10.
 A few days later, Antonio showed up with a great big German shepherd named Sapphire. She'd had one litter and then been fixed. "She's gonna watch the place," Antonio said. "You better make friends with her, Tom, or she bite you." He gave Tom a bone, and Tom took the dog over by the low wall he'd built. There he played with her, holding the bone but letting her lick it, until they had a rapport going. Antonio arranged it so that only he or Tom could give the dog food, to have her loyalty.
Antonio had a spare room, his garage actually, and there he set Tom up. It was much nicer than the shed. In the afternoons the sun would shine in, on a western exposure, and Tom would pull down the amber plastic shade and lie on the rug on his back—probably not much different than Sapphire—and enjoy the peace. Only thing about the peace was, there were children all around. Not just the quiet little Indio girls who had helped him to his feet the day of the accident, but a lot of screaming smaller kids. And the boys who were the same age as the mature girls were not at all quiet or mature. Sometimes they teased Tom, but usually they all got along pretty well. Tom charmed them with stories of his travels. The serious little girls would always sit in too, chiding the boys when they got rowdy or silly. Then again, some evenings the serious little girls might be having an off day and everyone was giggling and being silly. Mostly, the children listened. He told them about big cities all around America, glowing with lights powered by mighty waterfalls. He told them about the north winds that came down past Alaska every winter, whirling like giant pinwheels, and colored ash gray with moisture which they then dumped as rain or snow in a swath from Washington over the Rockies across the plains and into New England. He liked the feel of the road under his feet, the slick way the gravel in the roadbed turned into lines and streaks when he looked down from the window. He liked the sense of going someplace that was like blood rushing in his veins. It was a rush, a high. It was an addiction. He didn't tell the children that part. All addictions demanded, by their nature, that they be broken. There was, too, the fact that if you were addicted, probably you got that way because something lay in your past. What that might be, he couldn't figure out exactly. At times he had dreams in which he knew what it was but he couldn't remember after he woke up sweaty and holding his throat. One night Antonio even came with a gun and a flashlight, banging on the sliding glass door in his gruff voice. "You all right in there, bud?"
"I'm sorry, I had a dream."
"Damn near shouted your head off."
"Sorry."
"Put a rag in it."
Luckily, it didn't happen often.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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