Even the Dog Knows by Jason F. Wright

Author:Jason F. Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shadow Mountain Publishing
Published: 2022-02-22T16:39:00+00:00

THIRTY-NINE

By mid-afternoon, the bus to Gulf Breeze was cruising along south of Athens and skirting the Oconee National Forest. Troy was up front near his dad, and the rest had gathered near the cooler and snacks in the rear. Grace sat sideways, her bare legs on the sticky vinyl seat, one row ahead of Mark. She quizzed him on his nomad life, and Moses and Beverage lay next to each other against the emergency door chewing on rawhides.

“Thirteen years?” Grace was slack-jawed. “You’ve been homeless for thirteen years?”

Mark spoke louder, but only because Grace had told him it was hard to hear him over the clanks and cranks of the bus. “I prefer not to think of myself as . . . homeless,” he said. “I have a house. Just not a home.”

Grace, curious and with nothing but time, pressed. “I’m so fascinated, Mark. What does that mean? A house but not a home?”

Mark took a sip from a cold water bottle—his third since boarding the bus that morning. “My wife and I had a home in Rochester. Rochester, New York. I’m from the Finger Lakes area. My wife is from Palmyra.”

“Is she . . . still living?” Grace asked, as Troy arrived and sat in the seat across from her.

“She’s not,” Mark said, looking down and fiddling with the clear cap of his bottle.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked,” Grace offered.

Troy looked, listened, watched the dogs trade rawhide but said nothing as the conversation unfolded.

“No need to apologize,” Mark said. “She was sick our entire marriage. I always knew she’d leave me before we were done.”

“Done?” Grace asked.

“With the journey. She was my love.” Mark pointed to his chest, and his voice fell into a canyon. “She was my heart.”

The miles passed, and Mark, in simple but colorful strokes, painted the picture of his life. He’d graduated from NYU and taught humanities at a community college. He met his wife there, a career counselor just three days younger. On their second date, she confided that she was a cancer survivor four times over, and she knew it wasn’t a matter of if but of which follow-up appointment would be the one that moved her from four to five.

They were married between semesters, and doctors found another tumor during their first year of marriage. “Nothing surprised us,” Mark said. “It was the . . . perfection of our relationship. No secrets. No surprises.”

“She must have been so special. So, so special that you chose to endure knowing all that.”

Mark smiled—a slight curl and a spark. “You don’t endure love, Grace. You breathe it.”

Troy remained quiet as Mark’s life continued, revealing itself milestone by milestone.

“We couldn’t have children, not with all the treatments. But we still built a family. We had a home, our own traditions, the college, our friends, our students. When she finally passed, her last breaths took a week.”

Grace wanted to probe, to pry, but it was obvious she wouldn’t need to.

“No one ever asks me about her,” Mark said, and for the first time Troy and Grace noticed his eyes were wet.

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