by Travis Flatt
My dog, Hero, is double dead.
Shortly after my nephew’s parents leave for their anniversary dinner, Parker comes to me brandishing Hero’s empty food bowl, demanding why I haven’t fed her, that she must have now (double) died of starvation.
Those first few minutes of drop-off were rough; the news of Hero’s death was delivered to Parker as he ran around, eager to pet and scritch Hero. My sister-in-law and I chased him, asking him to listen. My brother, oblivious, described the guitar he’d just bought.
We caught Parker in my living room. I tried to explain that Hero died last week, gave up, and turned it over to my sister-in-law. Turns out “went to heaven” is their euphemism.
“Like grandpa?” Parker said, at which point I had to recuse myself to the freezer for my calming ritual while my sister set Parker up with a coloring book and returned to get my instructions: “Don’t let him go outside—there’s a pollen alert.”
Allergies come from my side of the family. “You come by them honestly,” my dad would have said.
I ask Parker to please put the food bowl back, saying I’ll be right there to color. Then I, for fear of going to what my therapist discourages me calling “the bad place”—the rocking on my couch, shouting names of the dead over the precipice of the void place—make a second trip to the freezer and open the door, smoosh my cheeks inside, and take long icy breaths until numb. I discover Parker on my couch, watching thin air.
“What’s up?” I say.
“Ghosts.”
“Yikes. Did you see something, dude?”
“Mrs. Richards says when someone goes to heaven, they’re still here. It shouldn’t make you sad. Their atoms are here.”
“Mrs. Richards is your teacher?”
He nods, then dives onto the floor, wrestling nothing. I maneuver myself between him and my entertainment system, ask what he’s doing.
“It’s Hero,” he says. “She’s bored. Dogs act bad when they’re bored.”
I go to the pantry, where I kept Hero’s toys, take a hedgehog-like thing down, drop it by Parker, who’s headlocking my ghost dog. “She likes fetch.”
He breaks from jiu jitsu to huck the hedgehog behind the entertainment system, then returns to grappling.
“Ahh, dude,” I say, and circle, pondering how to fish the hedgehog from the dusty abyss.
Parker shouts, “They’re fighting!”
He’s watching some nothing unfold near my bookshelves.
“Who’s fighting?”
“Hero and Jojo.”
JoJo was my brother’s dog; she died around when Parker began walking. I doubt Parker actually remembers her, but there are pictures all over their house.
I wade into the invisible dogfight, warning Parker to never ever do this; his grandpa, a vet, would have said it’s a great way to lose a hand. By the scruffs of their pretend necks, I toss them in opposite directions. JoJo was a German Shepherd and Hero, a Shetland sheepdog. I measure my pantomime accordingly.
“JoJo’s hurt,” says Parker, consoling thin air by the entertainment system; I tell Parker I’ll be sure to get JoJo a shot later.
“Let’s go outside,” Parker says, losing interest and running to the window. “Grandpa can fix him.”
I start for the freezer, then collapse on the couch, pat a cushion. “Dude, come here.”
He does.
“Your mom doesn’t want you outside because of allergies. But look, this game—listen—this game with the dogs is fine, but I don’t like talking about grandpa like that; he’s in heaven, and that makes me sad, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Do you want to draw?”
“She’s peeing on the floor,” he says, and points to the doorway into the kitchen.
“Who is?”
“Clementine.”
Clementine, I think, was my brother’s neighbor’s dog; my brother plays guitar with the guy. He has a kid Parker’s age.
“No. Bad dog,” I say.
Parker leaps up and begins spanking the air in the doorway.
“Hey—don’t hit.”
Now Parker tears up, says he’s sorry, leans down and kisses nothing, tells nothing to “sit” and “stay,” congratulates whichever dog this is, then adds, thoughtfully, that he misses her.
“I do too, dude. Let’s take a walk. You want to get some air and see Grandpa?” I scattered his ashes in the Tennessee River, which runs through town. There’s a bridge four blocks away, where we’ll turn back.
“Okay,” Parker says and sneezes. Or pretends to. “I’m allergic to dogs.”
“Dust,” I say, putting on my shoes. “And pollen. And pretty much everything. You come by it honestly.”
Travis Flatt (he/him) is an epileptic teacher and actor living in Cookeville, Tennessee. His stories appear or are forthcoming with SmokeLong Quarterly, Bluestem, Prime Number, Fractured Lit, Monkeybicycle, Pithead Chapel, Iron Horse Literary Review, and elsewhere.
