Pt. 1 - The Dog

He awoke late. The midsummer sun was already filtering in through the tattered curtains. He’d be behind from the start. It was hot and the thin sheet clung to his sweaty body. He prepared himself mentally to rise but his listless bones seemed to work against him. They lay anchored to the bed as if bound my inescapable fetters. He groaned and swung his left leg off the edge of the bed. Raising his torso proved more difficult as he tried to prop himself up by pushing his left arm behind him. This failed and he fell back to the mattress where he lay motionless for a moment.

He heard a dog bark and was immediately made alert. Part of his mind noted the oddity that something once so domestic and benign now demanded immediate attention. His ears probed the morning for the gentle din of the chickens in the yard below. Before their low reverie had reached his brain, he was up, leaning, his palms flush against the cracked windowsill and surveying the land that he called his own. A portion of it was, by statute, his. Beyond that, the legality got a little bit hazy. The only remnants of the back fence which had once divided the two properties were the cement posts at either end of the line. He had been unable to remove them and had quickly given up, leaving them to remain just another decrepit memorial to civilization--- that grand experiment.

Beside the makeshift coop (which was once merely a toolshed) the chickens ambled about contentedly plucking seed and grit from the windswept ground all the while feigning indifference to the delay in their morning meal. Satisfied that the small flock was safe, the man reached to the dresser which sat beside the window and grabbed a pair of shorts with a belt still looped through and began pulling his legs through. He nearly toppled back into bed before successfully dressing himself. He didn’t bother changing his shirt.

Moments later, as he walked out the coop, he was wearing a sun-bleached Detroit Tigers hat ostensibly aimed at keeping the sun off his increasingly ample forehead which, in reality, had long ago given itself in to a perpetual tan. Almost every exposed surface of the yard had been converted into some way into farmable land yet somehow grass still seemed to spring from the very rocks of the path. To his left, a raised bed assembled from discarded pallet remnants housed an abundant assortment of greens in various stages of growth, indeed some had already gone to seed, and on the right, a wheelbarrow with a flat tire held the bulk of a squash whose vines crept out and over the edges, worming their way across the yard like verdant, coiling cephalopods and whose roots dangled from the gaps in the corroded metal--- strange stalactites.

The portions of the yard which were not currently heavy with produce hosted a litany of ramshackle tools and building supplies salvaged over the years from those more (or less) fortunate than himself. Thistles and weeds sprung up prodigiously. Sparrows splashed in pools of dirty rainwater.

The coop itself was a testament to impressed ingenuity with its battered roof a mosaic of patchwork fixes. The door, however, fit snugly and securely and the latch still shone in the sunshine.

Sliding the latch he did quick mental math before accounting for each of his hens. The rooster, a thick Bantam, was most likely foraging somewhere nearby but out of sight. More assurance. Even trivial assurances brought joy (or something like it) in a world of uncertainty.

He retrieved a sack of feed from the shelf and tossed it haphazardly through the mesh grating to the waiting hens who lined up like shoppers snapping up doorbuster savings. So long ago, he thought. Who would even remember the reference now? Another relic. Another fading page. How long until time and tide swallowed it all? How long until all he’d known was just another context-less monument eroding beneath a veil of dust? How quickly we vanish, he thought.

The hens gave no pause for contemplation.

Returning the bag he relatched the door, squinting against the blinding sun. From somewhere off in the distance, closer now, it seemed, the dog barked again. More a sharp yelp than a bark it was. He glared back out towards the front of the house. He hand absently fingered the cracked handle of a hoe.