Stubborn Dogs - Pt. 2

I hadn't taken more than a couple of steps and already I was feeling the pain.

Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I had this image of a loping gazelle or a thoroughbred race horse--all lean muscle and determination.

I didn't lope so much as trot; I didn't so much resemble a race horse as an old steam engine working its way up a long grade and pulling a heavy load.  And, like the steam engine, I was huffing and puffing and leaking at every joint.

Easily the dog passed me and, just to rub it in, as he passed, he turned his head to look at me as if he couldn't quite believe how badly I was doing.

As I became acutely aware of every joint, ligament and musculoskeletal connection between my toes and my hips, I was also reevaluating my options:  no way was I making it back to the house.

First priority:  get out of the light.

There was light everywhere:  from the streetlights and from the houses that lined both sides of the street.  There was also light from all over town bouncing of those lazy clouds.  If there was someone watching, this was way too easy for them.

I had no way of knowing how long it would take for him to turn his attention back to me after the car had safely passed, but I was certain it wouldn't be a lot of time and so I needed to make the best use of it.

My leaky old steam engine was just about out of the pool of straw-colored street light.  Maybe ten feet and I could feel the sweat rolling down my back and the jackhammer in my chest.

You spend the first few decades of your life drafting a description of the person you are.  And, like all good writing, that draft is full of false starts, dead ends, strikeouts and corrections.  By the time you hit your thirties your character is pretty much set:  you are who you are.  As you get older, you continue to be who you were.  It's like a good book you return to again and again:  the images are static, the characters make the same predictable choices and yet the story takes on different meanings.

My character was always the gym rat and so I thought I was still that same guy.  I know it's a half-century later--believe me, I am reminded of that every morning--but I also know that if you asked me I would say with great confidence that I could still bench the four-twenty and that I still had a respectable quarter-mile.

Rewrite!

Up ahead, the dog had stopped and was looking at me and my embarrassing attempt effort to keep up.

I could see him standing there, mocking me.

I could see him.

There was no light on this part of the street.

The light moved and so did I.

And then the light stopped moving.

The silence of the night was broken by the drone of the car horn backed up by the baseline of some shitty rap music from its sound system.

I turned to see a cloud of steam billow up from the pleated front end of the car now wrapped around a lamp post.  The cloud was briefly silhouetted by the next operating streetlight before joining the polyester choir that lingered over our heads.

Decision time was over.

I pulled the Derringer from my pocket and stuffed it into my sock.  The flashlight went into my back pocket along with a  handful of poop sacks.  I dropped my coat and kept moving.

I wasn't going to run anymore.

In the distance, I heard the sirens that meant quiet time was over.  I just needed to keep my head down until they got here.