Ray opened the shop at five like he always did, not because anyone was coming at five but because his body didn’t know how to sleep past four-thirty anymore.
Eleven years he’d been doing this. The lock stuck the same way every morning, a quarter turn too far and then back, and he’d stopped noticing he did it until one day he caught himself doing it in the dark with his eyes still half shut and realized the motion lived in his hands now, not his head.
The fluorescent tube flickered three times before it caught. It always flickered three times. He’d thought about replacing it but the new ones came on too fast, too bright, like walking into a dentist’s office. Three flickers gave him a second to settle into the room.
The shop smelled the way it always smelled. Rubber and bait and the faint sweet rot of the lake that came through the walls when the wind was right.
He started the coffee maker, the old Mr. Coffee that Carol had bought at a Goodwill because she said no machine needed to cost more than twelve dollars to heat water and push it through grounds. She’d been right. He was still using it.
He poured a cup and went out front to check the minnow tank. The porch had two plastic chairs he’d bought at a yard sale for three dollars each. They were white once. Now they were the color of old teeth.
Nobody ever sat in them except Ray, and he only sat in one, the one on the left, because the one on the right had been Carol’s and it was a chair and it didn’t know she was dead but he did.
The minnow tank was fine. It was always fine.
He stood on the porch drinking his coffee and looking at the lake, which was flat and silver in the early light, and he let the morning happen without him for a minute. The coffee was too hot and he drank it anyway.
The dog was lying on the concrete next to the chairs.
Ray didn’t know how he’d missed it coming out. It was right there, flat on the ground, not on either chair, just pressed against the concrete like it had picked the hardest surface available and settled for it. Medium-sized, brown, some kind of mutt with a wide chest and ears that went up partway and folded over.
It lifted its head and looked at him. The eyes were tired. Lids heavy, whites gone yellow.
“Morning,” Ray said.
The dog’s tail scraped the concrete once. Then it put its head back down.
He stood there looking at it the way he looked at most things, which was practically. It had a collar on, red nylon, plastic buckle, the cheap stuff they sell at gas stations.
The red had gone dark along the edges and the nylon was frayed at the D-ring and the whole thing hung loose around the dog’s neck. Whatever size this dog had been when somebody put that collar on, it wasn’t that size anymore.
He could see the ribs. Not the suggestion you’d get on a lean dog built that way. These were ribs right there under the skin, plain as fence posts.
Ray went inside and refilled his coffee and stood at the counter looking through the screen door at the dog on his porch. He’d had dogs his whole life. Bird dogs mostly, a couple mutts. He’d buried four of them behind the house where the property sloped down toward the tree line.
Dug the holes himself every time, and every time the shovel hit a depth where the dirt changed color and got cool and he’d think this is enough and keep going anyway because the dog deserved better than enough.
This one on the porch was sick. He could see it in the coat, dull and flat, and in the way it lay there, not sleeping but not quite present either. The body pulling inward, spending everything on whatever was happening inside. He’d seen it before. He didn’t need to catalog it to know what it meant.
He went to the back of the shop where he kept a hot plate and a mini fridge. Leftover catfish from last night, fried in a cast iron pan with salt and cornmeal.
He’d eaten half standing at the kitchen counter at home, which was where he ate everything now because the table was too big for one person and too small for the silence. The other half was in a plastic container.
He put some catfish on a paper plate and filled a bowl with water and brought them both out. Set the water down first. The dog’s head came up and it got to its feet, and the getting up was slow, front legs first, then the back, with a pause in between where the body gathered itself against something Ray couldn’t see.
The dog drank. Long and steady, half the bowl. Then it turned to the catfish and sniffed it and pushed a piece with its nose. Ate one small bite and stepped back from the plate and stood there looking at Ray.
“That bad, huh,” Ray said.
He sat down in the left chair. The lake was out there past the gravel lot and the boat ramp, still as glass, and neither of them did anything for a while. After a few minutes the dog walked over and lay down next to his chair. Not touching him. Just near. Close enough that Ray could hear it breathing.
He reached down and scratched behind its ears. The dog leaned into his hand, and Ray sat there scratching a dying dog’s ears on a porch where his wife used to sit and watch the boats come in.
Carol would sit in the right chair with her coffee and wave at every single boat whether she knew them or not. Ray never waved. He’d just sit there and let Carol do the waving for both of them, and now the boats came in and nobody waved and the boats didn’t seem to care but Ray noticed every time.
The dog’s breathing was heavy. Ray kept scratching its ears and watched two herons work the shallows by the boat ramp, patient and still, waiting for something to swim close enough.
—-
Around eight he drove to town for ice. He was loading bags into the truck bed when he remembered he needed stamps, so he walked across to the post office. On his way out he passed the community board next to the door. The usual stuff, church potluck flyer and somebody selling a riding mower.
And a picture of a dog.
Ray stopped. The flyer was printed on regular copy paper, starting to curl at the edges. A photo of a brown dog standing in a yard, healthy, full coat, bright eyes. Ears that went up partway and then folded over at the tips. MISSING DOG. A description and a phone number. Please call if you have any information.
The dog in the photo looked like it weighed twenty pounds more than the one on his porch. But the ears were the same, and the chest, and the way it stood. Time and road and whatever was going on inside that body could account for the rest.
He pulled the flyer off the board and folded it and put it in his shirt pocket.
Back at the shop the dog was still on the porch. Hadn’t moved. He went inside and picked up the landline and unfolded the flyer and dialed the number.
It rang three times. Four. He was composing the voicemail in his head when the line picked up.
“Hello?” A woman’s voice. Rough in a way that wasn’t one bad night. Sounded like she hadn’t slept right in weeks.
“Yeah, hi. My name’s Ray Connolly. I got a bait shop out on Lake Road, about six miles past the Route 9 junction. I’m looking at a flyer here and I think I might have your dog.”
He leaned against the counter, the phone warm against his ear. The flyer was getting damp where his thumb pressed the fold.
Silence. Then a breath, pulled in deep.
“You have him?”
“He’s on my porch. Brown dog, red collar, ears that go up and fold over. Skinny. But it looks like the same dog.”
“Oh God.” Something in her voice broke open. “Oh God, that’s him. That’s him.”
“He showed up this morning. I gave him some water and food. He drank the water but he didn’t eat much.”
“Is he okay?”
Ray looked through the screen door at the dog on the porch. The thin frame. The dull coat. The way it lay there with its head on the concrete.
“He’s here,” Ray said. “He’s resting.”
“I’m coming. Where are you exactly?”
He gave her the directions. Past the Route 9 junction, six miles, the shop on the left, says CONNOLLY’S BAIT on the sign but the sign’s faded so look for the gravel lot and the boat ramp.
“How far are you?” he asked.
“Four hours. Maybe three and a half.”
“That’s a drive.”
“I don’t care. I’m leaving right now.” He could hear her moving. Keys. A door.
“I’ll keep him here,” Ray said. “He’s not going anywhere.”
“Thank you.” Her voice cracked on it. “I’ve been looking for weeks, I’ve been everywhere, I went to a clinic and he was there and then he wasn’t…”
She stopped herself.
“I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
“Drive safe,” Ray said. “He’ll be here.”
He hung up and stood there with his hand on the phone. The shop was quiet. The fluorescent hummed. Outside the dog lay on the porch and the lake held still and the morning went on.
—-
He spent the afternoon the way he spent every afternoon, which was waiting for someone to need something. Sold a bag of ice to a guy in a bass boat. Restocked the cooler. The dog stayed on the porch. Around noon it drank some more water but wouldn’t eat. Ray tried plain rice and it took three bites and turned away.
He sat with it while the shadows got long. The dog lay next to his chair and Ray scratched its ears and felt the bones under the fur, too close to the surface.
Carol’s garden was still behind the house, or what was left of it. The raised beds she’d built from cedar planks, the tomato cages still standing in rows. Ray hadn’t planted anything in them since she died.
He mowed around them. Kept the beds clear of weeds because that felt like something he owed her, though he couldn’t have said what.
The woman hadn’t arrived by dark. Four hours, she’d said. It had been over twelve. He tried the number and it rang out to voicemail. A tired voice. Hi, you’ve reached me, leave a message.
He didn’t leave one. He’d wait.
He locked up at nine and drove home and walked through the house turning on lights the way he always did, every room, because Carol used to do that and he’d told her it was wasteful and now he did it himself because a dark house was worse than a high electric bill.
He washed the cast iron pan from last night and set it on the stove and stood in the kitchen with nothing to do and the whole house lit up around him.
He went to bed. Set the alarm for four-thirty even though he’d never once needed it.
He drove back at five the next morning. The gravel popped under the tires and the headlights swept across the front of the shop and across the porch and across the two plastic chairs and across nothing else.
The porch was empty.
He sat in the truck for a second with the engine running. Then he got out and walked up and stood there looking at it. The water bowl was there. The paper plate with the untouched rice. The two chairs.
Everything was there except the dog.
He walked the gravel lot and went down to the boat ramp and looked along the tree line. Nothing. No brown shape. No red collar. Just the lake and the birds starting up.
He went inside and turned on the light, three flickers, and started the coffee maker. Carol’s twelve-dollar Goodwill coffee maker. He stood at the counter while it worked and looked through the screen door at the empty porch and the chairs and the bowl and the plate.
He picked up the phone and dialed the number from the flyer.
Voicemail. The same tired voice. Hi, you’ve reached me, leave a message.
The beep came and Ray stood there with the phone against his ear. He’d told her the dog would be here and it wasn’t. He didn’t know if she’d gotten lost, or changed her mind, or broken down on the highway. He didn’t know if she’d ever hear this. But the dog had been on his porch and now it wasn’t and someone should know.
“This is Ray,” he said. “From the bait shop. Your dog took off in the night. I thought he’d stay but he didn’t.” He looked through the screen door at the porch, at the road past the gravel lot, at the trees going east toward the sun coming up. “It went east. I’m sorry.”
He hung up.
He poured a cup of coffee and went out to the porch and sat in the left chair. The morning was cool and the lake was there and the right chair was empty. He picked up the water bowl and the paper plate and brought them inside. Stood at the counter drinking his coffee.
A truck pulled into the gravel lot. A man got out wanting minnows.
Ray went to help him.