By Giano Cromley
I open my eyes and experience a lovely moment of short-term amnesia.
A second later, I’m struck by a sizzling flash of dread when I look around and realize what happened last night. I went AWOL, skipped town, and spent the night in a beat up Crown Vic in the middle of nowhere with a man who claims to be (and disappointingly probably is) my father.
The air in the car is fuggy from stale night-breathing. Rod is slumped against the driver’s side window, doing a light, whistling snore. His baseball cap has fallen off and sits on his lap, leaving his greasy hair rumpled. I can tell he’s one of these people who can sleep anytime and anywhere, interruptions be damned, which is one trait I wish I’d inherited from him but sadly didn’t.
I’m glad to be on my own for a few minutes, to take stock of where I am and what my next move might be. So I peel my blanket off and delicately nudge open the door. To the north, about a mile away, I can see a cluster of buildings that makes up the last town we passed through. To the south, nothing but open, flat country. There’s no traffic in either direction.
Eager to engage in some semblance of morning hygiene, I decide to follow the sound of running water behind me. I push my way through the bushes. The ground feels spongy, and the dew quickly soaks my boots.
Eventually, I come upon a small stream carving a path between the rocks and tree roots. I kneel down at the bank and cup some water in my hands. It’s bone-shatteringly cold. When I splash my face, my lungs snap wide, and my skin pulls tight. I let out an involuntary, “Whoo.”
I’m awake now, ready to face my current situation with a clear head. I should get back to the car, but for some reason I don’t feel like dealing with Rod just yet. Might as well let him enjoy his sleep a little longer.
Across the stream, further east, there’s an open field with a small herd of cattle grazing. The trees are taller down here, close to the water. A mix of cottonwoods and willows that gives the air a particular sweet tang that reminds me of something that hovers at the edge of memory.
Suddenly, standing at the stream bank, I get the distinct feeling I’m being watched. My head swivels, peering through the foliage, expecting to see a pair of eyes. Instead, I notice a weird shape of dense growth near the edge of the field where the cattle are grazing.
I hopscotch across the stream to investigate, and it isn’t until I’m close that I realize it’s an abandoned cabin. The wood plank walls are gray and splintery, and the roof has long since caved in. All told, the building’s a little bigger than my dorm room back at Haverford, yet it probably sheltered a whole family at one point.
I try to imagine the stories of the lives that took place within those walls — earthy German or Scottish immigrant stock, working the land, trying to make a go of it. They had to build this shack in a hurry before the first winter set in. They always meant to improve on it, but weak crops and hard living kept those plans on hold. Then maybe their youngest child passed away from scarlet fever that one summer when things had just started to look up. It was enough to get them to pack it in and head back east, chastened, with dreams much smaller than they’d once been. The shack was left to the elements, a sacrifice to nature and the gods in the hope that both would be kinder in life’s next chapter.
Now that I’ve imagined this story, I feel a strange need to be inside the shack, to feel it. The brush is thick, and one of the native species in these parts has some serious thorns on it, but I manage to make my way through, until I find a doorway and enter the abandoned homestead. As I look around, I notice evidence that someone was making use of this shack well after my imaginary homesteaders skedaddled. There’s a ring of blackened rocks and a smattering of empty SpaghettiOs cans. Near the far wall, I spot an old vinyl car seat that’s come apart at the seams with yellow, spongey stuffing poking out. I nudge the seat once with my toe.
The air around me is moist and cold. Flies are droning in the corner like monks chanting in a foreign tongue. My head is woozy, perhaps from a bad night’s sleep, or maybe from something else. My balance starts to go topsy-turvy, so I sit down in the car seat. I lean back and close my eyes to ride out this mental turbulence.
And as I sit there, I feel myself being transposed to a different time and place. I’m not in a shack in North Dakota anymore. I’m sitting behind the wheel of Debbie’s Subaru, in Billings, parked outside a veterinary clinic. And I can hear a voice. It’s Debbie, asking me a question: “Are you sure?”
This past summer, when I got home from Haverford, it was clear that life back in Billings had changed. Debbie’s relationship with Harley was cratering, and her spirits were accordingly despondent. For me, I was feeling the positive effects of the Time of Abiding and raring to get back to school. But I was shocked when I got sight of Mr. T.
His soulful schnauzer eyes, normally dark and deep with empathy, had gone cloudy and unreadable as a Greek oracle. His hair was patchy. He seemed skittish and confused. He showed a distaste for the indoors, preferring instead to lie in the backyard and stare at the gate, as if he expected it to suddenly open and release him.
“What’s wrong with Mr. T?” I asked Debbie the evening I got home.
“Things are getting harder for him,” she said vaguely, and a bit ominously.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Debbie and I were standing in the kitchen watching him watch the gate.
“I’m sorry, son.” Her face trembled.
“Why are you sorry?” I asked cautiously, because in my experience it’s always a bad sign when people apologize for no reason.
“We went to the vet last week,” she said, her eyes brimming and then overflowing. “Cancer.”
I stepped away from Debbie as if I’d been slapped.
“When were you planning to tell me?” I asked, though it wasn’t the question I really wanted an answer to.
“I couldn’t.”
She reached out to touch my shoulder, but I spun away.
“What are you doing about it?” I asked. “What’s the plan of action?”
“They found it too late,” she said. “There’s nothing we can realistically do.”
“Nothing? And you’re okay with that?”
Debbie looked at the dirty dishes that sat in the sink.
I knew it was killing her to tell me this, knew I was making it harder, and that she probably needed comfort from me as much as I needed it from her. But I felt the kind of pain that only feels better when you hurt someone else. So I turned away, walked out on her, out to the backyard where I sat next to Mr. T and joined in his silent vigil of the back gate.
Within a week, I could tell that things with Mr. T were even worse than I’d guessed. He stopped eating, only sipped occasionally at his water. We woke up one morning to see he’d had an accident all throughout the living room. He’d never had an accident inside, not since his earliest puppyhood, and you could see it was killing him to have violated one of his primary dog commandments. He sat in the mess, ears tucked back in shame, too weak to move himself out of it.
Wordlessly, we knew it was time. Debbie got a blanket and wrapped him up in it and took him out to the car. She asked me to drive — the first time I’d driven since getting sent off to Haverford. The vet’s office wasn’t far. I maneuvered the car slowly, took the turns wide, to make sure Mr. T was as comfortable as possible.
When we pulled into the lot and I shut off the car, Debbie said, “It’s the right thing to do, Kirby.”
I said, “I know, Debbie.”
She must have detected something in my voice because she said, “You don’t have to come in.”
I said, “I want to.”
I can hear my own voice now, the sound of it, and I’m struck by how childish it sounds.
Then I saw her face harden, not in a mean way. She was just steeling herself for a task she’d rather not do, especially since it was becoming apparent she’d have to do it alone. I tried to move. I tried to pry my hands from the steering wheel, tried to reach for the door handle and walk through the parking lot without collapsing into a heap. I wanted to let my dog know I was there for him and always would be on some vast and vital cosmic plane.
But I couldn’t do any of those things. Not one.
“Are you sure?” Debbie asked. Her voice — the way she said it — is so clear to me now as I sit here in this abandoned cabin.
“Yes,” I whispered, though I don’t think I’d ever been more unsure about anything my whole life.
Then Debbie, recognizing what I really meant, nodded in absolution. It was the most generous thing she’s ever done for me.
She got out, opened the tailgate and lifted the small bundle of suffering from the back. I sat in that car seat and watched as she cautiously took the steps to the vet’s office, shifted the weight to her hip so she could open the door and slip inside.
I knew I’d taken the easy way out, knew it would probably be one of the last times in my life when I’d be allowed to. The hardest part of being a parent, I imagine, is that you always have to be an adult.
I watched as she came back out, a half hour later, shoulders slumped like she was really, really tired.
After that day, Debbie’s consumption of The Golden Girls increased markedly. The tapes ran on a constant loop. Even if she wasn’t watching, they were always on in the background, as if the sounds of their voices could comfort her.
A week later, in an attempt to cheer her up, I came into the TV room and said, “Should we get another dog? To keep you company?”
Debbie looked up. Her eyes were a little bit wild, like she couldn’t quite tell how either of us had gotten there.
“I don’t think I can go through this again,” she said.
It wasn’t clear to me what the antecedent to the word this was. Did it mean having another dog? Or did it mean having another son? Later on, I started to wonder if this was a placeholder for life itself.
The stuffing in this car seat is wet, and it’s soaked through my uniform to the skin on my butt cheeks. I can hear cows mooing in the distance and the sharp cry of a predatory bird somewhere overhead. Rod is probably waking up, wondering where I’ve wandered off to. The ghosts of the people who lived in this cabin are getting tired of my presence, telling me to leave now or join them forever. So I force myself to leave. I scramble back through the brush, across the stream, and out to the highway.
The Crown Vic is gone. I can see its tire tracks in the soft soil of the shoulder. I am alone in what is truly the middle of nowhere.
I’m not sure how long I was sitting in that cabin, but the sun is well above the horizon now. Rod must’ve seen I was missing and figured I’d ditched him in the night. He’s probably given up on corralling his wayward son and happily rejoined the ranks of nonparenthood. Which now leaves me with a decision to make.
I could hoof it back north to that town we passed through. Ask some kindly farmer to borrow his phone and ring up Haverford. Yes, I missed taps check and there’ll surely be a heavy price to pay for that, but I haven’t missed class yet. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll take pity on me and let me slink back into my previous miserable existence without too many extra punishments heaped on top.
Or I could call Debbie, tell her everything that’s happened, apologize for a lapse in judgment and perhaps go back to a different kind of miserable existence.
Then there’s a third option. I could stick my thumb out until I find a ride south, figure out how to get the rest of the way to Chicago, track down Izzy, profess my boundless and undying love for her and live the life that that path leads me on.
It’s not an easy choice. I’ve reached the age where I can see as many pros as cons in whatever choice I make. Which is, on balance, a pain-in-the-ass point in your life to reach. I walk back to the road and stand there with my toes touching the asphalt. Doubt hangs over me like a heavy cloud.
Then, in the distance, I hear an engine. A car is coming, heading south. The driver lets off the gas before he even gets to me. Probably one of those neighborly types who’s always asking people if they need help.
The car comes to a stop at my feet. Rod sticks his head out the window and looks me over. “Figured I’d let you enjoy yourself down by that stream for a while,” he says.
“Where the hell were you?”
“Had to make a quick phone call.” He rests his elbow on the windowsill. “Shall we proceed?”
I look up and down the highway. No other cars are in sight. Whatever decision I’d been facing, it seems to have been made for me.
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Related Feature: One Question: Giano Cromley
Giano Cromley is the author of the novel, The Last Good Halloween, and the story collection, What We Build Upon the Ruins, both of which were finalists for the High Plains Book Award. He is the recipient of an Artists Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council, and was a BookEnds Fellow with Stony Brook University. He is an English professor at Kennedy-King College in Chicago, where he is chair of the Communications Department, and sits on the committee for the Center of Equity for Creative Arts. He lives on the South Side of Chicago with his wife and two dogs.
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