44 Years

Irvin Washington’s dog died forty-four years ago today. He remembered the day well. That particular day stayed in his mind for three very different reasons, but then again, maybe the reasons were one and the same. The first reason it was so memorable was that it had been Irvin’s birthday. The second reason was that she had been a very good dog. The third and final reason was because that was the day the angel had come. At least, Irvin had believed it was an angel at the time. Now, forty-four years later, he suspected that it might have been something other than an angel, but how was he to know? He was not an expert on such things, and the angel, or whatever it was if it was not an angel, had never returned for him to question.

It had certainly looked like an angel. Irvin had never seen an angel before that memorable day, but if he were to make up an angel he would have made it look very much like that one, or maybe even exactly like that one. He recollected that he had been crying when the angel came. It had surprised him to cry over that dog. His hands and his boots had still been dirty from the burying of it, and he was leaned over the shovel handle crying when the angel appeared. Irvin had buried dogs before, and he had buried people. What, he supposed, had it been about that dog that made him cry when he buried it? She had been a good dog, he guessed, but what constituted a “good” dog anyways? She really had not been any better than any of them other dogs he had buried and not cried over, just friendlier. She had been a friendly dog.

While he was leaned over that shovel handle crying, before the angel came, Irvin recalled noticing the sunset. The sky had been particularly beautiful, as he recalled. Cobalt blue it was. As blue as perfume-bottle glass, with slate gray clouds running cross-ways from low down on the horizon like ladder rungs, with bigger, steely clouds splotching up the higher Cobalt Blue like paw prints. It had made him smile in the middle of the crying. That had been a singular moment in itself, smiling while he was crying, but then the angel had come, too.

Irvin hoped that the angel had come for him that memorable day forty-four years ago, but he had stayed, and the angel had gone. Irvin could not figure why the angel had left without him when he had been so sure that the angel had come for him. The angel had looked at him like... well, like it was his very own angel. That is what made him wonder if maybe it had not been an angel at all, but was instead something that looked very much like an angel should look, but was really something different from an angel, or maybe some different kind of an angel.

Bitty had passed two months before that dog, and here was Irvin, forty-four years later, remembering the day that dog had died, and remembering an angel that had left without him, yet he could not remember Bitty’s birthday. He did remember the sparkle in her eyes, though. Who could forget that? The angel’s eye had carried that same sparkle. If he could get to the cemetary he could get Bitty’s birthday from the stone. He should know her birthday. Even though he needed to know her birthday, they still would not let him drive, so how would he get to the cemetary? He had taken to drinking after Bitty died, and when he wrecked the car they took his license. They took his license, and they told him not to drive, but they wouldn’t pick him up and take him to the cemetary. It didn’t seem right. He could no longer go to see Bitty, or to see the girl.

Irvin felt sorry for the girl, the one he had hit with the car. She had been very young. He always stopped by her marker when he went to visit Bitty. The girl was probably someone’s angel herself, just like Bitty had been. Forty-four years. Irvin couldn’t recall Bitty’s birthday, but he did remember his own. Today he was one hundred and two years old. Who would have thought it, forty-four years after Bitty, and the girl, and that dog. He still felt pretty good... physically, anyways? Hell, who knew, he might live three or four more years! A tear worked its way down his cheek at that thought, dodging through an obstacle course of wrinkled and time worn skin.

Irvin Washington sighed. Forty-four years. Forty-four years of remembering. Fort-four years alone; an old man, in an old house, in an old town. That dog had been the last one, his last friend. She had been a good old dog, a friendly dog anyways.

Forty-four years since that dog, and since Bitty, and since the girl, and since that angel had visited, but had left without him. At least it had looked like what Irvin thought an angel should look like, but it might not have been an angel. It might have been something else entirely.