By Michael Carlson

The whiteboard was blank, leaning against our elm tree. I uncapped my marker and wrote: “Broke and Craving Pancakes.”

Our red tent had broken zipper teeth. The nylon flap hung open, curled like a sick tongue. I ducked inside, knelt by Shay wrapped in a sleeping bag, and rubbed his shoulder until he woke. Purplish-brown eyes, low-stubbled jaw. Long black hair splayed across a thin pillowcase.

I smoked a cigarette in my rocking chair. Shay emerged into the honeyed light, scratching the back of his head. He took forever with his tan work boots, the gum-soled ones I had lifted from Walmart. Mouth open and laces in hand, Shay watched a robin striking dirt.

“Come on, I’m hungry,” I said, handing him a cigarette.

We lived behind a veterinary clinic, a good fifty yards from the edge of its back lot. We were tucked in nicely, surrounded by scores of elms and sugar maples. Rarely did we encounter anything larger than a squirrel that early in the morning. A husky sprinting through our woods was a surprise, and so was the voice cracking the air, yelling, “BENNY. COME!”

There was something hopeful about the polar-white hair singing through trees. I thought, Keep going. Leaf litter sprayed as the husky plunged downhill and over the creek, unfazed by the dragging leash. Scaling the rutty bank, Benny looked back at Shay who was yelling “Hey. HEY!” and disappeared behind the Arby’s. Shay looked at me and cried, “Let’s get him!” His eyes pulsed like stars. I hadn’t seen his face that animated in years, since he’d recovered from his brain injury. Therapy dogs had been brought in for trauma patients. Thus began Shay’s dog obsession. But I was hungry, dopesick, and I couldn’t leave Shay alone. “We can’t, Shay.”

A man in a navy bomber jacket and cream slacks broke into our clearing, chest heaving and startled by our presence. “Did a dog run through here?”

With pride, Shay pointed across the creek and said, “That way. Over there!”

The man hustled across the shallow creek. Shay scrambled to his feet and moved in that direction, but I lunged and grabbed his arm. “Please. We’ll look later.

He turned to me with disarming speed and shoved me backward. “Don’t,” he warned.

We were no longer two eighth-grade boys skating gaps downtown after school, Shay soaring over a mulched bed of ferns, his board rotating beneath him. No longer seniors drinking canned beer in lawn chairs outside his aunt’s trailer where the air smelled of crushed, powdery rock from the quarry. Now we were a junkie and a brain-injured, schizophrenic alcoholic nearing thirty, living together in a tent, arguing about a dog.

“You don’t care. But I do,” Shay said, pointing at his chest. He did not understand our situation. The last time I left him alone more than a few minutes, he wandered into the vet parking lot and petted a dog for so long that its owner got uncomfortable and told Dr. Melendez. The next day, Dr. Melendez found us rinsing our hair in the creek and said if we walked through her lot or talked to her clients again, she’d kick us out of the woods on her property.

I said, “I care, Shay, but we need money.” Until we made money, our day was fully booked with performing and the stretches of waiting that followed. “We’ll look soon, okay?”

I grabbed the bottle from our tent I was hoping to save for later in the day as it was the last of our stuff. “Here,” I said, handing it to Shay.

After a few vodka pulls and more of my begging, Shay rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

I had him carry our stack of plastic milk crates. I slung the bag of tennis balls over my shoulder, grabbed the whiteboard, and we made our brief commute. We took to the strip of lawn edging the clinic’s lot. Shay walked ahead while I eyed the building, afraid Dr. Melendez would walk out and tell us to pack our shit and leave because the day before, I broke her rule too. I interacted with a client. In my defense, the client resembled my ex-girlfriend, and I was full of heroin, feeling hopeful.

We crossed the frontage road, crossed the ditch bubbling with white clover, and arrived
at our corner with the massive stoplight overhead. I did not know where else to go. The shelter had kicked me out and no other wooded spots were that close to a lucrative intersection. Besides, the corner had become familiar, our open-air living room, with its carpet of dusty gravel and bottle glass twinkling in the bright haze of morning.


Most drivers avoided us by staring at the red light. We made out better performing for passengers, for their occasional middle fingers and solemn nods floating sympathy our way. My favorite was the raindrop of a child’s nose pressed against window glass.

The intersection was busy, air thick with fry grease, hot-nickel drafts of spent gasoline, wild grass, and the pungent mist of our clothes. Shay had worn the same outfit for weeks, an oversized leather jacket, stiff jeans, and boots. A motorcyclist gave him the jacket on a cold day in early spring and ever since, Shay wore it like a second skin. “Want to take off that jacket? It’s getting pretty hot.”

Looking down the road, Shay shook his head. “Screw you.”

The light turned red. I faced traffic, whiteboard raised. “Still mad about the dog?”

“No.”

“The dog is fine, Shay. I’m sure he’s fine.”

The pancake line only produced a few quarters. During the next green, I erased the board with my sleeve, wrote “Helping Us = Cool,” and held it high. After several reds and little money, I tried “Would Love A Manny Peddy.” I got desperate and wrote, “Really Hungry. Please Help”.

Nothing.

Shay sat on the milk crates with his lips parted, watching traffic, bemused. One red light after another, I patrolled the ranks of idling cars, hoping to score cash without having to perform because my knees felt pencil-thin, close to snapping, but harassing folks with only words was not getting it done. I wrote “Support Homeless Juggling” on the board, handed it to Shay, and grabbed the tennis balls.

I juggled well, tossing ball after ball, shaping a neon fountain. I slid along the shoulder like a circus act while motorists reclined in air-conditioning. After several reds, I enlisted Shay to juggle because he was terrible and sometimes his failure made people laugh and laughter paid. I messed with him, shouted, “Higher! Throw them higher so you have more time to catch them!”

“Shut up,” Shay said, biting his lip in concentration, doing as I said.

We often benefitted from Shay’s quirkiness, his flapping mane of greasy hair and clumsy movements, but not that morning. “Okay,” I said, recovering one of his dropped balls from the ditch. “Let’s take a break.”


The woods behind the clinic doubled as living quarters and our breakroom. We had recently salvaged a blue tarp and a rocking chair with scooped armrests. Shay was spread out like a snow angel across the tarp as I rocked in the chair, fantasizing about filling the syringe in my pocket with dope. We passed the last of our vodka in the shade.

“Let’s look for the dog,” Shay said, sitting up.

“We need money.” I took a large pull and passed Shay the bottle. “Finish it.”

He drank the rest, and I asked how he was feeling. Shay wiped his lips and grinned, revealing a mess of neglected yellow teeth. “Pretty good now.”

A breeze stirred the leaves as the liquor relaxed my spine. I surrendered to the pendulous swing of the feather-light chair. For a moment, I felt content with our life, the duffel swollen with books and dirty clothes, the mini propane stove, the musty towel hanging from a branch, the old bread wrapped in a sock. Content that it was just me and Shay under the light-stippled canopy.

Footsteps crunched over dead leaves. Dr. Melendez emerged from brush into our clearing in a starched white jacket. The absence of sack lunches she usually brought us was a bad sign.

“Hey, doc.”

“Morning,” she said flatly. Then, with a brighter voice, “Hi, Shay!” Shay, transfixed by her presence, waved.

Dr. Melendez said, “Let’s talk,” and I followed her to a distance where Shay couldn’t hear.

“You’ve got to leave now,” she said, brushing aside loose hairs from her bun with the same long fingers that spent all day feeling for lumps and sewing up sticky animal wounds.

“Please, Dr. Melendez,” I said, embarrassed. “I won’t let it happen again.”

The day before I had performed on the corner, totally sick, for hours until I made enough to cop. Exhausted, I leaned against the broad trunk of our elm tree, tied off, shot up, and a bone-deep high rolled me like a storm. Lips grooved like velvet. Eyes heavy, dropping like lead sinkers. I smoked a cigarette at our woods’ edge and watched the clinic’s parking lot. A girl in a black pantsuit with cropped blond hair clicked across the pavement in heels, pulling a cage from her trunk. She reminded me of an old girlfriend whose apartment smelled like dried apricots and warm newspaper. I stepped into the silver afternoon light, crossed the lot, and failing to locate words explaining my wooded exodus or disheveled state, I asked the girl for money, pitifully, thinking maybe she would find me sad and take me home. She smiled politely and fished through her purse. “Here,” she said, giving me a five. I asked her name. “Sorry, I’m in a hurry,” she said. A Pomeranian with soot-colored hair looked up from its cage.

“Are you from around here?” I asked, keeping distance so she wouldn’t feel threatened.

“I’m sorry?”

“Did you go to Craig High School?”

“No,” she said, turning, walking toward the clinic, the dog’s beady eyes leveled on me.

“Where are you from?” I called out to no response.

Dr. Melendez had flat cheekbones and molten brown eyes. “I cannot have my clients heckled. I’ve told you this.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I don’t think you do.” Dr. Melendez scanned our woods. “Have you seen a husky
running around?”

“Not since this morning,” I said, pointing. “He ran that way.”

She nodded at Shay, “How’s he doing?” She had the doctoral gift of changing tone and focus alarmingly fast. “Did you take him to the clinic?”

“I tried,” I said, a half-truth. Dr. Melendez advised me to take Shay to the community clinic downtown for free psychiatric care and medication. I did take Shay on the bus downtown, but he swore at a man in the lobby when their elbows touched. I was dopesick and Shay was missing documentation, so I scrapped the idea and we left. “He won’t take the help.”

Dr. Melendez checked her watch. For months, she’d brought us sack lunches and advised me on how to improve our situation, and for months I steadily cooked down her efforts into a spoon. “Leave my clients alone, Matthew. This is your last warning.”

She had never visited us without food or spoken that directly so I believed her.

“Did she find the dog?” Shay asked once Dr. Melendez left. “No,” I said. “He’s probably long gone by now.”

“I hope he’s not,” Shay said. “He’s beautiful.”


Across the divided highway, a red-tailed hawk sat on a transmission cable, still in the windless afternoon. I propped the whiteboard against our crates: “Need $$$. Training For The Army!”

“All right,” I said. “Ready?”

“I want to find the dog,” Shay said.

“We’ll look soon, okay?”

Shay’s next line must have escaped him, which happened occasionally. He stood there, eyes caught, hands swallowed by long sleeves. “Come on, bud,” I said, patting his chest.

The rejection of that day continued but at least Shay was happily buzzed. I requested he point at me and yell like a drill sergeant while I did pushups. He was thrilled, insulting me with some unique phrases like “Don’t stop you little baker boy!” and “Push harder you fish!”

My face was inches from gravel when someone yelled, “Are you okay?!”

Rising to an elbow, squinting into the harsh light, I saw a woman leaning over from her driver’s seat. I stood and brushed myself off. “I’m fine,” I said, approaching, thinking her concern was a favorable start to conversation that could become cash.

Lowering her sunglasses, she said, “Matthew? Matthew Berry?” “Mrs. Schultz?”

She looked at my old shoes, then took in the rest of me. “I thought maybe you were hurt,” she said. “What are you doing out here?”

Shay looked at Mrs. Schultz like he had never seen her before. “We’re begging. For money,” I said.

“Oh,” Mrs. Schultz said, looking at Shay. “And is that Shannon?” She asked with more cheer, familiar with his story. Unfortunately, I couldn’t blame my being a derelict on injury. People recovered every day from torn ACLs without getting drug-addicted and storing bread in an old, stretched-out sock.

I waited while she searched her center console. “Don’t think I have anything.”

“That’s okay,” I said.

The light turned green. “Sorry. Good luck boys!”

“Take care,” I said, raising my hand.

Cars drove by and I looked at my shoes, the Reebok Classics I’d owned since high school. The once tightly woven mesh had aged from a clean, emerald green, into a frayed, sickly brown. Begging in my hometown, I encountered people like Mrs. Schultz who reminded me how long it it had been, a decade, since my cleats sunk into the pitch, anything kicking up dirt as I ran for the ball. Ten years since I broke from a defender and planted my foot to shoot, heard a pop, and a bolt of pain shot through my chest. It seemed only seconds later that Shay was there, saying, “Breathe, Matt.” I was told later how quickly he rose from the bleachers and raced across the field. My lungs pulled for air as I twisted on the grass. During the skip-walk to Shay’s truck, he said, “You’ll be okay, man,” and I tried believing him, that my scholarship to Michigan would work out and I would leave that town. Shay lived with his aunt in her busted trailer and rarely complained. He’d say his father was incarcerated, yes, but would not share much. Rarely shared about his mother. The most talented skater in the city (if you could call this a city), Shay had a few sponsors. I’d witnessed him break ribs on a handrail and snap a femur tre flipping a 13-set. On both accounts he remained pretty cool, considering, so I kept quiet on our drive to the hospital.

Shay waited in the ER lobby while, under the bald fluorescents, a needle sank into my skin, and morphine spun through my blood. My lungs opened and my heart sighed with that first narcotic high. I breathed slowly as my pain was released like fingers from the string of a balloon.

“Who was that?” Shay asked. His once-smooth face was now scruffy and pitted with scars, a washed-out yellow-gray from years of sun exposure and shifting weather.

“Mrs. Schultz,” I said. “Our old history teacher. Remember her?” I asked. “No,”

Shay said abruptly, offended whenever I questioned his memory. “We’re not making shit with these exercises,” I said. “They’re too confusing.”

Some days it took a dozen acts before finding a profitable one. Other days, it didn’t matter what we did—it was all water bottles and God bless. I scribbled “Need A New Chair, This One Sucks!!”

“Here,” I said, handing Shay the board. “Sit on me and hold this.” A grin broke across his face. “Sit on you?”

I got down on all fours. “It would be my pleasure.”

The pressure of Shay’s weight and the roar of traffic wore on me while he sat on my back and fidgeted, making jokes like “I’m going to shit on you!”

The first few reds got some laughs but no cash. I had Shay get off during greens so I could shake out and stretch. Cravings were getting loud, hissing, urging me to cross the frontage road, enter the clinic, walk past reception and down the hall to the supply closet where the good stuff was locked up. So close, a hundred yards away—enough painkillers to lay us out like happy dogs in the rain.

“We’ll try a few more,” I said. “Then I’ll steal us a bottle.” Shay, hands in pockets, didn’t respond.

“Here we go,” I said, getting to my knees as the light turned yellow.

Months after tearing my ACL, I stood behind a party supply store, high on Oxy, and filmed Shay skate a loading dock for a small video part. His skin looked healthy then. Shay had saved his AutoZone money and moved into his own apartment. I never saw Shay so pleased as he was once all his boxes were inside and all that remained was him unpacking, making himself at home. Stakes edged the dock and connected to the stakes were steel chains. Shay was trying to switch heelflip over a hanging length of chain into an eight-foot drop. A half hour in, Shay took yet another running start, pushed off, gathered speed, but failed to pop high enough. He tried kicking his board out but his foot snagged on the chain, throwing his body to the ground. None of his panicked flailing kept his head from hitting the blacktop with a muffled thud.

Shay spent days in a coma and another week recovering in the hospital, his spirits lifted most by those therapy dogs, grinning when they licked his hands. His decline was mild at first. AutoZone kept him employed but Shay started drinking heavily and quit, moved back in with his aunt and stayed inside most days. I was living across town, chasing heroin, spiraling. I lost my scholarship and Shay lost his sponsors. I moved out of state and spiraled more. Friends texted, saying Shay’s acting weird, Shay’s aunt kicked him out, Shay’s in the psych ward, Shay’s homeless. After losing my job and girlfriend, and pawning everything I could, I returned home and moved into the shelter. For weeks I cooked in their kitchen but couldn’t shake the daily fantasies of heroin dripping down my throat. The shelter kicked me out when a volunteer found me all fucked up, nodding off in the laundry room. After days of drifting, I found Shay in the woods behind Walmart. He was living with a paunchy, balding man from Chicago whose laugh made me nervous. One night, as a light rain washed over our tent, I watched my friend sleep. He loved dogs. I thought, if we’re already in the woods, what the hell, might as well be close to dogs.

Toothy rocks pressed into my hands and knees. Buckling under Shay’s weight, I was about to call it when a gruff voice barked, “Now that’s funny!” Shay stood and grabbed a ten from a man in a truck who said, laughing, “Now that’s good!” We made some money that afternoon, enough for a couple bags and a bottle. Sick, and eager to call my dealer, and knowing Shay would slow me down if he tagged along, I told him to leave the crates on the corner, grab the whiteboard, and meet me at our spot. I said, “DO NOT talk to anyone, okay? I’ll be right there.”

I ran down the quarter-mile stretch of road to the gas station in a fever of withdrawals. I asked the clerk with purple-streaked hair, Tiffany, if I could use the store phone. I’d been flirting all summer, serenading her with tales of our vagrant life behind the clinic. The sympathy she gave was heart-melting. I lied, said I needed to call a friend. Minutes later, my dealer was on his way. I purchased vodka and smokes, told Tiffany she was the best, and walked back to our spot proudly, leisurely, smoking a cigarette.

I used the weed-choked curb for a sidewalk. The narrow spine of concrete required outstretched arms to make it from gas station to vet clinic without falling. With every knee-wobble, I tightened my core. Part of me believed if I could walk that length of curb without falling, my life would change. I would hop off and a desperation to get clean would rattle my soul. I’d shoot up one last time and, in the morning, return to the shelter, apologize for my relapse, and beg for a bed. Or maybe I’d hop off and know how to save Shay. But all that happened was I looked up and saw Shay behind the clinic, bent over a trash can, and Dr. Melendez beside him, speaking with hands up, bracing herself like he was a threat. I jumped off the curb and ran toward them.

“It’s okay, Shay, it’s okay,” Dr. Melendez said.

“Get out of there!” I yelled but Shay didn’t respond. I kicked his leg, “Hey motherfucker. STOP.”

Shay pulled his head from the trash can and smirked at me, his brown eyes spinning.

“Go over there,” I demanded, pointing at the woods.

He peered inside the trash again as if he missed something. “He needs to eat.” “GO,” I
said, grabbing Shay by the collar of his shirt.

He spit at my shoes. “You don’t know but I KNOW!” he yelled, walking away.

Massaging her forehead in disbelief, Dr. Melendez said her receptionist was assisting a client when Shay burst inside and asked for dog food. After the receptionist asked Shay to wait, he started pacing and swearing. Dr. Melendez found him outside rifling through the trash.

“He says he saw that dog running around. He’s trying to feed it.” “I’ll take care of this,” I said. “I shouldn’t have left him alone.”

“No,” she said, face resigned, tone unbending. “I need you both to leave now, Matthew. I’ve done what I can do.”

“Okay,” I said, “Okay,” trying to stall, to slow the teeth of our transgressions. I bargained for more time, for one last night in the woods, promising we’d be gone in the morning.

Looking off toward Shay, she said, “Fine. But that’s it.”

Maybe I should have apologized, or thanked her for the months of lunches and counsel, but I only managed to stand there, full of regret, hoping for a more productive
change.

“Good luck,” she said.


I shot junk into my arm and watched clouds drift overhead. Shay drank his bottle. I nodded off for a while, then led us down to the creek.

“We’ve got to leave here tomorrow,” I said as light flickered metallic on the water. As the sun set, all the leaves, even greens and browns, glowed like small fires.

Shay studied the water too. “I’m staying here.” “You can’t, Shay.”

“I want to stay by the dogs.”

I moved closer to Shay so our bodies touched. “I know, man.” A drone of insects clicked in the summer heat. I wanted to talk to my friend, share old stories, or apologize for many things, apologize for what we’d become, but nothing sounded so important as the trickling stream.

To honor his repeated requests, we canvassed the woods for Benny. Shay’s wind-lashed face, washed in the tangerine dusk, brimmed with adventure. Though we failed to find the dog, Shay seemed fulfilled by the search. Before it got too dark, I persuaded him to join me on the corner one last time.

The sun issued its final light, feathering a milky pink sky with blood oranges and reds. Shay drank from a water bottle and poured the rest on his head. The light was green when he walked toward traffic, edging close to the white line. “Hey! What are you doing?” I yelled.

A car honked, throwing its horn at Shay to back up. I called out again, “Step back!” Shay turned around with a wide smile. “This feels good,” he said. “Cars make a breeze.”

More cars honked. When I stood to grab him, Shay chuckled and returned to the crates. “I want a cigarette,” he said, walking drunk, spitting into the ditch.

“Don’t mess around,” I said, handing him one.

I was very high. I wrote “Please Help. Money or Food” on the whiteboard with little enthusiasm. I should have known the jokes would not last. All the sarcasm. My first and only summer begging on the corner and the festivity of it all had died quickly.

“Alright, I’m calling it,” I said.

“Hey!” Shay said, standing, pointing across the road. “There he is!”

Nestled between the north and southbound lanes was a sloped median of cut grass. And in that grass, pacing back and forth, was Benny.

“Holy shit,” I muttered to myself. “Shay. Don’t go in the street!” I shouted.

Benny’s eyes jumped from object to object. Car, light pole, us, car, car, some noise or scent far away.

“Come here, boy!” Shay cried, moving closer to the white line, waving Benny over.

The light was green when Benny made a run for it. Shay slapped his thighs, crying out, “Here, HERE!” as if we wore the faintest resemblance of a home. There was the smell of burning rubber and a punishing yelp that was either a battered dog or torqued brakes maybe both. Then there was nothing left but the muted yellow light turning red, and Shay running toward Benny with the same urgency I had running toward Shay, a decade ago, after his foot caught the chain. Once I saw, inching out from his head, a thin peninsula of blood, I wanted to cry. I often wonder if I could sense then, as I dialed 911, what was coming. The needles and spoons and hunger. The schizophrenia sneaking through the fracture in my friend’s skull. All the golden collections of his memory sneaking out.

Shay dropped to his knees on the pavement and gathered the husky in his arms. Cars idled, headlights catching on Benny’s snowy coat. Shay rose with Benny in his arms, moving with purpose like he did that first day in his new apartment, weeks before his fall. After we carried the last load up from his truck, Shay stood in the living room and bragged about the accommodations. “It’s got central air and a dishwasher and everything.” The window AC unit at his aunt’s hadn’t worked for months.

Benny fought to breathe, each inhale ending in a thin whine like a bad whistle. I supported the weight of the hind legs as we shuffled across the frontage road toward the clinic’s empty lot. We laid Benny in the grass and knocked on the doors. The lights were off. Shay looked at me with a clarity I had not seen in years and said, “Let’s call someone.”

Tiffany let me use the gas station’s phone. 911 said they did not rescue dogs and recommended a 24-hour vet across town. My lungs and quads had that familiar athletic burn as I sprinted back to the clinic. The heroin was potent, causing everything to hum,
like the headlights and glowing billboards splashing so much radiance onto the scene that, when I returned, the sight of Shay on his knees looming over Benny in the grass looked cinematic. Prayerful.

I was tired. Bones feeling silky, I laid down, beside Benny, and looked into the vaulted sky, inhaling its anthology of glacial blue stars. I ran my hand through Benny’s coat. Shay knelt over us and studied Benny’s eyes. He wrinkled his face, stood abruptly, and shouted, “Wait here!”

I called after him, laughing at how flustered and serious he was, then felt guilty for laughing, knowing I should get up and help save the dog. But I felt a triumph in giving up, in laying on the grass beside Benny and thinking Okay, stars. Okay. I held my palm against Benny’s chest and monitored the activity of his heart. His lungs felt bound, constricted, like they were wrapped in a thick cord being cinched tighter and tighter and I accepted this as good. I thought, this is the end and maybe there will be peace. We laid in the cool grass, a wounded dog and numbed-out junkie, as cars streamed by on the highway. I could feel it swell in my feet, in my throat—we were approaching some edge, a precipice, a threshold of great change. My spirit was preparing for this when against my palm, Benny’s heart started beating with promise, like it was rising. I thought Keep going and he kept going, his heart kept beating but I was not ready to move. I wanted to lay there for a while, or forever, but now Benny was standing and Shay returned with a couple, a man in a worn baseball cap and woman in a green cable-knit sweater who asked me questions. We all watched Benny stumble around, wheez- ing, failing to put weight on his left forefoot and returning to the grass. I told them about the vet across town. When they asked what happened I thought, No, no, just look at these stars.

The choreography of their rescue reflected a familiarity with dogs. How committed they were, moving closer to Benny as he backed away, gaining his trust. They squatted low, coordinating a dual lift, scooping him up, saying “Got him?” and “Yeah, I got him,” like they had been caring for dogs, together, for years. Shay followed them, standing in quiet observation as the woman helped the man into the passenger seat with Benny draped over his lap before racing to the driver’s side. They merged fast onto the highway, tires spitting gravel.

I got up and joined Shay under the streelight. I put my hand on his shoulder, felt the day drop through his body. “I’ll be right back,” I said.

The red tent, mini propane stove, and a few of Shay’s outfits he never wore I left behind. I propped the whiteboard against the entrance of Dr. Melendez’s clinic and wrote her a note: “Visit us at the men’s shelter off Jackson St, please. Bring dogs for Shay.”

Shay was standing where I left him. He appraised the swollen duffel strapped to my back and my old soccer bag, now stuffed with his clothes, that I set down to give my arm a rest while we discussed next steps. But there was no discussion, no rebellion from my friend. His often shifty brown eyes were still and his posture slack, defeated, full of desires and needs and confusion and love, full of want for the night to end.

I pulled out a cigarette for Shay, then one for myself, and we smoked our last on the corner. Shay gazed in the direction Benny was taken as I told him the plan. I explained how we’d hitch a ride but may have to wait a few days for a bed. I told him we would figure it out, that it would be okay. Shay said, “I don’t want to get in a car.”

“The place is a few miles away,” I said. “You want us to walk?” “Yes,” he said.

I took a few pulls while thinking, blowing my smoke toward the clinic, and the humble strip of woods, and the yellow moon above.

“Fine. But you’re carrying this one,” I said, pointing down at the gym bag. “And let’s just cross at this light.” The pedestrian symbol on the crosswalk had expired and the countdown was nearly done—6, 5, 4. I pressed the button and we waited our turn.

The light turned green and cars crawled forward. Drivers fidgeted with buttons on their dash. They looked blankly ahead toward the next intersection of lights and the next. I could tell in their glazed expressions that it had been a long day, and they were anxious to get home.

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Michael Carlson is an MFA candidate at Vanderbilt University and editor of Nashville Review. His work has been supported by the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Michael teaches creative writing for Vanderbilt and The Porch TN. He is working on a collection of stories that follow people affected by the opioid crisis.