blue against the diffuse street light trying to sneak in from outside.
Mom was sitting in her chair next to the fireplace and Dad was on the old leather ottoman that should have been put out of its misery years ago. He was leaning forward, elbows on knees, holding his pipe in one hand. If the curtains had been open, he would have been staring out the window, but I knew he’d just been sitting there staring at the curtains as if imagining something really interesting on the other side. I’d seen him do this too many times to count. I always wondered what he thought about as he sat in the dark staring at a set of closed curtains. Why not just open the damn things? At least the view of the street might change if a car or dog or neighbor wandered by.
“You gonna tell me what’s bothering you?” asked Mom.
“It’s stupid.”
“Not if it’s got you upset like this, it isn’t.”
Dad fired up his pipe, then pointed toward where I was hiding with its glowing red bowl. “He must think I’m some kind of asshole.”
“I don’t think he feels that way. He maybe doesn’t understand you, but he doesn’t think ill of you.”
“What about you?”
“You’re my husband and I love you.”
“C’mon. I’m not drunk so I’m not gonna throw a fit- answer the question.”
“I think you act like a real bastard when you’ve been drinking-but it doesn’t make you a bastard. That’s something you really have to work at.”
Dad chuckled, puffing on his pipe. Even from where I was hiding, I could smell the sweet cherry-flavored tobacco.
“Think he’ll remember much about us after we’re gone?”
Mom pulled in a little gasp of air, then said: “Don’t you go talking like that. We may not be as young as we used to be, but I’m not shopping for burial plots just yet.”
“That’s because you don’t have to, remember? We paid for them damn things-what was it?-ten, fifteen years ago?”
“Oh.”
“ Oh, she says.” He shook his head. “Think a person’d remember something like that.”
Mom readjusted her position in the chair, then asked: “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong or not?”
Dad puffed on his pipe again, then wiped the back of his arm over his face. “I told you, it’s stupid.”
“How about you let me decide that for myself?”
He looked straight at her. “It’s just, I been thinkin’ about when I was a kid, how I’d always get a whole dime once a month to go spend however I wanted. Shit, I had seven different paper routes I worked, and I handed every penny over to Mom so she could buy groceries and pay the bills-”
“-I remember the Depression, hon. We’re the same age, as I recall.”
“A dime was a small fortune back then. But Mom, she insisted that once a month I take a dime and go to the movies on Sunday. I could see a triple-feature with cartoons and get popcorn and a soda and still have three cents left for ice cream or something. I used to love those times, y’know. ‘Downtown Sunday’ was a big thing for me. I’d go to the Midland or the Auditorium for the movies, then walk around the square. Those’re some of the best memories I have.
“Anyway, there was this one corner downtown with this old building, and every Sunday I’d see the same three old guys sitting on the steps, sharing a newspaper or splitting up sandwiches, passing around some beer, and they always had this raggedy-ass fat old hound dog with ’em. I didn’t know which one of ’em owned the thing, but it never gave me any trouble so I never asked. But any time that dog’d see me coming, he’d waddle over and then just sit there and look at me with those sad eyes-thing looked like it was coming down off a drunk most of the time. I’d usually give it some leftover popcorn or a piece of my sandwich or whatever I picked up after the movie, and it’d eat it, then lick my hand and waddle back over to those three old guys. They always waved at me and I’d wave back. It was like part of my Downtown Sunday routine, you know?
“I thought it was great that here you had these old guys who’d meet each other on them steps and pass the better part of the day with their paper, and their stories, maybe playing checkers or something… and they always had that damn dog to keep things interesting. I mean, there was people who’d walk by and make fun of them, or try not to laugh at ’em ’cause they thought they was, you know, funny in the head or something. But I never laughed at ’em or made fun or anything. They had a place to go and spend good time with their friends. I thought that was just… just great.” His voice was growing thin, unsteady. He took a few more puffs from his pipe and as he did, Mom leaned forward.
Something more was going on here than what I was seeing and hearing. I’d never heard Dad talk about his childhood much, and whenever he did, I always tuned him out after a minute or two. Same thing with Mom. After all, I was young-what the hell did their childhood memories have to do with me?
“One day,” Dad continued, “I’d had a real good month and so Mom gave me an extra nickel, I thought I was King Midas or something, even bought myself a couple of comic books-I bought a little penny bag of dog scraps from one of the restaurants after I got out of the movie, decided that I was gonna make that old hound dog’s day. So I walk over to that corner and the three old guys are there and the dog waddles over as usual and boy, did it get lively when it saw what I had for it. So I fed it the scraps and petted it for a little bit, and that’s when I noticed that somebody’d stapled this plastic blue tag to the back of the poor thing’s ear. I figured maybe the dog catcher had caught it or something and maybe they did this down at the pound before the old guys came to claim it-but I couldn’t imagine anyone doing something like that to an animal. So I was extra nice to the dog that day and decided to walk it back across the street and say hello to the guys.
“We stood there talking for a few minutes and I finally got around to asking them whose dog it was, and you know what? It didn’t belong to any of them. They said that it had just always been there, and that it had waddled up to each one of them at some point and that’s how the three of them had met. After that, they sort of saw that dog as their good-luck charm, so they didn’t think they should send it away. None of ’em had any idea how that tag got there, either. I thought that was odd but I didn’t want to push the subject and maybe get them mad at me, so I asked ’em how long they’d been coming downtown on Sundays. And you know what one of them said to me then? He looked at me and shook his head and said: ‘Christ, boy! We come down here every day. We’re in our eighties- everybody else we know’s dead. What the hell else have we got to do?’
“I went home that day and cried myself to sleep. It was just terrible. Here I’d spent all this time thinking they were having a grand time, and all the while they were miserable. I didn’t go by that corner much after that. It must’ve been five, six months later before I passed by there, and this time they were all gone. There was only that old hound dog, just as friendly as ever. I think it even looked better in some ways; more energetic, and its eyes weren’t as bloodshot and droopy anymore. But it was just sitting there, scratching at that tag on its ear and waiting for the old guys to show up. It was still sitting there waiting when I left to go home and-”
And then Dad did something I’d never seen him do before; he dropped his head down and started crying. Even from where I was standing, I could see the way his body jerked and shuddered with the sobs.
Mom made a move to go to him but then thought better of it at the last moment. I wanted to call out “Give him a hug!” but I didn’t. I was as stunned and confused as she must have been.
“Oh, God,” said Dad, wiping at his eyes, but still the sobs kept coming. “I hate to get up in the mornings. You know? Some days I wish I didn’t have to get up at all, that I’d never have to get up again, ever. Just lay there and stare at the ceiling until… I don’t know what.”
“Honey, what’s going on?” Mom moved closer to him, but still would not touch him, as if she were afraid he might shatter into a thousand pieces.
“I wish I’d been a better soldier in the war, come home a hero like Sergeant York or something. But, no, I gotta go and get all shot up and now I’ve got a bad hip and two legs that get all swoll-up on me until I can’t hardly stand it hurts so much. I wish I’d been able to afford college, get me a degree in agriculture or something. We’d be on our own farm right now, one we own, and we’d be raising chickens, all of us. Instead we got this damn house that ain’t even paid for yet and ain’t gonna be anytime soon, and all I can do is drink until my hip or my legs don’t hurt so much ’cause I can’t afford the doctor bills anymore… then I yell at you and him and make everyone scared.” He pulled in a deep breath full of snot and regret and wiped at his face again.
“I see the way he looks at me sometimes. He looks at me just like people used to look at those old guys on the corner when I was a kid. Like I’m some kinda joke. I don’t want to be a joke to him, some worn-out old man
