The Rain

The rain clawed at the glass. Trent remembered hearing that somewhere — the rain clawed at the glass — or reading it, although he hadn’t read a book in several years so reading it was less likely. It was a good description, he thought. Probably more than a decade. It was very fitting of the way the rain now clawed at the glass of the little window of his little house. But it was more than that, and meant more than the words he could use to describe it. There was no one else here, so why describe it? His way was common expressions, nothing fancy. But he appreciated rain, and he appreciated that in someone else’s imagination, it had claws and it wanted to find its way inside. Or at least past a pane of glass. But for the moment the rain was restricted to roaming the grass plains outside and beating on the roof of the stable and the roof of O’Reilly’s house on the other side of the hill and of the feedlot the seven miles down the road where Trent worked on six-day rotation.

Jimmy let out of small huff from his spot on the living room rug.

Jimmy huffed a lot these days, the kind of huff you might expect from an ageing dog who had seen many things and didn’t have time for seeing those things anymore. Didn’t have time for any of it. To his credit, Jimmy was 91 in dog years. It showed in the way he struggled to stand up off the floor when he wanted to move and in his shaky steps when he’d trek between his selection of favourite spots around the house and most of all it showed in the way his eyes seemed dull. They were dull like how an old camera lens gets mould inside and there’s nothing you can do to clean it out.

Aside from soaking up the morning sun when it spilled over the front verandah, Jimmy didn’t go outside much anymore, not like when he was a pup and he’d disappear during the day and when Trent got home he’d have to walk up over the hill calling out “Jiiiiiiimmy!” over and over until Jimmy came bounding back through the grass. There was probably no need for Trent to do all this since Jimmy had never once spent a night away from home, not when he was a pup and he’d scratched at the front door and whined to be let inside, all while Trent and Deb ignored him until the dog fell asleep on his bed of old potato bags. Not after Deb left and Trent could let the dog spend all the time inside that he wanted.