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THE OLD BLACK dog was lying on the pavement again. He'd arrived a little earlier each day - he'd pulled up the handbrake before ten to five that morning - and she hadn't been there but, by the time he'd finished his run, she was in her usual place once more, back pressed against the concrete wall around the apartment building opposite the park, head down on her crossed forepaws, eyes closed.
In the week he'd been watching her, she'd never left that spot, unless it rained, when she took to the apartment building corridor, walking so slowly she was almost drenched by the time she reached shelter. His business would take him around the park several times every day and, every time he looked for her,
she was there. At night, though, she vanished. Three nights ago, he had slowed down - the only car that hadn't accelerated to breakneck speed on the stretch - and peered into the apartment compound, to see if she was lying in the brightly lit corridor, but she wasn't.
Yesterday, although the traffic flying one-way around the park was heavy by 6.15am, he had crossed the road to finish his run on her side. From the park bench across the road, where he watched her every morning while taking off his sweaty shoes and socks, he would have called her black; up close, her fur was heavily flecked with grey. He slowed almost to a walk when he came alongside her but she didn't open her eyes; and then the line of cars whizzing by stopped entirely, for a few moments, as someone pressed the pedestrian crossing button at the traffic lights lower down the street, and he ran across the road and sat on the bench, and watched her, the way he was watching her now.
A snatch of verse from Derek Walcott's poem, "The Schooner Flight", came to mind, eight or ten lines that ended with an exclamation point that never failed to pierce his heart:
The driver size up my bags with a grin:
"This time, Shabine, like you really gone?"
I ain't answer the ass, I simply pile in
the back seat and watch the sky burn
above Laventille pink as the gown
in which the woman I left was sleeping,
and I look in the rearview and see a man
exactly like me, and the man was weeping
for the houses, the streets, that whole fucking island.
Christ have mercy on all sleeping things!
He could feel tears welling up in his eyes and, in the rapidly brightening daylight, was grateful for the perspiration pouring off his brow as his body cooled. The sun was rising quickly now. It would be another day of sweating in the shade, of being earnestly busy, of chasing profit and status and all the other vanities.
The sun glinted suddenly on the windshield of his rented car, reminding him the working day had to be started, if it was not to become a working night. Christ have mercy on all transients, he thought, and pushed himself up from the bench. The pitch walk felt cool under his bare feet. He walked onto the grass verge, taking deep pleasure from the dirt under his feet, the same sensation that might have annoyed him on another day, in another mood. He walked to the car, feeling the Earth itself below him, holding him up.
In the Gulf of Mexico, disaster proceeded apace, never slowing, every day, for months now. The oil the world demanded had to be found at lower and lower points on the planet's surface. When something went wrong, it went horribly wrong. If the world was a human being, he thought, that injury would have sent it to the Emergency Room. Far more than what had to be repaid, business people were pondering the profit lost. How many rich people did he know who lived lives of great power and wealth, surrounded by sycophants, but died weak and lonely, surrounded by paid caregivers? The answer: nearly all of them. What would it take to persuade people they could live together? Another spurious Messiah?
He threw his shoes and socks into the car and looked across the road. The old black dog lay with its head on its paws, eyes closed. Cars whizzed by without a break. On the other side, lower down the street, approaching the traffic lights, was a woman in athletic gear. "If she presses the button," he thought, "I'll cross the street and pat the dog."
The light changed. The cars stopped. He crossed.
The dog remained still even when he stood right next to it. He clicked his tongue. She lay unmoving and unmoved. Against the run of his mood, the thought arose: let sleeping dogs lie; but, smiling, he bent down to pat her.
She had been aware of him all along. Fear gave her speed. She jumped up and turned as if to dart across the street, where cars were speeding by once more. He stepped back, out of her immediate space, and she didn't complete the movement into the street that would surely have killed her. She stood her ground on the pavement, eyeing him uneasily. He looked at her. He'd never seen anything that old put up a fight. Even more than before, now, he wanted to pat her, for her, for him, for the love of God, and for the broken, bleeding Earth.
He put out his hand and, speaking softly, took a tiny step towards her. She stiffened and summoned what dregs of adrenaline were still left to her to make her hackles rise. She pulled her upper lips back in what ought to have been a ferocious, terrifying growl.
She had no teeth.
He stepped back. She relaxed. Her body drooped, exhausted by the encounter. He stepped back again and she lay down again, crossed her paws, rested her head and closed her eyes. He turned away, stepped into the street, began to run in his bare feet, fast, before he could himself be run over by the waves of careless, speeding cars. Christ have mercy on all sleeping things. He got into the car, put the key in the ignition and started the motor. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw a man exactly like him.
BC Pires is not just awake but jumpy
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