Kash
—I died in a heat like this, said one of our retirees, an older man with hair far thicker than his age should have allowed.
This was after a different gentleman had fainted, and we collected the cones, cornhole bags, and bocce balls from the lawn, and brought everyone to the shade beneath the wall of cypress trees.
—You’re just trying to get a laugh, I told him. It isn’t accurate to say you died.
I’d been volunteering with this non-profit long enough to remember his quiet heart attack. I’d never seen someone dying. Humidity went down everything. Condensation whitened the near side of the fish tank, and through it, the big-eyed, last-remaining betta watched the EMTs work his body. They pushed on his chest as if setting a new gray tile in the retirement home’s mortar.
—I did die, he said, and I got to the start of heaven. Clouds were hard like gum to step on, and you could see, far as that radio tower there, the gates of St. Peter.
—Does anyone have a favorite actor? I interrupted. A favorite album?
There was a murmur of black-and-white starlets and rock-a-billy choices.
—There’s music there, the old guy said. But it comes right at you. It’s the warble of an Indian guru with the march of a Union drummer boy. Very easy to keep moving forward to that rhythm. I was ready. Do you have a wife? he asked me.
—Who wants to play twenty questions, I said. We’re paid to keep your minds active here. I’ll go: I’m thinking of someone famous.
—If you don’t have a wife, he said. Get a dog. Get two. Someone up there, I don’t know, God or who, they let the gates open, and out came hundreds of dogs. Dogs, horses, cats, but the dogs came the fastest. Kash, Keekee, Baby Blue—even the ones I’d briefly known, even from decades ago—their wet smell was all over me. Tongues, tails (some sheared off and others full on), and ears every way. Barking, sure. Kidneys dangled in the air, bullets rattled in the gut, euthanasia dripped from their mouths. And they took me by the scruff, as if I were a pup, and dragged me back to my body on Earth. Ask anyone! Field day, I was just winning. I’m the quickest here. Don’t say I’m wrong right away, give it some time to see for yourself.
—Never had a dog, was all I could say at last, since the heat was melting the surface of a nearby lake, and now the sky, too full, let it all torrentially down.
Inside, we gave our fainter over to the nurses and told the rest of our residents they were a tough generation. Then I drove slowly—the windshield awash—back to my basement apartment, hoping it wouldn’t flood.
The welcome mat was floating at the entrance, but inside everything was as I left it. On the counter was the letter for a charity gala which I junked with the credit card offers. There was not much else to do, so I filled the sink and starting at my stack of dishes.
I figured the old man was wrong. There was no wild dog pile at any rainbow bridge, and it only seemed right that the here-after should mirror the stillness of the here. Dish by dish I made steady progress, from dirty on one end to stacked neatly on the other. It all was very neat until, almost finished, the tenderizer slipped from my hand. Water splashed violently, and a tinge of soap went in my mouth.
I stuck my hand in the warm water to try and the water swayed as I tried to find it. Well, maybe he was right. He’d told me once of his time in the Navy, handling the searchlight, and even in the doldrums, the calmest, waveless sea, he’d found more than one drowner below.