The Fountain

The rain came soft at first, tapping on the leaves like a man knocking gently at a door. I was in the garden, sleeves rolled, hands black with earth. The snapdragons stood in neat rows, their colors dulled by the gray of the sky but proud all the same. Pansies huddled low to the soil, their faces open like little children watching the clouds. The boxwood hedges were dark and still. I liked the quiet of the rain. It was clean. I worked with slow care. Pulling weeds, turning soil, checking the roots for rot. The kind of work you feel in your shoulders. There was a peace in it. The kind that does not come easy. The kind you earn. The garden took the rain without complaint. I watched it soak in, running along in little rivers, making everything soft and alive again. The cold wet seeped through my shirt. I let it. The pansies drooped under the weight of water, but they would rise again. Snapdragons held firm. Tough little bastards. The hedges needed trimming, but not today. Today was for ra...

The morning was cold, but not cold enough. The damp air hung low over the pine needles and the red clay. In early spring, the woods breathed slow and quiet. The river moved steady in the distance, like a man who knew where he was going. You walked because it was good to walk, and the ground gave under your boots the way it should. The trees were tall and thin. Loblolly pines, mostly. Some sweetgum and oak, their buds just pushing out like green fists. A squirrel ran along a branch and vanished. You could hear birds you couldn’t name. The woods didn’t care what you called them. The sun came through in slants and touched the earth in long strips. It felt like it had been waiting all winter for this moment, for the chance to be warm again. There was nothing to say, and so nothing was said. You walked past deer tracks and an old fence that had no purpose anymore. Maybe it never had one. The woods held onto things like that—forgotten, rusted, quiet. You kept walking because you wanted to ...

The vet said it was time. The old dog had stopped eating three days ago, and now he couldn’t stand. His eyes were still bright, but his breath came heavy and slow. We carried him out to the car and drove into town. He didn’t cry. He hadn’t cried once. Not when the pain started. Not when the strength left his legs. He only watched us with that quiet, steady look he always had, like he knew everything that was coming and had already made peace with it. At the office, they led us into a small room with white walls. It smelled clean. Too clean. The kind of clean that makes your stomach hurt. The vet was kind. She spoke in a low voice and told us what would happen. We nodded. There wasn’t much to say. I held his head in my hands, and he leaned into me like he used to when we sat on the porch after a long day of walking in the woods. The needle went in, and he gave one last breath. It was quiet. Not soft, not loud. Just final. We drove home in silence. The sky had turned the color of gunme...

The pond was quiet in the morning. The trees were still and the water was dark and flat. I carried a cane pole and a tin of worms. The pole was long and light, one I had used for many years. It was good tackle. Simple and honest. You could feel the fish with it. I dug the worm from the tin and put it on the hook. The hook was sharp and the worm curled around it, trying to hold on. I let the line drop near the reeds. There was no need to cast far. The fish were near the bank. You only had to wait. Not long, usually. Not if the water was right and the sun not too high. The line twitched. Then it pulled. I set the hook and lifted. The fish came up fast, splashing. It was a bluegill, wide and flat. It kicked hard in the air. I brought it in and took it off the hook. Its mouth opened and shut like it was still trying to speak. I held it a moment, then let it slip back into the water. It disappeared slow beneath the reeds. There would be others. There are always others if you wait and your t...

In the morning, I walked the dog. The sun was low and the air was cool. She trotted ahead, ears flopping, nose down in the grass. She was good at finding smells. She found the scent of another dog and followed it to the corner, where she stopped and looked back at me. I gave her slack in the leash. She was a good dog. A steady dog. She knew her work. We passed the house with the red door and the bougainvillea. The woman who lives there was watering her plants. She waved. I nodded. The dog sniffed the base of her mailbox and sneezed. There were other dogs that had been there. She could smell them all. A whole world in the dirt and on the concrete. I could not see it, but she could. She was made for it. I let her work. We walked until the sun was higher. The streets were quiet except for a crow on a telephone wire. The dog stopped to scratch her ear. I watched her and thought of nothing. That was the good part. There was no talk, no thinking, just the walk and the dog and the street an...

The house was quiet now. The mornings came and went like old friends who had grown tired of the visit. He would sit at the kitchen table with his hands around a coffee cup that had long gone cold, staring at the empty chair across from him. The ache was not loud, nor did it rage. It sat in his chest like a stone sunk to the riverbed, unmoved by the current of passing days. He thought about the way she would hum softly while drying the dishes, the sound slipping through the cracks of his memory like sunlight through a dusty window. He missed her without ceremony, without grand displays. It was a dull, persistent throb that never asked for attention but never left him alone. Sometimes he would walk the old path down to the river, where they once threw crumbs to the ducks and talked about small things that seemed bigger then. The air was thick with the scent of pine, and he could hear the water moving over the rocks, just as it always had. It made him angry sometimes—how the world did not...