He stands in the washed-out afternoon sun next to a concrete pillar affixed with two spigots on the top, holding his dog. She is mostly white with black-spot-speckled skin that only shows once her fur gets wet. He steadies her gently by the scruff. It’s clear they’ve done this many times before, and she will continue refusing to enjoy it. She quivers silently, stoically, resolved to accept the inevitable.
The man’s skin is a deep, dark brown-turned-almost midnight by the sun, exposure, and an impossible-to-know life that had led him to that pillar. His sinewy muscles practically burst through, taught and strong, not in the way of someone who exercises intentionally but who is always on the move.
I can’t tell if he has a house to call home.
His dog is thin but not emaciated. I imagine him lovingly sharing a can of tuna with her, taking a quarter for himself, and giving her the rest. I imagine them sitting beside each other along the dock when evening comes, her ears alert to the world and his eyes soft as he pets her head while the sun sets along the water. They are an inseparable, silhouetted duo in my mind; he found her as a puppy, and they are best friends. Soul mates.
He soaps her fur, working the flea shampoo into a lather with decisive tenderness, covering her ears, neck, flanks, tail, belly, and shoulders in thick suds with the practiced and careful hand of someone who has done this enough times for muscles to take over. A meditation.
She stands taught and shivering despite the heat between his knees as he leans over to pull a deep pink flea comb from a plastic bag. The man brushes her haunches, the top of her head, and the tops of her paws in quick, even strokes.
My heart sings for the love he has—a love I’ve made up in my head, but hope is true nonetheless. I love this man for his gentleness.
An hour from now, when we’re long gone, maybe he will hit her. Maybe he won’t share his can of tuna. Maybe he’ll give her away. Perhaps he is only washing her this way because he’s tired of fleas, not because he loves her.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
This is my way—to create lives for strangers I don’t know and never will—and I don’t know if it’s ignorant optimism, sweet storytelling, or hopeless romanticism. I sit in our truck as Devin eases it out of the stall where we washed off our boat next to the man removing the fleas from his dog with deep brown eyes, and I am filled with sadness that I’ll never know this man. I’ll never know the real story or their life or their names or who they will become.
Yet I am grateful, too, for my dream to go unbroken. To remain intact. This is the way of my mind. Hopeful, glass half-full the further I go from my world into another’s. Believing in the goodness of strangers as I wrangle all I fear inside myself.
Now that her body is lathered and brushed through, the man stands up straight, reaching for the hose. He turns it on, putting half his thumb over the nozzle to get enough pressure flowing, and washes her body first, moving to her head last. When he comes close to her face, he folds her ears to keep the water from getting in. Protecting her as best he can.
We drive toward the freeway, away from the soon-to-set sun. The two are in the rearview mirror, bathed in light. I watch as he rinses her—slowly and steadily.
A man and his dog.