Free Man in The Woods by Scott Spencer

is something disquieting about seeing so much food, fruit piled up like cannonballs, slabs of meat seething beneath airtight plastic wrap, whole aisles devoted to potato chips. On his way to the pet food aisle, Paul passes two elderly men whose carts have bumped up against each other. One of them has poet-laureate white hair with a yellowish tinge, like the keys of an old piano; the other is stooped, using his cart as an ad hoc walker. They are sharing a great laugh over something, and when the stooped man picks out an item from his basket—a small jar of tartar sauce—and shows it to his friend, their laughter increases. And the sound of those old men laughing plunges Paul into a sense of despair and remorse greater than anything he has felt since the fight in the woods. Just the sound of their voices makes his hand throb, his heart lurch drunkenly.
    “Something we can do for you, young man?” the white-haired fellow says to Paul.
    “Not that we will!” his stooped-over friend quips.
    Paul carries a fifty-pound sack of dry dog food slung over his shoulder; a month’s supply of kibble makes it seem as if life were predictable, that there are things you can plan on and measures you can take. When he pays at the checkout counter, the woman working the cash register looks at him strangely, and when he gives her the money he sees his hand: it is swollen and red. And his face, too, must tell some version of the story of what he has been through.
    Something must be done about this. Paul drives out of the parking lot with his left hand on the steering wheel and his right arm slung over the dog’s shoulders. He has owned a dog only once before in his life and that was King Richard, a golden retriever Paul’s mother bought from a local breeder the first Christmas after Matthew left Connecticut for New York. Paul and his sister were electrified with joy when their mother came home with the fat, honey-colored pup.
    “Oh my God, oh my God,” Annabelle said, over and over, her hands clasped.
    The puppy seemed happy to be with children; it romped and panted and licked their hands—and bit their fingers, too, it couldn’t help itself, all that exuberance and passion to connect. But there was something wrong with the dog. When it rested it was unnervingly still and its eyes went dull, like some life-of-the-party drunk who, after regaling the table with his hilarious anecdotes, slumps into a melancholy stupor. Soon, the puppy was coughing, deep, wracking coughs, Paul couldn’t believe such an ominous sound could come out of something so soft and small. Like a bicycle horn bleating inside a bowl of oatmeal. By week’s end, the dog was dead, its eyes like smashed fuses, the tip of its little pickled tongue protruding from its mouth.
    “King!” Paul had called out, as if to rouse the puppy back to life.
    “Well that didn’t take very long,” his mother said, her voice flat, affectless; she had already entered that phase of her life in which misfortune was the norm.
    About fifteen miles from Kate’s house, Paul makes a series of turns and takes first a two-lane blacktop that leads to Victory Hill, a convalescent home for the aged, and a place Paul knows will suit his purposes. The nursing home, once the summer residence of a spice broker down in the city, who summered there with a series of short-lived wives in the early nineteenth century, is on a perch with a partial view of the river. But Paul’s destination is the employee parking lot, which is nearly empty and sheltered from view.
    “Okay, Shep, time to get out.” The dog has curled up on the seat, with his nose close to his hindquarters, and doesn’t wish to be disturbed. When Paul touches his mahogany-colored ear to roust him up, the dog doesn’t open his eyes but growls softly. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Paul says. This for some reason makes Shep’s eyes open—they are round as marbles and rimmed with red.
    “Wait right there,” Paul says and