Free The Fish and the Not Fish by Peter Markus Page A

kicked up road, it is dust that is what rises up from our dust skinned skins.
    It was on a night like this when the sun rose up at dawn the next day that we saw for the first time that dog Dead Dog dead on the side of the road.
    When we first saw Dead Dog, there on the side of the road, the dog that we saw, we thought that it was a dog dead.
    Dead Dog did not make a move, or turn his dog head, or make with his dog mouth a sound when we stuck the toes of our boots up in Dead Dog’s nose.
    That dog’s dead, one of us boys said.
    Us boys, we left Dead Dog there for dead, there on the side of the road, and kept on with our walk to where we did not know where us boys would go to.
    Not to home was all that we knew.
    We walked.
    We walked some more.
    The sun, it seemed, seemed to walk its walk up the sky with us.
    The sun, it seemed, it was one of us.
    When we turned and went back the way to where home was for us boys back in the house where we lived in with Man, this was when we saw Dead Dog and we saw it, then, with both of our boy eyes, that this dog, it was not dead.
    This dog that we thought it was dead, it sat up on the side of the road and it looked up at us boys like it, this dog, it was one of us.
    What those dog eyes said to us boys, when they looked up at us up from the side of the road was, Would you please give this dog a home?
    Home, us boys knew, our house, it was no place for a dog to be took to since we had no food or bones for us to feed it but for the dirt that we might scrape up for it and say to it that this dirt used to be bone.
    But Dead Dog did not seem to mind it that dirt was all that he would get to eat if he came with us to that house at the edge of the woods that was for us boys what we were told was for us our home.
    When we brought Dead Dog home with us to meet Man, we told Man that when we first walked by this dog there on the side of the road we thought that this dog was dead.
    Oh yeah, Man said to this. You think that just cause some dog sits up like this dog did sit up that this don’t mean that this dog ain’t dead?
    Us boys, we did not know what to say to this.
    So we did not say yes or no.
    You boys deaf, Man said to us next, or do you both just got dirt stuck up in your ears?
    Us boys both stuck our thumbs in our ears and said, No, sir, there’s no dirt in here that we can feel.
    Can we keep him? we said so to Man, and we all three of us looked down at Dead Dog as this dog licked at his own rear.
    Man looked down at this dog as this dog did what he could do with his tongue and what Man said then was, What could a dog like this hurt, and that you boys could use a dog like this to keep us out of his way.
    We said our thanks to what Man said when he said it, though we did not say this with a hug.
    Us boys took Dead Dog with us to bed that night and we have since that night watched this dog sleep each of these nights, there at the foot of our bed, the sleep that makes you think that this dog is dead.
    But dead, this dog, he is not.
    Dead Dog just likes to make it look like he is dead.
    But this dog is a dog that lives.

II.
DEAD DOG BARKS
    At night, Dead Dog barks.
    Dead Dog is a dog that barks at things in the night that Dead Dog hears but can’t see.
    We think that what Dead Dog thinks he hears at night are skunks and coons and dogs not named Dead Dog who hunt at night and like to paw through the cans out back where we put out our trash.
    But the truth of it is, there are no cans out back where we put out our trash.
    Our trash, Man digs holes in the dirt out back near the woods and down in there we put our trash and put the dirt back on top the way that Dead Dog does with his bones.
    But one night when we hear Dead Dog bark and bark and when we hear that his Dead Dog bark is not the kind of a bark that will stop, us boys, we go out to see what it is that Dead Dog thinks that he sees.
    This is what we see.
    We see a night that is so pitch black dark that we can’t see