chapter 1, page 2: the dearly departed
(chapter 1, page 2)
Zodiac is washing the dishes of that night’s feast. He was all over the kitchen sink.
“How did the dog explode?” asked Red, who was sitting by the kitchen table.
Zodiac then, turned off the water from the faucet, it was still dripping, but that was fine to him for now. If he had not let that dog explode he would have turned off the water faucet tightly. It wasn’t the time for that.
“I was supposed to wash the dishes right here when I remembered our dog had not yet eaten dinner,” he was exhausted to speak that long. He was trembling. “So I took that bowl of afritada that we didn’t eat, you remember?” he continued. “I took it downstairs, and when our dog saw me…” he paused.
Red thinks he shouldn’t say “our dog” when she doesn’t feel any acquaintance with it.
“When our dog saw me, it suddenly acted weird. Jumping up and down the cage, barking at me, pushing its head through the narrow rails of its cage. It pushed its head through it and it couldn’t get its head out…oh how it suffered,” he said. And he thought, yes that might be the reason why he pulled its hind legs.
“We should bury it somewhere,” she said finally.
“What?” he panicked. He had not buried anything in his life, not even a sprout during home economics class, he always pretended allergic of soil. Well, he really thought he was back then.
“We can’t let that dead dog over there,” she said.
Dead. The word made him remember terrible things.
“I can’t, I can’t touch it anymore,” he said.
Red was starting to get really impatient with his undecidedness.
“I love that dog,” he said. He sat down the table, with his hands still soapy.
“There’s no helping it,” said she. “We’ll call the undertaker first thing tomorrow.” Somehow, she was disappointed. She could imagine him and her, walking up the dark woods of their backyard, threading on mud, a shovel, a black bag with a dismembered dog inside and some plastic flowers maybe, from the flower vase at the azotea. When she asked why they don’t put on fresh flowers, all Zodiac could say was that they were “noisy”.
That night, Zodiac couldn’t sleep. It was way past his bedtime. Usually, he’s already dreaming of chasing arms and legs at 11pm but its already 1 in the morning and he hadn’t had a wink. Perhaps a dead dog under the house disturbed his well planned nights. It was messy, he kept whispering to himself. It wasn’t supposed to be there. The idea of an undertaker coming to his house bugs him most. Why does Red have to say that? She could have said she knows mormons more than he does and then tell him to just let the dead dog rot there. Undertaker inside his house, for all he knows they even pick dead people’s boogers.
