David by Ray Robertson

she manufactured for strangers on the street or for my mother delivering the food she didn’t want.
    â€œNow, how can that possibly be? It’s my gift to you. Didn’t anyone ever teach you it is considered unkind to return a gift to a friend?”
    â€œNo, ma’am.”
    â€œWell, thankfully, now someone has.”
    *
    I was a good boy. Of course I was a good boy. What other kind of boy could I have been? A stray dog no longer stray is a happy dog, an appreciative dog, an indebted dog. Understandably.
    In the classroom, I never spoke until spoken to. I did not giggle, whisper, or squirm in my seat. I used proper language at all times whenever speaking. I always abided by the Golden Rule hand-lettered and framed and hanging at the front of the classroom, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you . I always assumed good posture and always faced forward, my feet flat on the schoolhouse floor and my hands folded on top of the desk. I raised my hand when I wished to speak and I stood beside my desk before speaking. Whenever Mr. Rapier,our teacher, asked me to, I would assist a fellow student in disentangling a point of incomprehension, never vain in my superior understanding, only pleased to be able to share my knowledge with another.
    At home, I did all of my chores without ever having to be reminded to do them. I carried in old Mrs. Cross’s firewood for her and shovelled her walkway and never accepted the nickel she never forgot to offer. I took my mother’s arm when we walked to church and dropped my very own earned dime into the collection plate. When I was old enough, I helped the Reverend King and Mr. Rapier run the evening classes they organized to teach the older adults how to read. I wrote letters for the blind and the illiterate to their relatives and friends still in chains back in the South. I prayed every night for my mother’s and my souls and the swift death of slavery and the Reverend King’s continued good health. I breathed so that my mother and Jesus and the Reverend King would be proud of me.
    Understandably.
    *
    The bottle and two glasses and the bowl of ice and the silver tongs laid out on the kitchen table; Henry with a fresh busy bone, oblivious for hours in front of the fire; the new gramophone waiting in the corner, wound and ready to go to work: everything is set, all that’s missing is George. I get up and go to the front window and part the curtain, sit back down. I rearrange the contents on the table—this time the bowl of ice and the tongs on the left, the glasses side by side in the middle, the bottle flanking the right—then get up and go to the window again, the same result as before. I sit down and open the bottle. A watched door never darkens.
    At nine p.m. on the first Saturday of every other month for the last eight years, George has shown up on my doorstep like he’d just dropped by on the off chance I just might be in. We didn’t hear much of each other after the war, after we both turned eighteen—him staying behind in Buxton, intent on raising a family and working his way up to the top of the potash factory, me moving away to Chatham—until, eventually, from the ages of thirty to forty we didn’t even share that uncomfortable silence that is owed to those who discover one day that their best friends have turned into strangers. We don’t talk about what brought us back into each other’s lives, but for eight straight years now we’ve passed the first Saturday night of every other month sitting together drinking whiskey at my kitchen table, haven’t missed a single night yet.
    George’s tap at the door lifts Henry’s head from his chewing, springs him to his feet and peels back his gums, bone time over now and ready to protect his family, or at least die trying. Dogs are never less than exactly what the moment calls for. This more than compensates for them never visiting the World’s