The Dog Park
by Jeffrey Greene
Ever since the home office had added West Virginia to his territory, Ron Mercer had come to depend on Sundays, his one real day off, as his island of calm in a workweek that made all but impossible demands on his time. He would sleep until nine, feel with satisfaction his unshaven whiskers, put on old clothes, greet his dog, Harry, a five-year old black Labrador, brew a pot of coffee, then venture outside in his slippers for the newspaper. It was only then, after reading the entire paper over as much coffee as his stomach could stand, that he would take Harry for a walk.
Harry would get very excited when he saw Ron carrying the leash, knowing it meant his Sunday trek to the big field off Slattery Road, a mile and a half from the house. The field, about a mile in circumference, was owned by an automated radio station but open to the public, and was one of the last large pieces of undeveloped land in the area. The walk from his house through the neighborhood to and then around the field and back was four miles, Ron’s best — and far too often — his only walk of the week.
On one of his busiest Saturdays in March, he didn’t get home until well after midnight. He slept badly and woke before dawn, and worse, the paper didn’t come, which wouldn’t have bothered him during the week when he didn’t have time to read it, but was intolerable on Sunday. His routine now completely disrupted, he decided to eat a quick breakfast and walk Harry, then go buy a paper and do his lounging later on.
It was just before seven when he reached the field, a dense fog almost concealing the four red transmission towers, and the air was cold and clammy. A recent snow had left the trail a gooey mess, and the rust-brown mud caking his shoes began to smudge his cuffs as he walked. He heard the waterfall sound of cars on the Beltway through the narrow buffer zone of woods on his right, saw a snakeskin-like piece of flattened bubble wrap on the ground and a crumpled black garbage bag lodged like an immense fungus in the crook of a leafless tree. Peering through the fog, he was first startled, then moved, by the sight of a tiny red glove stuck on the end of a thin branch protruding from a leafless sapling flanking the trail like a beckoning, inhumanly slender arm.
He’d begun to think that for once he had the field to himself until he heard a high-pitched keening somewhere off to his left that he recognized as a radio-controlled model airplane. He couldn’t see anything, but assumed it was the man he’d often seen here flying his planes, for he had several, stacked according to size on a wheeled cart with shelves designed to hold them. It seemed odd, though, to be flying a model plane in heavy fog at this hour. A neighborhood bordered the field on three sides, and people were still sleeping. He thought the man must be a very confident flier, to risk smashing up his expensive and probably hand-built toy.
Harry, meanwhile, was straining at the leash, so Ron unhooked him and watched as the dog plunged excitedly into the fog, wagging his tail, smelling and marking every bush and tree, and very soon he was out of sight. Ron could hear him somewhere off to his left, scratching the ground, then move on, his tags clinking.
Ron was about to call for Harry when he saw the indistinct shape of a person some distance ahead on the trail, walking toward him. He noted with the instinctive anticipation of a solitary man that it was a woman. She was walking rapidly, not with the open, swinging stride of a hiker, but with her head down, her arms crossed over her chest and hands gripping her upper arms, her gait stiff and hurried. The woman, he could now see, was tall, slim and fortyish, with a good figure and short brown hair that accentuated her clean jaw and beautiful neck.
He was preparing himself for a slight smile and a nod of neutral friendliness and, of course, to speak if spoken to but, as they came face-to-face and he looked up, he was surprised not only by the beauty of the stricken face as she hurried past him with a distracted glance, but by the tears streaming from her swollen eyes.
He turned to watch her receding figure; she continued on, head bowed and shaking as if in vehement denial, until she veered off the trail and into the unfenced back yard of one of the houses bordering the field. The emotional distress of a stranger, attractive or not, was certainly none of his business, but how could he not wonder why an early-morning walk had ended in tears?
And such a pretty woman, too, he thought, beginning to descend toward the tiny stream that at one time had probably been a creek running through a dense woods but was now just a low spot on the trail. It was, more often than not, a bit muddy, with weeds growing lushly in the little hollow it made at the foot of the rise that couldn’t be called a hill. Someone had placed a sturdy board across the “banks” of the trickle, no more than a foot wide at its widest point, and it was only a few yards after crossing it that he came upon a smashed model airplane.
He reached down and picked it up, then scooped up the propeller, which was in two pieces on the ground, and slipped it into his pocket. It was surprisingly small, perhaps the smallest of the hobbyist’s collection. Although one wing was broken and hanging loosely, it was quite beautiful in its lines and loving, intricate detail, right down to the name “Intrepid” hand-painted in elegant cursive on the fuselage. Ron could still hear the shrill buzz of another plane in the air, and assumed the man was postponing his search for this one until the fog lifted. Well, he was going that way, and would return the plane to its owner.
Off to his left he heard the low, almost conversational snarling of dogs at play rather than fighting, and he called out for Harry. A moment later he spotted Harry and a slightly smaller dog that looked like a chocolate Lab running side by side a few yards away, playfully nipping at each other’s ears and, when he clapped his hands, they both came to him. As Ron reached down to put on Harry’s leash, he noticed that the other dog was trailing a fancy braided leather leash, and he quickly picked it up. The dog was friendly but undisciplined, jumping up and trying to lick his hands and face and muddying up his pants.
“Down,” he said softly, and the dog obeyed, slapping his legs with its heavy tail. He petted its head and back, then noticed with alarm that his hand was smeared with blood.
“What’s happened to you, buddy?” he said, examining the dog for wounds or bites and finding none. The dogs in their excitement were beginning to tangle him up, and he had to transfer both leashes to his right hand and start walking again to keep from dropping the plane. The strange dog’s dark brown fur and the uncertain light had initially camouflaged the blood, but now that he had time to look closely, he could see splotches of red along one flank, on one ear, his head and shoulder, and some of it, he realized, had migrated to Harry during their roughhousing. He thought it might have rolled in something dead, and freshly dead, too, considering the thankful absence of carrion smell on the dogs or on his hand.
And where was its owner? It wasn’t the first time he’d seen dogs running around here trailing leashes. But it was the first time he’d seen a beautiful crying woman on the trail or blood on an uninjured dog, or smashed toy planes, for that matter. Oh, so the lady’s beautiful now, he thought; merely pretty won’t suffice for the retelling. It’s the fog, he told himself. It makes sad women lovely and flying model planes hazardous, and conceals nefarious activities, which are nevertheless revealed by the blithe innocence of dogs. I should come here more often at dawn, he thought; It’s better than the movies.
The plane was close now, circling invisibly somewhere off to his left, its buzzing slightly muted by the fog, but he still couldn’t see the hobbyist, who was usually positioned closer to the middle of the field. When he saw him, he’d give him his broken plane, although he didn’t particularly want to interact with the man and was tempted simply to call out to him and lay the plane on the ground. He wondered about the etiquette in these matters. He heard the plane climbing to what he assumed was its height limit, then plunge into a screaming dive. It seemed risky if not foolhardy under these conditions and, sure enough, a moment later Ron distinctly heard the dive end in another crash.
Two down, how many to go? And whose dog was this, anyway, and what was he supposed to do with it? He’d never seen the model plane guy with a dog before. Maybe it was the woman’s dog. No, she wouldn’t have left the field without at least calling for it. Or would she? What if the blood on the dog belonged to its owner and, if so, what had happened to him?
He listened for someone in distress or calling for help, but all he heard was the rude conversation of crows in the bare trees to his right, followed, rather surprisingly, by the buzz of another plane in the air. Almost immediately, it passed overhead just behind him, flying at an altitude of no more than thirty feet and crashed into the scraggly branches of a pin oak, where it stayed, dangling by one wing.
The dogs were getting excited again, almost pulling him forward and, half by accident and half on purpose, he loosened his grip on the chocolate Lab’s leash just enough for the dog to pull free. It bounded forward and was soon lost to sight. Well, its owner was probably looking for it anyway.
Harry wanted to follow his new friend, but Ron kept a tight grip on the leash and quickened his pace. The dog had probably surprised a rabbit, killed it and then rolled in it. No way of knowing without scouring the whole field, and all he wanted to do was finish his walk. But he kept thinking of the blood on the dogs, and the angry, tearful woman, and the unseen pilot who kept crashing his painstakingly assembled planes.
You’re making assumptions, he told himself, that might have very little to do with what, if anything, is actually going on here. And even if he had stumbled into some kind of domestic dispute occurring at this unlikely hour, he would soon stumble out of it. None of his business.
He heard a dog barking and then the giant insect sound of yet another plane in the air, and then he saw, no more than a hundred yards away, the hobbyist next to his cart and realized for the first time that the fog had begun to lift. Apparently the chocolate Lab was his dog; it was excitedly circling the man and wagging its tail.
Having picked up the broken plane, Ron felt obligated to return it to the man and started walking toward him. The man’s back was to him and, from this distance, he appeared to be taller than himself, though slighter of build. He had a large balding head on a slender neck and shoulders, and long, slightly bowed legs.
Maybe it isn’t the same model plane hobbyist, he thought and then remembered that the man he was used to seeing always wore a brown felt fedora much like his own. The man was looking up at the sky, and the sound of the plane overhead must have covered Ron’s approach, because he didn’t turn around until Ron was just a few feet away. It was only then that Ron saw the man’s face, and stopped. His left hand was wrapped in a blood-soaked handkerchief, and Ron began to wish he’d left the broken plane where it lay.
“Oh, that’s great,” the man said with a hard, toothy smile, his unsettlingly large blue eyes red-rimmed and unblinking. He was swaying slightly, his long face sickly pale and twitchy, as if he’d been drinking all night. There were four angry-looking scratches on one cheek, and Ron thought of the distraught woman. “Everything’s gone to hell,” the man said, continuing to operate the joystick of the control box, although he wasn’t even looking to see where the plane was.
“Sorry,” Ron said, holding up the broken plane. “I was just walking my dog, found this over there.”
The man laughed, a pained, helpless laugh, as if he’d just been told that a tree had fallen on his new car, and then nodded toward the cart. Ron stepped forward to slip the plane into its slot when he saw something that the cart had concealed from view: a hat like his own, lying crumpled next to a pair of muddy hiking boots, worn by a man dressed in blue jeans and a brown leather bomber’s jacket, lying in the mud, his arms tucked neatly under his body.
Ron’s heart thudded when he saw the blood on the man’s clothes, his face, the ground. He recognized the model plane hobbyist that he’d seen here so many times but had never spoken to, though he’d always meant to, sooner or later. He jumped at the sound of growling behind him. Harry and the chocolate Lab had gone back to worrying each other’s ears.
“They seem to like each other,” the man said, his ashen face still wearing its hectic grin. He turned his attention back to the controls, maneuvering the plane so that it was almost overhead, then sent it climbing up and out of sight into the fog. “This one’s for the whore I married,” he said over his shoulder, and then Ron looked up with alarm as the plane went into a crash dive and smashed into the damp ground only a few yards from where they stood. It must have been the largest, with a wingspan of perhaps two and a half feet, but it was a shattered ruin now. “Well, that’s the last one,” the man said with finality, dropping the control box on the ground and turning to face Ron.
“I only wanted to—” Ron began, and stopped. The man was looking at something behind him with widened eyes. He turned and saw that the woman he’d passed on the trail was running toward them from across the field, shouting something he couldn’t hear. Was it a name she was shouting?
“I couldn’t do it,” the man said, “not to her. And she’s told the whole world by now.” He looked down as a deep shudder passed through him, shaking his thin shoulders, then he sighed deeply, reached into his jacket and pulled out what looked like a .22 target pistol. He seemed exhausted, barely able to stand.
“That’s right,” Ron tried to say, his mouth and lips like dry cloth, his heartbeat interfering with his breathing. He began backing away “She’s told them. No point now in...” He stopped, panting and lightheaded. She’ll never get here in time, he thought. “No point,” he said again, putting his whole life into his eyes, begging.
“You just walked into something, is all,” the man said.
Ron kept backing up, unconscious of Harry even though he was still clutching the leash, and the dog, who was having trouble adjusting to this confusing gait, abruptly stopped right behind him and Ron lost his balance, tumbled backwards and landed hard on his left shoulder. When he looked up, he realized that the man had lowered his weapon and turned his back on him.
Scrambling to his feet, he took off running, Harry easily keeping pace, and when, a few seconds later, he heard the vicious, spitting crack of the .22, he whimpered and kept running, stopping only when he could no longer catch his breath and went down on his knees. Ron thought he heard a faint, anguished scream somewhere behind him. When he looked back, all he could see through the fog were the crouched shapes of wild rose thickets and the diffuse, yellowish light of the risen sun.
His shoulder was in agony, and he had strained a muscle in his right leg, but he headed toward the road at a fast limp, not slowing down until the field was a good half-mile behind him. It was only then that he realized he was still clutching the wreckage of the “Intrepid” in his left hand and, finding himself near a wooded spot overlooking the Beltway, he threw it into the bushes along with the broken propeller.
Copyright © 2025 by Jeffrey Greene
