Shadow of Saturn

Visits: Consecutive Substack Story 1186

Photo by Ramith Bhasuka on Unsplash

The house was clean, too clean, the house was quiet, too quiet, and the floor was nothing but floor.

“I thought you said you had a dog,” Melanie blurted and thought she sounded like the dog was the only reason she came over, not entirely true, but it was a feature.

In the reflection on the door wall she saw Kenny’s mom lower her magazine.

The woman’s look was hard to gauge, mirror image and distorted, but it wasn’t good.

“I do…” Kenny said, unsure in the weirdest way. “Wanna go see him?”

“Yes,” Melanie answered, more than a demand than she intended.

They walked out the back door of the little bungalow, and Kenny asked “hop the fence?” Melanie didn’t really want to but didn’t want to say no either, so she tucked her dress and hopped the fence.

“Mrs. Dwyer is old and knows me,” Kenny said, like an explanation.

Once they were through the driveway and on the street Kenny said: “My dog lives near the Shadow of Saturn,”and smiled for the first time.

Melanie Piedler didn’t really want to hang with Kenny Gagin. Rhonda Wentraub talked her into it.

“My mom says by our sophomore year of college we’re gonna love the weirdo poets and hate the sports heads,” Rhonda put it.

Melanie didn’t know what or where the Shadow of Saturn was but she knew there was a strip club in this neighborhood, a neighborhood she wasn’t supposed to be in, but Rhonda had offered an alibi.

In two blocks they cut through a hole in a fence and by the sound of it were getting closer to the freeway.

Half a block down Kenny pointed at a big, semicircular shadow.

“I hang here sometimes.”

“Shadow of Saturn?” Melanie asked.

“Yeah, see…” Kenny’s finger made a little squiggle in the air.

The shadow was made by the C of the Carter’s Hamburgers billboard along with the burger.

It did look like Saturn. With beer cans.

“Do you write poetry here?”

Kenny flinched.

“I used to. One of the Count probies…he said he was a Count Probie… took my notebook and set it on fire.I hope Buster is out.”

They walked along a row of fences. Pitties and Dobermans danced to their perimeters, barking, snarling.

The last house before the freeway the backyard floodlight was on.

Kenny stopped Melanie and scooched her behind an evergreen tree that looked like a slightly too large Christmas tree.

“He should let Buster out just before 8:30, I think. Hope.”

Melanie got shivery.

“Buster is your dog?”

“Ummmm…” Kenny said.

A scary thump thump thump echoed. It was a noise, but more than that.

Kenny saw the startled look on Melanie’s face.

“Car on the freeway got a flat. That construction zone that’s been there for six months, I don’t know if it’s nails or broken concrete or what, but people pop tires there.”

A screen door creaked.

Kenny’s eyes widened and a real smile crossed his face, broad, beaming.

“Buster!” Kenny whispered.

The screen door slammed and Kenny inched out toward the fence.

Then he ran and slid/knelt at the fence like a soccer player celebrating a goal.

Buster jog/limped over to the fence.

“Hi Bust,” Kenny said, and the old Rottweiler mix licked Kenny’s face through the fence.

“Whose house is this?” Melanie asked.

“My dad’s,” Kenny said.

“Why don’t-”

“You can pet Buster, he’s nice.”

“Why don’t-”

“I got him when I was five,” Kenny interrupted again.

“But why is-”

“Pet him.”

Melanie leaned over the fence and stroked Buster’s shoulders.

“He’s pretty.”

“He’s the sweetest dog.”

Kenny jammed his hand under the fence and Buster slapped at it like a toy.

“I got him for my fifth birthday,” Kenny said. “I got pictures.”

“But he stays here?” Melanie asked.

Kenny nodded slowly, as though an invisible hand was doing it for him.

“I love you Busty,” Kenny said and Melanie would swear to all the real planets in the sky that the dog understood exactly what Kenny was saying.

There was a creak over the hiss of the freeway.

“Shit!” Kenny said through clenched teeth.

“Tree,” he said. Melanie dashed to the evergreen.

“Buster!!!” a man’s deep voice bellowed.

The dog headed toward the voice,the door.

When the door slammed, and the floodlight went out Melanie said “That’s your dad?”

Kenny walked silently toward the Shadow of Saturn.

He sat down in a place that felt to Melanie like he had sat before.

“Buster was the best birthday present.”

“If he was your birthday present how come he doesn’t stay at your house sometimes? How come-”

“Wait!” Kenny said, harshly, rather angrily. Melanie started to think she wasn’t going to let herself be interrupted again and that Rhonda was definitely gonna hear about it.

Kenny picked up a stick, and scratched “How Come?” in the dirt.

Kenny handed the stick to Melanie.

“Write a poem about How Come.”

“I’m no good at poetry,” Melanie said.

“I don’t know if I’m any good,” Kenny said.”Write a poem about How Come.”

Melanie scratched at the dirt but didn’t make a word.

“My dad,” Kenny said, “thought…”

Kenny picked up his own stick and a dog barked in the distance.

Melanie wrote How Come in the dirt underneath Kenny’s.

Kenny wasn’t looking. He was looking back at where Buster was.

“My dad thought that if he bought me a dog my mom would move back in, that they’d get back together. When that didn’t happen at first he’d let me spend the night and play with my dog. When my mom said it was never gonna happen he let me come over on special occasions and play with my dog. Christmas, Easter, shit like that.”

Melanie wrote How Come in the dirt again.

“When my mom got a new boyfriend my dad said all he was was a check and he never wanted to see me again. He’s never missed a check. And I only see Buster if I sneak over.”

“That’s so fucked up. No…no birthday gifts, no–”

“No. Terri Ryan’s mom told my mom she heard him refer to me as…umm…Eileen’s faggot.”

Melanie Piedler ran. She ran to Kenny’s dad’s house with the stick in her hand and hopped the fence.

She bent and started scrawling in the dirt with the stick.

Kenny ran to the fence thinking he would leap over it and froze.

The hot from his father’s cigarette was bobbing in the window.

He was coming toward the door.

“Melanie, please, run.”

Melanie shook her head and scrawled.

The screen screeched and a voice said “What the fuck?”

Melanie tucked her dress and hopped the fence.

The floodlight came on.

The voice said “I’m getting my gun!”

Melanie ran and Kenny ran behind her.

Dogs barked all over the block.

When they got to the street Kenny stopped running.

“He hurt his achilles making axles at Broadstreet. He ain’t running this far.”

Melanie nodded and slowed.

“Does he have a gun?”

“Everyone in this neighborhood has a gun. What did you write in his backyard?”

“I didn’t get a chance to finish.”

“What did you write?”

“How come? How come you’re such a mean motherfucker?”

Kenny smiled. “Now you can tell people you’re fucking great at poetry.”

***

Like it? Love it? Want to see this crazy daily fiction quest continue? buymeacoffee.com/JimmyDoom

{I really hate asking but the Substack Subscription Model has absolutely imploded}