Issue 05

Cliff glanced over at Carly and laughed. She cried every time they reached the stretch of I-70 where the snowcapped Rockies first rose into view outside Denver.

“Tie the god damn dog to the side bar,” Cliff had said, that fateful day. 

         “But it’s got anxiety,” Carly pleaded.

         She tied the Huskie mix with one blue eye and one brown eye to the side bar and comforted it before they left for the cabin. It ran circles in the truck bed but finally settled.

         After a while, Carly stopped looking.

         Before long, she heard a ting. At first, she assumed it was the whipped engine, then she glanced in the mirror and saw the leash flapping.

         She begged Cliff to turn back.

         “There’s no way of telling how long ago it jumped,” he’d said.

Cliff rested a hand on her thigh. “You ever going to stop thinking about that dog?”

         “This stretch reminds me.” 

         “It might have made it.”

         “You know it didn’t,” Carly said, staring out the window.

         Cliff veered onto the Winter Park exit and they stopped for gas in Empire.

         “It wasn’t a dog that wanted to be kept,” Cliff said, pulling up to a pump.  

         “You always say stuff,” Carly said, slamming the door to go inside.

         The ride up was the best part. She loved the cabin, and they were lucky to have it, lucky to have each other. But only on the ride up did she feel free. Then they arrived, and Cliff hit the garage door button and it closed like bars.

         Cliff was under control during the week, but at the cabin, he drank. Carly hung around until he was far enough gone that he was better off alone. Then she slept. Most nights, Cliff never made it to bed. Passing out on the couch or a chair outside. She’d wake him and send him to bed and enjoy a few hours in the morning. Being with Cliff had become a life. She sacrificed because he had a steady business, steady plan, something someone might have once called a steady life.

         They’d met in South Carolina during her senior year. Cliff was drifting through town and picked up work at her granddaddy’s auto shop. She breezed in one afternoon in a red dress, on her way to the movies, stopping by because her granddad would give her spending money. Cliff’s head rose from under the hood of a Chevy.

         After three dates, Cliff popped the question.

         Her dad hated him, her mom was concerned, and her granddaddy loved him. A perfect Southern stew.

         The cabin was 1500 miles and seven years from then.

         The early morning sun caterpillar-fuzzed the mountains. A husky fog hung waiting to fizzle. Carly made a pot of coffee and sipped, watching. Her phone buzzed. Mom. She didn’t answer. She hadn’t answered in six months.

         The keys to the truck hung on the hook by the door. She had money, demanded it for being as forgiving as she was. An allowance, Cliff called it. Two thousand a month went into her account. It had been that way for five years and she’d never touched it.

         She walked into the room to see how dead Cliff was. She said his name, shook him, jumped on the bed, but he wouldn’t stir.

         “What if I leave your dumb ass right now?” she said.

         Cliff didn’t rustle.

         There was a boy she’d known in high school, before Cliff. Elliot Adams. She found him on Facebook. He seemed single. Lived in San Francisco. Tech guy. He’d always been a computer nerd in high school. They’d had fun in Tom Wood’s class, flying across the room in swivel chairs as he wrote code stuff on the marker board. They’d act like nothing happened when he finally turned. Elliot messaged her once, must have been a year, asking what she’d gotten up to.

         She was too embarrassed to respond.

         Emboldened, she scrolled messages until she found his and replied.

         Carly: I don’t know, what are you doing?

         He responded immediately.

         Elliot: Wow. Carly Rae. The most beautiful girl in the Clover High School Class of 2014. If I’m being honest, I’ve been waiting for you to reach out.

         A butterfly landed on the windowpane as she dumped out her coffee and stared out at the driveway. It flapped its wings then flew away.

         Her phone buzzed again. Dad. Six months, too.

         She opened the fridge and saw bloody mary mix and grabbed it. Then a bottle of vodka from the freezer. She filled a glass half full then splashed bloody mary mix and walked onto the porch.

         The fog was gone, and the mountains were still.

         There is nothing more still in this world than mountains, she thought.

She drank half the glass and stared at nothing. She heard a bark and peered down at the vast space that existed between the balcony and the foot of the mountain. From under the cover of a tree the huskie mix appeared, running and barking, and stopped for a moment.

         It was their dog.

         It hobbled on three legs, but moved with purpose, wild and free.

         Overtaken, she whistled, and it came. She pet it eagerly and wept. But the dog was too wild to be tamed and left as quickly as it arrived. It hobbled down the hill below the cabin and into a bluff and turned back to look at her like it remembered. But when she called it again, it disappeared.

         Her phone rang this time. Mom. She didn’t answer. She wandered into the room where Cliff slept and listened to him snore. She grabbed the keys to the truck. She pushed the button and the garage doors opened. She backed out onto the street and realized she’d packed nothing, had no possessions, and floored it. She was twenty-six years old and leaving the first act of her life behind.

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