Free The Night Gwen Stacy Died by Sarah Bruni Page B

food.
    “Who’s this?” Peter’s mother had asked.
    “Our new best friend,” Jake said. He placed his hand on the dog’s head and told Patch
     to sit, but the dog only scratched its ear.
    “He’s got all his shots?” their mother said.
    “Sure,” Jake said.
    Peter had given the dog his hand to lick, and the dog complied. “So you’re his favorite,”
     Jake said. “Maybe you want to take him for a walk with me?”
    By this time, there was little their mother could do to prevent the dog from inhabiting
     their home. Peter had the leash and collar in his hand and Jake was helping him fasten
     it around the dog’s thick neck. As they walked, Jake told Peter about how dogs were
     really the first ones in space, but the reason no one around here ever talked about
     it is because it was Russian dogs, and everyone had hated the Russians so much.
    “Why?” Peter said.
    “Because they’re communists,” Jake said.
    Peter nodded. “The dogs too?”
    “Yeah, they’re communists too,” Jake said. “But they can’t help it.”
    Peter was five. He was interested in space travel.
    Jake said, “You think Patch would make a good astronaut?”
    “Yeah,” Peter said.
    “Hell, you’re probably right,” Jake said, and Peter had laughed because he thought
     this was supposed to be a joke.
    But later that night, after Peter’s bedtime, when he had snuck downstairs to watch
     his brother smoke a cigarette on the front porch, he heard Jake talking to the dog.
     He heard his brother say the words
orbital velocity
and
stratosphere
. “The problem with space travel,” Peter heard his brother say to the dog, “is that
     you always think there’s going to be enough oxygen saved up to go around, but there
     never is.” This was the first time it occurred to Peter that maybe there was something
     wrong with his brother.
    Later—after they both were gone—it would seem sometimes as if his brother and the
     dog had planned it this way, that while Peter sat at home alone with his mother and
     dusted the piano keys with his fingers, Jake and the dog were in orbit somewhere,
     Jake asking the dog to give him his paw, and then feeding him some cryogenically frozen
     food scraps.
    When Patch finally ran away, Jake had already been gone for four years. Peter was
     ten years old when he started dreaming of Patch standing on the cusp of a field near
     their house, looking both ways as if contemplating something. Within two weeks of
     the first occurrence of this dream, the dog was gone. For those two weeks, Patch couldn’t
     even go out into the yard to go to the bathroom without Peter following him out the
     door and crouching beside him.
    They had been playing fetch with a tennis ball. “Go, fetch,” Peter told Patch, and
     Patch did. He was the sort of dog who was happy to fetch, content to bring any object
     back to the place from which it was launched. Peter was working on his arm. He was
     old enough to play baseball, but didn’t, and he wanted to know what it felt like to
     throw.
    “Patch, fetch,” he yelled, and the tennis ball shot into the air with the dog trailing
     beneath it. Patch gathered the tennis ball between his teeth and lifted it, but then
     rather than bounding back with it, he paused.
    “Patch, come,” Peter called.
    Patch sat down. As soon as he saw the dog sit, Peter knew that it had started to happen.
     The dog looked at Peter and then he looked the other way, beyond their property, where
     there was an expanse of farm land full of corn that was already half harvested, and
     beyond that a forest of pine and fir. Peter didn’t call the dog again. He looked Patch
     in the eye, and under his breath he said,
please
, but it was an entreaty to no one, least of all to Patch, who clearly was already
     following a path he intended to keep. Patch dropped the tennis ball. He looked at
     Peter for maybe another four seconds before running the other way.
    He couldn’t save his brother. Even with warning,