Final Draft (Maybe)

(I am still not as satisfied as I would like to be with this story but here it is in it’s final form. I think that I will try to edit it some more though.)

Man’s Best Friend

I had to work until ten o’clock; it was a Tuesday. When I walked into the house I knew that something was missing. My mother was sitting on the couch, a blanket wrapped around her legs and Kate curled up next to her. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary except for the missing fixture in the corner of the kitchen. A purple, plaid, hair covered pillow lay in the South West corner of the kitchen empty with only the U shaped indentation left.

I remember the day that we got him. My dad came into the house and told me and my sisters to come outside because he had a surprise for us. His grey, Chevy pickup was about a foot away from the garage door when the four of us, my mother including me and my sisters, filled out of the house. Before the grey truck, he had this old 80’s, red and white truck that would honk the horn when he turned right. I would holler at him, “Stop it dad!” but he would just say, “I can’t. It honks when I turn!” with a coy smile on his face as he turned the steering wheel. I’m still uncertain if he was messing with me and honking the horn when he turned or that the truck had some type of mechanical flaw that made it honk. I am inclined to think the former given that my dad has worked on cars most of his adult life, but I wasn’t always paying attention to him when I rode in the truck so I never caught him doing it.

We all went out to the driveway, the topper on the truck bed prevented us from really seeing what was back there, the side windows tinted almost to black to prevent the sun from bleaching his ever important parts or junk or whatever he kept back there, or maybe he just bought it off of someone he knew and that was their intention. Anyway, we were all swelling with anticipation, my sisters clenching their fists, holding them to their mouth, and when my dad opened the tailgate of the truck and pulled an off-white dog caddy out of the back an explosion of joy erupted from all of us. We had been asking my dad for a dog for quite some time but he would always say that we didn’t need one or that it would be too much work or something along those lines. We named him Max.

I knew that it was happening today but that didn’t make it any easier or make the house seem right in any way when I got home. He used to sleep on the rug in front of the door leading from the garage to the kitchen but this time I didn’t bump into anything when I opened the door. My mom later said to me, “Could you just sit by the door when I come home so that I hit something.” This is the only door that we really use. My dad usually comes in the back door because his shop is in the backyard. About ten feet from our deck sits my dad’s fully functioning auto shop. He used to race sprint cars when I, and he, were much younger. I would watch them, my dad and his friends, assemble the red, white and blue car every spring. The smell of molten steel still perspiring from the freshly welded skeleton frame that arrived promptly at spring time would filter through my little nose. I would sit in my sandbox weaving intricate Vietcong tunnels as the guys wrenched and ratcheted the steering system in place. The fresh spring afternoons I spent in the wooded area next to our house were greeted with grumbles and growls. I can still hear the roar and anteceding grumble of a sprint car engine echoing throughout the house and in my young ears. No wonder he has to turn the TV up full blast to hear anything.

He was the one that took Max, my father I mean. I said my goodbye to Max the night before. It was like March 2007 all over again. She died of cancer in March of 2007. When I went to see her she was hooked up to machines and covered in about seven blankets; hisses and the mechanic whirs of motors filled the silence in the sterile room. She had stopped eating and the last time that I saw her she was nothing more than the fading image of my grandmother. I hugged her and she started crying and told me that she was sorry. I didn’t understand why she had to be sorry but she said she was and I told her that it was alright. The funeral was strange. It was like I was removed from the situation but I wasn’t. It was like this wasn’t my life but I was there watching it happen. My mother told my sister that it was sad watching me carry my grandmother to her grave. I was proud that I was one of the chosen. I just hope that I am making Yoshi proud. It was sad to see her go and now it was sad to see Max go. He had to be about seventeen years old. A Shih Tzu has an average life span of eleven to fourteen years which means that Max, a half breed, lived well beyond the average life span of a pure bread Shih Tzu. I rubbed his furry head and stroked his curved, protruding spine and told him that he was a good dog. He picked up his head and looked around a little and then went back to sleep; it was like saying goodbye to Yoshi all over again.

I’m not sure when my dad took Max to the Vet. He went to the Vet that is located behind Jerseys on South Highland Ave. Jerseys used to be The Sunshine Café which was my grandparents restaurant. I know the building very well and remember the way that it used to be. It’s still strange going into the place to drink beer when I used to go there to eat hamburgers the size of my seven-year-old face and french-fries the size of my little fingers, if not bigger. Everything was bigger when it was The Sunshine Café. I remember going there often when I was a child. My mother would take us there most Sunday mornings to eat breakfast, which was always too big for my little belly.

It’s emptier in the house now and even my cat, Kate, seems to think so. The day after Max left she went to the kitchen door where he used to sleep looking for him. Kate even woke my mother up one morning to make sure that she let Max outside, but of course he was nowhere to be found. Kate hates every other dog or cat that come close to her but she didn’t mind Max. In some karmic earthly balance the two of them were compatible. Even though the little guy pissed all over the house and frequently pissed me off he was still there to greet you when you got home. He was still there when you were feeling bad. He almost seemed to know when you were down or when you were ill. He wouldn’t sleep in my room unless I was sad or ill he would.