The fence post on the south side had been leaning since March and Dale had been meaning to fix it since March and every morning he looked at it from the kitchen window and every morning it was still leaning.
It bothered him the way everything bothered him now, which was personally. Like the fence post was doing it on purpose.
He poured coffee into the same mug he always used. The other one was still in the cabinet, the blue one with the chip on the handle that Karen had used every morning for six years, and he didn’t use it and he didn’t throw it away and he didn’t think about why he did neither.
He just reached past it.
The coffee was too hot and he drank it anyway because he wasn’t going to stand there blowing on it like he had somewhere to be. He didn’t have somewhere to be.
He had the fence post and about fourteen other things on the property that needed attention, and he’d get to them or he wouldn’t, and nobody was going to ask him about it either way.
That’s when he saw the dog.
It was standing about thirty yards out, just past the equipment shed, in the strip of grass between the mowed part and where the tree line started. Medium-sized, brownish, some kind of mutt.
It had a wide chest and ears that went up partway and then gave up and folded over. It was sniffing at the ground in that wandering way dogs do, zigzagging through the grass like it was reading a newspaper only it could see.
Dale set the mug down on the counter hard enough that coffee slopped over the rim. He didn’t clean it up. He went to the back door and pushed it open and stepped out onto the porch in his socks and yelled.
“Get out of here!”
The dog stopped and looked up at him. Didn’t run. It just stood there with its head slightly tilted, like it was considering whether he was serious.
He was serious.
Dale went back inside and pulled on his boots, the old ones by the door that he hadn’t laced up all the way in months, and walked out across the yard toward the dog.
The grass was wet with dew and by the time he was halfway there his socks were soaked through inside the boots and that made him angrier, which was fine because he’d been angry since he woke up and the anger needed somewhere to go.
The dog watched him come. It didn’t tuck its tail or crouch down. It didn’t look aggressive either. It just stood there like it had every right to be on his property, and that was what did it.
That was the thing that turned the low simmering heat in Dale’s chest into something that needed an exit.
He pulled off his right boot without stopping to think about it. The wet sock peeled against his foot and the morning air was cold on his toes and he threw the boot at the dog. Not near it. At it.
A hard overhand throw that sent the boot tumbling through the air, laces whipping.
It missed. Hit the grass about two feet to the left and bounced. The dog flinched and scrambled backward, ears flat, and then it turned and ran for the tree line. Fast.
Not panicked exactly, but with the kind of speed that comes from knowing what a thrown thing means. It had been thrown at before.
Dale stood there in one boot with his wet sock soaking into the cold ground and watched the dog disappear into the trees. His shoulder ached from the throw. His back ached from everything else.
He walked over and picked up the boot and put it back on and went inside and poured out the coffee that had gotten cold and made a new cup and drank it standing at the same window looking at the same leaning fence post.
He didn’t feel better.
—-
The rest of the day went the way days went.
The barn door hinge had been squealing for two weeks and he tightened it, and then he mowed the strip along the driveway even though it didn’t need it yet, because the day needed filling with something. He ate a sandwich standing at the counter for lunch because the kitchen table had two chairs and he’d rather stand than sit across from an empty one.
After lunch he walked the fence line on the north side checking for loose wire, and by the time he got back to the house his back was a fist between his shoulder blades that wouldn’t unclench and he took three ibuprofen and sat on the couch and fell asleep watching something about people buying houses in places he’d never been.
He woke up at four.
The light through the window had gone gold and soft and the TV was still on and for about half a second before he was all the way awake he thought he heard someone in the kitchen.
Water running, or a cabinet closing, or something that sounded like another person moving through a space, and then he was awake and the sound was just the TV and the house was empty the way it had been empty for two years.
He got up. Made dinner, which was eggs and toast because that was what he knew how to make without thinking about it.
He ate standing at the counter again. He washed the pan and the plate and the fork and set them in the drying rack and looked at the drying rack, which had been designed to hold dishes for two people and now only ever held dishes for one. He looked away from it.
He went to bed at eight thirty because there was no reason to stay up.
—-
In the morning the dog was back.
Same spot. Just past the equipment shed, standing in the grass where it met the trees. Sniffing at something Dale couldn’t see. Acting like yesterday hadn’t happened. Acting like nobody had thrown anything at it.
Dale stood at the kitchen window with his coffee and watched it. His boot was by the door, dry now. He could go out there again. Yell again. Throw something again.
The dog would run again and come back again tomorrow or the day after, because that’s what strays do. They go where they go and fences and boots and angry men are just weather to them, something to wait out.
He watched the dog for a long time. It moved through the grass in its zigzag pattern, nose down, tail hanging loose. It paused near the equipment shed and sniffed at the corner where the foundation met the dirt and then it looked up toward the house.
Its tail moved once, half a wag, uncommitted, and then it went still again. Dale stepped back from the window even though the dog probably couldn’t see him from that distance.
He didn’t know why he stepped back. He didn’t know why the dog being there made something in his throat tighten, something that wasn’t anger but lived right next to it, in the same neighborhood, on the same street.
He opened the refrigerator. He had leftover meatloaf from two nights ago that he’d made from a recipe on the back of the oatmeal box because Karen had taken the recipe binder when she left and he didn’t know how to make anything the way he used to.
The meatloaf wasn’t good. He’d put too much salt in it and not enough of whatever else was supposed to go in. He cut a thick slice and put it on one of the plates from the drying rack and carried it outside.
The morning air was cool and the grass was wet again. He walked out to the middle of the yard, not all the way to where the dog was, and set the plate down on the ground. Then he walked back to the house and went inside and stood at the window again.
The dog watched him go. It waited. A long time, probably five minutes, which is a long time when you’re standing at a window wanting something to happen and telling yourself you don’t want it to happen.
Then it walked over to the plate in that cautious way, low and slow, ready to bolt. It sniffed the meatloaf. Circled the plate once. Sniffed again, longer this time, its nose almost touching the meat.
Then it walked away from it.
Just turned and walked back toward the tree line without eating. Not running, not scared. It just didn’t want it. It went back to sniffing the grass, zigzagging along the edge of the trees like the meatloaf had never been there.
Dale stood at the window and watched and something in his chest dropped, some floor he didn’t know was holding him up, and what was underneath it was so old and so familiar that he almost couldn’t breathe.
The dog didn’t want what he was offering. He’d stood in this kitchen and thrown a boot at it yesterday, and today he’d put food out like that erased something, and the dog had sniffed what he was offering and decided it wasn’t worth the risk.
He couldn’t even be mad about it. The dog was right. What was he offering. Some bad meatloaf and a yard full of things he kept fixed.
He watched the dog work its way along the tree line. It paused every few feet to sniff at something, patient and unhurried, moving in a direction that had nothing to do with Dale or his property or his plate of food sitting in the wet grass getting cold.
The dog had somewhere to be. Or it didn’t, but either way it wasn’t here.
It reached the far corner where his property ended and the county easement began, where the trees got thicker and the mowing stopped. It slipped into the brush without looking back. Not fast, not dramatic. It just kept walking until the branches closed behind it and the brown shape of it was gone.
Dale stood on the porch. He didn’t go back inside. He stood there with his coffee going cold in his hand and looked at the place where the dog had disappeared and waited, because part of him thought it might come back out. Circle around. Change its mind.
Come eat the meatloaf and then come closer, close enough that Dale could sit on the porch steps and the dog could lie in the grass nearby and they could just be two things in the same yard, not needing anything from each other except the fact of being there.
But the tree line was still. The early light was coming through the branches and making long shadows across the grass and the plate was still sitting out there in the yard, untouched, and Dale was still standing on his porch.
He stood there for a long time. His lower back had settled into its usual ache and the porch boards were cold through his socks. Long enough that his coffee wasn’t just cold but had stopped being coffee and was just brown water in a mug he was holding for no reason.
The birds started up again, same as always, like the world was worth singing about whether anybody was listening or not. The fence post on the south side was still leaning. Everything was where he’d left it.
He went inside eventually. Washed the mug. Didn’t go get the plate. He’d get it later, or he wouldn’t, and the meatloaf would sit out there until something else came along and ate it. Something that wasn’t afraid of what he might throw.