10X10X10
issue 1
| 06/01/07: Issue 1
What the Dog Dragged In
The man takes the counter seat in the diner, one leg swinging around the red leather circle as if expecting to find a bronco to bust instead of a fast to break. The waitress says, “So sorry for your loss, Jim.” He nods, two eggs over hard, crisp bacon as if she doesn’t know already, same meal every Tuesday morning after early Mass. “I heard the news on the radio.” Grunt, two sugars in the coffee. “Terrible thing, them making you go through all those DNA tests.” The diner, half empty, has gone still, customers holding their collective breath. The waitress won’t leave him alone, she’s circling him the way a buzzard tips and spirals at the sight of recent road kill. “Course it must have been the worst thing waiting all winter knowing he had to be out there somewhere. Your father was always real good in the woods. I remember him sugaring and splitting wood with my dad.” Jim stirs coffee, crumples one slice of bacon and shoves it into his yawning mouth all at once as if to block any words threatening to slip out. “Of course, a dog always knows where his master is. Especially Poker. He’s been with your dad almost twenty years now, isn’t that right. And I expect with the melt--“ She stops herself, straightens the napkin dispenser, lining up the salt and pepper, wiping spots off the counter that aren’t there. “You know, you could sue that doctor who gave your dad the wrong medicine, the stuff that made him wander off like that. A man as busy as yourself with them two jobs can’t be expected to watch out for him all the time.” Jim takes the eggs slowly as if he’s decided this is his penance, the price he’ll have to pay until she gets right round to the idea she’s been turning over this whole time, the one last detail everybody in the booths and scattered down the counter and around the town want to know. “Jim, whatever old Poker brought home, you know, it could have come from an animal or something-“ her voice finally winds down and gives up. Jim swallows one last bite, slaps a five on the counter, same as always, tip included. He crosses the room deliberately like a man who has to remember how to walk after a long illness. Just before the door eases shut, the way a kid pokes his head in to have the final word, his voice makes its way back into the diner and says, “the leg bone” and everybody inside lets out the breath they didn’t know they’d been holding.
Elizabeth Winthrop is a published fiction writer whose poetry has been rejected by Charter Oak Review, Kalamazoo Review, Nation and Poetry Magazine among others. This is her first online publication. You can learn more here.
|
|
© 2007. Don't steal, it's wrong.