by Terry Kay
James could barely speak. “You need to get some rest, Daddy.”
“I’m all right, son. I feel good. I don’t hurt.”
“Do you want anything?”
He rolled his head on the pillow. His eyes were shining and there was an expression of gladness in his thin face. “You know where my dog is, son?”
“Where?”
“Up at the cemetery. She’s waiting for me. I’m going there. You want to see her, go up there. Go up there in the morning, son. Right at sunup. She’ll be there.” He smiled happily and closed his eyes. His hand relaxed on his son’s hand and he slept his morphine sleep.
He did not speak again. The cancer finished its feeding in the hollow, emaciated body.
* * *
On the day after his father was buried, James drove to the cemetery in the pink-blue glaze of dawn. The plot was still crowded with wreaths of flowers—flowers with bright, colorful faces and ribbon sashes—and the white, mica-sand covering of the ground was pockmarked where people had stood for the gravesite services and where chairs had been placed for the family.
James stood at the foot of the graves of his parents and his brother—a brother he had not known, a brother dead before his own birth—and stared at the shadowed sand mounds. Nothing was as permanent, he thought. Nothing. He turned and looked across the cemetery. His father had said the white dog would be there, to look for the white dog at sunrise. His father had said the white dog was his mother. He remembered Neelie’s fearful warnings about ghost dogs. Maybe Neelie had said it often enough, and his father had subconsciously believed the stories.
His father was wrong. There was no white dog at the cemetery and there was nothing mysterious about the sunrise. It was only a quiet, pleasant time of the day. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes and breathed deeply, inhaling the perfume of the flowers and the clean, watery coolness of the air. Suddenly, a chill struck his neck and raced across his shoulders. He could feel his heart racing. He turned quickly, his eyes scanning the cemetery. Nothing. He began to walk slowly around the plot, searching. He could hear his father’s voice. His father believed that White Dog would be at the cemetery.
The gauze curtain of morning was now lifted, and a soft brightness spilled through the trees. James walked into the plot, between the grave mounds of his mother and father, and he knelt. Then he saw them: across the chest of sand on the grave of Robert Samuel Peek, he saw the paw prints, prints so light they could have been made by air.
Author’s Note
You will find in many novels a fine print disclaimer about the story, about the coincidence of similarity to real people and real events. It is a proclamation that fiction is fiction, regardless of its wellspring. This novel does not carry that disclaimer. It would be a lie. I have taken To Dance with the White Dog from truth—as I realized it—of my parents. There was a grand romance of life between them, and my father’s loneliness following the death of my mother was a terrible experience for him. And there was a White Dog. And my father did believe White Dog was more than a stray. In this novel, I have changed names, numbers of children, and other facts. I did this for two reasons—dramatic intensity and detachment, both necessary in relating a personal memory to an unknown audience. I do not mean to offend the truth. I only wish to celebrate its spirit.
Table of Contents
e-Foreword
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Author’s Note
