Dave

Unpublished Short Story Excerpt

"Dude."

"That's not cool."

“Ripper left Dave?”

"He's coming back."

"Yeah, next year with the swell. His plug said he parked the RV at his mom's and sold his stash for a plane ticket."

"Back to the North Shore probably."

"How do you just leave a dog?"

"Maybe Dave'll be cool here. I mean, we all feed him."

"Yeah, just let him hang here."

"No. No." Cate shouldered past the dripping, dreadlocked, tattooed surfer boys crowded around Dave, a matted golden retriever sheltering under an open hatchback. "There's a shelter right off Huntington. Someone needs to drive him up there."

"He's a San-O dog," droned one boy, his pupils wide and red from smoke. "This is his spot."

“I don’t think he was even Ripper’s dog.”

“Dave thought he was Ripper’s dog.”

Cate knelt down. Dave was insecure. He begged food off barbecuers and attacked other dogs, but they’d all fallen asleep with their salty wet heads on his belly that summer. Cate whispered to him, rubbing him between the ears, and he yawned out a big hot breath of Sausage McMuffin breakfast charity before slumping back down into his mid-morning nap. 

Over the cliffs of the San Onofre Trails the boys, wrapped in hoodies and knit caps, watched big black dolphins playing close to shore in the high tide. The waves came in long, fat lines, building up so far out that they were encased in fog and hard to make out, but the old guy dawn patrol were out on their longboards and SUPs and had been since dark. A rain so light it was mostly fog wisped and floated around their noses.

"You can't just leave a dog roaming around out here,” Cate insisted. “He needs –"

"Church's firing today?"

One of the boys tapped at the screen of an iPhone. "That's what Surfline says, but last time it was –"

"When's low tide?"

"Plus, he attacks other dogs," Cate insisted, standing up straight. "One of the campers' ankle biters could get eaten."

"Like noon?"

"Who picked up McDonald's but didn't get me anything?"

"Let's go to Lowers."

"I heard that girl meetup group is going to Old Man's today."

"Seriously, did someone buy McDonald's for Dave but not me?"

"Lowers is too fucking crowded."

"What's Bolsa Chica doing?"

"If you go to Huntington, take Dave to the shelter there," Cate pleaded, but she may as well have been speaking from another dimension. Some dead ghost, giving the living a shiver. They paused, looking at or through her, one of them with his finger wiggling in his ear, another blinking up momentarily from his iPhone.

"Brah, it isn't our dog."

"I'll drive to Church's. Who wants a ride?"

"Tyler ate your McMuffin, dude."

"You owe me a fucking taco, Tyler."

"Where's that girl you were with last night? She go home?"

Cate watched them wander back up the dirt trail to the parking lot. Dave groaned and snuffed at her calf, tasted it, then rolled onto his back. She felt very old. The ocean was so far down the cliff that the surfers and their longboards looked unreal, like toy shadows on a painting of an ocean, fog lifting, rolling, puffing up the sheer rock face. From up there, it looked extreme, huge, uninviting. Up close she knew it was even more formidable. 

And yet she ached to be out in it. Her blood sang to the ocean, and the ocean responded, like and like. She felt its pull as she turned away from it and followed in the footsteps and skateboard wheel tracks of the boys, most not yet old enough to legally drink, back to a battered, paid-off minivan, purchased for a different life.

Cate wondered, briefly, if her own son was turning out like these idiots, and the thought tired her out. She stopped mid-step with the pain of it, so acute that her chest hurt, the way it did sometimes after paddling over a steep wave and belly-flopping out the back. It was best to forget. Like stressing about death, there was no point; worrying couldn’t fix it. 

That's when she noticed that Dave had followed her, was heeling on her left, and had stopped with her. He looked up at her with a wide open smile, tongue out his big teeth, looking so derpy that she snapped out of it and laughed.