By Héctor Hernández
He was an hour outside the city limits when he remembered the boxes in the attic. Everything else—furniture, household items, boxes of memories—had been packed into one big moving van that morning and was already headed toward Salem, Oregon, to the new, smaller house less than two miles from his sister and her husband. He hadn’t wanted to sell his home, but everyone said it was best to distance himself from the tragedy. “Besides,” they said, “what would you do all by yourself in twenty-seven-hundred-square-feet of empty space?”
Did those forgotten boxes hold cherished books, precious photo albums, or just unwanted Christmas decorations? He couldn’t remember. He let out a great sigh. He would have to go back.
An hour later, he exited the freeway and turned right onto the familiar, wide boulevard. He drove along sun-dappled streets. They were lined with thickly branched, leafy trees. When he and his wife had first moved into the new neighborhood nearly twenty-five years ago, those trees had been only thin saplings, their trunks no bigger around than the circle formed by pinching together your thumb and forefinger. Now they were sturdy giants, their branches extending outward to provide shade along the ample sidewalks and quiet streets.
The man turned into the secluded, little cul-de-sac where his house sat and parked in the street out of habit. He always left the driveway for his wife and daughter to park. He turned off the engine and waited. That persistent knot in his chest was flaring up again. He hadn’t told his doctor about it. If it was a heart attack, so be it. He was ready to leave this earth. But after a few deep breaths, the knot disappeared. He knew that was only temporary. He wasn’t fooled. It would be back. It always came back.
Before exiting his truck, he took in one final, deep breath, filling his lungs to aching capacity, deliberately provoking that pain in his chest, daring it to show itself. But like a crafty fox, it refused to take the bait, so he exited his truck and made his way up the porch. He unlocked the front door, swung it open, and stood on the threshold. He watched as the ghosts of a thousand memories sprang to life: the countless birthday parties for his daughter, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, Family Friday with pizza and a movie (just the three of them), his daughter’s slumber parties, her graduation parties—first from high school, then from college. There were no ghosts of her engagement party, though, or her mother’s 60th birthday celebration—nor would there ever be.
He swallowed back a rising lump in his throat before stepping inside the hollowed-out space. As he turned to close the door, he heard the brisk clack, clack, clack of clawed feet on hard wood floor. His first thought was Greta’s ghost, his daughter’s bull terrier. There really had been no other choice except to end her suffering after cancer advanced to the point where food received nothing more than a sniff or two of mild interest and she refused to leave her cage, preferring to spend all day just lying on her mattress, staring at empty space. But it wasn’t Greta’s ghost—far from it. It was the neighbor’s very real pit bull and Greta’s nemesis: Marley.
Before Marley came on the scene, Greta had been top dog—at least in her own backyard. But with Marley’s arrival, Greta instinctively felt challenged. She greeted her new neighbor in a most uncivil manner, charging the fence that separated them with a blatant display of aggression, barking furiously while racing back and forth along the wooden barrier, her back hairs raised like a bristle brush. Perplexed by this most ungracious welcome, Marley could only stare quizzically at his batty neighbor.
“How ya doing, Buddy.”
Marley offered a wide, child-like grin. He wagged his tail furiously when the man reached down to scratch behind his massive head. His short, black fur; broad, muscular torso; and metal-spiked collar were fearsome to behold, but really, Marley was as friendly and social as a Golden Retriever.
The Houdiniesque canine often escaped from his backyard. The first time had caused chaos in the quiet little cul-de-sac with its tidy yards, well-maintained homes, and two cars in every driveway. Police were flooded with calls of a vicious pit bull threatening man, woman, and child. But after several escapes, neighbors eventually came to accept that Marley posed no real threat. They would still yank their kids from the street—you could never be too careful—but they stopped straining the 911 system.
A funny thing, though, the man was certain Marley never entered anyone else’s home, only his. And that, Marley started doing only recently, after the double tragedy—a traffic accident the man still couldn’t understand. It was as if Marley knew the man was missing something, and Marley was there to replace it.
“Well, Marley, I have to go up into the attic to get some boxes. You can hang out with me if you want to.” Marley stretched his childish grin even wider—and sat. “Or you can sit here and wait. Your choice, Buddy.” Marley chose to wait. But when the man began climbing the stairs, Marley rose and fell in behind him.
Inside the master bedroom, the attic ladder was pulled down, and the boxes retrieved. They contained nothing more than broken and mildewed camping gear. They were carried outside to the truck, placed in the bed, and would be transported nine hundred miles and then dumped.
The man cast his gaze up to the sky. It was a mean, wet grey. A light rain would arrive soon from the north. Temperatures were cold enough that the local mountains would be tickled with a feather’s dusting of snow this winter day in “sunny” Southern California.
Marley was more skin than fur. He wasn’t built for such frigid temperatures. The man worried for his four-legged friend. His neighbor, Marley’s owner, was at work and he didn’t have his number. They weren’t close neighbors, enough for a “good morning” or “how’s it going,” but that was as personal as it got.
What to do . . . ?
The hard, double knot of grief in the man’s chest began to stir once again. It had been boxed for too long and wanted out. It seized this opportunity as the moment of escape and tore at the man’s emotional vulnerability without mercy, scrambling out of the tiny space in which it had been forced to hide.
The man, taken by surprise, stumbled along on legs that grew weak with every step. When he could go no farther, he dropped to one knee and threw out a hand to brace himself, finding purchase against the side of his truck. Grief clawed its way up his throat. When it emerged, the man let loose a horrific howl. He cursed the heavens, the world, the living, and even the recently dead. His grief knew no bounds. He sobbed uncontrollably. Marley whined as the man’s tears flowed and the heavens cried with him—the first spatters of cold rain had begun to fall.
*
The man was on the 99, approaching Tulare. He would make a stop there. He had planned on taking the 5 freeway to Sacramento, spending the night, and heading out to Salem the following morning, but that was before. The 99 offered more places to stop and take breaks, more places for his new best friend to run and stretch his legs.
* * *
Héctor Hernández received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. He is now retired and writes when inspiration demands his attention. His short stories have appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, After Dinner Conversation, Bright Flash Literary Review, CafeLit, and Literally Stories.
