Timothy Johnston - The Current

He went back out the way he’d come in and stood looking at the Minnesota sundown. Bright bands of red and pink in the west, but dark winter clouds overhead. Near the middle of the yard the snow had been disturbed—excavated, and darkened with what looked like soot, and he knew what it was before he reached the edge of the site.

The fire had melted back the snow and left sharp fins like rock formations, and down in the pit lay the upturned earth, the dirt patted down with the back side of a shovel. At the head of the grave, or the foot of it, stood the rusted iron T-post, rising from the snow at its tilt like a ship mast—just the right height for boys to swing from, one to each side, making the bedsheets shimmy on the lines… until one day the post shifted down in the turf and they felt it going and Oh shit oh shit , they dropped and ran for their lives.

No idea then that they swung their sneakers over the future grave of their dog. No idea they’d ever have a dog. How many times had they asked her? Begged her. Promised to take care of it, to feed it, she wouldn’t have to do a thing. No, no, and no , she said, I know how that story ends . But then one day you take off to the tracks, the forbidden tracks, and The train is coming Danny , Marky says, hurry! and you center the penny on the rail and jump back down the bank and into the trees so the conductor won’t see you, and it’s then, the train growing big and your hearts beating, that Marky says, Danny there’s a dog .

And you look and look before you finally see it in the weeds and shadows. Hardly recognizable as a dog at first with its shabby, mud-brown coat, every kind of burr and thistle in its low-slung tail. Big animal in any case, though starved almost to death: ladder of ribs and caved-in stomach and hunched, bony spine. Dark lips drawing back to show its teeth, and the train keeps coming, shoving air and sunlight before it.

The engine roars by and the boxcars follow, clack-clacking over the seams of the rails while no one moves, boys or dog, and over that steady clatter you say loudly but calmly: Marky, don’t even think about petting that dog , and Marky says, It’s all right Danny he’s just hungry that’s all… and then you know you have to go first, before he goes to the dog himself, and the dog looks spring-loaded, so you go—one hand out, knuckles up for sniffing, and you know Marky has fallen in step behind you by the sound of his excited, open-mouthed breathing.

The dog’s eyes are a golden color and they watch you and you only, your every movement: Your hand going slowly into a pocket. The hand coming out again. The thing you hold in your hand now, a Snickers bar, your lunch.

And you were halfway home, the dog wobbling along behind you, before you remembered the penny, and by the time you and Marky were in the driveway you’d sworn off the penny altogether—it had already done its work, hadn’t it? You’d always wanted a dog, always, and now here he was! And if she said no, if she tried to say no, you knew already what you’d say to make her say yes…

And it wasn’t Wyatt down there in the hard ground now; it was just his body, just the organic remains of what he’d lived in while he was on the earth and the rest of him, the most of him, had gone back into the world. Because life was organic and that was one kind of energy, ashes to ashes, but there was also energy between living beings, currents that traveled between them outside of biology, and that energy could not be buried, and neither could it fade into nothing, because energy never just ended, it transformed and recycled and you felt it even if you didn’t believe in it. Souls. Spirits. Whatever you called it there was a current and you were in it always and you couldn’t bury it.

He heard the sound of tires on packed snow and gravel—then slamming doors, then boots stomping up the front porchsteps before he could call out, “Back here, I’m back here,” and the boots stomping back down again and then stomping through the snow, and it was no boy coming around the corner of the house but a full-grown man in blue jeans and his blue mechanic’s jacket with the Wabash Auto patch on one side of his chest and his name stitched in red on the other. Marky hustling up the path in the snow, grinning and his arms out, and Danny opening his own arms and bracing for it, but the two of them nearly falling backwards anyway onto the little grave. Righting themselves and holding each other at arm’s length to look at faces grown a little older—two years gone by since his last visit—but still at twenty-nine more alike than unalike.

“How you doing, buddy?”

“We saw your truck Danny and Momma said whose truck is that and I said that’s Danny’s truck and she said how do you know and I said I just know and I was right.”

“You were right. How do you like that truck?”

Their mother was making her way up the path, smiling at the sight before her: two boys, not one. Wiping her cheek with gloved fingers.

“That’s a Ford F-150 XLT four-by-four two thousand and one,” said Marky. “V-8 or V-6 Danny?”

“V-6.”

“Four-point-two-liter engine. Wyatt died Danny. Momma buried him right here so you could find him when you came home.”

“I know, buddy. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

“It’s OK Danny I wasn’t either I was at work.”

“He was a good dog, wasn’t he, buddy.”

“He was good dog Danny. He was our dog.”

“Yes, he was. But you took care of him.”

“Yeah but he missed you Danny. He was always missing you.”

“I know. I was missing him too. Now make room for your old mom here.”

“Oh, Danny.” Her arms tight around him, Danny stooping so she could press her wet cheek to his unshaved jaw. The familiar good mom smell of her out here in the cold. Smell of the farm and the smell of Minnesota in the cold winter dusk.

HE’D HAD NOTHING but coffee for the last twenty-four hours and he didn’t like tea so she made him hot chocolate, and Danny sat at the table and watched as Marky helped her put the groceries away, then they all sat around the old table as in the old days when the boys were boys, and he answered their questions about Texas and New Mexico and the jobs he’d held since he’d seen them last. He told them about some of the men he’d worked with, like deaf Billy Ramos who could fix any broken thing you put before him. Told them about New Mexico and the old adobe ruins and he told them about the coyotes you heard at night right outside your windows.

“Wild coyotes?” said Marky.

“Is there another kind?”

Marky sat thinking about that.

Danny sipped his hot chocolate.

“Is that the only jacket you own?” he said, and his brother looked down at his mechanic’s jacket. He brushed at the oval where his name was stitched.

“What’s wrong with it Danny?”

“It’s Sunday.”

“So?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” said their mother. “Your brother is cranky from his long drive, that’s all.” She put her hand on Marky’s jacket sleeve. “Do you want to take your shower before dinner, sweetie, or after?”

Marky chewed on his lower lip and began to jiggle his right leg. He didn’t want to leave, but his habit was to take his shower before dinner and he did not like to break his habits.

“Go,” Danny said finally. “You won’t miss anything.”

“Don’t go anywhere Danny,” he said, and Danny said, “I just got here, knucklehead,” and Marky said, “You’re the knucklehead Danny,” and he scooted back his chair, and rose from the table, and took his leave—all very impressive until he reached the stairs, and Danny’s mug began to chatter on the table with the speed and force of his brother’s climb.