dog

The dog went trotting down the street.  It was a warm summer day.  Wonderful smells came from every side.  There, on the right, somebody was making a cake.  Chocolate.  The dog's tongue swept over his chops as tiny droplets of spit sprayed out into the air.  Next to the cake, something green.  Something cut.  Trees.  Limbs nipped off, bleeding sap.  Freshness and newness in the air.  The tree made neat, perfectly balanced.  The birds and squirrels disturbed and noisy.  Chattering, cheeping, screeching, cackling.  Time to remake their homes in sparser branches and wider spaces.  Times are tough all over.  The dog's food bowl was empty when he left his house.  And the dog trotted on.

The dog went trotting down the alley.  The surface was recently blacktopped and the smell of tar was heavy in his nostrils.  In spite of its strength, other scents found their way in.  Smells from garages, open and closed.  The cars resting inside, or the space where the car would be later, covering over the spot it made on the floor.  When the dog made spots on the floor, the man whacked him on the nose with a rolled magazine, or on the bottom with a slipper.  The dog never sees people whacking the cars, but maybe they only do it in the garage so they can point at the mistake and yell, so the car knows what it did wrong.  There on the left, an open door!  And the car inside must have made a very big spot indeed.  The whole top of the back end was full of dents and depressions.  Two men were standing next to it on either side shaking their heads in disgust, one rubbing his jaw and the other with his hands on his hips.  Funny, their feet didn't look big enough for slippers to make those kinds of marks.  It must have been a Sunday paper.  Sometimes the Sunday paper was so fat the dog couldn't get hold of it to carry it around in his mouth.  He passed the open door, wreathed in scents of machines and their accessories.  He got to the end of the alley and turned right and the dog trotted on.

The dog went trotting through the park.  The air was full of high, squealing sounds.  Children running and playing.  One ran up to him, almost close enough to grab his passing tail, but a nervous mother ran up behind the child and jerked him away.  Her voice was tight, angry and frightened at once.  All around, people were hot and sweaty.  Some had food with them.  The dog's tongue tingled as he caught the odor of salty, oily meats, the kind that people put on bread and ruin with runny things that come in bright colors in bottles and jars.  Walking slowly by a cluster of trees, hoping to see picnickers under them who would give a friendly old dog a bite to eat, he caught the sharp, sweet smell of fear.  There were no picnickers, just two girls.  Their scent was stinging, bitter, coppery, and one looked around nervously while the other never took her hands away from her face.  More than afraid, the lookout was anxious and the hiding one was sad, but they were fearful of something too.  They obviously had no food, so the dog trotted on.

The dog went trotting down the dirt road.  Little puffs of dust rose up under his feet.  Some yards of grass and clover separated him and the dirt from the trees and billowing dark green summer leaves.  Not a breath of air moved around those leaves, but they hung expectantly, waiting for a gentle evening breeze.  It was still a long time till evening.  There was no sound to distract the dog from his path either.  No twittering birds, no nattering, squeaking insects.  It was so quiet.  Like the TV when the man in the house put it on mute to listen to the boy and girl talk on their phones in their rooms.  Between them speaking there was silence, like now on the road.  Suddenly, there were sounds from the trees.  Feet stamping, lungs pumping, sticks and stalks roughly thrust aside.  A boy, a teenager like the one in the house, was running.  He came out of the trees to the right of the dog and ran wildly.  He didn't look behind him, like he thought whatever he was running from could catch him if he saw it.  There was a break in the trees up ahead of him and a ditch or a hole, because he suddenly lifted his arms up and disappeared downwards into the weeds.  And the dog trotted on.

The dog went trotting down the train tracks.  He placed his feet carefully on the ties because the ash gray rocks between them poked and pained his pads.  The sun beat down stronger and his tongue dropped out of his mouth, and now he was very thirsty.  Not a drop of drool managed to fall from his lips before it could be shrunk away by the heat.  There was water around the tracks, but it was stagnant, choked with slime and filth.  The dog was not so thirsty yet that he would even consider that oozy liquid.  It stunk horribly.  Something else was stinking too, something dead.  It had been dead for a while and the summer weather was wearing the body away.  Stronger and stronger the smell drifted up from the left side of the tracks, the swampier side.  Even the last few dry, roasting hot days hadn't hardened the mud here.  The dog could imagine it squishing between his toes and covering his paws with crusty boots.  It might be cooler.  But the smell kept him on the tracks.  It was just on his left now; he couldn't see anything in the weeds, but it must be right there, rotting away, bloated with the gases of death and swarming with bugs.  The dog could hear them humming quietly as they flew around their possession.  They didn't fly above the weeds, though, and they didn't come near the tracks.  How odd.  And the dog trotted on.

The dog went trotting down the highway.  On the highway shoulder really.  He was no stupid dog.  There weren't that many cars zipping by, only a few.  Some even slowed down and pulled a little to the left so as to be sure of not hitting him.  Now there was a little breeze, and not just from the passing cars.  It came from over the fields.  It was full of questions and answers.  The dog smelled animals, big ones, but he had never seen them and didn't know what they were.  There were small animals too, on the breeze.  Their smell was more pungent, concentrated.  Then, up ahead, there was a car.  It wasn't moving like the other cars.  It was lying on its side in the grassy ditch, with all its limbs flailed and stretched out, reaching for help.  Three people were standing around, near the back end.  As the dog came closer he could smell their nervous sweat, even though two of them acted calm and relaxed.  There was a man who was obviously tense.  He walked a few steps out to the field and came back again with jerky, uncoordinated movements.  The other man was calmly smoking a cigarette, casually raising the pale little twig to his lips for a few seconds before letting his arm drift down.  The woman appeared calm, but as the dog passed by, odors erupted from her - salty sweat and tears, sweet endorphins and urine.  The woman and the smoker glanced at the dog as he trotted past.  The other man didn't notice him.  He was yelling now, angrily waving his hands in the air over his head.  He smelled like blood.  The car did too.  But there was nothing else to call the dogs attention, so he looked off into the distance, towards the coming night, and the dog trotted on.