It’s after 1 A.M., and the ghosts are awake.
I’m walking westbound down Cavendish Street, from the residential neighborhood toward our few little blocks of downtown. It’s blasted cold and the wind is howling like the demons that used to plague this place, but I’m out here because the dog needs to go to the bathroom and it takes her a good half-a-mile walk to get her bowels loose. God only knows why she won’t go in our nice fenced-in yard, but I guess when you’re a twelve-year-old retired ranch dog you’re bound to have picked up a few eccentricities. Whatever her reasons, a walk is the only thing that will do, and loving a senior animal means you do these things because at this point you’re just not going to change them.
The dog trots down the pavement on her too-short little legs, her back end bouncing with every step. With her plush double-coat she laughs at winter, while I cinch up the mouth of my hood and wrap my scarf tighter around my face. If it were only the cold, it wouldn’t be so bad — she and I have braved colder nights than this together — but the hood and the scarf cut off my peripheral vision, and that’s not a welcome thing on nights like this.
As I said, the ghosts are awake. Living people don’t belong outside on nights like this, and everyone but me and the dog seems to know it.
Continue reading →
