Her Dog, Kind Of

            She is seen, standing oddly near the curb, in her fuchsia puffy coat. She is seen doing that, but she isn’t crazy, and neither is the dog whose little house is across the street and near the fence there. She is seen, but so what?

            She is there because of what she saw on a Saturday morning when she didn’t have to get up for school. She got up late on that bitter cold morning, looked at a sharp angle through her window to the side of the backyard, saw what she saw, and said: “Those morons!”

            She saw that the new people next door had put their dog out so it wouldn’t leave a mess while they were gone. She had seen the dog a few times before. It was a big ol’ homely-beautiful-tiger-brindled dog. A nose, then head, then the hyena-high shoulders coming around the little doghouse. The girl knew what to do, and she was the one to do it, as cold as it was.

            She put on any shoes and ran downstairs. She knew dogs. Others didn’t. If a dog knows you know dogs, it’s usually alright. If not, and if a dog like that thinks you’re messing with it, it’s a trip to the ER, asking, “Would you please remove this dog?” She wasn’t afraid. She knew dogs, and right now, that dog needed fat. Through the kitchen, to the ‘fridge, and pizza would do. Then, out to the winter shock.

            The cold pizza in her hand was the warmest thing around. She reminded herself not to run, but walk quickly, across snow that made the sound of wrapping junk on the living room floor on Christmas morning. She couldn’t see right due to the brightness and the ‘not sad, my eyes are freezing’ tears, but she had to get that slice of pizza to that poor dog. She walked quickly toward the dog, and the dog set up a racket:

            “This is all my turf! i’m lonely. cold, isn’t it? Now you’re on my turf. Don’t mess around. I think I like you, though.” The tail wagged.

            The girl stopped and tried not to chuckle. The dog could have that bit of her yard that the chain allowed it to reach.

            “It’s your place, and it’s my place.”

            She said it, and it didn’t make much sense, but it’s the tone that counts.

            “You’re not crazy. You’re cold.”

            She was assuring herself, too. But, as she put her hand on the dog’s bristly head, it was surprisingly warm. The dog had its eyes on the pizza. She said- ‘ok’, but she paused. She didn’t have to. She put the slice down.

            One-two-three, and there was nothing left but snow, and less of that.

            The dog looked up at her, and at her hands.

            “That’s all. That’s enough,” the girl said, and the dog understood when she didn’t waste time getting back inside.

            Her mother said to her, “I wouldn’t pet that dog. You’d better wash.” and she ran upstairs and laughed.

            She would swing by first thing and check in with Tanya in the afternoon, and sometimes dart into the kitchen to pay it forward with pizza, bits of meat, and other things that dogs eat. She would sit and spend time. Tanya didn’t use some of the spots around the little house, so, some spots were better than others. People passing by would look on the place with dread, but it was potentially the least crazy place in the world. Ben next door was okay, but told her not to feed the dog candy, and she laughed later. She knows dogs, and dogs shouldn’t eat candy. And she did make sure to wash, but Tanya shit was better than bullshit.

            She could be a vet, and run a no-kill shelter. She visited more and more as she mentioned dogs less at school. Otherwise, it would be all ‘link your interest', and she already knew things like dogs shouldn’t be fed anything with small bones, since they swallow it whole like pizza, and then sometimes it doesn’t come out all right.

            With the dog, it was: ‘You know me and I know you, and you know that, etcetera.’ And in the spring, she told Tanya,

             “Just between you and me, Ben needs to give you a bath. But it won’t stop me from coming here. I’m kind of always with you.”

            Time passed, and the world continued to overdo, either with too much, or too little, like a monk. School was stable and predictable, but they were always trying for the middle.

            “Woah! Not too much! Don’t run! Calm down. No fighting! Paint the walls salmon! That’ll work!” She shared space with others in an invisible steel ring that opened to accept new members. And, sometimes within, there was trouble, but you wouldn’t know by looking.

            At the doghouse, people wouldn’t know by looking, either. Sometimes people would stop there in the grass alley and, through the barking, ask her if Tanya was her dog. The first time, she answered- “Kind of,” and that worked. The people who really owned Tanya probably didn’t mind her saying that. ‘Kind of’ takes skill, determination, and commitment. They were each other’s ‘kind of’ in a bubble, in the afternoons. The conditions were out there.

            Then she went ‘link your interest’, or whatever, on an essay for the state test. It told her to write on a topic, but, reading it again, she saw that it could apply to anything. So she tweaked things a bit and made it about dogs. Teachers didn’t see it. It was written for some nerd at an old desk wearing a green visor, who passed it, she guessed. She told Tanya, one afternoon when the school year was winding down, “There’s a story about you, on paper, in some big storage closet now. Only one person read it. Hope you don’t mind.”

            She imagined that the closet had sand-plaster walls, and was painted shiny puke green. And that the door was framed by rock columns that Lincoln himself had chiseled. And, someone had put a sticky-note on her essay, which read: “B+. Knows dogs. Has to work on her handwriting.”

            So, now, she is seen. Walking slowly back up the alley.

            Because one night brought with it a new set of conditions among conditions.

            “Now?”

            “I told you it’d be now.”

            “But, you’ve been saying that for awhile.”

            “Now is now.”

            All of a sudden, they were now residents of Blair Street. Many things were left behind in the rush. They stay in her mind. But that night, she remembered, while being hurried about gathering things in bags, to send a high-pitched burst from her mind for Tanya. “Always”.

            Although it was blocks out of her way, she went back sometimes. The next door neighbors didn’t mind. Things stabilized as well as they would. She sat with Tanya and thought of things left behind in the house there, but she couldn’t get them. It was off limits.

            She is seen walking away down the alley, and, so what? People can walk down the alley. She wanted to be with the Tanya, at the place, but saw that there were new conditions. There’s a crew fixing the front porch of the house, and they at least wouldn’t understand. She spins around in the middle of the alley and sends a message back:

            “I’ll be back when things settle down.”