Bittersweet

This work of fiction is a product of the author's imagination. The characters, incidents or dialog are not to be construed as real. No one should publish or post this story anywhere else without the author's written permission. This story does NOT contain any explicit sex.

The length of this story is around 2850 words and takes up 1 page on Lit.

Tags used on this story are: Memories, Dog, Death, best friend, depression, fiction, green eyes, loneliness, time passed.

This was difficult for me to write and proof. Please forgive any typos and misspellings that I missed.

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He walked into the bar, one among a herd or a dozen or so men. He was the one that wasn't barking and boasting and grunting as he walked, alone among many. He imagined that he could be in an African savannah among a group of adolescent male baboons, all trying to convince themselves of their maleness.

They came from the last flag-ball game of their informal league. The air smelled of snow, the first real snow of the year if you didn't count the dusting from last week that lasted on the ground for twenty minutes.

Even if it was just flag-ball there was always lots of contact. He played in the offensive line and released all his frustration, rage and tensions shoving against the guys in the defensive line.

Now they came, as per tradition, to this so-called pub. He'd never been in an English pub, but he was pretty sure they weren't like this. Even with the fake diamond pane windows set into the concrete walls with lights behind it to simulate daylight in this windowless room.

He sat at the bar, nursing the single draw with a glass of water on the side and thought about ... things. He had his last paycheck in his pocket and wondered why he lasted as long as he did. That prick of an art director. That asshole didn't know graphic design from a hole in the ground. When he told the prick just that he felt sooo good, so relaxed. He went and sat in his cube and actually started working, working on his own idea. It worked for a full fifteen minutes. Until the personnel manager called him to her office and handed him his final paycheck.

When he got back to his cube all his personal possessions were boxed and ready to go. The other drones just concentrated on their screens and ignored him as if he had a fatal disease. Not a smile, a high five or any other acknowledgment. Except for the rueful half smile with a lifted eyebrow that Tony offered. But then Tony had been wanting to bed him since the divorce.

Another swig of beer, another swallow of water. Divorce. Well it could have been worse, a lot worse. Thanks to his sister. Well that was what big sisters who were lawyers did. Not legal advice, but by reading his wife before they married. Knowing he would probably fall for the bitch, his sister hadn't told him about the extra insurance policies their parents had. She split the policy they both had jointly, but kept the money in trust on the individual policies that each parent had on each of them.

The bitch, she tried to take the house. The house that had been in his family since after the civil war. And take it along with the family farm, or what was left of it. At least she didn't get either. His thought slipped into the past. He had the room on the North East corner of the upstairs of the square two story house. Built in the classic American Foursquare style it had been home to generations of his family. And generations of dogs.

Lad. An interesting combination of breeds, at least one of which pointed and another retrieved. Poor Laddie started out as Lady, named that first day by his older sister. She brought the wet, muddy half grown dog in from the road, picked up from a ditch as she walked in from where her school bus dropped off.

Poor Lady or Laddie had been dumped off by some townie. He could hear the parents telling the children how he would find a good family on the nearest farm and be happy and run free over the fields. Lad was the anomaly that didn't starve to death or get killed and eaten by coyotes.

That dumb piece of miss matched fur was about a year old when Sis brought him in. Dad was against it, and so was Mom, but Sis had her way, as usual. And while he came to love the dog, he had to live with yet new tortures and humiliations that his mad sister thought up. No-one at grade school, junior high or high school ever bullied him. They either knew his sister gave it to him worse at home, or were afraid of his sister who declared that he was hers and hers alone to torture.

The worse was with the dog. Not the dog, but the way Sis used the dog. He was six when she brought Lady in. After the folks agreed to keep it, Dad had to explain that Lady was really not a lady, and had to be called Laddie, which shortly was shortened to Lad.

Not long after that Sis started feeding Lad one piece of his food at a time. Lad picked it carefully out of her hand and crunched down on it, wagged his tail and looked eagerly for more. He used to sit on the floor next to them and watch. She would keep it up for at least a quarter of the food the bowl.

One day, when neither parent was there, she pushed the piece of kibble at him instead of the dog. Held it there with that look in her eyes. Her eyes. They were different from everyone else in the family. He had green, with wavy dark auburn hair, just like grandpa. Everyone else had either pale blue or green eyes with orange red curly, or strawberry blond hair.

Hers were dark dark blue, with straight black hair. Dad used to say there was a Welsh woman in their ancestry, and sometimes the Welsh came through all the Scottish genes. He had seen her eyes when her rage came through, They seemed to turn black and he couldn't stand to look at them, or her.

That afternoon, Dad in the field, Mom out at work or shopping, she fed the dog a piece of kibble, then gave him a piece. She held it there, in front of his mouth, pressed to his lips and didn't say anything. Her eyes narrowed and turned icy. He trembled and finally opened, chewed and swallowed. Her smile was wide and loving.

Every time from then on, when Mom and Dad weren't there, he got to savor the taste of dog kibble. She tired of the game when she got to high school.

Lad turned into a great dog. Smaller and lighter than a lab, with long legs and medium long fur, he pointed. Rabbits, pheasant, mice. It didn't matter. But Dad trained him. For several years He and Dad would hunt Pheasant in the fall and winter, and Lad would always point, and when the bird was down, would bring it back to the boy, regardless of who shot it.

The hunting stopped after Dad had his heart attack. But he recovered and they would go out in the fields with Lad. Wait till Lad pointed, then clap hands and off went the bird. Half the time He'd throw a Yellow Tennis Ball, and Lad would gleefully chase it down and drop it back at His feet.

He was Lad's favorite. Lad had always gone to his room to sleep, much to the chagrin of Sis. When Lad was big enough he would jump into his bed and spend most of the night curled up by his feet. Lad also would meet him coming home from school, and eventually came to the corner where the gravel road their house was on met the main road, a little less than half a mile from home, then walk He and Sis back home.

He grew up with that dog, shared it's meals, however unwillingly, and loved it. Sis left it alone by the time she started high school, about two years after she brought it home, she still petted it, but gave up the pretense that it was hers. Everyone knew it was His.

Lad got older as he grew up. He must have been about six when Sis brought the dog home, and by the time He graduated from high school Lad was getting on. A little slower, but just as loving and eager. After high school he joined the National Guard, to help pay for college. He spent a little more than six months that summer training, and when he got back Lad was all over him. He'd missed the start of the school year, which probably a good thing. By thanksgiving there were rumors they would be deployed after Christmas.

He worked on the farm, Lad at his side, as if the dog knew He wasn't going to be around for long. And in the Cold bitter wind of late January he took Lad out into the corn stubble for a last point and clap and tennis ball throw. Lad was slower and once never found the ball.

The deployment was for sixteen months, and he got home in late May of the next year. If Lad had been eager to see him after his Basic training, he was ecstatic to see him after that. But He saw that Lad only found him by the sound of His voice, and His smell. And Lad was limping. There was a spot of short hair on one side.

They hadn't told Him about the cancer, or the blindness.

He took another pull on his beer, another swig of water. A girl sat on the bar stool next to him. Blond, blue eyed, tall, athletic. Probably a college kid, wearing a sweatshirt with the Woodston College logo on it. He thought to himself that he would probably win a bet that her last name would end in "son" or "sson" or "sen", or maybe it would have two a's together in the middle or beginning of her name.

His family had come to the area not long after it was settled by Europeans or European descended people, but being Scots they were in the minority in this area full of Scandinavians. His first kiss was with a Norwegian girl, Nancy Toloffson, the first soft breast he had felt was Janet Olsen. Other than Lad his best friend was Jeff Aagaard.

His parents had died just four years ago, not six months after he had started dating Janelle. They hadn't liked her, but tried to hide it. His sister didn't. Sis had told him at the funeral that he shouldn't marry her, but also said that he probably would. And he did. He should have known something was wrong with Jan when she asked about insurance money a week after the funeral.

And sure enough Sis, who was the executor, sent him a check a week later. It had been a car crash, they were on the way to visit Sis in Iowa City, and a Truck had T-boned them. It was instant the doctors said. As if that would make it better.

So he married the bitch. She started whining about this and that and everything else the first month. She insisted on spending nearly all the insurance money on a honeymoon cruise and stay in Cozumel. It was fun. He knew she wasn't a virgin, and neither was he, barely. And it was great. But there was always something she found to complain about.

He had started thinking divorce after a year. One Thanksgiving they were over at Sis's place, his brother in law was great and ignored the jabs that the bitch threw at everything. But Sis didn't. He saw her eyes get narrow and darken more than once, and Ron, his brother in law, saw it too, and got pale. He wondered what hell Sis would visit on Ron when no-one was around. Maybe he was a masochist.

The girl next to him gave up trying to talk to him, and finally left, heading for the sounds of his rowdy team-mates. He looked at himself in the mirror. He looked older than he should. More tired. Well he couldn't go back to farming, he and Sis held the land together and leased it out. She took care of everything, and sent him a check every fall after harvest. At least he had a place to live in that old house so full of memories.

He sensed someone else slip into the seat next to him. His mind drifted back over the years as he wondered why he thought of sad things when things weren't going well.

He had gotten a job in town after he got back from his deployment. Still living in his old room, Lad now had a step stool to get into the bed, and couldn't go through the night without needing to go outside. So he would get up at the first whine and follow the dog's slow progress downstairs and out the kitchen door. He didn't go as far as he used to.

He took Lad to the vet that last time. After the examination he knew from the Vet's expression what the verdict was. He asked the Vet for pain killer, was told it would help some, but not completely. The Vet had wanted to ... well that wasn't going to happen, not inside some antiseptic building that Lad hated going into.

When he got home Dad didn't have to be told, Mom petted Laddie on the head and busied herself in the kitchen. He unhooked the leash and dad gave him the forty-five that grandpa had brought back from World War two.

It was a short walk, past the old windbreak of planted rows of cedar and spruce, and into the corn stubble, past the first field into the oaks on top of the hill. They used to spend a lot of time here, Lad chased the squirrels while He worked on a fort, or a tree-house. Or leaned on the glacier scared boulder and watched clouds while Lad lay against him.

Lad must have known, and he was ready somehow, the look in his eyes said it all. The sigh as he lay down without even a half circle at the top of rise. Just suddenly slumped down and put his head on his paws told a story of weariness and pain. He knelt and scratched Lad behind the ears. Good ol Lad, good boy, good friend. Wait for me.

Dad came up with a couple of shovels after it was over. They dug off to the side of a large rock between two oaks, looking over the meadow and down to the little creek. When it was done they moved another rock over as a headstone. Dad was quiet, his eyes a little misty. He had tears dripping down his cheeks.

They stood there a while. Then, looking at the other rock, next to Lad's, Dad said that 'they' might get to know each other, and wait for 'us'. He realized that He wasn't the first one to go through this misery. He remembered Dad's stories about Suzie.

Mom wasn't in the kitchen when they got back, the dishwasher was open and a broken plate lay on the floor. Dad asked him to clean it up and suggested that Lad's bowls be taken to the barn. Dad left the kitchen to head upstairs to look after Mom.

Tears filled his eyes as he re-lived that day. He took another sip of beer. Someone else sat beside him. She smelled of cedar, or spruce. He'd smelled that before, somewhere.

After Lad things sped up in his life. College, a job, grad school, the bitch. The divorce. Then the huge check from Sis, the note with it about not telling him about the other insurance policies and the settlement from the truck driver's insurance company and employers. Seems he had been drunk at the time of the accident. And Sis was a lawyer in a large firm.

So losing the job wasn't the end of the world. He could get by for a while, if he was careful, perhaps for a very very long time. Forever? And he could free-lance. He'd done it before. And Woodston College had a graphic design program, hadn't someone mentioned to him last month they might be looking for another instructor?

Spruce, that was it. Who was it that used to wear that? Jane? No, Janet. Janet Olsen, that's what she smelled like that night in high school. Wonder what happened to her?

"Ian? Ian MacKrimmon? Is that you? Goodness! I haven't seen you since we dated in high school, ooffa."