Free From a Dead Sleep by John A. Daly Page A

she turned to greet him from under her frazzled white hair and large, dark-framed bifocals.
    “Did you see some guy walking around here this morning?” he asked.
    “Who?” she replied in a dainty voice.
    “Some guy. I don’t know his name. He was dressed in black. Did you see him out on the road this morning?”
    She took a moment and squinted at him. “Who?” she repeated.
    “Jesus,” Sean said in annoyance. He raised his voice. “Anybody! Did you see anybody at all down here by the road this morning?”
    Her wrinkled face twisted in befuddlement. She arched her back and her eyes rose to the air as if she was straining to recollect a memory from her youth.
    Sean tapped the side of his door impatiently with the broad palm of his hand.
    “Well . . . I can’t say as I did.”
    Without another second wasted, the rear tires of the Nova spun circles and Ruth Golding was left behind in a cloud of dust as Sean advanced hurriedly back down the road.

    Sean didn’t answer his phone once that evening. He let his machine bear the torture. There had already been one scathing message left from his landlord. It had been awaiting attention since early that morning. A similar one came through around six p.m. That fat bastard , Sean thought to himself. Bailey lived right downstairs. He was either too lazy or too scared to come up and speak to him like a man. Sean took some gratification in believing it to be the latter, although he was fine with skipping the confrontation for one more day.
    He spent the next hour searching through cluttered drawers and disheveled closets for possessions to sell off. It wasn’t an uncommon practice, but each sale left him feeling like he had less of an identity. When he had moved out of his mother’s house, she gave him what was left of his father’s stuff. For years, she had kept the belongings around for some unknown reason. Sean speculated that as much as she hated him, it was her way of keeping up hope for her husband returning someday. Finally letting them go was her way of forgetting.
    The mementos were Sean’s only attachments to the man who had left his life so abruptly without as much as a goodbye. But like with his mother, each abandonment relieved his mind of another memory, whether it was an old pair of steel-tipped boots or a small HAM radio with rainbow-colored, entangled wires stemming from the back.
    Pickings were now slim. Almost every keepsake that would bring in more than just spare change was now gone—all but one . . . the one that Sean once promised himself he would not part with. It lay nestled away safely in his locked, top right desk drawer.
    He sat back on his large, overworked, brown leather recliner for hours in the dimmed living room that was growing darker with the sky. Time moved by slowly, like it often did. He found himself barrenly watching flashes of light from his nineteen-inch television set dance across the surrounding walls. The volume was turned down low. Now dressed only in checkered boxer shorts and a frayed t-shirt that had once been white, he repeatedly twisted his raised ankle in a clockwise motion to loosen up the aching and stiffness. One of his hands was wrapped around a warm bottle of beer while the other one massaged the ears of the old overweight dachshund who lay contentedly bundled up in a ball across his lap.
    Rocco. The thirteen-year-old pooch had belonged to Diana before she left for college years earlier. She could have left him with their mother, but she felt the crotchety canine was a better companion for Sean. Both were rambunctious and ill-tempered—a perfect match. He had initially protested the gift, fearing that the responsibility would cramp his style. But as a favor to his pleading sister, he eventually gave in. He never regretted it. The two were kindred spirits—standoffish, territorial, and set in their ways. Rocco had gone completely blind from old age within the last year, but he was still tough. He didn’t let the