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FICTION CONTEST WINNER
The Dog Fence
by Rachelle Pinnow
“Marco’s coming over,” Suz called, glancing up through the kitchen window while washing dishes at the sink.
“Tell him I’m out,” Stan said from the couch.
“He knows you’re home; your truck’s here.”
“Well, tell him I’m lying down. I don’t want to talk to him.” Stan took his newspaper and headed downstairs. He heard
the knock and the screen door swing open.
“Morning, Marco.”
“Good day to you, Suz. Stan around?”
“Actually, he’s lying down.”
“Lying down on a day like this?”
“Well, he had his coffee and read the paper, but I guess he isn’t feeling well.”
“Must be getting old.” Marco scratched the grey stubble covering his upper lip, which curled in teasing. “Can’t keep up
with me.”
Suz nodded patiently, “I’ll tell him you stopped by.”
He hesitated as his grin uncurled. “I wanted to talk about doing up the fence, making it higher for Nina, so, you
know…so that won’t happen again.”
“That was awful. I didn’t want to bring it up until you did. Is she okay?”
“She’s fine now.” He continued scratching, behind his ear, down his side. Then resolutely crossed his arms to rest
on his belly.
“What did the vet say?”
“You know Henry, a couple blocks over, his brother’s a vet, so I took Nina to him. She’s got some torn muscles, in her
neck and chest, but nothing too bad. She’ll heal fine. She was sure scared, but she always acts a bit funny, jittery, you
know. We’ll fix up the fence better and everything’ll be good.”
“Well, I’m glad she’s okay. I’ll tell Stan.”
“Yeah, tell him to come over when he’s up.”
“Will do, bye now.”
The screen door sprang shut.
Stan came up the stairs waving his newspaper. “I heard the whole thing.”
“Sit down a second and talk to me,” said Suz, bringing the coffee carafe. “You heard, Nina’s alright?”
“Yes, but I’m not going over there. I’m done with that fence. He’s on his own.”
“Maybe you should at least go over and ask about Nina.”
“I’m sick of talking to Marco. You think I don’t listen! That guy. And that damn dog of his won’t stay in his yard. I’m
through with it.”
“So he won’t tie her up?”
“No.”
“Why not, he’s only gone for a couple hours at a time. They’ve got the birdhouse pole in the middle of the yard.”
“He thinks it’s cruel to tie a dog.”
“She almost killed herself.”
“There’s no reasoning with him.”
“Sounds familiar.”
Stan rolled his eyes, a habit he picked up from the kids long ago.
“Well, he knows you’re here and there’s no way to get past him.”
He sipped his coffee at length, stretched out his long Wrangler legs under the table and flipped through his paper,
which he’d already read front to back.
“And I’m not going to lie for you all day.”
He rolled his eyes again.
Suz got up and washed their two breakfast plates in the sink. The new granite countertops gleamed in the sunlight.
“Maybe I’ll make some cookies for Jason, or another pie.”
When Stan didn’t reply, Suz only huffed. She reached for the watering can instead and filled it to the brim.
Stan looked around at the drooping plants, mold growing on the soil, yellow-leaved, waterlogged. “We could take the
last of Jason’s boxes to him with the baking.”
“Oh, what’s your hurry, Stan? He only moved out two months ago. Let him come over when he’s got time and sort
through his stuff.” She put the can down.
“Well, look at the other two. We’ve still got Eric’s couch down there, and all of Jeff’s school books. And they’ve been
out for over a year.”
“That’s different. It would be easier if they were in Regina.” She readjusted a few dangling hairpins that slid from her
fine, feathery hair, and reached high in the cupboard for a large glass bowl. “Besides, Jason will probably take the
couch.”
“The rest of the stuff better be out by Christmas. We’ll have it all boxed and ready for them when they come home on
holidays.”
Suz hummed as she flicked the pages of recipes. “Oatmeal raisin.”
Since Marco and Fran got her from the shelter a month ago, she’d run away a dozen times. Nina was a strange,
sleek grey and black dog, part German Shepard, part Greyhound. She’d been deserted by her former owners, left to
starve.
Marco had convinced Stan to help him weld an iron fence and gate to secure the short distance between his house
and garage. Nina had still managed to get out. Through, over, around? It seemed impossible. They’d made
modifications to the fence and still she escaped. Stan called her Nina-Houdina.
But then, last week, Stan had come home to find Nina hung from the fence. Her collar had caught on the top vertical
bar. No, she wasn’t hung dead, like Stan had thought when he first came up the drive. The big dog had been quietly
whimpering with her hind paws inches off the ground. When Stan had lifted her off the gate, her fur had a greasy film
to it, a coating of panic.
“Symbol of sovereignty,” Suz said, “Six letters.”
“Marco’s getting on my nerves, more and more.”
“Oh Stan, you two have so much in common.”
“No, he’s changed. I think he might even be getting a bit senile.”
“Hmm… ” She erased 7 across. “Marco’s the same as he’s always been.” She checked a clue off the list, looked up
and said, “‘The Simpsons’ bartender, three letters.” Head back down, she added, “Maybe it’s you.”
Stan worked his toothpick, didn’t say anything.
“Well, with the boys gone, you seem a little… ”
“M-O-E.”
Suz printed it downward. “Marco is Marco. I’ve always liked him. It’s Fran that bugs me.”
“What’s wrong with Fran? She’s never done anything to you.”
“Well, that’s just it. She’s so cold; she never gets involved. I mean, Marco’s out in the yard. We talk. Fran just stays in
the house. Does she ever come over for a visit?”
“Do you ever go over there?”
She tapped her head with the pencil, “past its prime, seven letters.”
“R-E-T-I-R-E-D?”
“No, third letter is a C.”
“M-A-R-C-O.”
“Third letter.” She tsked and said, “He made a mistake, let it be.”
“That guy cannot be wrong.”
“I know another guy kinda like that.”
“He should admit it. He talked me into that fence in the first place.” Stan drummed his finger on the table, not really
wanting to get into it again, but the sight wouldn’t leave him. “Seeing that dog hanging there. Suz... Who knows how
long she’d been like that. And how the hell did she get up there? There are no middle crossbars to launch off… She
must have just been going crazy to get hung up like that.”
“I don’t know.”
“And you didn’t see it.” He drummed again, louder. “I’m too pissed off to go over there yet. He’ll want to fix it again,
make it higher or something. I’m sick of it. He’s wrong.”
“We’ve all been wrong before. At least let him save face.” Suz raised her eyebrows, glared at him a moment longer
than was comfortable.
That look was like a pointed finger. No matter how much time passed, Stan always assumed Suz was thinking back
to when he worked the pipeline running through Hanna, and on payday he got drunker than the rest and bought
rounds for the whole bar. His entire cheque spent in one night. She was pregnant with Jason then and told him not
to bother driving back for his week off. Her mother came and stayed with Suz for a month. That long, dry, hung-over
day in Hanna, when he thought his wife might leave him, was the fleeting flashback Stan got whenever Suz looked at
him that way.
“That’s enough coffee,” he pushed back from the table. “I’ll go over and,” with a reconciliatory smirk, “mend fences.”
Another week passed and Stan felt a little better about his neighbour. As he turned onto the crescent, Stan shifted into
neutral, popped the clutch out, and let his truck glide down the long gentle grade of the street, slowly coasting straight
in to where he would park. He’d done this routine for years, trying to use as little brake as possible. He looked up at
the side-by-side bungalows on the bend, his and Marco’s, mirror images of each other with their long driveways and
detached garages. Stan had redone his in stucco, Suz had landscaped, planting a big apple tree, and their boys had
added a semi-permanent fort off the far side.
Now and then, their boys had played with the older boys next door, but Stan and Suz didn’t see much of their
neighbours until after they’d all retired. Marco had run a successful engineering company, designing some kind of a
specialized grain silo. Just before Marco retired, he had a contractor out to the house to put on an addition. Most of
the back wall had been knocked out and the new frame jutted into the backyard. But then, the work was strangely
halted. The summer passed into fall and the structure remained the same, a rough skeleton of joists shivering in
scanty tarpaulin.
The end of the driveway approached and Stan had to brake stronger than he wanted. He cursed his lack of
concentration, noticing that Marco was crawling around his yard by the fence. Stan slowly turned off the engine and
sat for a moment in quiet. He remembered how the neighbourhood had wondered about Marco’s unfinished
addition. There were rumours that a rich farmer’s silos had collapsed and he was suing. In the years following,
Marco’s whole house seemed to slump under the burden.
Marco made his usual salute-wave as Stan wandered over from his truck.
“Those shoes are looking pretty rough there Stan-y-boy,” said Marco, half-grunting as he stood up from one knee,
measuring tape in hand. Nina pranced around him, outside the fence, never having an impulse to take off if she was
in good company. “You out for a drive?”
“Lunch with Jason, over by his apartment. Dropped off some of Suz’s cookies.”
Marco shook his head. “You should really take those in for repair, before you ruin them completely.”
“Yeah, just haven’t got around to it yet.” Stan balanced on the outsides of his feet assessing the inside leather parting
where the stitching had come out.
“You know, my friend Jim’s got a repair shop on Cornwall.”
“Yeah? What’s the place called?”
“Jim’s Shoe Repair.”
“Oh.”
“Nice old guy, barely charges anything.”
“Well, I usually just go to The Sole Man in the mall.” Stan kept his hands in the pockets of his slacks. With Marco,
agreeing to one thing meant agreeing to all things, and Stan was not doing any more work on that dog fence.
“No, this place is terrific. Jim wears an apron and smokes cigars right there in his shop. He likes to shoot the shit a
bit, an old timer, a real shoe cobbler, even more Italian than me. He’s got a cash till with a hand lever, doesn’t know
what a debit card is. Will put you on a tab if he likes you and thinks you’re good for it.”
Casually backing off, “I’ll think about it.”
“Trust me, Stan. Quality work. I know about these things, like you know about welding. Trust me,” he kept on,
scratching away at his chest through his paint-stained shirt. Then smoothly shifting gears, he said, “Now what do you
think? These steel rails are obviously too far apart. She must have slipped through here somehow.”
“Like I said before, Marco, I don’t think this is the best kind of fence to build. Spend the money and put up a proper
eight-foot wood fence, flat side in, and you won’t have any problems.”
Marco sighed, “Look Stan, this’ll work. And you’ve got all that extra Rebar. Why don’t you put on some work clothes
and we’ll just double up a few of these vertical bars to fill in the spaces.”
It was a sweltering mid-summer day, plus 32 without the slightest breeze. Stan and Suz had the air-conditioning
blowing and still had to retreat to their basement. They planned an afternoon of sorting and boxing leftover stuff from
their boys. Suz put on some Anne Murray and they both got to work.
An hour later, when Stan went up to move the sprinkler, he saw her.
A few kids had gathered and were all looking around for what they should do. With trembling shoulders, an older kid
shouted to Stan, “I tried knocking on your door, but you didn’t answer.”
“Sorry…”he fumbled forward.
“It was screaming and crying. We didn’t know what to do.”
“God.” Stan tried to clear them away. “Go down to the end of the driveway.” He pointed. Some of them went.
Marco and Fran weren’t home. A fresh bowl of cold water sat in the shade of the garage. Their lawn was the brightest
green, the sky, the brightest blue. Nina, the only dark thing, absorbing the sunlight, was impaled on the top of the
fence.
The unfinished end of a steel bar protruded through her hind leg, pulling her thin fur away from her body, taut as cloth
around a tent pole. Her narrow head and front legs were wedged and tangled between the vertical rebar extensions,
fitted higher than any human imagined a dog could jump. Blood ran out from her wound, black in the baking sun, and
trickled down the shafts of the dog fence.
The coffee percolated happily.
Stan silently leafed through the paper. Suz attempted the crossword on her own.
Finally Stan said, “They put her down.”
Suz let her shoulders sink, pencil set aside, hands in lap.
“Last night, after you went to bed,” he continued. “The operation would’ve been pretty pricey, and her chance of
recovering was slim.”
“Still.”
“Yeah. After all that.”
The coffee finished brewing, but neither moved to pour it.
“I’m sick of sitting around at this table,” Stan said.
Suz’s forehead scrunched up and she began distractedly re-pinning her slippery hair. Stan noticed there were now
more pins than hair.
“I’m just saying, let’s get away for a bit. Let’s… ” His eyes grasped around the room, “Let’s fly to Vancouver and see
Eric.”
Her eyebrows slowly relaxed.
“I need a break – from being retired.” From filling up their days with crossword puzzles and dog fences, from that
empty house. “I want us to get away from here for a bit. Finding that dog made me sick. Of everything, of Marco,
myself… I don’t know.”
Suz reached across and rubbed his hand. “I think that’s just what we need, to take a trip.” She nodded. “Maybe we
could even stopover in Calgary on our way back and see Jeff.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“When should we go?” Suz sprang to her feet, took two mugs from the cupboard, popped bread in the toaster.
“Maybe leave in September, when it starts to cool off here.”
“And it’ll still be nice on the coast.” Butter, jam, juice, plates.
“I swear,” Stan was still bewildered, “if we’d have built a wood fence, she would’ve just run straight into it, over and
over, until she crushed her head.”
“Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how well you plan it, or build it, things just go wrong.” Suz put down the butter knife.
“Tying her up probably would’ve killed her too. Nothing could be done.”
“She just couldn’t be alone.”
“Poor thing.”
The Dog Fence
by Rachelle Pinnow
“Marco’s coming over,” Suz called, glancing up through the kitchen window while washing dishes at the sink.
“Tell him I’m out,” Stan said from the couch.
“He knows you’re home; your truck’s here.”
“Well, tell him I’m lying down. I don’t want to talk to him.” Stan took his newspaper and headed downstairs. He heard
the knock and the screen door swing open.
“Morning, Marco.”
“Good day to you, Suz. Stan around?”
“Actually, he’s lying down.”
“Lying down on a day like this?”
“Well, he had his coffee and read the paper, but I guess he isn’t feeling well.”
“Must be getting old.” Marco scratched the grey stubble covering his upper lip, which curled in teasing. “Can’t keep up
with me.”
Suz nodded patiently, “I’ll tell him you stopped by.”
He hesitated as his grin uncurled. “I wanted to talk about doing up the fence, making it higher for Nina, so, you
know…so that won’t happen again.”
“That was awful. I didn’t want to bring it up until you did. Is she okay?”
“She’s fine now.” He continued scratching, behind his ear, down his side. Then resolutely crossed his arms to rest
on his belly.
“What did the vet say?”
“You know Henry, a couple blocks over, his brother’s a vet, so I took Nina to him. She’s got some torn muscles, in her
neck and chest, but nothing too bad. She’ll heal fine. She was sure scared, but she always acts a bit funny, jittery, you
know. We’ll fix up the fence better and everything’ll be good.”
“Well, I’m glad she’s okay. I’ll tell Stan.”
“Yeah, tell him to come over when he’s up.”
“Will do, bye now.”
The screen door sprang shut.
Stan came up the stairs waving his newspaper. “I heard the whole thing.”
“Sit down a second and talk to me,” said Suz, bringing the coffee carafe. “You heard, Nina’s alright?”
“Yes, but I’m not going over there. I’m done with that fence. He’s on his own.”
“Maybe you should at least go over and ask about Nina.”
“I’m sick of talking to Marco. You think I don’t listen! That guy. And that damn dog of his won’t stay in his yard. I’m
through with it.”
“So he won’t tie her up?”
“No.”
“Why not, he’s only gone for a couple hours at a time. They’ve got the birdhouse pole in the middle of the yard.”
“He thinks it’s cruel to tie a dog.”
“She almost killed herself.”
“There’s no reasoning with him.”
“Sounds familiar.”
Stan rolled his eyes, a habit he picked up from the kids long ago.
“Well, he knows you’re here and there’s no way to get past him.”
He sipped his coffee at length, stretched out his long Wrangler legs under the table and flipped through his paper,
which he’d already read front to back.
“And I’m not going to lie for you all day.”
He rolled his eyes again.
Suz got up and washed their two breakfast plates in the sink. The new granite countertops gleamed in the sunlight.
“Maybe I’ll make some cookies for Jason, or another pie.”
When Stan didn’t reply, Suz only huffed. She reached for the watering can instead and filled it to the brim.
Stan looked around at the drooping plants, mold growing on the soil, yellow-leaved, waterlogged. “We could take the
last of Jason’s boxes to him with the baking.”
“Oh, what’s your hurry, Stan? He only moved out two months ago. Let him come over when he’s got time and sort
through his stuff.” She put the can down.
“Well, look at the other two. We’ve still got Eric’s couch down there, and all of Jeff’s school books. And they’ve been
out for over a year.”
“That’s different. It would be easier if they were in Regina.” She readjusted a few dangling hairpins that slid from her
fine, feathery hair, and reached high in the cupboard for a large glass bowl. “Besides, Jason will probably take the
couch.”
“The rest of the stuff better be out by Christmas. We’ll have it all boxed and ready for them when they come home on
holidays.”
Suz hummed as she flicked the pages of recipes. “Oatmeal raisin.”
Since Marco and Fran got her from the shelter a month ago, she’d run away a dozen times. Nina was a strange,
sleek grey and black dog, part German Shepard, part Greyhound. She’d been deserted by her former owners, left to
starve.
Marco had convinced Stan to help him weld an iron fence and gate to secure the short distance between his house
and garage. Nina had still managed to get out. Through, over, around? It seemed impossible. They’d made
modifications to the fence and still she escaped. Stan called her Nina-Houdina.
But then, last week, Stan had come home to find Nina hung from the fence. Her collar had caught on the top vertical
bar. No, she wasn’t hung dead, like Stan had thought when he first came up the drive. The big dog had been quietly
whimpering with her hind paws inches off the ground. When Stan had lifted her off the gate, her fur had a greasy film
to it, a coating of panic.
“Symbol of sovereignty,” Suz said, “Six letters.”
“Marco’s getting on my nerves, more and more.”
“Oh Stan, you two have so much in common.”
“No, he’s changed. I think he might even be getting a bit senile.”
“Hmm… ” She erased 7 across. “Marco’s the same as he’s always been.” She checked a clue off the list, looked up
and said, “‘The Simpsons’ bartender, three letters.” Head back down, she added, “Maybe it’s you.”
Stan worked his toothpick, didn’t say anything.
“Well, with the boys gone, you seem a little… ”
“M-O-E.”
Suz printed it downward. “Marco is Marco. I’ve always liked him. It’s Fran that bugs me.”
“What’s wrong with Fran? She’s never done anything to you.”
“Well, that’s just it. She’s so cold; she never gets involved. I mean, Marco’s out in the yard. We talk. Fran just stays in
the house. Does she ever come over for a visit?”
“Do you ever go over there?”
She tapped her head with the pencil, “past its prime, seven letters.”
“R-E-T-I-R-E-D?”
“No, third letter is a C.”
“M-A-R-C-O.”
“Third letter.” She tsked and said, “He made a mistake, let it be.”
“That guy cannot be wrong.”
“I know another guy kinda like that.”
“He should admit it. He talked me into that fence in the first place.” Stan drummed his finger on the table, not really
wanting to get into it again, but the sight wouldn’t leave him. “Seeing that dog hanging there. Suz... Who knows how
long she’d been like that. And how the hell did she get up there? There are no middle crossbars to launch off… She
must have just been going crazy to get hung up like that.”
“I don’t know.”
“And you didn’t see it.” He drummed again, louder. “I’m too pissed off to go over there yet. He’ll want to fix it again,
make it higher or something. I’m sick of it. He’s wrong.”
“We’ve all been wrong before. At least let him save face.” Suz raised her eyebrows, glared at him a moment longer
than was comfortable.
That look was like a pointed finger. No matter how much time passed, Stan always assumed Suz was thinking back
to when he worked the pipeline running through Hanna, and on payday he got drunker than the rest and bought
rounds for the whole bar. His entire cheque spent in one night. She was pregnant with Jason then and told him not
to bother driving back for his week off. Her mother came and stayed with Suz for a month. That long, dry, hung-over
day in Hanna, when he thought his wife might leave him, was the fleeting flashback Stan got whenever Suz looked at
him that way.
“That’s enough coffee,” he pushed back from the table. “I’ll go over and,” with a reconciliatory smirk, “mend fences.”
Another week passed and Stan felt a little better about his neighbour. As he turned onto the crescent, Stan shifted into
neutral, popped the clutch out, and let his truck glide down the long gentle grade of the street, slowly coasting straight
in to where he would park. He’d done this routine for years, trying to use as little brake as possible. He looked up at
the side-by-side bungalows on the bend, his and Marco’s, mirror images of each other with their long driveways and
detached garages. Stan had redone his in stucco, Suz had landscaped, planting a big apple tree, and their boys had
added a semi-permanent fort off the far side.
Now and then, their boys had played with the older boys next door, but Stan and Suz didn’t see much of their
neighbours until after they’d all retired. Marco had run a successful engineering company, designing some kind of a
specialized grain silo. Just before Marco retired, he had a contractor out to the house to put on an addition. Most of
the back wall had been knocked out and the new frame jutted into the backyard. But then, the work was strangely
halted. The summer passed into fall and the structure remained the same, a rough skeleton of joists shivering in
scanty tarpaulin.
The end of the driveway approached and Stan had to brake stronger than he wanted. He cursed his lack of
concentration, noticing that Marco was crawling around his yard by the fence. Stan slowly turned off the engine and
sat for a moment in quiet. He remembered how the neighbourhood had wondered about Marco’s unfinished
addition. There were rumours that a rich farmer’s silos had collapsed and he was suing. In the years following,
Marco’s whole house seemed to slump under the burden.
Marco made his usual salute-wave as Stan wandered over from his truck.
“Those shoes are looking pretty rough there Stan-y-boy,” said Marco, half-grunting as he stood up from one knee,
measuring tape in hand. Nina pranced around him, outside the fence, never having an impulse to take off if she was
in good company. “You out for a drive?”
“Lunch with Jason, over by his apartment. Dropped off some of Suz’s cookies.”
Marco shook his head. “You should really take those in for repair, before you ruin them completely.”
“Yeah, just haven’t got around to it yet.” Stan balanced on the outsides of his feet assessing the inside leather parting
where the stitching had come out.
“You know, my friend Jim’s got a repair shop on Cornwall.”
“Yeah? What’s the place called?”
“Jim’s Shoe Repair.”
“Oh.”
“Nice old guy, barely charges anything.”
“Well, I usually just go to The Sole Man in the mall.” Stan kept his hands in the pockets of his slacks. With Marco,
agreeing to one thing meant agreeing to all things, and Stan was not doing any more work on that dog fence.
“No, this place is terrific. Jim wears an apron and smokes cigars right there in his shop. He likes to shoot the shit a
bit, an old timer, a real shoe cobbler, even more Italian than me. He’s got a cash till with a hand lever, doesn’t know
what a debit card is. Will put you on a tab if he likes you and thinks you’re good for it.”
Casually backing off, “I’ll think about it.”
“Trust me, Stan. Quality work. I know about these things, like you know about welding. Trust me,” he kept on,
scratching away at his chest through his paint-stained shirt. Then smoothly shifting gears, he said, “Now what do you
think? These steel rails are obviously too far apart. She must have slipped through here somehow.”
“Like I said before, Marco, I don’t think this is the best kind of fence to build. Spend the money and put up a proper
eight-foot wood fence, flat side in, and you won’t have any problems.”
Marco sighed, “Look Stan, this’ll work. And you’ve got all that extra Rebar. Why don’t you put on some work clothes
and we’ll just double up a few of these vertical bars to fill in the spaces.”
It was a sweltering mid-summer day, plus 32 without the slightest breeze. Stan and Suz had the air-conditioning
blowing and still had to retreat to their basement. They planned an afternoon of sorting and boxing leftover stuff from
their boys. Suz put on some Anne Murray and they both got to work.
An hour later, when Stan went up to move the sprinkler, he saw her.
A few kids had gathered and were all looking around for what they should do. With trembling shoulders, an older kid
shouted to Stan, “I tried knocking on your door, but you didn’t answer.”
“Sorry…”he fumbled forward.
“It was screaming and crying. We didn’t know what to do.”
“God.” Stan tried to clear them away. “Go down to the end of the driveway.” He pointed. Some of them went.
Marco and Fran weren’t home. A fresh bowl of cold water sat in the shade of the garage. Their lawn was the brightest
green, the sky, the brightest blue. Nina, the only dark thing, absorbing the sunlight, was impaled on the top of the
fence.
The unfinished end of a steel bar protruded through her hind leg, pulling her thin fur away from her body, taut as cloth
around a tent pole. Her narrow head and front legs were wedged and tangled between the vertical rebar extensions,
fitted higher than any human imagined a dog could jump. Blood ran out from her wound, black in the baking sun, and
trickled down the shafts of the dog fence.
The coffee percolated happily.
Stan silently leafed through the paper. Suz attempted the crossword on her own.
Finally Stan said, “They put her down.”
Suz let her shoulders sink, pencil set aside, hands in lap.
“Last night, after you went to bed,” he continued. “The operation would’ve been pretty pricey, and her chance of
recovering was slim.”
“Still.”
“Yeah. After all that.”
The coffee finished brewing, but neither moved to pour it.
“I’m sick of sitting around at this table,” Stan said.
Suz’s forehead scrunched up and she began distractedly re-pinning her slippery hair. Stan noticed there were now
more pins than hair.
“I’m just saying, let’s get away for a bit. Let’s… ” His eyes grasped around the room, “Let’s fly to Vancouver and see
Eric.”
Her eyebrows slowly relaxed.
“I need a break – from being retired.” From filling up their days with crossword puzzles and dog fences, from that
empty house. “I want us to get away from here for a bit. Finding that dog made me sick. Of everything, of Marco,
myself… I don’t know.”
Suz reached across and rubbed his hand. “I think that’s just what we need, to take a trip.” She nodded. “Maybe we
could even stopover in Calgary on our way back and see Jeff.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“When should we go?” Suz sprang to her feet, took two mugs from the cupboard, popped bread in the toaster.
“Maybe leave in September, when it starts to cool off here.”
“And it’ll still be nice on the coast.” Butter, jam, juice, plates.
“I swear,” Stan was still bewildered, “if we’d have built a wood fence, she would’ve just run straight into it, over and
over, until she crushed her head.”
“Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how well you plan it, or build it, things just go wrong.” Suz put down the butter knife.
“Tying her up probably would’ve killed her too. Nothing could be done.”
“She just couldn’t be alone.”
“Poor thing.”
| April 2007 Issue 11 |
