Narrator: Wade T. | Kentucky, USA
Dad kept hunting dogs most of his life. After he died, we dismantled the old kennels and stacked the metal panels behind the barn. There hadn’t been a dog on the place for four years.
The night before the land sale, I woke up to the whole pack running.
If you’ve lived with those dogs, you know the difference between a few barking and a pack moving together. I heard nails on the concrete, the gate latch rattling, one dog with that hoarse cough instead of a proper bark. Dad used to call him Rusty.
I stood in the kitchen with the porch light on. The concrete pad was empty. The sounds came closer until I could hear panting against the screen door.
I couldn’t bring myself to open it. I wanted to. My hand was on the latch, and I couldn’t.
It went quiet around dawn. In the morning the screen was bowed inwards at nose height, with a wet oval in its centre.
My sister calls it a lovely goodbye. She wasn’t the one standing there in her underwear wondering what would come in if she opened the door.
