=A Good Place to Say "The End"=

(first appeared in Meat for Tea : The Valley Review)

There’s an old man who walks his dog early in the morning across the empty parking lots in back of the shops not yet open for business. One of his arms is palsied, shaking like a thin branch of dead leaves. His dog…it’s one of those toy breeds; it looks like a dirty mop. Maybe it is a dirty mop. He’s probably a stroke survivor. The man, I mean. He’s probably a stroke survivor and this is his exercise for the day.

He wakes up. He pours a glass of water. He takes his pills. He puts on the radio. He puts on his coat. The dog gets excited; it yips and yelps and shakes itself out all over. Its little muzzle is pink and wet as if it’s been eating rare roast beef. The man bends down and clips the leash on the dog. He rises, dizzy. He holds a hand out to steady himself. He doesn’t die.

So he leaves the house; he turns on the stoop and locks the door. He nearly drops his keys, but doesn’t. You think he’s going to die, don’t you? Be honest.

He doesn’t die.

He walks down the stairs very gingerly. They might be slippery. It rained last night and it’s a frosty morning. A patch of ice could send him ass over heels; it could kill him.

But he doesn’t die. Not yet.

He walks like he’s walking on a pathway of eggs. His left hand flutters. His eyes are shielded behind a pair of dark glasses that conceal half his face like a superhero’s mask. He walks through the empty parking lots. The small dog trots along jauntily at his ankles; its tail like a pom-pom. When it takes a poop the man must bend to pick it up in a sheet of paper towel that he has brought along for this purpose. He has a dizzy attack when he rises from this duty. Every time he rises the effort momentarily blinds him. Each time, every morning, he thinks, this is it, this time it is going to kill me. What a way to die! Clutching a fistful of dog-poop in a paper towel!

He bends down to clean up after the dog again this morning. He has the dizzy attack. He thinks, this is it, etc. You do, too. We all do. But he doesn’t die. He will die, tomorrow or the next day or some day after that; probably not too long from now either. But today he doesn’t die so let’s quit while we’re ahead. Let’s agree that this is a good place to say “the end.”