It had begun to snow. Nieves lifted his head to the slow, slanted cascade of flakes and stuck out his tongue. He savored the cool on his tongue as he watched the dog charge across the parking lot and disappear down the trail head.
There was more to savor than snow. Nieves recalled the night before. He had attended a wedding reception held at an Italian social club Nieves frequented. He was seated next to the sister of one of the club’s executive. She was visiting from Rome. “How’d you learn to speak Italian so well?” she asked him. Years before, he said, he had played semi-pro soccer in Sicily. He told her a story from those days. His crew were locking horns with a cross-town rival, a gang of savages culled from the worst of the league by a dodgy, penny-pinching industrialist. One of the goons pulled Nieves down in the box and he was awarded a penalty. Nieves sauntered to the ball and hit it clean but the ball sailed on him and rattled off the cross bar. The goalie bolted from the net towards the stands where the rabble were already celebrating with gutter fervor. Nieves stood his ground in a pose of dejection. From behind his guise, he watched the ball as it began to roll towards the goal, propelled by a furious backspin and the uneven ground of the pitch. The ball crept across the line, the referee signaled a goal and the stadium died a death.
The woman threw her head back in laughter, a genuine guffaw and her hand had come down on his. She didn’t seem like a lady who expected much. At one time, she told Nieves, she had been a stewardess for an Italian airline. “I went everywhere. And nowhere.” She was thin and tall with black ringlets piled high above a lined but open face as tawny as his own. Just under fifty, he thought, a bit younger than himself but the same breed. They danced and when it was time to leave, tipsy as they were, he slipped his hand around waist and drew her in for a peck. In a week, she would be back in Italy. The thought gnawed at him.
As Nieves reached the trailhead, the dog scampered out of the woods to meet him. Nieves teased it for a moment, playfully batting at its face. The dog pulled back and kicked up clouds of snow. Nieves began to walk and the dog settled into a crisp saunter. In the summer, some dead trees had been cleared out and wood chips spread on all the main trails, leaving them well marked. But the dog was a tireless drifter and when they came to a fork, Nieves knew where they were headed. “You devil,” he said, reaching down give the dog a rub. The dog romped away down the small path that would take them deep into the woods.
The snow’s cascade seemed like the slow arpeggio of a harp, thought Nieves, sounding the notes in his head. It was early, too early. He woke up before dawn and the woman had already left his condo. He couldn’t fall back to sleep and waited restlessly in bed for the faint light of dawn. Nieves continued with the music as counterpoint to the whispering hush of wind and footfalls. As they moved to the back of the park, Nieves could make out the imposing hulk of the defunct racetrack through the scrim of barren trees. Its future loomed over the preserve. Developers were licking their chops as they dreamed of the wrecking ball swinging wild and hard.
The dog glanced at Nieves and picked up his pace, disappearing around a bend. He spent most of his time carousing at the farm where Nieves grew up in the county. Nieves traveled a lot for work and had only taken the puppy as a gift from one of his sisters. A dog like that had no business in the city, thought Nieves. His people on his mother’s side were tomato farmers off the boat from the Azores. His father had returned to Portugal shortly after the younger sister was born, leaving Nieves and the two girls alone with their mother. Money was always tight. The struggle marked them all, especially his sisters. They were beautiful but self-serving. Both married well. Divorced well too, with no kids to bog down future adventures in avarice.
They must be slipping some of their loot to his mother, Nieves was sure of it but she still worked a fruit stand in the summer, selling everything she could to locals and cottagers. Marie Nieves, tippling home-made wine, cajoling in broken English. Shit-faced but never showed it.
The dog returned, grumbling with short, sharp barks. Up ahead, the path was blocked. The obstacle soon revealed itself. Nieves noticed the savaged flank of the deer. The animal must have clipped itself on the fence as it moved from the grasslands on the other side of the preserve and the blood attracted the coyotes.
The dear’s gaze into oblivion caught Nieves short, as if he had bit his tongue. He felt a nature rapture overtake him. The woods suddenly seemed alive with animal spirits, inscrutable and imposing. When he was a teenager, his father had re-appeared, just like that. He behaved as if he had always been there and nobody questioned his return. One day, Nieves was driving back from the city with him. They had gone to the market to sell produce and on the way home, his father stopped at a bar. Nieves plugged the jukebox while his old man threw back rum, that was his drink. By the time they left, it was dark. His father should have seen the deer charging out of the woods but he didn’t and the deer took out the right fender before rolling into the ditch. Nieves remembered his old man pulling onto the shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s have a look.” He never spoke English, never liked it.
His father shone a flashlight. The deer was thrashing about, trying to right itself. But its front legs were destroyed and blood covered its breast. His father gave Nieves the flashlight and took out a sledge hammer from the back of the truck. He stepped smartly to the deer and swung. The deer wrenched its head from the blow and thrashed again. His father took another swing. The deer made a sound and moved and went still. A car whizzed by and then another. “Hold that light steady,” his old man said. Nieves watched his father pause at the top of his next swing, staring at the deer, choosing his place for delivery. The hammer dropped. The deer’s head exploded.
Nieves stepped around the doe, the dog holding fast to his leg. Nieves glanced through the fence at the abandoned racetrack. Tomorrow, he would take the dog there, before he was due at his mother’s for Sunday dinner. He thought again of the woman, her hair spilling over him, but the deer crowded her out.
Back in the parking lot, with the dog settled in the backseat, Nieves reached into the glovebox and pulled out a flask of rum. He took a swig and watched the snow through the windscreen. Exhaustion and longing flooded through him and it was all he could do to turn on the engine. He put the car in gear and eased out of the lot.
—Timothy Dugdale
Timothy Dugdale is a senior copywriter, brand strategist and freelance journalist who writes for a variety of luxury lifestyle magazines in North America and the Caribbean. He also composes existential novellas and poetry.