BEDTIME STORY

Flashlight bright, lighting the ceilings and walls,

“Lie down. Lie down. Don’t worry about your twisted

Nightgown.” It never took me so long to fall asleep.

All right, then, here we go: “Long enough ago that I was just six years old my family had a dog named Rhombus. Rhombus was a mischievous beagle, always getting into trouble. We found him at the pound. It’s strange now for me to think that he had a name before he came, but afterwards and forever it was Rhombus. Maybe that explains his multiple personalities or his senile, psychotic ways. He never once kept a bone we’d given him. Instead he’d bury it in the backyard to never again retrieve it. Once, when my mom went to bed, she found a cold, old hotdog under her pillow. 

“EWWW,’ she said.

“My uncle lived with us then. His dog, a pup, named Ossie—the best dog ever—and Rhombus, as my uncle told my brothers and I, fried or scrambled eggs every night after we went to bed. Ossie we did not blame, after all he was just a puppy, innocent and unaware, but every morning I’d look Rhombus in the eye and ask why he didn’t share.

‘Then when we were traveling and Rhombus stayed behind with Grandma, her neighbor girl took him to the creek in spring. The water was high and fast. That dumb darn blasted dog jumped in and couldn’t get out. He drowned. I cried that night, the night my parents told me he was dead.” I’ve decided now that he may not have drowned. His body was never found. He just wanted a new name with a new family that didn’t think him so deranged.