light and warmth. The day’s brightness had gradually left and with it the cheeriness that sunshine brings. He’d been on the river for two hours doing more strolling and thinking than fishing. It was good out here, away from the pressures of committees and expectations and people needing him. Out here it was the way everything should be; slightly rugged and sparkling and colorful. Out here it was real.

The mayflies would be swarming soon. Trout would race toward them, flashing their colorful God-given Joseph coat and splashing in their leap to catch the flies. Then fishing could begin in earnest.

He cast out. It was a good one. He would have a trout or two or more to take home and show off and fry up. There it was! The familiar tug; the fight for life at one end and for food and satisfaction at the other. He pulled and played with the fish until it was close enough to net. With a practiced hand he unhooked his fish. Just as the splash of the trout sprayed him, he heard it.

The leaves of a bush rustle in a variety of ways. A spring breeze only slightly moves leaves in a playful whisper. The wind that stirs before a storm is faster. It’s urgent, a warning. This was neither. It was the sound of someone approaching. But, no. Not someone. The sound was too brash, too heavy.

He spotted it then, the dark brown coat, the swaying posture. The bear looked at him across the river that was suddenly more narrow than a minute before. Snout to the air, it sniffed. There was no way to remove the fish scent that touched his waders and permeated his hands. If he threw the fish to the bear it would be a short time before the bear came closer for more. Slowly he let the fish slip from his hand back to its home in the river.

Fishing was over for the night. He would give the other fisher extra room by his absence. He moved quietly and as quickly as he dared, making his way back to his truck, back to the people who needed him. That was real, too, after all.

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