These were the reasons Paul neglected to leave the car windows cracked for Roger, the lame-eared bull terrier he’d bought soon after he signed the divorce papers: because he’d grown up loved and careless, the youngest of two by five years, practically an only child; because his brain ran hot with thoughts he struggled to categorize, to place or reconcile, to humor, to herd; because, now thirty-eight, he’d only just begun to do things for himself.
A warm morning, the overcast sky like a stalemate between sun and cloud. There’d be a visit to the bar for courage, followed by the dreaded trip to his parents’ house that afternoon. For now he’d kill time at Lyle’s Tackle and Hardware. Locked the vehicle doors with the fob and crossed the parking lot. Used the restroom and perused new inventory, blaze orange rods and the new selection of lures he’d read about in Field and Stream. While chatting with Delilah at the register, he didn’t turn back to see the mist over his shoulder clear, the sun having bested the brume. They swapped stories of the long, dumb hours working retail. Spoke of the car crash on Mountain View Road all over the news, two more teenagers screwing around and now dead. She’d gotten her nose pierced at the mall. A recommendation from her daughter. Told him it made her feel young again.
Paul stepped into bright sunlight with sudden unease in his gut, that feeling like when the distractions fell off and life came roaring back. Different this time though, a hint of guilt, the sense of some fault or a missed obligation. He saw the blue Plymouth and froze. Felt the weight of the bag loosen in his grip—nightcrawlers and AAA batteries for the motel remote—as he exhaled (Oh) and broke into a jog (fuck…fuck…fuck) toward a greater pain and the very real prospect of having done something spectacularly, unforgivably bad.
Glimpsed the motionless white hide through the window, the mass like a hole in the black interior. He tugged at the handle idiotically and then fumbled with the key fob on his hip. Unlocked the door and tore it open. Roger lay on his side like a plump carousel horse, legs outstretched mid-stride, the front left paw bloody. The odor was appalling, baked shit with a hint of acrid sweetness. Paul’s belly tightened. A voice called out to him.
He blinked and staggered and then caught himself against the hot car. Looked up and saw Delilah across the lot, the smoke from her vape pen swirling around her. The car singed his palm. Withdrew his hand and suddenly the world exasperated him, the sign twirler across the way, a sub shop, a Honda dealership.
“Hey,” he garbled. Wondered what she could see from where she stood. How long had she been watching? She smiled. Seemed especially small in her floppy red vest, her legs two thin rails of blue jean beneath.
“Got pretty hot out, huh?” she said.
He gave a dumb salute in reply. Fell into the stifling interior, dragged the door shut behind him and managed to start the engine. The A/C stammered in like a cruel punchline. And suddenly he was out on Route One, braking at a stoplight. Asked his eyes in the rearview if what he’d done was really done. Yes, they said. Roger’s big white head lay there beside him, warm against his thigh. But was it too late? Pulled out his phone. Typed in the nearest vet office with clumsy, trembling hands. Ten miles away and closed on Sundays. The car behind him honked. He started forward.
The realization was plain as he glanced over: Roger lay dead, his tongue hanging out to the side in that dumb, endearing way, the comedy now a perversion. Who forgets to crack the windows? What kind of asshole? What kind of monster? Drove about a mile in silence and then hit the wheel and cried out. Balled his hand and punched his forehead with his fist. Drove on as the houses and trees flitted past, unsure of where he was even heading.
There were reasons Theresa had left and reasons he slept all alone with a streetlamp leeching through the chintzy motel curtains, wasting away in the fluorescent hell of his job at Print Depot, six years with the copiers counting the seconds in collated clicks. And to drink and to game every night he got home was to kill himself off with cheap pleasures that blunted the real joys in life and extracted innumerable tolls, as if the blue light of the TV were sucking out his passion, contentment, sexuality, and filling the void with Miller High Life, one Call of Duty mission at a time. And now Roger was dead, a victim of moronic negligence. Struck his forehead again with his fist for good measure, harder than before. Drove on a while longer in silence.
And he might’ve predicted what would follow, a counter to balance the self-drubbing—a dark inclination arising from god knew where, perhaps some deep evolutionary feature. Because a human being was beholden to their mind. And should his ever tally all of the offenses committed, mistakes made, necessities forsaken and pains caused, he’d hurl himself right off the Falmouth Bridge. So it was that he felt his mental framing shift like sand beneath a stirring tide. Because, despite the rotten guilt deep down, he’d go on living and must cope with what he’d done.
Told himself he’d only had the dog these four months. The Dog. Yes, Roger would be referred to as such moving forward. There. Didn’t he already feel a little better? The Dog was a rescue as well, meaning The Dog was already indebted to him. As for the act itself—oh, but really, goddamn him—wasn’t negligence more forgivable than malice? There were human beings sharpening knives in cold kitchens that very moment, intent on violence. Corporate suits with boardroom schemes to defraud hardworking people. He’d made one awful mistake and had no choice but to move on.
And finally: The Dog was a dog. Just a dog. Only a dog.
Another mile down Paul spotted the Food Lion and hit the brakes hard, swerving into the lot. The mental shift had worked; it meant nothing to pull up beside that brick dumpster enclosure, shrewdly recalling the trick with the lock from back when he’d worked there part-time. Inhaled the fragrance of not-quite-expired bread. Meant nothing at all to open the passenger door and see viscous streaks of some mystery liquid down there on the seat, the source of the stench, perhaps vomit or shit. The whole horrible matter would cost him the leather jacket he took from the collection of winter clothes stashed in the trunk. His favorite garment. Theresa had hated it.
Spread it out over The Dog and hoisted the bundle, the thick jacket mercifully abstracting the fifty-five pound source of the weight—that is, so long as he paid no mind to the slumping tail on one side, the black nose and pink tongue lolling out of the other. He leaned into the open hatch and laid the bundle down gently in the dumpster darkness, the soft stacks of Wonder Bread hissing as The Dog sank into them. Dragged a separate heap of trash down over for concealment. And he felt that sickly weird thrill then as he scurried back to his car, of having gotten a fast one over on the world, a sensation like when he’d shoplifted candy or beer as a teen.
And it all meant nothing to him. He’d scrub the puke or shit and do better beginning tomorrow. Clean the chunk of fur off the door lock, the smeared traces of blood on the windows around him—oh, but really, damn the thought of Roger desperately scratching for air—and start everything over somehow. Paul was back on Route One now. And the farther he drove meant the further his past lay behind him. Ended up in that place just outside of downtown where he’d meant to be anyway. See? It was all working out.
The knock of pool balls and familiar gush of air greeted him, the hair rising on his forearms. No longer smoked himself, but loved the way it hung dank in this last local bastion of clunky glass ashtrays, conversations begun among strangers seeking a light. One man practiced his shot in the corner. That corny AC/DC song playing on the jukebox. Took a seat and stared listlessly at the whiskey bottles doubled by the backing mirror. The bartender came in from the rear, heaving a trough of longnecks on ice. Paul ordered a shot of bourbon and a beer. Downed the one and quickly slugged the other, tapping his heel on the stool rung to Queen. Ordered the same and sat trying to focus his untethered mind on the football game on TV. Here he was at the bar where he’d planned to be all along, where he’d aimed to pop in for a shot of courage before going on to ask his parents the dreaded question—and he might very well accomplish it, pretend he’d not done what he’d done. Ordered a third round, the buzz pleasant and warm in his chest.
The jukebox had stopped and the game on TV meant nothing to him. Paul mindlessly swiped a dingy menu from atop the bar and perused the pub offerings. Couldn’t even think of eating, though he’d barely had breakfast, but instead thought to feel the work of his own hands. He’d printed the menus himself several months back on thirty-weight goldenrod bond. Had laminated them with sturdy ten mil and cut the edges to bleed, per the bar manager’s request and against Paul’s recommendation that they keep the extra lam around the edges so the menu would remain sealed and protected. And check it out: already peeling at the corners.
As if he were one to give advice about lasting things. A dummy. And here it goes. The buzz opening him to himself like always, allowing a glimpse of his own hideous entrails. Paul felt heavy. Stuck. Trapped beneath the girth of his mind and thinking, I suck at the merciful teat of oblivion each evening. Worked forty-six hours last week and my car needs new brake pads. So tired from it all I could fall over dead. Memories of his father’s hands, his head being jerked back, the brush running hard across his scalp before mass. Would soon be going back to live in his old room, surrounded by sports memorabilia and whatever other trappings of his boyhood. That is, if his parents would have him. Which came down to the visit he’d be undertaking in mere minutes. Too big for his old bed. Too fat for his old desk. Almost forty years old and right back to where it all had begun.
Paul felt his head sink lower and lower. Rested it then on the bar, right atop the menu as he closed his eyes and listened to the pop of a bottle being opened, more pool ball collisions, the calming sounds of what could very well have been a recording titled Sunday Afternoon in a Mostly Empty Bar. On cue, the door opened and a group entered.
“Told him I’d return the favor on the back nine,” a man said.
Heard them mosey over to the other end of the bar, where they ordered a pitcher and two gin and tonics. He hoped they’d get their drinks and maybe grab a table near the back, but they lingered instead, one of them asking the bartender to switch the TV to the ‘Skins game.
“That’s a four o’clock start,” the bartender said.
“Then turn it to the Eagles,” said another. “Check out buddy over there, guys. Must’ve gotten plastered.”
Paul realized how he looked and wished they’d just leave. Didn’t want to raise his head though—the ten mil had a nice texture. Felt cool on his forehead.
“All men his age look like that,” a lady said. “Defeated. Too much porn, I think. Messed up their expectations.”
The bartender laughed out loud at this.
“A generation of foreheads on bars,” he said.
“Turn it to the Eagles, man,” the one guy said again.
Should’ve also said please but whatever. Paul knew their type from his various stints in the service industry.
“Maybe his wife left him,” the lady said.
“Or maybe his dog died,” mused the bartender, prompting another round of laughter.
Paul shot up and looked all around him to find the group suddenly gone, one lone patron dabbing his drink stirrer. Rubbed at the mark on his forehead and wondered if he’d nodded off. He pulled his phone from his pocket to check the time. The sight of the screensaver walloped him: Roger wearing his goofy dog grin. The phone fell from his hand and clattered onto the hardwood. He slinked off the bar stool, swiped the phone and jammed it back into his pocket as the bartender emerged from the kitchen with a rack of new glasses.
“Back to the land of the living, huh?” he said to Paul.
The game on TV was still in the early third quarter, meaning he’d only dozed a minute. Paul wincing at the fresh realization of the terrible thing he’d done. And not only had he done it, he’d responded by leaving Roger in a—who the hell washe to do that? He ordered a tequila shot and then closed out his tab. Caught the patron a few seats down staring over. And the shot helped, but still the bar felt more hostile by the minute, the way he’d expected only the world outside of it to.
The phone bobbed in his pocket like a loaded weapon as Paul stepped to his car. He knew it held pictures of Roger at the lake, on a perch off the Appalachian Trail, at a BBQ at his brother’s with Nellie, both niece and dog stained with streaks of green from rolling together in newly cut grass. Pulled back onto Route One in the direction he’d come from, inhaling the sweet shit stink as a type of penance, earnestly wondering if he’d ever be able to use the device again.
He returned to the Food Lion parking lot, which appeared different now in the less scorching, early autumn afternoon. The brick enclosure felt more tomblike, swathed in shadow. Did the thing he knew to do and slunk through the gate. The trapdoor cried out as he slid it aside. He moved fast, shoving through the stinking garbage since added to what he’d pulled onto Roger’s body. In fact the dog was now completely immersed, Paul finally wrenching Roger’s remains from the pliable bread, once again glad for how the thick jacket made an anonymous lump of it all. In the car he yanked the hem over a pink jowl. Rolled down all the windows and turned the air on as he cruised along Route One, certain only of where he was going.
His old street recalled an era of some unkept promise, houses built to last, their windows frowning out at every lawn. American and USMC flags adorned the neighborhood, the occasional Trump 2024 sign faded by the sun. Chippy sidewalks bulged here and there from the slowly rising roots of elms beneath them. Paul drove up to the house he’d grown up in, a small blue colonial with the attached green carport. The boxwood shrubs that were the fragrance in his childhood memories had long been uprooted, the mulch beds having washed away so that only a patch of pale dirt bordered the house front. He staggered across the lawn and up the stoop.
Paul stepped right into the spiced, slightly medicinal-smelling home, its subtle stink of feet an addition in the year since he’d last visited. Heard the television on in the living room and peered into the dim space at newspaper piles, a gerbil cage sans gerbil, small stacks of plates lain at random intervals as if meant to pin down the worn carpet. His mother sat smoking in her chair. Leaned forward as he crossed the entryway, squinting. He continued to the kitchen.
“Paul?” she called behind him.
Made for the fridge and opened it. Swiss cheese and ham fixings would do. An open loaf of rye bread sat on the counter which, thankfully, was only slightly stale and showed no mold. He began to craft a sandwich right atop the gummy counter, as if he’d just come in from JV football practice. Heard his mother’s footsteps patter up behind him.
“Paul,” she said. “You’re here. What’s the matter?”
Spread mustard off the blade of an unwashed knife. Added a squirt of mayonnaise. Swaying all the while—was pretty drunk after all.
“Where’s Theresa?” his mother said.
Because when had she last seen him alone? Had been forever since he last entered the home without Theresa by his side.
“I’ve got a question for you, mom.”
“Here, take these seed packets home to her. I overdid it this summer and have leftover—”
A low rumble interrupted her, the familiar sound of weapons testing on the base ten miles away. He’d grown up with the sound as a backdrop to street hockey games, birthday parties, his first sexual experience. The floor trembled beneath them as they stood in place, listening to the glasses and plates rattling in the wall cabinets. It finally ceased.
“Said I’ve got a question for you.”
She began digging through her wicker basket where she kept hand lotions, lighters, coupons.
“You know, Paul. I was thinking about you two the other day at mass. Father Collins gave a sermon about gratitude, saying we ought to reflect on things in our lives we feel thankful for. I thought about how grateful I am that you found a nice girl to put up with you.”
Paul took a too-big bite of sandwich and recalled, chewing, that he wasn’t even hungry.
“Oh, you know how you were, making bad decisions, getting into trouble. We were always worried you had something wrong with you. And now look at the man you’ve become, hardworking and decent. It was her doing, of course. Here. These zucchini seeds, take these ones—you smell like a pub. Have you been drinking?”
And for the briefest moment those last words took him back to sixteen, standing in that very spot, confronted with that same line of questioning. Was wearing his Adidas shell tops and a fitted cap. The radio she used to keep on in the kitchen playing that popular Sugar Ray song. He knew this would happen, the wave of nostalgia. And was earnestly glad to feel it again, his youth, even if only by a passing reverie. That sense of comfort familiar to the time, when his mistakes had only been minor, the big choices yet to be made. He was indeed drunk. Suddenly craving the confines of his room, to continue the fantasy for as long as it would hold.
“Paul,” his mother said. “Paul? What’s the matter?”
Paul put down the sandwich and broke past her, toward the staircase.
“You have a question for me?” she hollered after him.
“I’ll go ask Dad,” he said.
Trudged up the stairs as she called out behind him.
“Your father’s in the basement, Paul.”
He reached the top landing and turned left into the hallway. Floated down the dim space with the floorboard creaking, same spot as always. The door to his room was closed. Paul twisted the handle and opened it, expecting the slight groan. Could’ve very well been fresh off the bus with his backpack slung over one shoulder, insecure in the very innocence he now yearned for. Hit the light switch and gasped as the dream dissolved:
It was like stepping into a warzone, his old room reduced to rubble. Hunks of busted drywall covered everything, jagged edges like small mountains jutting up from underneath a layer of gray fluff. He reached down and ran his fingers through the feather-soft substance, like snow without the cold; stood a moment enduring the sight of his boyhood defiled. The top of some trophy peeked out of the wreckage. On the walls remained the unaffected posters of Frank Thomas at bat and Kathy Ireland in a bikini, another of a blue tornado he’d bought on a field trip to the science museum. Overhead, he finally noticed, was a gridiron of bare ceiling studs and electrical wires, musty darkness beyond. He backpedaled and closed the door.
Descended the stairs and could hear the distinct sound of his mother chatting on the landline in the kitchen.
“Don’t know why he’s here but I think something’s wrong,” she said.
He rounded the landing and started down the hallway, passing family portraits on the wall. Entered the kitchen.
“Anyway, how’s my granddaughter?” his mother said into the clunky receiver. “I emailed you that article in Reader’s Digest about bullying in schools.”
Snuck behind her and headed for the basement door, opening it to the warm metallic air. The whine of a grinder wheel greeted him. Made his way downstairs to the concrete bottom. The dim, open space had that dense charge of purpose, of things being done. Knew to head for the rear corner, passing the section of floor mottled with green blots from a very slow leak, the weight rack and bench throwing skeletal shadows in the beam of a snake light. Another rumble from the nearby Marine base made the hard floor quake, the space suddenly feeling how he imagined a bunker might; the near wall sighed a puff of grit through its cinderblock seams.
The man sat atop a barstool, perched in the lamplight, his focus especially drawn to some small wisp of color he held clasped between a pair of tweezers. His other hand prodded incessantly, as if he were interrogating a fly. The backdrop to his father’s workbench was the massive black flag that had both terrified and enthralled Paul as a kid. It featured a skull wearing an olive-green cap, two crossed M4 Carbines and the phrase, “U.S. Marines—Mess With the Best, Die Like the Rest.” The skull had always aroused a deep terror, as he’d imagine it to be grinning, reveling in the triumph of death. He could now see that it wasn’t. It was simply a skull. All skulls appeared to grin.
“Get a beer,” his father called back. “They’re in the fridge behind you.”
Paul’s reaction was to do as told. Swiped a cold Killian’s from the fridge and twisted off the top. Took a long drink. Another rumble from the weapons testers once again froze everything. He’d always thought of them less as bombs but more as the footsteps of distant but encroaching giants.
“When did the ceiling collapse in my old room, Dad?” he said.
His father continued to prod the fly lure he’d crafted from fragments of feather or whatever, sometimes even a snip of his own hair. There was a name for the hobby Paul couldn’t recall at the moment.
“Is that what you came down here to ask me?”
And he was so susceptible—the man had barely spoken, had not even turned around and yet already had diminished him.
“Roger died,” he started. “My dog.”
“What dog?”
“My dog. I didn’t have him very long.”
How much did that sentence say? Wished to smack himself right in the forehead, soon as the words had left him. His father paused. Glanced back, peering over his glasses. Then he resumed his work. The hard beam of the snake light pried the age from his face.
“I need to bury him, Dad. In the backyard.”
“Nope,” his father said, shaking his head, observing his fly in the light. “That’s not even what you do. You go to a professional. A veterinarian. They bag it and stick it in a freezer for a couple weeks. Gets picked up and hauled off to an incinerator, where they burn it to ash, fur and bone and everything. How it happens. Two-thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Gunny’s in a coffee can upstairs.”
Paul imagined Roger’s soft white coat on fire—I believe you. I believe you. Please stop. His father continued:
“It’ll run you maybe three-hundred or so. What breed of dog did you say? How big?”
“Just a patch of dirt. All I’m asking for.”
“I’ll float you the cash, if you need it.”
“Cash? What? I’m thirty-eight fucking years old,” he said and took a big swallow of beer.
The ground beneath them gave a brief, low grumble, as if rolling over in its sleep. His father turned back again, not all the way as before, but as if he were drawing an ear to the sound. Perhaps he was acknowledging a noise so common that he’d ceased to hear it. Paul’s old man maybe considering, how many more distant bursts until the entirety, walls and ceiling and rooftop alike, trees and clouds and sky, collapse for good?
“Look, I’m sorry about the dog, son,” he said. “You can borrow the shovels and post hole digger. You’ve got your own yard.”
Paul stood watching his father do his thing; an unbearable rise of emotion stifled his breath and he found himself biting his fist—he wished more than anything ever to tell the man how lost he’d always felt in life, to admit he’d had no real friends since childhood and that Theresa, after years of overlooking the excuses, hangovers and passionless nights, of paying more than her fair share of restaurant bills, had thrown up her hands and abandoned the effort, leaving him to save herself.
Instead he quaffed the remainder of the beer, set it down on the grimy floor and then made for the fridge. He grabbed another for the road.
“Oh, you’re very welcome,” his father called back sarcastically as Paul groped his way toward the stairs in the blackness. “Give our best to Theresa.”
The warm light of the kitchen hit him—the smell of cooking was at once enticing and nauseatingly rich. His mother ran in and began stirring the pot on the stove. It was enough to start him down the hall and into the foyer, through the screen door that smacked shut behind him. Out into the late afternoon where he felt the shortening days of early autumn. Hot Christ, the stench in his car. Fuck. Headed back in the direction he’d come from, speeding past the Dollar General on one side, the movie theater closed for mold remediation on the other. Remembered he’d been holding the bottle of Killian’s the entire time, sucked at it and then pitched it bitterly, half-empty, out onto the grassy median. In the seat beside him sat the covered lump.
He turned into the Lyle’s Tackle and Hardware parking lot, pulling into the very space where it all had begun. The sun was setting, casting shadows lifetimes longer than the objects it shone on. Why had he returned? A need he’d meant to fulfill, a briefly considered idea he’d forgotten on the way over. Rolled his windows up and cut the engine. Stared over at the passenger seat and paused, imagining that the nondescript lump could be anything, whatever he wished it to be. Might lift the leather garment and grasp a bouquet of purple mums beneath, the clear wrapping crinkling in his fist. Might exit the vehicle and study his reflection in his window, pleasantly surprised to find his cowlick smoothed, his button-down shirt free of wrinkles. Might strut across the parking lot and find Delilah near the entrance, hitting her vape pen.
Paul reached over. And when he pulled back the jacket what he saw exploded it all: life was a balsa wood toy. A discarded tire rotting in the woods. A sweatshop replica of real beauty, designed for cost-saving. A fork with tines bent in the garbage disposal. Life was a closeout special, a five-for-one deal. Ubiquitous. Mass-produced. Mile after mile of drab housing developments, apartment complexes and fields, systems of nature occupying the land and competing for sunlight, whole swaths of the global population dropping off each day, cleft neatly away by the scything of war or the degradation of time, everything in between. There’d be no shortage of more life to come. Day after day after day after—
Pulled open the door handle and fell out, his seatbelt catching his chest. He burped and then felt the Killian’s rise to his throat. It spewed out, dark froth splattering on the gravel, burnt caramel notes sickly sweet coming up. And when he’d finished, he hit the seatbelt button and dropped hard against the gravel, skinning his palm as his face landed in his own puke. Day after day after day. And surely somewhere on that massive green earth lay a plot just for Roger. And surely somewhere on that massive green earth lay a plot just for him. Paul climbed up off the ground, his scraped hand stinging. Wiped his cheek with his shirt, shut the door to his car and started for the sign now lit against the early evening, where he’d select a shovel on Aisle Six.
Damien Roos is an author and playwright with an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. His work has appeared in such outlets as Southern Indiana Review, New South Journal and Barrelhouse. He is a former editorial fellow for Guernica Magazine, a former reader for PANK, and has completed his first novel, Sounds of Leaving, which was a semifinalist for the Big Moose Prize by Black Lawrence Press. By day he works in homeless outreach, previously in New York City and currently in Asheville, NC, where he lives with his wife, pitbull and bewitching black cat.
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