And She Was by Cindy Dyson Page B

us when he got close enough to reach. We bobbed uncertainly toward each other, then retreated. I would like to say I threw my arms around him. But I was afraid of him. This was the first time I’d seen him as an honest bum—a drunk. That last time, five or six years ago, he was still pretending, still keeping an apartment, finding jobs now and then. Back then we had still been able to make believe. Standing in this heat with my father an arm’s length away, I was suddenly aware of the power shift. For years I’d been daddy’s girl, pleasing him with grades and a passion for hot rods; then, when he left, I’d followed my mom’s lead and hated him by turning against everything he’d wanted for me and toward everything he disdained about her. For the last ten years, we’d been in a no-man’s-land, rarely seeing each other but aware that we could negotiate a truce, a slow compromise—if we had the time. And that’s what hit me now, that we had no more time. That he’d robbed me of the time and would leave me with a lifetime of regret. He was going to die and take away my chance to have my father back. At that moment, I hated him for it, and I pitied us both. I wanted to leave him there with a parting hateful remark and never let myself need him again. And I wanted to rush him to rehab and force vitamins into his mouth, and put him to bed on clean sheets and make him recover. Either action would have been better than what I did. Once again, I let him decide.
    “I was just passing by and heard you were staying near here,” I said, offering a neutral choice that left all the others open.
    He nodded. “Glad you did.”
    We remained three feet apart, our feet light, uncertain.
    “Oh, for the love of mud,” Yolanda said with a sigh. She shook herhead and stepped over to my father. “Give your daughter a hug, Henry.” She shoved him toward me.
    One of his arms came around my shoulders, and we stood maybe six inches apart as he patted my shoulder half a dozen times. “Good to see you. Good to see you.” We remained in this awkward half hug, half standoff for maybe four seconds, then he backed up a couple steps.
    Yolanda, hands on her hips, rolled her eyes and blew out a disgusted sigh. “No wonder,” she muttered as she turned to walk back to the shop, leaving my dad and me alone among the corpses of Lincolns and Oldsmobiles.
    Dad watched her until she rounded the corner. The silence lay like a blanket folded so long the creases were permanent lines of dust and shadow. I wanted to hold the silence longer this time, force him to ease us out of this. The dog snuffled, watching me.
    “Who’s this?” I asked. I couldn’t do it, no matter that I’d been on my own so many years, that his weakness shouldn’t strand me any longer.
    “Cowboy,” Dad said, reaching down to scratch the thing’s head. Cowboy tilted his massive skull into the scratch. “My sidekick.”
    I knelt and reached my hand out. Cowboy jumped forward, missed my hand, and crashed into my knees. Of course, my knees were balancing the rest of me, which fell back with a plop into the red-dry dust. The dog’s head pushed into my hair, and I had to shove him back to stand up again.
    Dad slapped his thigh, and Cowboy leaped across the few feet separating us. “He’s one of the pups Phil’s guard dog had after a wayward weekend. This one seemed to have been born with an affinity for me. Phil let me keep him. Drowned the rest of the litter.”
    I couldn’t help but think this was for the best. One of these atrocities in the world was enough. He was massive. Although still a pup, Cowboy’s head came most of the way up my thigh. His body was one coiled muscle, and his head flattened with a low forehead and squared-off jaw. His hair was slick and short and gray-brown brindled, ideal camouflage for a junkyard. His tail was a thick cord of whipping muscle.
    “What is he?”
    “Mother’s a rottweiler. Think the sire was a big wolfhound that kept