Lucky Dog

Lucky Dog The church sign read, “Trouble is just a rest stop on the way to Good.” The paint had cracked and faded and one of the Os had begun to disappear, which made the sign seem even more like a prayer. That road had been trouble since the county had surveyed the bypass then paved it. The town folk avoided it after it took four teenagers that first year on a blind curve. The church people were certain though it meant their souls had found their way to Good or to God. Depending on their faith or their spelling. That night the rain was hard and a flatbed slowed then stopped on the curve. The door opened and a man pushed a dog out onto the shoulder. He didn’t say that he was tired of cleaning up after one more puppy or that dog food cost too damn much. Instead he whispered to himself that terrible is a rest stop on the way to good, like the sign said. Then the man slammed the door, the engine muttered and the tail lights, just like the man’s conscience, slipped away into darkness. The dog sat on the curve waiting to be found or abandoned, fed and loved or simply left to hurt. Waiting, as we all do, for some small unlikely mercy. Down the road another man rubbed the fog from the windshield and then prayed between curses for a way to see. He had stayed too late, hoping the girl he was whispering to could hear something true beneath shots and beers. Around the curve in the dark, the dog whimpered to himself because he was cold and because he was alone, and for the first time in his life, afraid. He didn’t know where to go and tried to fight down the certainty that his master might never return. The man saw the dog too late and hit the brakes. The car spun and slid, like it had made up its mind, toward an embankment. He twisted the wheel hard and almost got past. But the dog let out that high hard cry, that unmistakable sound of fear crossing over to loss. The man spun the wheel back again. But the car, certain of where it should go, spilt over the edge like it was trying, once more, to teach the truth about speed and gravity and the ditch that they always demand. The dog limped away into the brush by the side of the road, crying to no one, dragging a badly broken leg behind. It was just five minutes but a little eternity before a passerby stopped, got out, peered over the roadside and climbed down. The man was unconscious, his right leg crushed by the buckled dashboard. The stranger phoned it in and the police came and called a tow and an ambulance. The cops were old hands at accidents, each twenty years in. They stayed on the job because they didn’t know what else they would do with all that useless time once they dropped the papers. So night after night, at every accident they shook their heads like they had learned to do at a thousand previous wrecks. “Too fast,” one said. “Yep…not a lick of sense,” the other answered. “Make him blow the test?” “Naw… what’s the point. Poor bastid already paid enough don’t you think.” Then they looked at the ground and wondered how long they would have to stand in the rain, how long it would take to write the report and whether their shoes would be dry by tomorrow. The ambulance came lights flashing, siren off and the EMTs hoisted the man up and out and shook their heads. They knew nothing to be done when they saw it. He would live of course, but he would never be right again. They could see it from a glance. Not right has a way of filling you up. Sometimes it follows you. It crawls into the back of your eyelids and then down into your dreams. And they had already filled up every bit of their dreams with the not right of the world. So they loaded him up, strapped him in, and with the siren off, rode away slow. The tow finally arrived, the operator was an old man. He was unshaven and walked with a limp. Like some kind of priest, he made his living from the blind curves and wreckage of those around him. Though he wasn’t interested in salvation as much as salvage. He hooked up the car and winched it back to the roadside. Accidents, he knew, were just a fact of life. Living’s full of collisions. He paid his mortgage with crumpled fenders and bent frames. And every time he looked in the mirror he told himself everybody’s one blind curve away from not right. And everybody’s full of spare parts. Good and bad luck are like the same pocket. One fella’s pocket gets turned inside out and some other fella’s is filled. Miss Fortune or Lady Luck. It’s just a question of which way the pocket’s turned. He was ready to pull it away, when he heard the dog in the weeds, frightened and whimpering to itself. The old man shoved the rig back into neutral, throttled down and listened hard. Then he stepped out of the cab and limped toward the sound. Men he knew, for the most part, get what they deserve. Sure, there is that out of the blue kind of calamity that can claim you. That grand design unavoidable kind of terrible. Floods, tornadoes, lightning strike house fires. But mostly it’s 'the bed you yourself make trouble' that you are forced to sleep in. The common self inflicted suffering that leaves you staring at your hands cause your fingerprints are all over every choice that led to it. So we run it hard on the blind curves and find ourselves in some ditch we ourselves dug. And we wonder how terrible justice has crawled into our own hands. But a dog is different. A dog like this, didn’t do nothing but wait for a little bit of mercy. Didn’t do nothing but hope and plead for the some tail lights to return or maybe for some headlights in the dark to stop the rain and the worry. The old man picked the dog up and tenderly felt the leg. He knew straight away they wouldn’t be able to save it. The dog cried like a child will, then with eyes full of hope looked up into the old man’s face. “That’s alright boy,” he gently whispered. “Look what this old world done to you.” Love, the old man had come to know, can show up in unexpected places. In after hours bars and church pews. In a bail bondsman office once, then a years worth of AA meetings. But sometimes it’s in the weeds crying, sometimes it’s waiting in the dark of a blind curve. It can seem nearly unreachable in yourself, beneath all the wrecks, all the cold nights and all the lonely that a tow trucker can live into himself. But somehow that dog winched it up… dragged love from the bottom of some ravine in him, like it was certain he still had some good spare parts left. The old man carried the dog in his arms and laid him on a blanket in the cab. Then he climbed in, pushed the rig into drive and felt the jerk as the chain engaged. Then once more he dragged the ruin away. And down the road a few miles, in the dark he reached out and put his hand on the dog’s neck. Holding the hurt at bay. Together they passed the sign barely visible in the rain, reminding each that Trouble is a just rest stop on the way to... Go d.” WLM Lucky Dog