Fiction

Marcy finished picking up after the dogs and tied the plastic grocery bag with two simple knots. The three greyhounds barked when they saw she was done because they wanted treats.

“Hush dogs,” she said. She crossed the yard and opened the side gate that led to the front of the house—and the two late Thursday afternoon trashcans that would be emptied on Friday morning garbage day. She swung the gate behind her as she usually did and proceeded forward across St. Augustine grass of the front yard.

When she did so the purebred, silvery dogs raised their heads like chickens around a cock. They were waiting for the click of the gate. This was the sign to stay put, though the opposite had been true during their racing days. The starting cages would snap open, and nothing would have been better than to finally sink their teeth into the fake white rabbit that was always just out of reach. Men would have bad days because of them, and some lucky men would name their own kids after their winning bets. Now, standing around in the yard with ears pinned back, the dogs can’t quite remember how the track and rabbit would, without fail, be replaced by wire cages and rough human hands, but they remember other things.

Before they could really understand what they heard, they were running—the three of them— streaking across the yard. There had been no click, and the first dog to hit the gate and force it open yelped. Marcy hadn’t even reached the trashcans when they ran past. In all her years of rescuing dogs, she had never once yelled after the ones who got out. They would come back.

Blocks away, an old man was trimming stray branches off of a tree in his front yard. The look in his eyes was that of a meticulous man, but his dry, cracked hands made him clumsy. His white undershirt was a good fit, and the wrinkled dimples of his forehead overflowed their narrow banks with sweat. The sunlight coming through the branches and leaves made it look like he was underwater. Occasionally he would stop his work and look toward his house, perhaps in anticipation that his wife might bring him some water or lemonade.

Across the street, a boy passed by his living room window and saw the old man cutting the trees. He doesn’t know the man’s name, but he doesn’t remember many people’s names. His mother says that he should be starting high school now, but the high school said no, so now he doesn’t go to school “for the time being,” his mother said. His own name is Peter, and it helps him understand the man cutting trees better if he imagines his name is Peter too.

Moving away from the window, Peter picked up a pen from his mother’s desk and went into the kitchen to draw on the newspaper at the kitchen table. He would add details to the pictures. Not mustaches and missing teeth, but instead birds and other people, standing in the background. His principal once told his mother that he was troubled, but Peter hardly ever got in trouble. His hands got dark with newsprint, and Peter started thinking about the other Peter, who could still be heard rummaging in the yard.

When he was younger, Peter would play in his front yard or in the street, and once, the old man came and talked to him. The old man reminded Peter of a horse riding character from a movie, and his voice was like a bassoon. He didn’t introduce himself as is the way of most old gentlemen, but his name is, in fact, not Peter, but Sergei. Sergei asked Peter questions he didn’t understand about his father, and then he said he was sorry. Peter was still thinking about the Western he had seen and finally asked Sergei what he knew about horses.

Instead of answering the question directly, Sergei began telling a story, as is the way of most old men. He said that when his parents first arrived in America with him when he was very young, they had had a very rough time. His father had been a skilled taxidermist, which Sergei explained is when you stuff an animal, and Peter nodded in understanding.

“He could make no money doing this in the cities, though, so he answered a letter from his older brother, telling him we would join him in his new home in Kentucky. He lived in a small town outside of Louisville, Kentucky, and he worked in the only ambulance. My father was able to start stuffing the animals that the hunters wanted as trophies, and we were soon able to live in our own small house, and my mother worked in a restaurant.”

His uncle had always told his father that they should all go see a horse race in Louisville. Sergei’s father would sit amongst stuffed ducks and cardinals and think about the horses gliding over the mud and all of the rich men cheering their favorites. Sergei’s father had never gambled outside of poker games with friends, but the thought of hugging a horse with a collar or roses lifted him beyond the musty seclusion of bird feathers. He began setting aside money for his first bet.