All was entirely too quiet out there in the darkness. There was an odd smell in the air, sort of like how Sprite tastes, but combined with smoke. If it were possible to burn a soda as though it were wood on a campfire, that would be the smell. I thought I could make out the glow of a bonfire through the trees.
The dogs had not made their appearance at the door, like they should have. They didn’t come when called.
There they were. One was breathing heavily like adrenaline was still pumping through her, not yet fully spent; the other was panting too, with red smeared along her jaw. Christmas red, vibrant in the bright beam off the flashlight, but not in a festive way. Blood.
It Has Been A Day Of Problems
“Did you see that pine tree is dead?” I asked my neighbor. The tree was in between our properties, but decidedly more on his. I had only just noticed it there, lonely and brown amid dozens of evergreens, and I was putting it to use for conversation. He groaned and said he hadn’t. There was an awkward silence, as he seemed not quite himself.
“I’m depressed,” he volunteered suddenly. “The mediation…it went badly.”
He had been doing so well in the last month, the best I’d seen since the divorce became official. He was talking about meeting someone new the last time we had spoken. It seemed as though he had gone through the stages of the grief of having his life turned upside down and had made it to the other side.
“I’ve got to sell the house,” he said. That was not too unexpected of an outcome, but he had been holding out hope. His expression and tone of voice had returned back to that early stage of grief I’d witnessed a year prior. The loss of the house was a new grief, or maybe this could be called a sub-grief. If we listed them this one would be labeled letter “a” with a little tabbed in space beneath number one: Divorce, i.e. no life partner of twenty-five years, finances uncertain, children confused, friends divided, etc.
I didn’t really have any good words to say. I don’t think there are good words for that. We parted. Later in the evening I was working in my garden when he called to me from the woods that divides us.
“I’m sorry about earlier…” he attempted from over the wire fence.
“It’s fine—it’s totally fine,” I said, but he covered his face with his hand and wandered away. This is what therapists see I suppose—people at their most vulnerable and completely unlike themselves. This man is an avid outdoorsman and very well fits the category of a man’s-man. He is not someone I ever expected to see crying in front of me.
It Was Midnight When I Went Looking For The Dogs
The smoky Sprite smell was in the air, and I wondered what he could be burning in that bonfire next door as I shone the light toward the back of the property. If this was a piece of fiction instead of something ripped out of my real life I’m sure all of these things would be connected, but they aren’t. Sorry. I don’t know what was going on with that bonfire, but I think it was something cathartic, and I wouldn’t dare disturb that process.
The dogs were circling a mound of grey on the ground. I scolding them and they looked at me like creatures that were not sorry, but restrained. Opossums play dead, even going so far as to slow their heart and breath rate. I stood over it, trying to be certain there was some wisp of life still in it. I thought maybe there was the slightest movement in his chest. His tail had been badly nicked, but not structurally damaged.
I took my idiot dogs inside but returned later. The opossum was gone.
The bonfire glow was low, and the sprite smell had faded.
Nothing was normal or fixed, but at least all was calm.