said so many things during the brief time they were together, things that are now dog-eared in her mind so that she thinks of them, repeats them, relies on them every day. Without him she could never have found her way back to this place, back to her father’s side in time to make amends, back to the flat, swampy land that has been home even in the years she spent elsewhere. All those years and miles away, and still she often fell asleep conjuring images of the Saxon River, that cold dark water winding its way through the Green Swamp and on down to the Carolina coast, the wide sandy shore and the white hot light of summer. Her parents had owned a modest cottage there, not on the ocean but with a view of the marsh, and coming back she’d decided it would be worth the forty-minute drive from town to live there, to wake to the briny ocean air she associated with freedom. She loved the glaze of salt that covered the windows, like ice in another lifetime and she had had so many—like a cat and, like a cat, she had returned home. The Incredible Journey, Luke called it; he shared her love for all the dog books and movies, would have loved her new business. She’d been left the beach cottage, her parents’ home, which she quickly sold, and the Dog House, a drive-through hot-dog franchise her dad had bought two years before he died, which she kept.
“It was an investment,” he told her. “If I’d known you would ever grace us, well, now just me, with a return home, maybe I would have gone in for hair or nails or tans, but I like a good hot dog and your mother liked a good hot dog and they aren’t easy to come by.” He said this before they knew he was dying, and so there was still plenty of time and room for the sarcasm and innuendo that had long forced them apart. And the hot dogs are good, no doubt about it, and the place is very popular with the kids from town looking for some place to go on their way to the beach. People love the way they can drive up and order something off the cute menu like, “I’ll have a Puppy, two Old Yellers, and a Chihuahua.”
“Never been much on hair and tans,” she told him, her skin so white from years spent in Chicago and then Maine and New Hampshire, her unruly hair a shaggy cropped cut she often did herself, coloring in the gray of her temples with a Sharpie.
“True,” he had said. He had shown her where everything was within the tiny structure. The young man he’d hired to manage the place was off in the corner chopping onions and filling the sauerkraut bin for the German shepherd, trying to pretend he wasn’t listening. “It would have made your mother so happy if you had ever taken her advice about anything—men, school, clothes, your hair, but no, that was just too hard, wasn’t it?”
“It was if I wanted to have any—hair, that is,” she tried to make a joke, resisting the big barbed hook he kept dangling in front of her. “Mom loved the Twiggy look. Skinny bodies and pixie cuts.” If she were in a therapy session, she might have said, What was that all about, you guess? Whose hair is it anyway? But she laughed again and shook her head in that way that said, No big deal, so long ago. “Mom wanted a little Jack Russell for a daughter and I was the plump mangy retriever who wanted to be an afghan hound.” She reminded her dad how they had both loved that photograph of a man on a park bench with a long-haired blonde—or so it appeared from behind—only it was really his afghan hound; she had clipped the picture from Life magazine and put it on her bulletin board beside the many dandelions magician Ben had pulled from behind her ear and ribbons she had won on the junior high swim team. “But,” she added, “I’ve always been in the Dog House.”
Her dad finally laughed and said her mother had said the same thing. The thought of her mother and the fact they had never made up hung in the air around them, as thick and heavy as she had told Luke it would, and
“It was an investment,” he told her. “If I’d known you would ever grace us, well, now just me, with a return home, maybe I would have gone in for hair or nails or tans, but I like a good hot dog and your mother liked a good hot dog and they aren’t easy to come by.” He said this before they knew he was dying, and so there was still plenty of time and room for the sarcasm and innuendo that had long forced them apart. And the hot dogs are good, no doubt about it, and the place is very popular with the kids from town looking for some place to go on their way to the beach. People love the way they can drive up and order something off the cute menu like, “I’ll have a Puppy, two Old Yellers, and a Chihuahua.”
“Never been much on hair and tans,” she told him, her skin so white from years spent in Chicago and then Maine and New Hampshire, her unruly hair a shaggy cropped cut she often did herself, coloring in the gray of her temples with a Sharpie.
“True,” he had said. He had shown her where everything was within the tiny structure. The young man he’d hired to manage the place was off in the corner chopping onions and filling the sauerkraut bin for the German shepherd, trying to pretend he wasn’t listening. “It would have made your mother so happy if you had ever taken her advice about anything—men, school, clothes, your hair, but no, that was just too hard, wasn’t it?”
“It was if I wanted to have any—hair, that is,” she tried to make a joke, resisting the big barbed hook he kept dangling in front of her. “Mom loved the Twiggy look. Skinny bodies and pixie cuts.” If she were in a therapy session, she might have said, What was that all about, you guess? Whose hair is it anyway? But she laughed again and shook her head in that way that said, No big deal, so long ago. “Mom wanted a little Jack Russell for a daughter and I was the plump mangy retriever who wanted to be an afghan hound.” She reminded her dad how they had both loved that photograph of a man on a park bench with a long-haired blonde—or so it appeared from behind—only it was really his afghan hound; she had clipped the picture from Life magazine and put it on her bulletin board beside the many dandelions magician Ben had pulled from behind her ear and ribbons she had won on the junior high swim team. “But,” she added, “I’ve always been in the Dog House.”
Her dad finally laughed and said her mother had said the same thing. The thought of her mother and the fact they had never made up hung in the air around them, as thick and heavy as she had told Luke it would, and
Similar Books
