Page 98 of Junkyard Dog

“Last week, actually,” he muttered, going back to the onion.

“And how did that go?”

It’s an awful lot to process.

“As well as expected, I guess.” He sighed, glancing up as the new bartender came in and tossed an order onto the ring. He waited until the door swung shut before continuing. “He’s working out, I take it?”

“Daniel gets the job done,” Thomas answered. “Customers seem to like him enough.”

He walked over to the cooler and grabbed a stack of burger patties. “Charlotte doesn’t like him.”

“Charlotte hangs out with Max,” the elderly man countered. “She’s hardly the epitome of character judgment.”

“Exactly.” He grinned. “If she can identify the guy as a jerk, imagine how bad he must be.”

Thomas fired up the grill. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, separating the patties and laying them on the metal. “Come back Sunday. If you’re still determined to put down roots here, we’ll talk. If not, I’ll buy you a beer and wish you well. Sound good, son?”

He nodded and opened a bag of buns. “Mind if I hang around here tonight?”

“Start by bringing the liquor order over from the back.”

*

Charlotte hung upher radio and pulled onto the off-road path, slowing to a crawl until she reached her destination.

The ball was still in her court, sitting lifelessly on the sidelines.

Confident she had at least half an hour before Max would be radioing in for her again, she turned off the engine, grabbed her flashlight, and gave the area a quick scan before she got out. Climbing onto the hood of the truck and leaning back against the windshield, she stared up at the expanse of the night sky.

“Who needs aliens when you have a hellhound sleeping in your backyard?” she muttered, rubbing her temples.

She liked order and facts and incredible animal adaptations that could be explained through Darwinism. She stuck to fiction books that existed in the realm of possibility, movies that held one foot firmly planted in reality.

In her opinion, myths were overly complicated stories bred from a civilization that hadn’t the scientific evidence to explain their world.

They weren’t the family history of some random guy working behind a bar.

Some random guy who made her heart pound. Or could keep her up for hours talking about everything and nothing.

That random guy who she’d been drawn to the moment she saw him, hiking boots haphazardly tied and a rakish grin on his face.

A low howl crossed the Keys, the high-pitched yelps of the coyotes joining in as the howl drew closer to her, coming up slow and steady on her right. She kept her eyes on the stars and ignored the hesitant approach of the beast in her peripheral vision.

“If you’re looking for kibble, you’re out of luck,” she called over, closing her eyes and folding her arms behind her head, a strange security settling over her with the dog’s presence in the quiet desert. When Butch chuffed, she smiled and glanced over at him. “I dropped it off with a family on the east side. Some yappy little fur ball’s eating it now.”

Butch, Alex, held back a few yards, his ears perked up and head tilted.

“You put me in a tough position,” she continued, turning her attention back to the sky. “I either have to rearrange my entire world view, or accept that both you and I are delusional and likely feeding off each other to create an alternate reality.” She frowned. “Though I’m not sure what my head thinks it would gain by composing this.”

She scooted over, dropping one arm over the side of the truck and tossing the other over her eyes. “If I go along with the delusional explanation, I have to accept that everything from the past few months wasn’t real. Or at the very least, the parts of it involving you weren’t.” She rubbed her fingers together and waited until a soft muzzle bumped against her hand. “And frankly, that kind of sucks.”

She grazed the beast’s ears, lifting one at a time absently. “On the other hand, accepting that an entire society exists in another realm? That opens a whole other can of worms for me, doesn’t it? I mean, one of the big questions is are you a dog that turns into a human or a human that turns into a dog? Because that’s an important distinction.”

The dog growled, nudging her hand.

“I’m going to go clock out,” she said, giving him a quick pat before she sat up. “If I call you after I get home, and that’s a big if, will you be home?”

She sighed as the dog took off across the sand, disappearing over the ridge. Swinging her legs over the edge of the hood, she hopped down and turned toward the driver’s-side door.

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