5 Minute Reads | Anthology

Melon Collie by iwritevs

by iwritevs

Title: Melon Collie

The commute from my hometown to the city where I worked was one long stretch of unbroken blue sky, a desert on each side. Back when my mom was alive I'd make the journey maybe once or twice a month. Now, though, I wasn't sure if I was ever going back.

Last night's suit was already in its plastic, laid out on the back seat, but my skin still reeked of alcohol, leaking from my pores in the heat, and my headache was a dull pressure behind my eyes.

There had been three of us at the funeral. Me, my mom's nurse, and the priest. Not the priest of my childhood, who I had feared and my mom had respected, but some new guy, scrawny and white, with a salesman's face and pink stripes on his arms and his neck where the sun had touched him. I had the poem she had wanted folded in my pocket, but I didn't read it out. I just listened to the priest and his psalms in the sweltering chapel. I had hoped my sister would make it. She would have understood what kind of person we were burying.

My car's aircon made a grunting popping noise as it failed, and I wound down the windows.

In the summer of fourth grade, my mom got me a puppy. His name was Hudson, and I'm not sure what he was, except that he was a good dog. The breeder swore blind there was some coyote in him, but I couldn't see it.

I never had too many friends, so having a dog ought to have been good for me. But I had refused to change in the room with the other kids one time too many, and the CPS lady said if they found so much as a scratch on me, there would be an investigation.

So my mom started beating Hudson instead.

Whenever I disobeyed her somehow, or talked back, or even if she thought I had, she would get the stick from the porch and strike him. If I yelled or told her to stop, that was another hit round the head, hard enough to make him yelp and cower. I can still picture his confusion, squirming to lick my mom's hands as the stick cracked against his skull. I would sneak out to the yard to comfort him after, and his wet nose would press against my cheek, his brown eyes full of forgiveness. I would blame myself after, think if only I was a better son, if only I was faster and more obedient, more loving, he wouldn't be in so much pain. If only.

The last time I saw him was when I left for the city, as he sat and watched me from the gate, his face against the slats.

My mom got rid of him before my next visit. She told me after the fact, like it was nothing, like Hudson was a piece of furniture or a broken lamp that she had thrown away. Oh, that old thing?

My sister never had a dog. Maybe she was right to get out when she did.

After the service, when the nurse went to finish her shift, I went to the bar with the priest. I expected the hard sell, but he told me that was between me and God. I wasn't even sure the guy was Catholic. My mom would have disapproved of him.

"Your mother was a difficult woman," he said.

"You didn't know her," I said, more sharply than I intended. He didn't.

"You're right," he said, breaking eye contact. "I don't." He ordered drinks for both of us. "But I know people."

We drank, and I felt bad. He was probably only trying to help. He probably didn't even have to be here, just wanted to look out for the guy who came alone to his mother's funeral. "She killed my dog," I said.

"I'm sorry for your loss," he said, and he said it like he meant it. I couldn't tell if it was practice or if he was just a naturally sincere guy.

"Aren't you going to tell me I should forgive her?"

The priest shrugged, sipping his drink. "She killed your dog. Jesus understands."

I swore, my feelings cracked and raw again. I hadn't thought I had any tears to shed for my mother, but if this wasn't grief, then what was it? Coincidence? That I felt like a storm about to break?

"So what's your plan?" The priest's voice was steady, clear enough that I could hear it over the music of the bar.

"Tomorrow I'm seeing the lawyer about the house," I said. "I guess I'll head back to the city after that."

"You're driving?"

"Yeah."

"You should be careful on the road," he said.

"Why?"

"That's sacred land."

The native shamans used to go there, to that stretch of desert, he told me, to start their spirit quests. The land where the sky stretched as wide and bottomless as an ocean. A place where the wall between our world and the spirit world was thin. And for me, he said, someone who had just lost a parent, the crossing would be easy. Maybe even unwitting.

"Nevermind," he said. "You'll probably be fine."

Fifty miles in, I saw something in the road and pulled over. I thought it was roadkill at first, with how sad and moth eaten it looked, a pile of coarse brown fur.

I got out the car and it raised its head. How was this thing still alive? But its ribs moved, even as the flies crawled over it. The creature whined, blood crusted around his left eye, and I saw that it was a dog.

Hudson. My heart stopped. I knelt beside him, and put my hand against his face, brushing away the flies. He gave a soft whine, almost a whistle, leaning into my touch. The dog was decrepit, but it was him, I knew it. I took off my jacket and wrapped him in it, carrying him to my car. He gave an uff as I set him down, deflating, and he looked at me with his one good eye, expectant.

"Come on boy," I said. "We're going home."

Hudson's tail wagged weakly as I started the car.