On Saturday, August 13, 2016 at 10:48:24 PM UTC-4, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> I just completed one of the short stories I'd mentioned in one of the other threads. Here's the unedited draft. Word Count: 1,991, 5 pages (as formatted for the collection):
>
>
> DOG DAYS OF AUTUMN
>
> The dog is the only animal that has seen his god.
> -- Anonymous
>
> I cut my father up and fed him to the dogs. I figured he'd have liked that as he had always been inordinately fond of them.
> At first they seemed confused when I tossed a bucketful of Daddy into their pen. I guess they could still recognize his smell. But meat is meat, and dogs are dogs, and a chunk of meat looks nothing like the man who'd petted and pampered them since they were pups. They ate him. Everything but his hair, which dried up like a weed and blew away.
> He'd named them Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink, and Sue, which he seemed to think was incredibly cute and even clever. I, however, beg to differ on this point. Giving dopey names to pit bulls is embarrassing; both to me, whenever he'd gleefully rattle off the roster to the feigned delight of dinner guests, and in all likelihood, to the unfortunate dogs that had to live with them.
> I watched them chow down with the sort of detached horror one experiences when ogling the mangled bodies at an accident scene. Strange how one can distance himself from his parents. Especially when one considers how close we'd always been.
> That is to say we had been -- in the past. The truth is that we'd grown apart over the last few years. Not through anything that he or I had said or done. He'd simply gotten old. He grown into something that wasn't quite my father anymore. He wasn't quite anyone anymore. Just an old man who sat around the house all day staring into space, and strangling random moments as they passed.
> The only things he still connected with were the dogs. Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink, and Sue. They'd drape themselves across his lap or over his shoes while he'd sit there rocking, rubbing their bellies and scratching the backs of their heads. They were like the grandchildren I'd never given him -- only grandchildren would have required his attention. With the dogs, he only had to be there: awake, asleep, or lost among his slowly-fading memories of those happier times when his life still had some meaning.
> Poor old Dad. Like so many of his generation, he'd grown into his profession over time, until it was impossible to separate the man from the mechanic. And when he grew too frail to work on cars, he hung up his coveralls and Peterbilt cap, and let time go to work on him. The old junker rusting away in Mr. Heltzer's field had a better chance of lasting longer than him.
> I cooked his meals, washed his clothes, swept his floors, and even paid his bills once his bank account went dry. His Social Security checks paid the rest, but toward the end he would no longer sign them, so I had to learn to forge his signature as well. The only good to come out of it was that I'd still be able to collect them now that he was dead. After all, nobody knew except for me and the dogs, and they weren't going to be telling anyone.
> In younger days we used to hunt most anything that walked, flew, swam, or crawled. We had a different set of dogs back then; a pointer, a setter, a shepherd and a spaniel. Same breeds, different names: Snap, Crackle, Pop, and Pow (a little known Kellogg elf from outer space). I used to think my father hated dogs.
> But come rain, sleet, snow, hurricane, tsunami, or shine, he'd pile us all (the dogs and I, that is) into his truck each Sunday crack of dawn, and head off to some virgin patch of wood where the deer and the antelope play right into our gun-sights and onto our dinner plates that night. Bleeding hearts aside, there's nothing more satisfying on God's green earth than a plate, mouth, and stomach full of fresh killed game.
> All in all, he was a good man, my father. And a pretty decent father, as fathers go. Sunday barbecues in the Summer, football games (television var.) in the Autumn, and baseball (ditto) in the Spring. Sometimes we'd toss a ball around out in back of the house, but more often than not we'd be swooshing
> Frisbees at the dogs. You can't just toss a ball with four dogs around and not expect them to want in on it.
> One day, the barbecues stopped. It had rained two Sundays in a row, so we called out for pizzas and cheese steaks instead. By the time the third Sunday rolled around, Dad had already made up his mind to order Chinese. And that was the end of it. A new precedent had been established. From there on in, Sunday night became takeout night; and the old grill was left to rust quietly behind the shed.
> That Winter the hunting excursions petered off as well. I started setting traps for the rats that had invaded our cellar, but it proved a mundane and thoroughly unsatisfying substitute. After a few months, I decided that a laissez-faire policy was best and quickly adopted one regarding the rodents.. Now you can't set foot in the cellar without seeing a rat or seven go scurrying across the floor. But it wouldn't matter if there were a hundred rats, since no one ever goes there anymore.
> The Frisbee tournaments were next to go. Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink and Sue took turns sitting in front of the back doorstep with a drool-covered discus in their mouth ... eagerly waiting for a game that would never come to be. It was sad, heartbreaking really, to see them sitting there; but I certainly wasn't going to play. A good, clean fetch stick, maybe. But a Frisbee dripping with four varieties of dog slobber? That'd be going above and beyond the duties of even the most conscientious pet owner.
> Besides, I'd never really bonded with this latest batch of dogs. Not that there was anything wrong with them per se -- no bad blood between or anything like that. But the first set of pups had lasted till I was twelve, and the second till I was pushing thirty. By the time this last set came along, I had simply used up all my youthful enthusiasm for dogs. My father, on the other hand, seemed to grow more attached to them as my affection waned.
> But if his love for the dogs increased, it was the only Dad-thing doing so. Every day he seemed to do a little bit less than the day before. He stopped making dinner, stopped cleaning the house, stopped polishing his guns, stopped changing his clothes for a week or two at a time, stopped combing his hair, stopped reading the daily papers ... you name it, he stopped it. It wasn't long till he just kicked off his shoes, plopped down in the rocking chair like a six foot tall sack of potatoes and became a full-time certified invalid.
> And, a full-time invalid requires full-time care. So I was eventually forced to give up a promising career at the local grocery store in order to devote all my waking hours to my Dad.
> Time passed. The Winter snows at last gave way to the speckled hues of wildflowered Spring, Spring blossomed into lazy Summer fields, Summer withered into Autumn; then the process repeated itself again. Arrows of geese shot back and forth across the sky; ponds froze and thawed, grew fat with crappies and trout; and garden spiders webbed the wildering hills where dragonflies graced thrones of Queen Anne's lace.
> I can't remember when we first stopped speaking to one another. Most likely that's because it didn't come about as the result of an argument or fight. It's just that there are only so many times a man can say "Wake up, old man!," or "Supper's on!," or "Lovely day today," before the words lose all their meaning. I only remember that one day in the middle of June, I saw a family of deer venturing out of the woods in our backyard. I was about to tell my father about it, in the hopes that it might inspire him to pick up the shotgun again, when I realized we hadn't spoken in several weeks. Perhaps even months.
> And so I let the deer pass unmolested. Dad was either snoozing in the rocker, or scratching Stinky behind the ears, and wouldn't want to have been bothered. It was hotter than usual that Summer, and I was every bit as keen on lying around the old homestead as he was. After all, I was no Spring chicken myself; going on forty-two at last count. I pulled an ice-cold Pabst out of the cooler and stretched out on Dad's old lawn chair in the shade.
> It's a good life when the sunlight bakes the air and the Southern breezes stir the leaves and weeds just so, like a gentle wicker fan. A man can really feel his bones on days like these -- and I had all the time in the world to savor this one.
> No nagging wife to pass on menial chores she really should have done the day before; no noisy little kids to break the rhythmic spell cricket lovesongs and cicada lays. No one at all, save me and my Dad; and this Summer Dad never said a word.
> Now Summer's great, but early Autumn has always been my favorite time of year. With its big ol' hunter's moon hanging heavy in the evening sky, and the trees all decked out in red and gold like gypsy caravans atop the hills.. But it was still September when Dad was felled by a stroke that hit with all the quickness and ferocity of a woodsman's axe.
> I found him lying on the kitchen floor with a half-opened can of dog food clutched tightly in his hand. For the first time in God-knows-how-long he tried speaking to me, but the sounds that came out of his mouth were no longer intelligible. I picked him up and carried him to his bed, and there he stayed for brief period of life that was allotted him. About two months, give or take.
> Before the year's first snowfall he lay dead. And for the first time in my life, I was alone. Not truly alone, I suppose, because I still had the dogs -- Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink, and Sue. But they never took to me, nor I to them, in the way they had taken to that old man. Him they'd loved like a father. Me treated like their keeper.
> Which would have been okay, if it weren't for the way I catch them staring at me. There's an old saying that a dog's no longer any good once he's raided the henhouse. You might as well take him out back and shoot him then and there. Once he's got the taste of blood in him, he'll keep on going back for more and more. And I'm guessing the same holds true for human flesh as well.
> It's been three years since Father's death, and those dogs still follow at my heels with a lean and hungry look. I tell myself that it's just my imagination, but I know that deep down, behind all the tail-wags and friendly puppy-dog smiles, they're counting out the days, weeks, months, and years till I lay down my head a final time. Perhaps it will be in the early Autumn.. If I have to die, I'd like it to be in the Autumn.
> And if the ground is not yet frozen from the frosted nights, then Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink, and Sue can bury my bones in all their secret places in the yard ... those same, scattered caches where they'd hidden the last traces of my father.
>

On Friday, March 17, 2023 at 5:04:09 PM UTC, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> On Saturday, August 13, 2016 at 10:48:24 PM UTC-4, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > I just completed one of the short stories I'd mentioned in one of the other threads. Here's the unedited draft. Word Count: 1,991, 5 pages (as formatted for the collection):
> >
> >
> > DOG DAYS OF AUTUMN
> >
> > The dog is the only animal that has seen his god.
> > -- Anonymous
> >
> > I cut my father up and fed him to the dogs. I figured he'd have liked that as he had always been inordinately fond of them.
> > At first they seemed confused when I tossed a bucketful of Daddy into their pen. I guess they could still recognize his smell. But meat is meat, and dogs are dogs, and a chunk of meat looks nothing like the man who'd petted and pampered them since they were pups. They ate him. Everything but his hair, which dried up like a weed and blew away.
> > He'd named them Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink, and Sue, which he seemed to think was incredibly cute and even clever. I, however, beg to differ on this point. Giving dopey names to pit bulls is embarrassing; both to me, whenever he'd gleefully rattle off the roster to the feigned delight of dinner guests, and in all likelihood, to the unfortunate dogs that had to live with them.
> > I watched them chow down with the sort of detached horror one experiences when ogling the mangled bodies at an accident scene. Strange how one can distance himself from his parents. Especially when one considers how close we'd always been.
> > That is to say we had been -- in the past. The truth is that we'd grown apart over the last few years. Not through anything that he or I had said or done. He'd simply gotten old. He grown into something that wasn't quite my father anymore. He wasn't quite anyone anymore. Just an old man who sat around the house all day staring into space, and strangling random moments as they passed.
> > The only things he still connected with were the dogs. Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink, and Sue. They'd drape themselves across his lap or over his shoes while he'd sit there rocking, rubbing their bellies and scratching the backs of their heads. They were like the grandchildren I'd never given him -- only grandchildren would have required his attention. With the dogs, he only had to be there: awake, asleep, or lost among his slowly-fading memories of those happier times when his life still had some meaning.
> > Poor old Dad. Like so many of his generation, he'd grown into his profession over time, until it was impossible to separate the man from the mechanic. And when he grew too frail to work on cars, he hung up his coveralls and Peterbilt cap, and let time go to work on him. The old junker rusting away in Mr. Heltzer's field had a better chance of lasting longer than him.
> > I cooked his meals, washed his clothes, swept his floors, and even paid his bills once his bank account went dry. His Social Security checks paid the rest, but toward the end he would no longer sign them, so I had to learn to forge his signature as well. The only good to come out of it was that I'd still be able to collect them now that he was dead. After all, nobody knew except for me and the dogs, and they weren't going to be telling anyone..
> > In younger days we used to hunt most anything that walked, flew, swam, or crawled. We had a different set of dogs back then; a pointer, a setter, a shepherd and a spaniel. Same breeds, different names: Snap, Crackle, Pop, and Pow (a little known Kellogg elf from outer space). I used to think my father hated dogs.
> > But come rain, sleet, snow, hurricane, tsunami, or shine, he'd pile us all (the dogs and I, that is) into his truck each Sunday crack of dawn, and head off to some virgin patch of wood where the deer and the antelope play right into our gun-sights and onto our dinner plates that night. Bleeding hearts aside, there's nothing more satisfying on God's green earth than a plate, mouth, and stomach full of fresh killed game.
> > All in all, he was a good man, my father. And a pretty decent father, as fathers go. Sunday barbecues in the Summer, football games (television var.) in the Autumn, and baseball (ditto) in the Spring. Sometimes we'd toss a ball around out in back of the house, but more often than not we'd be swooshing
> > Frisbees at the dogs. You can't just toss a ball with four dogs around and not expect them to want in on it.
> > One day, the barbecues stopped. It had rained two Sundays in a row, so we called out for pizzas and cheese steaks instead. By the time the third Sunday rolled around, Dad had already made up his mind to order Chinese. And that was the end of it. A new precedent had been established. From there on in, Sunday night became takeout night; and the old grill was left to rust quietly behind the shed.
> > That Winter the hunting excursions petered off as well. I started setting traps for the rats that had invaded our cellar, but it proved a mundane and thoroughly unsatisfying substitute. After a few months, I decided that a laissez-faire policy was best and quickly adopted one regarding the rodents. Now you can't set foot in the cellar without seeing a rat or seven go scurrying across the floor. But it wouldn't matter if there were a hundred rats, since no one ever goes there anymore.
> > The Frisbee tournaments were next to go. Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink and Sue took turns sitting in front of the back doorstep with a drool-covered discus in their mouth ... eagerly waiting for a game that would never come to be. It was sad, heartbreaking really, to see them sitting there; but I certainly wasn't going to play. A good, clean fetch stick, maybe. But a Frisbee dripping with four varieties of dog slobber? That'd be going above and beyond the duties of even the most conscientious pet owner.
> > Besides, I'd never really bonded with this latest batch of dogs. Not that there was anything wrong with them per se -- no bad blood between or anything like that. But the first set of pups had lasted till I was twelve, and the second till I was pushing thirty. By the time this last set came along, I had simply used up all my youthful enthusiasm for dogs. My father, on the other hand, seemed to grow more attached to them as my affection waned.
> > But if his love for the dogs increased, it was the only Dad-thing doing so. Every day he seemed to do a little bit less than the day before. He stopped making dinner, stopped cleaning the house, stopped polishing his guns, stopped changing his clothes for a week or two at a time, stopped combing his hair, stopped reading the daily papers ... you name it, he stopped it. It wasn't long till he just kicked off his shoes, plopped down in the rocking chair like a six foot tall sack of potatoes and became a full-time certified invalid.
> > And, a full-time invalid requires full-time care. So I was eventually forced to give up a promising career at the local grocery store in order to devote all my waking hours to my Dad.
> > Time passed. The Winter snows at last gave way to the speckled hues of wildflowered Spring, Spring blossomed into lazy Summer fields, Summer withered into Autumn; then the process repeated itself again. Arrows of geese shot back and forth across the sky; ponds froze and thawed, grew fat with crappies and trout; and garden spiders webbed the wildering hills where dragonflies graced thrones of Queen Anne's lace.
> > I can't remember when we first stopped speaking to one another. Most likely that's because it didn't come about as the result of an argument or fight. It's just that there are only so many times a man can say "Wake up, old man!," or "Supper's on!," or "Lovely day today," before the words lose all their meaning. I only remember that one day in the middle of June, I saw a family of deer venturing out of the woods in our backyard. I was about to tell my father about it, in the hopes that it might inspire him to pick up the shotgun again, when I realized we hadn't spoken in several weeks. Perhaps even months.
> > And so I let the deer pass unmolested. Dad was either snoozing in the rocker, or scratching Stinky behind the ears, and wouldn't want to have been bothered. It was hotter than usual that Summer, and I was every bit as keen on lying around the old homestead as he was. After all, I was no Spring chicken myself; going on forty-two at last count. I pulled an ice-cold Pabst out of the cooler and stretched out on Dad's old lawn chair in the shade.
> > It's a good life when the sunlight bakes the air and the Southern breezes stir the leaves and weeds just so, like a gentle wicker fan. A man can really feel his bones on days like these -- and I had all the time in the world to savor this one.
> > No nagging wife to pass on menial chores she really should have done the day before; no noisy little kids to break the rhythmic spell cricket lovesongs and cicada lays. No one at all, save me and my Dad; and this Summer Dad never said a word.
> > Now Summer's great, but early Autumn has always been my favorite time of year. With its big ol' hunter's moon hanging heavy in the evening sky, and the trees all decked out in red and gold like gypsy caravans atop the hills. But it was still September when Dad was felled by a stroke that hit with all the quickness and ferocity of a woodsman's axe.
> > I found him lying on the kitchen floor with a half-opened can of dog food clutched tightly in his hand. For the first time in God-knows-how-long he tried speaking to me, but the sounds that came out of his mouth were no longer intelligible. I picked him up and carried him to his bed, and there he stayed for brief period of life that was allotted him. About two months, give or take.
> > Before the year's first snowfall he lay dead. And for the first time in my life, I was alone. Not truly alone, I suppose, because I still had the dogs -- Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink, and Sue. But they never took to me, nor I to them, in the way they had taken to that old man. Him they'd loved like a father. Me treated like their keeper.
> > Which would have been okay, if it weren't for the way I catch them staring at me. There's an old saying that a dog's no longer any good once he's raided the henhouse. You might as well take him out back and shoot him then and there. Once he's got the taste of blood in him, he'll keep on going back for more and more. And I'm guessing the same holds true for human flesh as well.
> > It's been three years since Father's death, and those dogs still follow at my heels with a lean and hungry look. I tell myself that it's just my imagination, but I know that deep down, behind all the tail-wags and friendly puppy-dog smiles, they're counting out the days, weeks, months, and years till I lay down my head a final time. Perhaps it will be in the early Autumn. If I have to die, I'd like it to be in the Autumn.
> > And if the ground is not yet frozen from the frosted nights, then Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink, and Sue can bury my bones in all their secret places in the yard ... those same, scattered caches where they'd hidden the last traces of my father.
> >
> It makes one wonder what's buried outside the Donkey shed.
Anthropologists of the future will be shocked at what is in the midden. It should be about 40x40 and 40 feet deep. Sixty-plus years of dumping.

On Friday, March 17, 2023 at 6:35:30 PM UTC-4, NancyGene wrote:
> On Friday, March 17, 2023 at 5:04:09 PM UTC, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > On Saturday, August 13, 2016 at 10:48:24 PM UTC-4, Michael Pendragon wrote:
> > > I just completed one of the short stories I'd mentioned in one of the other threads. Here's the unedited draft. Word Count: 1,991, 5 pages (as formatted for the collection):
> > >
> > >
> > > DOG DAYS OF AUTUMN
> > >
> > > The dog is the only animal that has seen his god.
> > > -- Anonymous
> > >
> > > I cut my father up and fed him to the dogs. I figured he'd have liked that as he had always been inordinately fond of them.
> > > At first they seemed confused when I tossed a bucketful of Daddy into their pen. I guess they could still recognize his smell. But meat is meat, and dogs are dogs, and a chunk of meat looks nothing like the man who'd petted and pampered them since they were pups. They ate him. Everything but his hair, which dried up like a weed and blew away.
> > > He'd named them Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink, and Sue, which he seemed to think was incredibly cute and even clever. I, however, beg to differ on this point. Giving dopey names to pit bulls is embarrassing; both to me, whenever he'd gleefully rattle off the roster to the feigned delight of dinner guests, and in all likelihood, to the unfortunate dogs that had to live with them.
> > > I watched them chow down with the sort of detached horror one experiences when ogling the mangled bodies at an accident scene. Strange how one can distance himself from his parents. Especially when one considers how close we'd always been.
> > > That is to say we had been -- in the past. The truth is that we'd grown apart over the last few years. Not through anything that he or I had said or done. He'd simply gotten old. He grown into something that wasn't quite my father anymore. He wasn't quite anyone anymore. Just an old man who sat around the house all day staring into space, and strangling random moments as they passed.
> > > The only things he still connected with were the dogs. Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink, and Sue. They'd drape themselves across his lap or over his shoes while he'd sit there rocking, rubbing their bellies and scratching the backs of their heads. They were like the grandchildren I'd never given him -- only grandchildren would have required his attention. With the dogs, he only had to be there: awake, asleep, or lost among his slowly-fading memories of those happier times when his life still had some meaning.
> > > Poor old Dad. Like so many of his generation, he'd grown into his profession over time, until it was impossible to separate the man from the mechanic. And when he grew too frail to work on cars, he hung up his coveralls and Peterbilt cap, and let time go to work on him. The old junker rusting away in Mr. Heltzer's field had a better chance of lasting longer than him.
> > > I cooked his meals, washed his clothes, swept his floors, and even paid his bills once his bank account went dry. His Social Security checks paid the rest, but toward the end he would no longer sign them, so I had to learn to forge his signature as well. The only good to come out of it was that I'd still be able to collect them now that he was dead. After all, nobody knew except for me and the dogs, and they weren't going to be telling anyone.
> > > In younger days we used to hunt most anything that walked, flew, swam, or crawled. We had a different set of dogs back then; a pointer, a setter, a shepherd and a spaniel. Same breeds, different names: Snap, Crackle, Pop, and Pow (a little known Kellogg elf from outer space). I used to think my father hated dogs.
> > > But come rain, sleet, snow, hurricane, tsunami, or shine, he'd pile us all (the dogs and I, that is) into his truck each Sunday crack of dawn, and head off to some virgin patch of wood where the deer and the antelope play right into our gun-sights and onto our dinner plates that night. Bleeding hearts aside, there's nothing more satisfying on God's green earth than a plate, mouth, and stomach full of fresh killed game.
> > > All in all, he was a good man, my father. And a pretty decent father, as fathers go. Sunday barbecues in the Summer, football games (television var.) in the Autumn, and baseball (ditto) in the Spring. Sometimes we'd toss a ball around out in back of the house, but more often than not we'd be swooshing
> > > Frisbees at the dogs. You can't just toss a ball with four dogs around and not expect them to want in on it.
> > > One day, the barbecues stopped. It had rained two Sundays in a row, so we called out for pizzas and cheese steaks instead. By the time the third Sunday rolled around, Dad had already made up his mind to order Chinese. And that was the end of it. A new precedent had been established. From there on in, Sunday night became takeout night; and the old grill was left to rust quietly behind the shed.
> > > That Winter the hunting excursions petered off as well. I started setting traps for the rats that had invaded our cellar, but it proved a mundane and thoroughly unsatisfying substitute. After a few months, I decided that a laissez-faire policy was best and quickly adopted one regarding the rodents. Now you can't set foot in the cellar without seeing a rat or seven go scurrying across the floor. But it wouldn't matter if there were a hundred rats, since no one ever goes there anymore.
> > > The Frisbee tournaments were next to go. Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink and Sue took turns sitting in front of the back doorstep with a drool-covered discus in their mouth ... eagerly waiting for a game that would never come to be. It was sad, heartbreaking really, to see them sitting there; but I certainly wasn't going to play. A good, clean fetch stick, maybe. But a Frisbee dripping with four varieties of dog slobber? That'd be going above and beyond the duties of even the most conscientious pet owner.
> > > Besides, I'd never really bonded with this latest batch of dogs. Not that there was anything wrong with them per se -- no bad blood between or anything like that. But the first set of pups had lasted till I was twelve, and the second till I was pushing thirty. By the time this last set came along, I had simply used up all my youthful enthusiasm for dogs. My father, on the other hand, seemed to grow more attached to them as my affection waned.
> > > But if his love for the dogs increased, it was the only Dad-thing doing so. Every day he seemed to do a little bit less than the day before. He stopped making dinner, stopped cleaning the house, stopped polishing his guns, stopped changing his clothes for a week or two at a time, stopped combing his hair, stopped reading the daily papers ... you name it, he stopped it. It wasn't long till he just kicked off his shoes, plopped down in the rocking chair like a six foot tall sack of potatoes and became a full-time certified invalid.
> > > And, a full-time invalid requires full-time care. So I was eventually forced to give up a promising career at the local grocery store in order to devote all my waking hours to my Dad.
> > > Time passed. The Winter snows at last gave way to the speckled hues of wildflowered Spring, Spring blossomed into lazy Summer fields, Summer withered into Autumn; then the process repeated itself again. Arrows of geese shot back and forth across the sky; ponds froze and thawed, grew fat with crappies and trout; and garden spiders webbed the wildering hills where dragonflies graced thrones of Queen Anne's lace.
> > > I can't remember when we first stopped speaking to one another. Most likely that's because it didn't come about as the result of an argument or fight. It's just that there are only so many times a man can say "Wake up, old man!," or "Supper's on!," or "Lovely day today," before the words lose all their meaning. I only remember that one day in the middle of June, I saw a family of deer venturing out of the woods in our backyard. I was about to tell my father about it, in the hopes that it might inspire him to pick up the shotgun again, when I realized we hadn't spoken in several weeks. Perhaps even months.
> > > And so I let the deer pass unmolested. Dad was either snoozing in the rocker, or scratching Stinky behind the ears, and wouldn't want to have been bothered. It was hotter than usual that Summer, and I was every bit as keen on lying around the old homestead as he was. After all, I was no Spring chicken myself; going on forty-two at last count. I pulled an ice-cold Pabst out of the cooler and stretched out on Dad's old lawn chair in the shade..
> > > It's a good life when the sunlight bakes the air and the Southern breezes stir the leaves and weeds just so, like a gentle wicker fan. A man can really feel his bones on days like these -- and I had all the time in the world to savor this one.
> > > No nagging wife to pass on menial chores she really should have done the day before; no noisy little kids to break the rhythmic spell cricket lovesongs and cicada lays. No one at all, save me and my Dad; and this Summer Dad never said a word.
> > > Now Summer's great, but early Autumn has always been my favorite time of year. With its big ol' hunter's moon hanging heavy in the evening sky, and the trees all decked out in red and gold like gypsy caravans atop the hills. But it was still September when Dad was felled by a stroke that hit with all the quickness and ferocity of a woodsman's axe.
> > > I found him lying on the kitchen floor with a half-opened can of dog food clutched tightly in his hand. For the first time in God-knows-how-long he tried speaking to me, but the sounds that came out of his mouth were no longer intelligible. I picked him up and carried him to his bed, and there he stayed for brief period of life that was allotted him. About two months, give or take.
> > > Before the year's first snowfall he lay dead. And for the first time in my life, I was alone. Not truly alone, I suppose, because I still had the dogs -- Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink, and Sue. But they never took to me, nor I to them, in the way they had taken to that old man. Him they'd loved like a father. Me treated like their keeper.
> > > Which would have been okay, if it weren't for the way I catch them staring at me. There's an old saying that a dog's no longer any good once he's raided the henhouse. You might as well take him out back and shoot him then and there. Once he's got the taste of blood in him, he'll keep on going back for more and more. And I'm guessing the same holds true for human flesh as well.
> > > It's been three years since Father's death, and those dogs still follow at my heels with a lean and hungry look. I tell myself that it's just my imagination, but I know that deep down, behind all the tail-wags and friendly puppy-dog smiles, they're counting out the days, weeks, months, and years till I lay down my head a final time. Perhaps it will be in the early Autumn. If I have to die, I'd like it to be in the Autumn.
> > > And if the ground is not yet frozen from the frosted nights, then Inky, Stinky, Tinky-Wink, and Sue can bury my bones in all their secret places in the yard ... those same, scattered caches where they'd hidden the last traces of my father.
> > >
> > It makes one wonder what's buried outside the Donkey shed.
> Anthropologists of the future will be shocked at what is in the midden. It should be about 40x40 and 40 feet deep. Sixty-plus years of dumping.