"Ghost Dog"
A mom obtains an extraordinary dog for her family. Plus: A Fine Day Will Burn Through in the Beaver Creek Library, Arizona.
News
A Fine Day Will Burn Through, my short-story collection, is now available in the Beaver Creek Library in Rimrock, Arizona. Many thanks to the staff, patrons, and Mary Fulcher for getting it there.
And now for this month’s story.
“Ghost Dog”
William Auten
Copyright © William Auten
All of them have these… Candyce pauses in the aisle. Standard, she thinks before checking if anyone stares at her, but the stares come from products’ couples, dogs, and their homes resembling her neighbors and their dogs. Expected, she continues. And I see them everyday, everywhere. The overhead music rolls into the next song; employees steer pallets; customers stroll. She inspects a small bed—the size of what she and her siblings and cousins had to sleep in when they were young. When a woman who attends the same health club turns onto the aisle, Candyce sneaks away.
She cruises treats and toys that won’t burden the climate. She starts for the sign REPTILES but turns for the exit and ignores notices for upcoming adoptions at the store. The woman from the health club reaches the cashier and wiggles her polished nails toward Candyce, but Candyce exaggerates putting on her sunglasses and scampers for her SUV while imagining she parades a mastodon on a leash through her neighborhood, no time to explain why the mastodon’s horns, tail, and fur change colors or why her kids, riding and giggling atop, are the happiest kids on the block.
After returning to work, she texts her husband <Went to the pet shop over lunch — the usual, snore> and, lingering in the parking lot, would love to stab her heels in the keypad’s demon eye calling her back to her office. The food truck parked by the marsh rumbles on. Candyce stuffs away her fob, adjusts her collar and sleeves, and waves the truck down as its brakes creak off for the street.
“Beef nachos, please. Extra jalapeños on the side. And give me the pump cheese,” she tells the cook who takes her card, slathers orange goop over her order, and drops the diced peppers into a cup that Candyce shoots on her way to a bench near the marsh.
“Hey!”
Candyce turns toward the food truck idling behind her.
“Would you mind passing these out to people you know?” The cook holds out flyers. “We know the family. They’re good people. They live nearby.”
Candyce follows his pointing to a gray rectangle of a trailer on the outskirts of town and the marsh.
“Appreciate it.”
“Sure.” She opens one:
MISSING GHOST DOG
“STU”
BEEN DEAD A WHILE NOW BUT OUR LIVES DON’T HAVE PEACE W/O HIM
LOVES THE MARSH
VERY MUCH A PEOPLE PERSON & SNUGGLE BUG
PLEASE HELP FIND & RETURN
WE ARE AUBURN FANS, BUT HE LOOKS LIKE THE UGA BULLDOG
“Wait!” she yells as the food truck leaves and she drops her nachos on the flyer. The water whimpers, and she stares at a shallow spot where blue-gray ripples darken and grass bends as though a pudgy ball rolled through. A colleague exits the office and heads for the parking lot but doesn’t hold down his toupee. No wind, Candyce muses before squinting at the trailer. It evokes her papaw’s trailer, and the shadows hobbling out—the door hinges’ squeaking and reaching her, across the marsh, from over there and, deeper, from the past—hobble like her father and uncle slinging onto the porch the squirrels they shot. Her father promised, if their circumstances worsened, he would boil dandelions and cook bugs and would never hunt the stray dogs she and her siblings and cousins had befriended. She scrapes cheese and crumbs off the flyer and folds it.
She reaches her desk as her computer flashes APP SERVICES W/ GREG + TEAM IN 15 MINUTES. She opens the spreadsheet she abandoned before lying to her team about taking an extra hour for personal leave and stops on a highlighted section where the shape reminds her of her son’s first start as goalie when he made a game-winning save. She scrolls down but scrolls back up to the highlight where its shape becomes the ears and nose her daughter drew one Christmas on a hamster curled next to the Holy Family. She drafts an email to Greg, asking him about risk assessment, but stops when, outside her window, a shape in the marsh slinks back. She erases what she wrote and tells Greg and her team “lunch is not sitting well with me.” She unfolds the flyer, opens a private browser for her searches—ghost animals; how to capture ghost animals; Are ghost animals real? Has anyone captured a ghost dog, and if so, how?—and imagines Information Technology & Safety calling her into their office after they find these searches on her computer. She emails the results to her home email and jots down notes on the flyer.
Isaiah texts her. <Pizza and beer sound good for dinner. I’ll be done early and can pick up J and J and we all could meet you at Mellow Mushroom.>
The door to Greg’s office opens. Half the team lingers; the other half disperses into the hallway and toward offices near Candyce’s. She shuts down her computer, silencing websites, blogs, and chat groups; gathers her purse and the flyer; tiptoes to the bathroom where she splashes hot water until it reddens her cheeks, forehead, and nose; and leaves drops on her lips and brow. As she snatches paper towels, Isaiah texts: <Sorry to hear about the pet store. We’ll find something.> She heads for the elevator past the offices.
“Hey…”
Candyce grunts into a paper towel and fakes a scratchy throat. “Quinn, hi.”
“I thought you left.”
“It hit me before I could.” She dabs her lip and brow. “Pretty sure it was that food truck out there.”
“Hope you feel better. See you Monday.”
Candyce texts Isaiah on her way to the parking lot. <I’ve got some stuff to catch up on after my meeting. Pizza and beer sound great, but can we eat at home?> She gazes across the marsh—its water and cattails. <I have a surprise for the kids.>
The pierced-nose teenager greets Candyce when she returns to the store, but the suggestions from the website Phantom Paws sends her toward food—“They want to feel like they’re eating when they were alive, including treats.”; bedding—“Give them