He dreamt of the place they’d bought him. Nights of baying under Spanish moss. His blood hot and his brothers about him. Those nights when they treed possum, treed coon, crossed paths with lion. They ran the trails together, ears flapping along with their feet, trumpeting to the world that they were alive and they were coming. The porches there needed no walls, yards no gates. Yapping dogs knew better than to pester him. His chest was deep and he knew it when the men looked at him that they were proud.
He dreamt of the night a brother died: the rev of that savage growl and an explosion from the brush. The lion came from uphill as they do and was on them before up was up. They fought to the death in the pale leaves of the forest floor and he earned his limp from a gash that ran from his hip to his belly. His whines joined the others as the combat burned away from their hearts and soon their cries were all that pierced the silence of the night and he watched in the moonlight as they took his brother and he watched further as they buried him in the soft earth.
He slept on the turned soil of the grave as he healed. When the grass had grown back and the smell of his lost brother faded, they called on him to run and he couldn’t. So they sold him away.
Now, the old hound dog rose when they brought his leash. He limped over cracks in the asphalt and sniffed the ruined wooden posts of city parks. He walked slowly for his hip pained him greatly. Yapping terriers and growling fighting breeds with their bulbous heads passed by and challenged him at his gate. The old hound dog didn’t bay from his wall. He could drive them downwards with the thunder in his chest, but he didn’t. He saved his voice for the warm moonlight of his dreams, saved it for his brothers.
The light burned away above them and he watched it fall across her face where she smiled. It caught like fire on her skin and he knew he would carry the sight to his grave and never tell a soul about it but only smile to himself at the thought. They forgot to pull their coats closed but the cold that blew across them only drew laughter from her, and he could see no difference from that sound and the sound of the wild creeks he had lay beside and cherished when the cold ground was his bed. Tonight, with luck, he’d sleep beside her, and their little babies would kick his side and he’d watch the sun come up for more of that precious fire that felt like his and his alone. In minutes the fire would pass and he would stretch his legs down the stairs where he’d make coffee and read the letters of friends still in the high country. And he would miss the wild cold and the stronger coffee of the wood fires. He would miss the breathless smiles of the climb and the true religion all about him. But today he was in a green little valley where songbirds sang rife and the gravel in his shoes could not bother him, for he followed the center of the universe in the form of a smiling girl. He could see it in the night sky settling over them—the stars had shifted. Above them planets turned and tides pulled at her leisure. He smiled up at the different worlds and put his hands in his coat pockets. And he knew he’d be there in the morning to make coffee again and greet her when she woke.
Life then was drunken nights on rainy streets. Two legs with a knack for staying under me and no fear of concussion, all guts and misplaced romanticism.
We were well into the night when we entered the fray—there in a crowded bar, with the realm of possibility glimmering at each corner of the room. Women, dressed and drinking, glanced over us with still more laughing at the open fires on the patio. I was drunk, light and airy, with an eye for all of them. That’s when he pulled me over to talk and hit me hard across the jaw.
“You need to go home.”
By some strike of luck I didn’t go down. By some sweeter, I didn’t go to sleep. His hand was the size of my head, that proud Samoan bastard. I could see it now from the bartender’s perspective. Some little sweetum knocked dead, careening headfirst into the floor—would probably think I deserved it.
Instead I stood there, scowling.
“What the fuck.”
“Go home, Ty.” He said.
“What?”
“Go home.”
I glanced back at the group of friends to see if they were watching.
“This isn’t you,” he said, “go home.”
“Okay,” I said, “can we go back and finish our drinks?”
“Go home.”
“Yeah I got that,” I said, “can we run out the night though?”
“Go home.”
And the big bastard finished his drink right there, set his glass down and looked me in the eyes before he walked out. And I stood there the fool, rubbing my jaw, probably trying to think. I looked back at the people I had called friends across the way and wondered where I was.
I woke in a foul-smelling stupor and walked down the city blocks for the coast. Working men piled into their trucks discounted me. Professionals in their own cars sped by with their eyes on the screens in their hands. My thick head made the ability to walk feel enough. Above a decrepit little yard with a sad, broken fence, flowers bloomed on tree branches. I stopped on the walk and marveled at their petals with the shame of one who had gone too far. I remembered a river I had forgotten.
Something silent grew inside, like an engine that had turned over in my chest. It rumbled to life and I knew I wouldn’t tell them: the new friends, the bar hoppers, the girls who pushed me forward, the many faces in the night. The turning would be my own and I would keep it so. And then the day would come when they would look over and my room would be empty.
They ran about the place drawing eyes from the many tables. And some too young scoffed and cast them aside from their thoughts. The younger folk in the place conjured up reasons why the little ones would be a bother to their life, and they weren’t wrong, for the parents that chased them were a heap of worry, charged with a task that might be more than they could shoulder. Yet the younger people noticed the parents were smiling despite, and in those moments their doubt was prodded and weak—at which time they would turn back to their conversations which were mostly about themselves and their doings. But the older folk, who were there for the third night that week, watched with silent glee, for the little ones that scoured the place with a curiosity lost to them were free in a way none of them would ever be again. In the little ones they saw the only people left who hadn’t broken their hearts on the world, and they laughed from the corners of the room with unlit cigarettes bouncing in their lips. Their toothy smiles shone quietly in the hanging lights above their tables, and the little ones came by each one with wide eyes, unsure, but offered a wave before carrying on, their little legs chugging forward.