Gary saw seven dogs seated around the card table, he listened to “The Weight” as we wait for the collie to match, raise, or fold. Lady and the girls drink sherry in the kitchen and whisper to the yams. Jack preaches to squirrels that stand on the fence.
“I visited Quezon City, and I lived in Seoul, but I never seen bulldogs dance.”
He steps out to the back yard, the sky, dark grey with urban edges, lights the shadows. Silence shoves him like fans leave a stadium after a loss. He squints at the deafness, stares toward a stack of rocks. The stones remind him of snappers that sunbathe on logs stuck in riverbank mud, loud silhouettes of secrets the size of nightmares. The fish skulls stare east.
Gary hikes bare sidewalks for coffee. He notes the boy who waves from a third floor window every morning. Crippled by polio, he rereads comic books from 1954. A widow serves him tea, one sugar cube. Snow flakes sparsely. Snow flakes suspend. Chilly, not cold. Jack exits a café, sits with his coffee on a bench in front of the shop. Across the street, a public square features a circle around a fountain under a statue of a dead man that stares west toward the frontier of nightness. Settling snow on the bronze face reminds Jack of the carnival, leftover cotton candy. He drops the styrofoam, coffee falls, shatters in shards of black slush, sharp caffeine crystals stain the pavement. Gary interrupts,
“I remember the quicksand by the tracks, the hobo who drowned, the paperboys’ parade to the closed truck-stop, sledding under pines before bedtime, donkey basketball, sawdust celebrities.”
Jack recalls the milk that stales daily in the cafeteria, pledges allegiance to the spelling bee. Gary passes two cows in a pasture to prime the pump with poison ivy. Muskrats seep out of the watercress, salamanders tidy the spring while the raspberry thief watches the tennis court cave-in. Raccoons lock the dogs inside the gate.
