Here’s a short story I wrote.

THE DOG

The dog was lounging up there on the porch and staring at the old woman.

She was reading from a newspaper, chain-smoking as the sun was calling it a day and the whole time the dog kept thinking smoking looked like a fun thing to do but couldn’t get over the acrid scent of burnt tobacco.

The old woman turned over a page, held up the newspaper and kept on reading.

The dog could only make out two full words on the front page, words he had been trained to read. He tried to ignore the other words he didn’t know but couldn’t help identifying familiar letters: T--E TO GO TO T-E -EA--

The dog sat up, barked. Was the old woman signaling to him to go to someone? Maybe go somewhere?

The old woman folded the newspaper inward. “What’s the matter, Racer?”

The dog barked again. He remembered the old woman’s granddaughter.

The old woman’s granddaughter was the one who’d taught him to read. She’d scribbled big red letters on cut-up cardboard squares and held them up before him no less than a few dozen times, pointing and enunciating many words over and over and over.

“You hungry, Racer?” the old woman said.

The dog sat there, watching the old woman puff on her cigarette.

The dog was thinking fondly of the granddaughter.

—

Writing and editing this story was a lot of fun. Even for a short story as this one, it amazes me how much editing I did.

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