The Dog Harlan Left Behind

The doctor told me I had broken the wrist in two places and badly bruised the hip, though nothing in the hip had cracked, thank God. My body temperature had dropped into the low nineties.

“Another hour on that ground,” he said, “and we would be having a very different conversation.” He looked at Wade. “Whatever was lying on her helped. I’d say it bought her the hour.”

“It was a dog,” Wade said, in a strange flat voice.

“Then I’d give him a steak.”

I slept after that, under a heated blanket, with a cast on my arm. When I woke toward morning with gray light in the window, my son was sitting in the vinyl chair beside my bed.

He had not gone home. He had not slept. His good shirt was wrinkled and his hair stood up, and he had been crying again, I think, though quietly.

“Morning, Mom.”

“Morning.”

He looked down at his hands. They are big hands, like his father’s. “Chief’s still in the hallway. Pam gave him a bowl of water. And some cheese crackers, which I think is against policy.”

“I heard him from the truck,” Wade said. “With the windows up. I sat in your kitchen and told you that dog didn’t have a bark left. I told you he was done.” He pressed his lips together. “He had one. He saved it.”

“He did.”

“I’d have found you in the morning, Mom.” Now the tears came again, and he did not hide them. “I’d have found you in the morning.”

I reached over with my good hand and took hold of his sleeve. He is my boy, and he was forty-seven years old, and in that moment I could see every one of his ages at once.

“Wade, honey, listen to me. You were wrong about the dog. But you were never wrong to be afraid for me.”

“I was trying so hard to do something. After Dad. I couldn’t fix any of it. And the dog was the one thing I thought I could fix.”

“Wade.”

“Every time I drove up the lane and saw him lying at the shed door, waiting. I’d think, he’s waiting for Dad. And I couldn’t stand it. I thought if he was gone, then you’d stop waiting, too.”

There it was. The thing underneath the folder.

I let it sit a moment. Then I said it as gently as I knew how.

“I’m not waiting for your father, Wade. I know where he is. I’m only not finished missing him.”

“And that dog isn’t waiting for your father to walk out of the shed. Not anymore, I don’t believe. We go to that door at four o’clock because it’s the one place left where we can both be sure Harlan was loved. We’re keeping the hour, honey. We’re not keeping the man.”

Wade put his forehead down on the edge of the mattress, next to my hand, and stayed there a long while. I stroked his hair with my good fingers the way I did when he had the croup.

When he lifted his head, he had his banker’s face back on. I knew it before he spoke. I braced, because I love my son, and I know my son.

“Mom, after this, we do have to talk. About whether it’s safe for you out there alone. Jenny and I have a spare room. We’ve looked at some places near us in Lincoln, and…”