//creative//
Spring 2019
Spring 2019
The Missing Dog
Marie Papazian
Why would he steal that pop anyways?
He couldn’t say. He wanted the fizzy cool on the soft of his tongue and that’s all he knew. He hadn’t thought about repercussions before he did it and after he did it there were none. None immediately.
It was a summer day in Alpena, Michigan. A small town filled with chilled air and maple trees and some clear water, too. It was a Sunday, the Lord’s day, and Tommy, 10, wanted a cold can of coke in his palm; so, he walked to the local convenience store, took a can of coke from the fridge and stuffed it in his pocket. He started towards the door. The woman with the maroon curls and the sagging face behind the cash register gave him a goodbye-type nod and that was that. Her nametag read: Barbara. She looked like a Barbara. The metal of the coke can jangled, making high-clattered notes against the sharp of his keys under his khaki pocket. Barbara hadn’t noticed.
A man stood right outside the store, hunched, two big bulging bumps on his back, behind the boney shoulders that curved inwards towards his abdomen. He had wrinkles all
deep in his face, sprawling all webs like plastic bag crinkles. The man glared.
No bar-code on a can of pop. No high-pitched pierced beeping when Tommy walked out
—just the slipping of the electric door and the blast-swollen heat of a humid day.
Makes your skin swell up, absorbing all that water-swelling air. Sweltering sunlight, soaking.
Tommy drinks his stolen pop on the porch stoop. Under the shaded awning of the baby-blue house with the white trim, the metal rooster poking out from the top, and the broad American flag dangling from the pole off the right-side window. The birds chirp and fly about, making songs all free. The air is crisp now, the sun setting behind the sprinkled pole lines of Oakwood trees. He smells pine cones and maple leaves. Distant paint splotch houses, like strips of wallpaper swatches. And it makes him happy and also sad—nostalgic because he is leaving.
He slurps loud and gulps all that coke down to the dark of his belly. It burns in a cool, refreshing way.
Mom’s home.
The squealing of the car tires makes tracks against the driveway gravel. The orange leaves on the tree blow and shake.
“Tommy,” she announces from the parked car, one high-heeled foot out the door now. Home from work.
“Tommy, I’m home!” she says.
“I can see that, mom,” Tommy huffs. He emphasizes mom, drawing it out. He puts his lips to the cold metal and takes another sweet coke swig. Soft breeze.
She doesn’t answer that. She takes her sunglasses off the top of her head and her hair falls.
“How was your day, sweetie?” she asks getting out of the car, heel bottoms scratching gravel. She adjusts her sheer black tights before standing.
“It was fine.”
“Did you talk to Mr. Jeremy?”
“Mom!” he shouts.
“I just think you should do that, hun.”
“You’re annoying,” he says.
He gets up from the stoop, swings the house door open, and walks heavily inside. He stomps up the stairs to his room and plops down on his creaky, wooden bed. He dreams of the man outside the store. The old guy, hunched and hard like a shelled crab. Such a mean face, cruel, really. Beady and glinting eyes, little pool balls scratching, etched. And then. And then there’s all those crinkles, that wrinkled face sagging and melting.
It’s still night and past Tommy’s window, cicadas chirp and lightning bugs flash. Bushes tremor between strands of wind, under the deeply blue, star-studded night. Smells like bonfire. Howls like a ghost story.
Under the dark cloak of Tommy’s dream, the man’s face begins to melt. Tommy can smell the burning rubber, almost taste it. The rubber of his lumpy skin, all loose and falling, those cheeks that droop, the eye sockets that sag and open up to reveal the pink gummy stuff underneath, all slithering with purple-blue veins. Worms. The air is hot, now. Smoke bends the air in a way that’s slinky, tinfoil metal air all hot and orange.
Tommy wakes up from his dream just when he starts to get really frightened. He tells himself he’s not scared. He wipes the crusty snot from the edges of his nose and collects all the crumpled tissues sprawled on his bed. He tosses the tissue towards the metal trash can, but they catch wind and float down like pretty jellyfish ghosts and then fall.
He hears a knock.
“Tommy?” It’s mom.
Tommy feels a harsh contraction in his heart, a tingling spread.
“What mom?” He draws out mom again. He gets up off the bed and starts throwing clothes in the suitcase top opened at the foot of his bed. He’s frantic, stuffing it, what’s needed.
“Tommy, there’s a man here to see you dear!”
“Who?”
“He says it’s Mr. Jeremy dear, so did you not talk to Mr. Jeremy?”
“Mr. Jeremy said he was visiting his mom in Chicago—”
“Well he’s here dear and you are keeping him waiting,” she opens the door a crack.
“Stop mom, I’m coming.” Tommy is confused. He doesn’t want his mother to see the frayed suitcase on the edge of his bed, stuffed with rainbow clothes wilting out the sides like a gift bag and almost filled. Doesn’t want her to know that he’s leaving.
The blue sun is shining in from the glass of his window in a harsh, piercing way. A way that bleaches strips of room and shadows others. A way that makes you contemplate burning.
He steps out the room. Mom’s gone. Walks down the staircase and his feet feel heavy. Creaks the blue carpeted floorboards with each slow-pattered step. The doorbell rings, a soft aching bring. Walking down towards the sunlight-ed entryway, floorboards bending kaleidoscope from the stained-glass door panels. Catches sight of Mr. Jeremy’s face through the window-glass, an image warped through bent beams of bright.
A flickering of recognition. A thud in Tommy’s heart.
“Dear!” mom calls from the back kitchen, now. “Open the door, dear! Tommy, Mr. Jeremy has been waiting there, poor man!”
Tommy stares out the window and feels another blunt pang. Tommy reaches for the round doorknob. Opens door. Air. Mr. Jeremy.
“Mr. Jeremy,” Tommy says.
Mr. Jeremy is wearing a striped polo blazer and some khaki shorts and a pair of tortoise- shell eyeglasses.
“Hello Tommy.” A rustling of Michigan trees.
“Mr. Jeremy,” Tommy says, “How are you?”
“I’m good, Tommy,” Mr. Jeremy says. “And yourself?”
“Good.”
“Tom I came here to ask you about the little paying job your mom and I discussed. She told me you’d like to make some cash this summer.”
“That’s right,” Tommy says.
“Well, Tommy. Mrs. Jeremy and I are in desperate need of a good man to walk our dog, Boogie. So if you’re up for the task we’d like to offer you the job.”
“Oh. Thanks, Mr. Jeremy. When do I start?”
“How about now?”
Tommy peers back into the shadowed house. Mom is nowhere in sight, probably around the corner in the kitchen. The ceiling lights are off, shadow squares on the lined wooden floor.
“Sure, Mr. Jeremy.” Tommy ventures. “I could walk Boogie now.”
Mr. Jeremy is visibly happy with the answer and turns his scrawny shoulders, his square chest inching out towards the sidewalk. Tommy puts his right hand on the doorframe, peers once more back into the dark house. No mom. He resolves to follow Mr. Jeremy down the front door stoop and out through the uneven cobblestone entryway. He pulls shut the looming front door with a double click.
They get to Mr. Jeremy’s house, grey, square, and lined with white. Tommy meets Mr. Jeremy’s pooch, Boogie. A cute pooch. All dirt shaggy and strands covering little shiny coal eyes. A wagging tail and dripping pink tongue. Happy pooch. Mr. Jeremy guesses that the dog’s a Havanese.
“But don’t quote me on that,” Mr. Jeremy laughs.
Mr. Jeremy hands Tommy the red leash and waves him goodbye.
“Just a thirty-minute stroll,” Mr. Jeremy says. “Not too bad.”
Tommy and Boogie set out. Tommy desperately wants cash. Boogie wants to eat sidewalk grass, but Tommy won’t let him. Tommy pulls at the leash whenever Boogie stops to sniff green. Boogie’s head jerks with every small tug, but Boogie is persistent.
The pair walk and walk. Down a grey sidewalk, past shivering ringed trees and cube houses. The sun is setting, the wind is cold. A big gust of wind blows and Tommy pauses to zip up his hoodie, then pulls the two dangling strings tight so the hood scrunches round his cheeks. He stuffs his free hand in his big pocket. Finds a frayed and worn packet of Wintermint trident gum. Pops a piece in his mouth and chews, chilly winter snowflakes and peppermint.
Boogie sniffles and makes little panting sounds out his tiny mouth, paws making patter sounds like bulging rain droplets dripping off a hanging pot, plop down and drop.
There’s not much activity on the street. They are the only ones out now, and the whole neighborhood is blanketed in rich blue. It’s about 5 o’clock. Tommy and Boogie reach the end of the block, right where the sidewalk ends and two streets merge and two green street signs off metal poles read, “Blueberry Dr.,” and “Maple St.”.
A little flickering out the right-side of Tommy’s vision. He pauses and turns his head, takes a glance at the uncommon commotion.
Pop. The sound of a soda can striking the sidewalk. The sound of thin tin metal rolling lightly on a cold, blue summer’s night.
On the side of the street, Tommy catches sight of a distant figure, two bulging bumps. A hunched back, hard like a shelled crab. The same man from the store. He dropped the can as he was taking out his garbage bag brimming with trash pieces. He lugs it out and heaves it but he yanks too jolty and the soda can drops and makes a popping sound off the concrete.
Tommy feels a dizzy wave through the air in his head.
The man bends down to pick up the can, but he’s already so low to the ground so he just tips a little like a tipping scale. The bumps on his back make his bent-down body a piece of dark coal, bent two bumps wrapped in a black coat.
Boogie lets out a low grumble. Boogie yelps.
Tommy pulls on the leash, tries to tug the pup away, but it’s too late. And the little old man has already taken notice of him. And the man turns his bent body, hunched and tipped, towards Tommy and makes the same murderous face like in the store. Wrinkled and folded like a dirty crumpled napkin.
Tommy can see it now. Vivid like in his dream. The sagging skin and the purple-blue veins and the pink gummy eye sockets. He can smell the rubber.
Tommy feels light and his eyes sort of roll back and he shakes a little. His heart thuds and then thuds. Pangs shoot through his heart and he walks away, slowly and then faster. He lets go of the dog leash, fumbles to pick it up, but Boogie’s already flying. Pattering down the street, far away from Tommy and them, red leash in the windy air like a circling ribbon, shiny and blowing.
Tommy doesn’t care. He bolts. Fast-paced and brimming, Tommy walks and then runs. Wind blasts. Down Maple St., takes a right, down Orchid Lane, takes a left, down the crooked sidewalk with the ridges and bending side trees, up past the stop sign. There it is.
Red and blue flash. Flash. Tommy places his hands on the door and pushes the glass, thrusting himself inside. He bumps into a tall body.
“Son?”
“Sorry,” Tommy mutters, breathy.
“Everything all right, son?” The police officer asks.
Tommy whispers under his breath.
“What was that, son?”
“It was me. It was me.”
The policeman chuckles. “What was that, boy?”
“I stole the coke.”
“Excuse me?”
“I stole a can of coke.” Tommy says, head down. “I just wanted some coke, but I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
The policeman pauses. Then he laughs. He has a nice big smile and he’s a good man.
“Sport.” He says. “It’s really okay.” He crouches down. “Try to get a summer job, though, alright kid?” he says.
Tommy nods. Tommy remembers Boogie.
“Oh, officer. I also have a missing dog to report.”
He couldn’t say. He wanted the fizzy cool on the soft of his tongue and that’s all he knew. He hadn’t thought about repercussions before he did it and after he did it there were none. None immediately.
It was a summer day in Alpena, Michigan. A small town filled with chilled air and maple trees and some clear water, too. It was a Sunday, the Lord’s day, and Tommy, 10, wanted a cold can of coke in his palm; so, he walked to the local convenience store, took a can of coke from the fridge and stuffed it in his pocket. He started towards the door. The woman with the maroon curls and the sagging face behind the cash register gave him a goodbye-type nod and that was that. Her nametag read: Barbara. She looked like a Barbara. The metal of the coke can jangled, making high-clattered notes against the sharp of his keys under his khaki pocket. Barbara hadn’t noticed.
A man stood right outside the store, hunched, two big bulging bumps on his back, behind the boney shoulders that curved inwards towards his abdomen. He had wrinkles all
deep in his face, sprawling all webs like plastic bag crinkles. The man glared.
No bar-code on a can of pop. No high-pitched pierced beeping when Tommy walked out
—just the slipping of the electric door and the blast-swollen heat of a humid day.
Makes your skin swell up, absorbing all that water-swelling air. Sweltering sunlight, soaking.
Tommy drinks his stolen pop on the porch stoop. Under the shaded awning of the baby-blue house with the white trim, the metal rooster poking out from the top, and the broad American flag dangling from the pole off the right-side window. The birds chirp and fly about, making songs all free. The air is crisp now, the sun setting behind the sprinkled pole lines of Oakwood trees. He smells pine cones and maple leaves. Distant paint splotch houses, like strips of wallpaper swatches. And it makes him happy and also sad—nostalgic because he is leaving.
He slurps loud and gulps all that coke down to the dark of his belly. It burns in a cool, refreshing way.
Mom’s home.
The squealing of the car tires makes tracks against the driveway gravel. The orange leaves on the tree blow and shake.
“Tommy,” she announces from the parked car, one high-heeled foot out the door now. Home from work.
“Tommy, I’m home!” she says.
“I can see that, mom,” Tommy huffs. He emphasizes mom, drawing it out. He puts his lips to the cold metal and takes another sweet coke swig. Soft breeze.
She doesn’t answer that. She takes her sunglasses off the top of her head and her hair falls.
“How was your day, sweetie?” she asks getting out of the car, heel bottoms scratching gravel. She adjusts her sheer black tights before standing.
“It was fine.”
“Did you talk to Mr. Jeremy?”
“Mom!” he shouts.
“I just think you should do that, hun.”
“You’re annoying,” he says.
He gets up from the stoop, swings the house door open, and walks heavily inside. He stomps up the stairs to his room and plops down on his creaky, wooden bed. He dreams of the man outside the store. The old guy, hunched and hard like a shelled crab. Such a mean face, cruel, really. Beady and glinting eyes, little pool balls scratching, etched. And then. And then there’s all those crinkles, that wrinkled face sagging and melting.
It’s still night and past Tommy’s window, cicadas chirp and lightning bugs flash. Bushes tremor between strands of wind, under the deeply blue, star-studded night. Smells like bonfire. Howls like a ghost story.
Under the dark cloak of Tommy’s dream, the man’s face begins to melt. Tommy can smell the burning rubber, almost taste it. The rubber of his lumpy skin, all loose and falling, those cheeks that droop, the eye sockets that sag and open up to reveal the pink gummy stuff underneath, all slithering with purple-blue veins. Worms. The air is hot, now. Smoke bends the air in a way that’s slinky, tinfoil metal air all hot and orange.
Tommy wakes up from his dream just when he starts to get really frightened. He tells himself he’s not scared. He wipes the crusty snot from the edges of his nose and collects all the crumpled tissues sprawled on his bed. He tosses the tissue towards the metal trash can, but they catch wind and float down like pretty jellyfish ghosts and then fall.
He hears a knock.
“Tommy?” It’s mom.
Tommy feels a harsh contraction in his heart, a tingling spread.
“What mom?” He draws out mom again. He gets up off the bed and starts throwing clothes in the suitcase top opened at the foot of his bed. He’s frantic, stuffing it, what’s needed.
“Tommy, there’s a man here to see you dear!”
“Who?”
“He says it’s Mr. Jeremy dear, so did you not talk to Mr. Jeremy?”
“Mr. Jeremy said he was visiting his mom in Chicago—”
“Well he’s here dear and you are keeping him waiting,” she opens the door a crack.
“Stop mom, I’m coming.” Tommy is confused. He doesn’t want his mother to see the frayed suitcase on the edge of his bed, stuffed with rainbow clothes wilting out the sides like a gift bag and almost filled. Doesn’t want her to know that he’s leaving.
The blue sun is shining in from the glass of his window in a harsh, piercing way. A way that bleaches strips of room and shadows others. A way that makes you contemplate burning.
He steps out the room. Mom’s gone. Walks down the staircase and his feet feel heavy. Creaks the blue carpeted floorboards with each slow-pattered step. The doorbell rings, a soft aching bring. Walking down towards the sunlight-ed entryway, floorboards bending kaleidoscope from the stained-glass door panels. Catches sight of Mr. Jeremy’s face through the window-glass, an image warped through bent beams of bright.
A flickering of recognition. A thud in Tommy’s heart.
“Dear!” mom calls from the back kitchen, now. “Open the door, dear! Tommy, Mr. Jeremy has been waiting there, poor man!”
Tommy stares out the window and feels another blunt pang. Tommy reaches for the round doorknob. Opens door. Air. Mr. Jeremy.
“Mr. Jeremy,” Tommy says.
Mr. Jeremy is wearing a striped polo blazer and some khaki shorts and a pair of tortoise- shell eyeglasses.
“Hello Tommy.” A rustling of Michigan trees.
“Mr. Jeremy,” Tommy says, “How are you?”
“I’m good, Tommy,” Mr. Jeremy says. “And yourself?”
“Good.”
“Tom I came here to ask you about the little paying job your mom and I discussed. She told me you’d like to make some cash this summer.”
“That’s right,” Tommy says.
“Well, Tommy. Mrs. Jeremy and I are in desperate need of a good man to walk our dog, Boogie. So if you’re up for the task we’d like to offer you the job.”
“Oh. Thanks, Mr. Jeremy. When do I start?”
“How about now?”
Tommy peers back into the shadowed house. Mom is nowhere in sight, probably around the corner in the kitchen. The ceiling lights are off, shadow squares on the lined wooden floor.
“Sure, Mr. Jeremy.” Tommy ventures. “I could walk Boogie now.”
Mr. Jeremy is visibly happy with the answer and turns his scrawny shoulders, his square chest inching out towards the sidewalk. Tommy puts his right hand on the doorframe, peers once more back into the dark house. No mom. He resolves to follow Mr. Jeremy down the front door stoop and out through the uneven cobblestone entryway. He pulls shut the looming front door with a double click.
They get to Mr. Jeremy’s house, grey, square, and lined with white. Tommy meets Mr. Jeremy’s pooch, Boogie. A cute pooch. All dirt shaggy and strands covering little shiny coal eyes. A wagging tail and dripping pink tongue. Happy pooch. Mr. Jeremy guesses that the dog’s a Havanese.
“But don’t quote me on that,” Mr. Jeremy laughs.
Mr. Jeremy hands Tommy the red leash and waves him goodbye.
“Just a thirty-minute stroll,” Mr. Jeremy says. “Not too bad.”
Tommy and Boogie set out. Tommy desperately wants cash. Boogie wants to eat sidewalk grass, but Tommy won’t let him. Tommy pulls at the leash whenever Boogie stops to sniff green. Boogie’s head jerks with every small tug, but Boogie is persistent.
The pair walk and walk. Down a grey sidewalk, past shivering ringed trees and cube houses. The sun is setting, the wind is cold. A big gust of wind blows and Tommy pauses to zip up his hoodie, then pulls the two dangling strings tight so the hood scrunches round his cheeks. He stuffs his free hand in his big pocket. Finds a frayed and worn packet of Wintermint trident gum. Pops a piece in his mouth and chews, chilly winter snowflakes and peppermint.
Boogie sniffles and makes little panting sounds out his tiny mouth, paws making patter sounds like bulging rain droplets dripping off a hanging pot, plop down and drop.
There’s not much activity on the street. They are the only ones out now, and the whole neighborhood is blanketed in rich blue. It’s about 5 o’clock. Tommy and Boogie reach the end of the block, right where the sidewalk ends and two streets merge and two green street signs off metal poles read, “Blueberry Dr.,” and “Maple St.”.
A little flickering out the right-side of Tommy’s vision. He pauses and turns his head, takes a glance at the uncommon commotion.
Pop. The sound of a soda can striking the sidewalk. The sound of thin tin metal rolling lightly on a cold, blue summer’s night.
On the side of the street, Tommy catches sight of a distant figure, two bulging bumps. A hunched back, hard like a shelled crab. The same man from the store. He dropped the can as he was taking out his garbage bag brimming with trash pieces. He lugs it out and heaves it but he yanks too jolty and the soda can drops and makes a popping sound off the concrete.
Tommy feels a dizzy wave through the air in his head.
The man bends down to pick up the can, but he’s already so low to the ground so he just tips a little like a tipping scale. The bumps on his back make his bent-down body a piece of dark coal, bent two bumps wrapped in a black coat.
Boogie lets out a low grumble. Boogie yelps.
Tommy pulls on the leash, tries to tug the pup away, but it’s too late. And the little old man has already taken notice of him. And the man turns his bent body, hunched and tipped, towards Tommy and makes the same murderous face like in the store. Wrinkled and folded like a dirty crumpled napkin.
Tommy can see it now. Vivid like in his dream. The sagging skin and the purple-blue veins and the pink gummy eye sockets. He can smell the rubber.
Tommy feels light and his eyes sort of roll back and he shakes a little. His heart thuds and then thuds. Pangs shoot through his heart and he walks away, slowly and then faster. He lets go of the dog leash, fumbles to pick it up, but Boogie’s already flying. Pattering down the street, far away from Tommy and them, red leash in the windy air like a circling ribbon, shiny and blowing.
Tommy doesn’t care. He bolts. Fast-paced and brimming, Tommy walks and then runs. Wind blasts. Down Maple St., takes a right, down Orchid Lane, takes a left, down the crooked sidewalk with the ridges and bending side trees, up past the stop sign. There it is.
Red and blue flash. Flash. Tommy places his hands on the door and pushes the glass, thrusting himself inside. He bumps into a tall body.
“Son?”
“Sorry,” Tommy mutters, breathy.
“Everything all right, son?” The police officer asks.
Tommy whispers under his breath.
“What was that, son?”
“It was me. It was me.”
The policeman chuckles. “What was that, boy?”
“I stole the coke.”
“Excuse me?”
“I stole a can of coke.” Tommy says, head down. “I just wanted some coke, but I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
The policeman pauses. Then he laughs. He has a nice big smile and he’s a good man.
“Sport.” He says. “It’s really okay.” He crouches down. “Try to get a summer job, though, alright kid?” he says.
Tommy nods. Tommy remembers Boogie.
“Oh, officer. I also have a missing dog to report.”
//MARIE PAPAZIAN is a Senior in Barnard College. She can be reached at [email protected].