under the sun

I've passed that old black dog three times now on my way up from the market. She walks stiffly, with the air of a stout, sourmouthed shopkeep. The fur on her face grows in odd tufts. She lies in the sunlight on that corner and gives me the once-over as I go by, but she is not interested in exchanging pleasantries.

If she is the dog I think she is, then I have seen her before and I have heard her story once from the afternoon girl in my old café across town. She was bitten badly in the face as a puppy by another dog, and it's made her a little wary and a smidge ugly. I remember the afternoon girl telling me this between drags on her cigarette, a smoke break in the sunlight outside when a pause between customers permitted.

That café is no longer. Neither the afternoon girl; she was killed by a late-night drunk driver years ago. I was away and did not make it to the funeral, but I am told that her biker friends turned out in their finest leathers and rode as a guard of honor behind the hearse. It must have been regal. The bikers I see now and then at another café one town south of here, taking their coffee while leaning against their shiny machines.