Old Bugger (Five minutes freewrite)

The old man knew something was missing the moment he woke up - hard to tell if it was the nose that first registered the lesser stench or the ears realized they could not hear the faint snore. Indeed, Bugger was not there sleeping on the rag in front of the fire. That the dog smelled Joseph knew on a theoretical level as after so many years he had grown accustomed to it - poor Martha was the one in charge with giving the dog a bath now and then, but she’s been dead for five years now. As for himself, he was too weak to hoist the damn dog in the tub, so all he could do was hose him every once in a while - which didn’t help much, as wet dogs tend to stink even worse. Still, he let the dog sleep inside because nights in the desert are cold and the animal was old. They both were.
‘Bug, Bug!’, he cried in vain. The dog was not in the kitchen munching on leftover sausage from yesterday’s dinner, nor in the pantry where he liked to hide and lick his balls in peace.
‘Damn stupid dog’, he cursed when he found old Bug digging a hole under the fence. One of these days the dumb animal would find his way out, where coyotes roamed and deadly snakes hid under the rocks. He’ll end up like that guy that used to work with them at the road construction company, Chuck or Chip or something like that, who got bit by a snake and by the time the ambulance reached them his whole leg was stiff and swollen and even his dick was starting to turn blue.
He always took great care to keep the gate locked, so the bloody dog won’t wander in the desert and get himself killed.
Imagine what would Jen say if she came home to discover old Bugger was gone. Thanksgiving was just a week away and she promised she’d drop by, if not on that day exactly, maybe the next day, bring him some cold turkey, too. Not that her turkey was any good, too stringy and tasteless, but at least Bugger could feast on it.
Her Mom, Martha, had been just the same when they were newly married, totally useless in the kitchen and what a great cook she became later. Jennifer didn’t even try and that husband of hers didn’t seem to mind. He’d never liked that Peter and maybe it was a blessing they never stayed more than an hour when they came to visit. As he lived so far away, at the edge of the desert it meant a four-hour round trip for them so, yeah, they couldn’t stay for long.
He didn’t care, he was used to being on his own by now and the rare times he drove in to town for groceries he never stayed long either. He noticed the people looking at him funnily, the maniac that lived in the desert. 'Oh, well, who gives a crap?'

‘The old fucker just had to rise early! He doesn’t do anything all day anyway, what the hell was he doing up at six every damn day anyway?’
He was so close and now he had to wait at least another day. A good thing his ears had not betrayed him yet, like his useless eyes, and he heard the squeaking front door just in time to move a few feet away and old Joe didn’t find the actual hole he’d been digging for over a week. The other spot, he didn’t care if Joe filled it up with dirt, it was a dead end anyway, because of that stupid rock buried in the ground he almost broke his left paw when he hit it.
You might say that dogs have no concept of time and don’t measure it like we do. You might argue they have no understanding of death. But at least they have instincts, you have to give them that, and Bugger could feel he didn’t have much left. And he wanted to run away and find Jen. When he was a pup, he used to be Jen’s pup. Jennifer, the quiet teenager, who often cried at night till he started to whimper and tried to lick the tears of her face. Bugger suspected the main reason the girl had adopted him as her own was so she had a reason to go out, take him out for a walk. Not that he needed it, he had the whole backyard for his private needs, it was she who needed to get out and escape the coldness of the house - where the slightly younger Joe barked his commands and nobody dared answer. ‘Bring me that dinner, woman’, he’d shout as soon as he got home. Then the beer, then the second beer, drinking himself into a stupor in front of the TV. He didn’t use to like the dog back then, that’s why he gave it that name, Bugger as in ‘Bugger off’, but if Jen wanted it he had no say.
Put it down to a dog’s instinct if you want, but there was the unwritten agreement between those two - ‘I stay and take good care of you, but only if you leave the girl alone’.
And when Jen left for college, the dog could feel Martha’s will to live draining way. Those last few days she spent in the armchair, looking out of the window, he was at her feet all the time. She sometimes stooped to pat him, but her mind was far away, he could tell by the look in her eyes. Until they found her one morning hanging by a rope in the pantry.
Jen never forgave her father for her mother’s death and if she sometimes visited it was just because of some weird sense of duty she had. And to see Bugger, of course. She always knelt on the floor and scratched him between his ears and fed him little treats. ‘If it weren’t for you, Bugger…’ and she let her soft voice trail and he could feel tears welling up in her.
If he managed to get up early enough tomorrow he could be on the other side of the fence by the time Joe wakes up. Then his nose would lead him straight to Jennifer’s house. Bugger fell asleep dreaming of her cry of joy, of her sweet smile, of her arms hugging him.

Thanks for reading!

Image: Pixaby