To Rolo's Dominion

Dog Years

Rolo’s ears and nostrils flared as Big Mike
sat with him in the good old bus. They'd
been sharing a steak cooked outside on the
Hibachi, and Rolo was growing impatient,
waiting for the rare meat to fall into his bowl.

He was thinking about Big Mike’s habit
of eating too slowly when he heard the gate
rattle and caught the scent of the stranger
approaching a little too casually. Rolo and
Big Mike’s eyes met and they both moved

Like trained stealth fighters, Mike toward
his .45 and Rolo to the entry, where he
caught a reflection of himself in the glassed
door and confronted a sudden reckoning;
a handsome junkyard dog he was no more.

A little arthritis had set in, he knew,
and now he found himself tiring easily at
times, and he wondered if he might have
cancer, the disease that had taken so many
of his old friends. His low growl came up

From his throat with an odd dispassion,
as though he didn’t care if the man out
there in the shadows, wearing a fedora
and London Fog overcoat, was a common
thief or a veterinarian come to poison him.

Big Mike invited Dooley in; Rolo, never shy,
and relieved for now, liked the tough old P.I.


TS