The house is shuttered and the yard untended. A mangy dog on a chain silently leaps at passersby, panting as he runs the chain out. He hears me coming and the race begins. Back and forth he lunges with muscled shoulders. The ground is beaten to hardpack by the pads of his feet. He never barks. He wears me out with his silent effort. What does he want? An MIA banner is draped across the back of the porch under a bare bulb that is always lit. Past time when one would be moved by such devotion like the homemade sign in a yard across town— My friend, John Smith, was killed by Agent Orange. Slightly lower, beneath the banner for the missing, A dusty American flag droops from the clapboard. I want to plant yellow petunias up and down the walk, I want to go inside and open the curtains and turn off the light. I want the dog to bark.
Yvonne Osborne has a flock of chickens and an organic gardening business, but every spare minute is spent HERE.
We drew straws and mine came up short. We were just boys, bored. The Michigan heat was oppressive and there was nothing to do. Dog days. Peter and Daniel came up with the idea: One of us would put a blood capsule in our mouth, lie down in the middle of Beechwood Avenue, and pretend like we got hit by a car. It seemed funny at the time. “Whose gonna do it?” I asked. “I’m not gonna do it,” Peter said. “Me neither,” Daniel said. So we drew straws. We combed the street and found a small white stone that could pass as a tooth. I put it in my mouth. The blood capsule was large and purple—the size of a horse pill. I wedged it between two molars. Then I took my place in the street, lying face down, one hand beneath my chest, the other at my side. It took a few minutes before I heard a car approaching, its engine a wall of dry throb. I bit into the capsule—a bitter rush—and heard the screech of brakes. “He needs help,” Peter yelled from the curb, leaping into the street. “Call an ambulance.” It was my cue. I moaned and rolled over onto my back, gurgling a line of syrupy purple blood down my chin. The door popped open, swung out. A woman wearing sunglasses. She stayed in her car. She put her hand over her mouth. I spit out the white stone and it hit the street, disappeared, just another stone in the street, clutched my abdomen and rolled back and forth. She stepped out of her car, turned to Peter and Daniel. “Jesus Christ, what happened?” I could barely hear her over the drone of the engine. “Why are you just standing there?” Maybe it was the way her voice sounded: like my mother’s voice whenever she stopped me, caught me preparing to jump off something high. I was on my feet. This was when I was supposed to tell her she was stupid, that it was all a joke. I couldn’t see her eyes behind her dark glasses. I felt a flash of sunlight in the back of my skull, heard the voice of my mother saying my name, saying something else I couldn’t hear. There was fear in that woman’s face, in the way her thin lips looked cut into her face, bloodless. I was running, Peter and Daniel behind me. There was the sound of my feet against the pavement, the sound of their laughter lost somewhere in my head’s temple-throb, the blood-heat of shame, and that bitter taste in my mouth, growing stronger, stronger.
