Day 103

“There were six of us, counting Abel still to be born, under the roof. I worked second shift at the warehouse and took classes in the morning, and Mery was at home most of the day. She had an almost free ride to Dartmouth because of a grant, but let it slide away because of the situation with Abel. We talked in those days, a lot, to catch up, and she didn’t believe half of the stories I told her, and I didn’t believe any of the stories she told me about Sang-Ho, about him being such a strong man, until I had a confrontation with him.” I pause again, and then Hon turned his snout to me, just enough so that he wasn’t looking directly forward.

“The wedding snuck up quicker than planned because Abel was growing and fussing like nobody’s business and they didn’t want to stress Mery in her last month or so. Our parents footed near everything of the bill, Sang-Ho only had an “uncle” who brought him over from Korea who nobody talked to. The ceremony was outside, on this hill overlooking a large bowl of wet grass because the man-made pond had been drained. It rained that day and everybody huddled under the reception’s pop tent. The whole time I watch Mery and Sang-Ho at the far end, and he’s got his hands over hers again, his palms over her knuckles, like he’s trying to swallow them up, and maybe it’s the blue clouds overhead or the smell of wet pollen but something makes me move my feet, skirting at the edge of the tent and go to them. I pull their hands apart and then lace them up together again, finger by finger till they are holding hands again. Mery is a bit embarrassed, but Sang-Ho wears this look which I could never place. He doesn’t show any emotion, nothing moves or twitches, but his eyes have a way about them, a clearness, or maybe a realness, and I understand when a shiver goes through me what Mery has always said about his strength.

‘Better,’ I tell them and try to laugh, ‘That’s always bugged me.’

And from there I drank for most of the ceremony, and I was never sure why.

Mery has Abel a few months later and I move out, but this time I leave a note. I tell them I found a university in Minnesota where I can get a two year degree to practice medicine on animals, that I already have it covered in government aid, that I’m getting a ride for my friends, and to send me pictures of Abel. I don’t give them a number. I call sometimes from pay phones and learn that Mery and Sang-Ho were expecting another kid after Abel, and that they had plans to move out East, New Jersey, to open a restaurant with a friend of Sang-Ho’s. I gave them a P.O. box I was using for everything and got to see pictures of Abel in a onesie and the house. It looked fantastic.”

Hon has seemed to relax in his stance, ears loose, not pert and up. He watches the land outside now, through the passenger side window.

“They lost that baby though.” I told Hon. “Complications in the womb, a genetic disorder that marked the baby as a foreign body and her body attacked it.”

I finish there and we were still a ways out. Hon starts tapping at the handle of the door though, with the nails of his paw, so much so that I think he might pop it open. He doesn’t stop when I ask him to so I pull over to the shoulder, which has a sharp slope down into a field that stretches for a ways into farmland. When I let him out Hon trots down the steep hill like nothing and makes it to the bottom, where I watch him, and he watches me. His head goes down and he smells at the earth, the first time I’d ever seen him do something so basic for a dog. I think that in all the time I’ve had him I haven’t seen him itch himself, bite at an itch, whimper, bark, anything. But He lifts a leg far out in the field, as if he’s trying to not let me see it, and after a moment he comes back and start driving again.