Photo by Dainis Graveris on Unsplash
The bedside clock reads 2:09 AM when Mitch Clark gives up on sleep. He flings the sheet to Roxanne’s side, empty but for her yellow bathrobe, and swings his feet to the floor. Sitting on the bedside, Mitch slips into his New Balance Walkers, pulls the Velcro snug, and stands. Since Roxanne left, Mitch has arranged her robe beside him on the bed each night. Streetlight leaking through the blinds finds a pale, overweight man in white shoes, black socks, and blue boxers—reaching for a robe in the shape of Roxanne.
Mitch eases his arms into its sleeves. He ties its terrycloth sash. In Mitch’s mind, Roxanne holds him in her arms as he walks past Howdy, asleep on his pad by the bed. Roxanne’s arms barely reach past Mitch’s elbows.
The clock on the stove reads 2:13 as Mitch enters his kitchen. By the time he drinks a glass of water and calls out, “Howdy, leash!”—2:15. Real time: 2:10.
Early in their marriage, thirty-eight years ago, Roxanne had set all their clocks ahead. “It helps me get a jump on things,” she’d said.
“What things?” Mitch asked.
“Things,” Roxanne explained.
Bounding through the kitchen, Howdy tail-slaps Mitch’s shins with the force of an eighty-pound, black-and-tan pit bull. As Mitch bends to rub his shins, Howdy yanks the leash from a hook beside the door and sits, sweeping the detritus from the mud room floor mat with his happy tail. “There’s a goo-boy,” says Mitch, face to face with Howdy.
Waiting for the words that will release him from his sit, Howdy aims his amber eyes at Mitch. Mitch takes the leash from Howdy’s mouth, clips it to his collar, and sings, “It’s Howdy Doo-dy time.” Up jumps Howdy. Out the door they go.
Both Mitch and Roxanne retired last year—she from physical therapy at age sixty, he from high school guidance counseling at sixty-five. Retirement was one thing Roxanne had gotten a jump on.
This past spring, Mitch and Roxanne enrolled in Spanish classes at Southern Indiana Tech. SIT. They had planned to spend two weeks in Costa Rica in September. Turns out, their instructor, Raúl Hernandez, was from Costa Rica. A Tico. And handsome, Mitch had to admit.
One night in June, Mitch’s weekly tennis match knocked off early. His doubles partner, Harold Gourley, a neighbor, suggested they go to Los Buenos Tiempos for its Thursday draft beer special. Dos Equis for dos dollars.
“Isn’t that Roxanne?” Harold had asked, pointing to a woman at the bar, a woman who was performing therapy on Raúl’s bronze thigh.
“I didn’t think you were interested in that anymore,” Mitch said later that night at home, pulling his shirttail from his track suit to make himself look thinner.
“That?” asked Roxanne.
“You know, sex.”
“Despierta,” Roxanne answered.
“What does that mean?”
“It means wake up,” said Roxanne, pitching a tube of lubricant into her suitcase. “Voy al apartamento de Raúl.”
“I got apartment and Raúl,” said Mitch. Raúl was another thing Roxanne had jumped on.
In the weeks that followed, Mitch woke up. In the middle of most nights. Lying in bed beside the robe, he’d replay his marriage. A play in four acts.
The Lean Years: when Roxanne and Mitch rented an efficiency apartment, accumulating a down payment for a starter home. A time when they filled their utensil thingy with plasticware from McDonald’s. And yet, they were as happy as Ronald himself.
The Even Happier Years: when they raised Sara Beth and Nick, joined a mega-church, and pretended to enjoy soccer.
The We-Are-at-the-Heights-of-Our-Professions-Living-in-a-Big-House-Skyping-Our-Successful-Children-While-Pretending-to-be-Happy Years.
The Desert Years: when they no longer pretended and were too foolish to realize that retirement wouldn’t change a thing. The years when Mitch should have recognized that Roxanne was the neglected oasis, he had trudged past.
Then earlier this week, Mitch received a postcard of a howler monkey in a rainforest. As beautiful as you thought it would be. Raúl says, hola. Best, Rox. Not even September. Roxanne had gotten a jump on her trip. On the bright side, Mitch had acquired Howdy.
At this time of night, aside from the occasional owl hoot and clicks of Howdy’s nails on asphalt, the neighborhood is silent. No melody to be heard in Melody Hills. No cloud in a star-filled sky. No one to see him wrapped in Roxanne.
Despite his sleeplessness and the gnawing reason for it, Mitch asks Howdy and Roxanne, “Isn’t this nice?” But even if Howdy or Roxanne could answer, they’d be interrupted by the thumping bass line from a car on Cool Jazz Lane. The thumps cut out. The lights turn off. The car turns onto Swinging Way, heading for Mitch and Howdy.
“Trust your instincts,” Mitch had counseled the kids at Faircrest High. And for the most part, Mitch had trusted his instincts, too.
If a kid smirks at your Living Well is Your Best Reward poster behind your desk, save your breath, serve the kid detention. If a girl says you planted pot in her locker, call school resource officer, Sergeant Fran Fleener, in for backup. If a car is heading for you at two-whatever in the morning, pull Howdy behind the Goldblatt’s catalpa tree and watch the car—a cab the color of a yellow bathrobe—pass by. See it come to a stop in front of Harold Gourley’s house. See a man jump from the cab. Watch him run across the Gourley’s yard. Notice how he lifts a window and climbs into the Gourley’s house.
When Mitch was five years old, he asked his parents for a dog, one who would fight wolves or pull him from a well. Instead, his father bought a blue parakeet. “If you keep his cage clean, we’ll talk about a dog down the road,” his father said.
“Where?” Mitch asked.
Mitch named his parakeet after The Howdy Doody Show, his second favorite TV program. Every Saturday morning, Buffalo Bob would ask, “Say, kids, what time is it?” With his eyes on Howdy, the wooden boy puppet, Mitch would call out, “It’s Howdy Doody Time!” Mitch had considered naming the bird after his favorite show, Captain Kangaroo, but it was a bird, after all.
Keep Howdy’s cage clean, Mitch did. He’d get a dog in no time. But in the meantime, Howdy became Mitch’s best friend. With Howdy perched on Mitch’s finger, he taught him to say, “Howdy” and “Itch” (the M sound, problematic). Soon, Howdy was saying, “Howdy, Itch” when Mitch entered his bedroom. Then one day as Mitch was cleaning Howdy’s cage, dumping bird poop out the window, Howdy flew away.
So, this is how life worked. One moment: pal on finger. Next moment: pal out window. Soon after Howdy vanished, Mitch’s grandmother did, too.
Mitch loved spending nights with Grandma Mildred. She let him snap the ends off green beans. He got to pull the strings from rhubarb. She made black cows. “Open the cola, and I’ll scoop the cream,” she said one night. Grandma Mildred froze her ice cream solid. It took a strong arm to scoop. But the next morning, despite Mitch shaking her scooping arm, Grandma Mildred said nothing. She had flown away.
Or this. One moment: walking into Los Buenos Tiempos. Next moment: walking out.
After Howdy flew the coop, Mitch never got a dog. “We can’t reward irresponsibility, Mitchell,” his dad had said. Years later, Roxanne announced, “I’m not a dog person.”
“Are you a cat person?” Mitch asked.
“I’m a people person.” Hard to deny, considering Raúl.
Mitch was lonely. And yet, hoping Roxanne would tire of Raúl, Mitch dared not get either a dog or a cat. What would Roxanne think when she returned? If she returned. In the meantime, he’d get a parakeet, name him Howdy, and keep the windows closed. With this in mind, one day Mitch got into his car. Twenty minutes later, walking through YouPet on his way to Birds, Mitch saw a pit bull scarfing fallen kibble from the floor. A short chain dangled from his ratty blue collar.
“Howdy,” said Mitch. The dog looked up.
One moment: bird in mind. Next moment: dog in car.
Brushing a catalpa pod from his face, Mitch stares at the violated window. Didn’t Harold and Marlene leave for Gatlinburg this week? Hadn’t Harold said, “Keep a lookout on things” and “Kelli’s staying home for summer school at SIT”? As Kelli Gourley’s former high school counselor, Mitch can imagine the necessity of summer school for her. Kelli had once accused him of planting pot in her locker.
“Hurry up there, boy,” Mitch says as Howdy hikes a leg, aiming at the catalpa’s trunk. “We have to do something.”
What they do is hustle down the street. No problem for Howdy. No big deal for Mitch, despite a skimpy, tight robe. Entering the Gourley’s yard, Mitch sees that the window is shut. Lights flicker behind curtains. A flashlight? Flashlights?
On the front porch with Howdy, Mitch pushes the button on a lighted doorbell. The first few bars of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” ring out through its speaker. Mitch is staring at the windowless front door when a porch light comes on beside it. A bug zapper zaps to his left.
“What do you want, Mr. Clark?” a young woman asks from the doorbell.
A speaker and a camera, Mitch deduces.
Bending forward, Mitch puts his hands on his knees and looks into the doorbell. “Kelli, are you okay? I saw someone jump into a window.” Zap
“My bedroom window. Your face is like huge, Mr. Clark.”
Mitch would expect Kelli to seem concerned if an intruder had entered her bedroom. Kelli sounds anything but. “Tell him you’re okay, Kelli,” a young man says.
“I’m okay, Mr. Clark.” Zap-zap
If Mitch had a dollar for every time a troubled kid had said they were okay, he could have gotten a jump on retirement like Roxanne. “Open the door and let me see you, Kelli. To make sure everything is cool,” says Mitch, backing away from the door.
“Cool?” the young man says, as though cool were reserved for the young. “Nice dog. But you don’t look so good, Mr. Clark. We’re cool, aren’t we Kelli?” Then, almost in a whisper, “Check out the old dude’s robe.”
“Just open up, and I’ll be off,” says Mitch. Zap
“Open the door, Jason,” says Kelli. The door opens.
In the time it takes Mitch to read Kelli’s Out of my sight! Thou dost infect my eyes knee-length T-shirt, Howdy jerks the leash from Mitch’s hand. In the time it takes Mitch to shout, “Here, boy!” Howdy runs past Jason, lunges at Kelli, and pins her to the hardwood floor.
“Holy fuck!” shouts Jason, dropping to Kelli’s side. And with a zap, zap-zap, Howdy yelps, twitches, rolls off Kelli, and goes limp.
How had the bug zapper zapped Howdy? thinks Mitch. Have I lost this Howdy, too? “Howdy!” Mitch shouts, stepping into the Gourley’s house.
“Uh, hi, Mr. Clark,” says Kelli. “Put your gun down, Jason. Biscuit was just happy to see me,” she explains, rolling over to embrace—
Biscuit? Mitch wonders.
“Can you hear me, Biscuit?” asks Kelli, holding the unconscious dog in her arms.
“I thought he was going to kill you,” says Jason, stuffing a small gun between the waist of his jeans and his Feel the Bern blue shirt. A stun gun, Mitch sees. “I’m majorly sorry, Kelli,” says Jason.
“You will be if Biscuit doesn’t wake up. Wake up, Biscuit Boy.”
“Biscuit Boy?” Mitch wonders aloud.
“He belongs to my friend Amber. He broke loose from his chain like weeks ago. Where’d you find him?”
One minute, Mitch is walking Howdy on a pleasant, star-filled night; and not ten minutes later he’s telling Kelli, “In the dog food aisle at YouPet,” as he and Jason carry Howdy-Biscuit Boy down a hall and into Kelli’s bedroom. Candles, Mitch sees. A bunch.
“Lay his head on a pillow,” says Kelli, leading Mitch to a rumpled bed. Jason clearly knows the way.
“He’ll come around soon,” says Jason. “But he might not think straight for a while. Look how long his tongue is.”
Jason Schlundt. Mitch remembers him now. He’d been called into Mitch’s office several times. Smoking marijuana in art class. Writing Police officers do it with handcuffs on Sergeant Fleener’s squad car. “Shocked a lot of dogs, have you, Jason?” asks Mitch.
“People. In my business, you never know when you’ll need to. Wouldn’t go nowhere without it,” says Jason, pulling the gun from his waist.
With Kelli propped against some pillows on one side of the bed and Howdy zapped out on the other, Kelli says, “Put it away, Jason. Sit down.” She taps a spot beside her with her foot.
Black toenail polish? Mitch wonders. With all the flickering, hard to tell. “What kind of business?” he asks Jason.
“I drive a cab.”
“Oh, yeah.”
As Mitch sits beside Howdy on the bed, Kelli asks, “Won’t Mrs. Clark wonder where you are?”
“Doubtful,” says Mitch, tugging Roxanne’s robe to his knees. “She’s in Costa Rica.”
“What’s she doing there?” asks Kelli.
“I can only imagine. She left me for a Tico. Why’d you climb through Kelli’s window, Jason? Didn’t you know her parents are away?”
“Yeah, I knew. Habit, I guess. Look, Biscuit’s coming to. What’s a Tico?”
“It’s me, Biscuit boy,” says Kelli, nose to the big dog’s nose.
“It’s Howdy Doody time,” Mitch tells Howdy.
By now the bedside clock reads 3:15. Howdy’s tale is whacking the sheets when Kelli says, “Will Amber be glad to see you!” Turning to Mitch, she explains, “His eyes are amber. That’s why Amber picked him. Hand me my phone, Mr. Clark. On the table next to you.”
First, Sarah Beth left for college, never to live at home again. Then Nick. Now Roxanne’s with Raúl. “Please, don’t call. He’s all I’ve got,” says Mitch, swinging his legs onto the bed and clinging to Howdy.
If Kelli’s bed were a map of the Midwest, Kelli is Illinois; Howdy, Indiana; and Mitch, stretching from Cincinnati to Toledo, western Ohio. Jason is St. Louis, stroking Illinois’ right foot.
“You play tennis with my dad, don’t you?” asks Kelli.
“Besides your dad, Howdy’s all I’ve got. Just don’t take someone for granted. Life can change like that,” Mitch says with a finger-snap. Howdy’s left ear twitches. “I should have recognized Roxanne had needs.”
“You mean like . . . damn,” says Jason. “Aren’t you like fifty-something?”
“Maybe it’s for the best,” says Kelli. “My dad is my mom’s second husband. She says her first husband was a warm-up. You’ll meet someone, Mr. Clark. We used to think that Sergeant Fleener had a thing for you. Didn’t we, Jason?”
With Jason’s smile flickering in candlelight, Mitch half expects Jason to say, Police officers do it with handcuffs. “For real,” he says instead.
“Fran Fleener? For me?” says Mitch.
“Seriously, Mr. Clark, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I read that somewhere,” says Kelli. Jason lies down beside her.
“Is that right? And what would that be?”
“Like get your wife back or move on. Right, Jason?”
“Whatev,” says Jason. “But get a bigger robe. Goodnight, you guys.”
How had it come to this? Advice from Kelli Gourley and Jason Schlundt. And yet, had Mitch done what had to be done? Hadn’t he just stood there as Howdy flew out the window? Hadn’t it been he who had deserted his marriage by his inattention to it? And what had he done to prevent Roxanne from flying to San Juan with Raúl? But first things first. “You say Amber keeps Biscuit on a chain?”
“Well, yeah, but that’s because her parents say so.”
“How would you like to live on a chain?”
“I wouldn’t, but—”
“Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Right? And what I gotta do is give Biscuit a good home. Or else I guess what I gotta do is tell your parents about this,” says Mitch, taking in the window, the candles, and Jason with a glance. “What do you gotta do, Kelli?”
One afternoon while Mitch was sipping a black cow on Grandma Mildred’s porch, her neighbor, Mr. Larson, walked up the steps and sat on the porch swing beside her. He asked Mitch’s grandma to hide a car in her garage. A 1946 Triumph that Mr. Larson’s son had restored.
Mr. Larson’s son Ron had been a utility company lineman. He was electrocuted in a storm. “Before Ron died, his wife cheated on him,” Grandma Mildred said to Mitch that night.
“How did she cheat?” Mitch asked.
“Never mind that,” said Grandma Mildred. “The car belongs to Ron’s wife now, but that doesn’t mean she should have it. What’s seems right isn’t always right, Mitchell,” Grandma Mildred explained.
“What seems right isn’t always right, Kelli. Biscuit would be happier with me, don’t you think?” asks Mitch.
“I’ll sleep on it. Good night, Mr. Clark.”
To Mitch’s right, Howdy twitches. From dreams, this time. To Howdy’s right, Kelli and Jason spoon. Quietly, Mitch rises from bed. One by one, he blows the candles out, planning to roust Howdy and leave. But with one candle remaining, Howdy looks so peaceful in its light. One paw draped on Kelli’s shoulder, his lethal tail at rest. What the heck, Mitch thinks. It’s been a long day. Or night. Whatev. He blows the candle out and lies down.
Settling into bed beside Howdy, a succession of images, words, and sounds stream through Mitch’s mind: a bowl of snapped green beans, a 1946 red Triumph. “All our times have come,” sing Roxanne and Raúl—a howler monkey between them. “Adios,” says the monkey to a blue parakeet, flying through an open window. The window opens onto a desert. The parakeet perches on a cactus. And just before sleep, a pair of handcuffs floats into view.
Mark Williams lives in Evansville, Indiana. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review , Rattle , and The American Journal of Poetry . His fiction has appeared in Drunk Monkeys , Indiana Review , fresh.ink , and the anthologies, American Fiction , The Boom Project , and Running Wild Novella Anthology, Volume 4 .