Adam was home. Somehow his mother could never tell, but the sound of his footsteps approaching the door was simply so obvious to me. So when I heard them today, I rushed at the door barking, alerting his mother. The scrape of a chair being pushed back in the living room told me she heard me, and I stopped, watching the door burst inward, which revealed Adam—and how do I describe Adam? He always smells like paper and looks like his mother with the same patches of fur sitting atop their heads, and he always knows just how to rub my stomach (in the center and in tight scratches).
In spite of myself, I started barking, seeing his face peek through the door, excitement crawling up my throat.
"Hey Marsh!" he said. He knelt down beside me and began rubbing me right around my ears in tight circles, reaching the area I could never get to. Bliss.
"Hey, how was work?" asked his mother from behind me. Adam, noticing her there, stood up as he shoved his hands into his pockets.
"Fine. One of the customers hassled me for some cream of wheat, saying it was marked wrong or something—the usual, you know," he said. I turned round, noticing his mother's lips pressed into a tight smile. Ever since the mailman came today, some kind of sadness kept drifting off of her. Even when I insisted she rub my stomach, it didn't appear to help her any. It was obviously her fault, of course. Mailmen are never to be trusted.
"Of course." She chuckled, but it sounded strange, like she was making a great effort to do so.
"Is everything okay?" he asked, drawing nearer. It seemed like the wrong thing to do, however, because she involuntarily drew a step backwards, and her eyes seemed to begin seeping with water. I whined, trying to bring Adam's attention back to me, so we might leave his mother to her own devices and we could play. But if he heard my plea, he didn't acknowledge it and simply pressed further.
"Mom, what's wrong?" Now his mother began to issue a sound that was almost like a whine, except it was too human to be, and the water began to seep more steadily from her eyes.
"Well... we were always worried when you dropped out of college. What it might mean for the government," she said. I looked at Adam, and to my surprise, saw an understanding dim his features; I wished his mother would stop talking, so that his face might return to the smile it was before. "When I went to get the mail this morning, I noticed an official-looking document." She sniffed as water began to flow more freely, not making any effort to disguise her emotions. "It was a draft for the military." At this, a wail escaped past her lips, and she nearly collapsed onto the floor, if it wasn't for Adam who rushed to keep her on her feet. I trotted over to them both, rubbing my head against her pants, hoping she might notice me, that their despair might end. And while they did notice me, it did little to heal the wound that started to bleed upon them.
It took a few minutes for his mother to find temporary peace, and when she did, Adam steered her towards the living room couch. She still sniffed occasionally, but she was able to meet Adam's eyes and to him, it was enough for now.
"Are you sure it was from the government?" he asked tentatively, his voice taking on a gentle note.
"Yes."
"It wasn't a prank or—or a joke?"
"No."
A silence passed between the two of them, some knowledge occupying the space in the room where it had not before. Adam was the one who broke the silence.
"Do you know when I'm to go to Vietnam?"
"In a month." His mother looked as if she had suddenly aged very rapidly and where wrinkles were absent from her face now had seemed to take shape.
"Oh," he said. "I thought I would have had longer than that."
And that was the end of his beginning.
***
A scream pierced through the night. I whined, turning over on the couch, waiting for the wretched sound to be cut short, but it just kept going. Resigned, I jumped off the couch, hitting the floor hard as the force rattled up through my body. I let out a breath of distaste, and trotted over to the staircase, climbing them as quickly as my short legs could take me.
When I reached the top of the staircase, the screaming stopped, replaced with a steady silence I could never appreciate in the night. Somehow the silence and the screaming were both equally deafening to me. I turned right, entering into a small room with barely any furniture in it except for a nightstand, a black box Adam sometimes watched, and a bed. Currently, the black box was off, and Adam lay in his bed while his breaths came in short and ragged as if he weren't previously sleeping but running instead. I barked, catching his attention from whatever thing in his mind had been tormenting him.
He sat up, noticing me for the first time, despite the fact I had thought my entrance to be a considerably loud one.
"Hey Marsh," he said, though it was without any of the enthusiasm it used to carry and instead almost sounded like dejection. He turned onto his side and petted me, while his eyes were lost in the shadows of the darkness surrounding us.
I never knew where he went after receiving that letter. But I believe that when Adam left, he never came back. The smell of paper and the stomach rubs and everything that was Adam left out the front door and never returned since, consumed by forces whose greed for innocent souls would never be satiated.
