When you see the dog you might not know you are seeing him. He is black from snout to tail. And sometimes you might think you’re seeing the dog but it isn’t really him at all; it isn’t even a dog. 

Do you know about death? That’s what the dog smells like. 

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I have seen the dog. You don’t have to believe me. 

I was walking to the convenience store. I was hungry, and I had a fistful of coins in my pocket, some quarters and a bunch of dimes, whatever I could find around the house, and I was thinking about what I could buy with them. I wanted to get something for my mom and me. I was thinking I would buy two ice cream sandwiches and a nice cold drink. A nice cold can of coke I could drink while I walked back. 

My mom was at home, in bed still. It was just barely before noon. It was already hot because it is always hot here. We say we’re used to it, but we aren’t really. We turn the AC on at noon. We keep it on for the hottest part of the day. There’s no point letting it run all day and night and the house still won’t get any more cool past a certain point. That’s something she taught me. 

When I got home, I’d turn the AC on and wake my mom up and it would be like a completely different world. I would take my shoes off and lie down. See what else might happen. 

That’s what I thought. I still hadn’t seen the dog yet. I hadn’t ever seen him before.

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Maybe you think it’s sad that my mom is going to die. But you don’t actually know that. You don’t know anything about her. 

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Some people think they have seen the dog but what they’ve really seen is vultures. Vultures arrive after death has come and gone. You might see them circling beforehand, but then they still haven’t arrived; they’re waiting, circling there up above you. 

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My mom has seen the dog a bunch of times. She’s the one who told me about him. If you see him once, you can almost be sure you’ll see him again. Some things are like that, like a lightning strike. Once it happens, it can happen again any time, like nothing, even though it seemed impossible before. There’s no use being scared of something like that. That’s what my mom says. If you’re going to see him, you’re going to see him. It’s not worth thinking about too much. 

When I asked her what he looks like she wouldn’t tell me. He looks like any other dog, but also not at all. When you see the dog, there’s no mistaking it. That’s what she said. Just hope it’s not my voice you hear telling you it’s him. Will he talk to me? I asked her. And then she laughed at me. She said it isn’t really like that. 

She was right. It isn’t. But there isn’t really a better way to describe it. 

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The first time my mom saw the dog she was just a little girl. She was so young she didn’t even know about the dog yet. She didn’t know what he meant. She kept asking everyone why the dog was there, at her grandparents’ house, licking his paws on the living room floor, but no one listened to her. It was an emergency – it was like she wasn’t even there. But she was there, and the dog was there too, whether or not anyone would say so.

People thought she was too young to know about that kind of thing. Like she was too young to worry about death. When people think that about someone, it usually isn’t true. That’s something else she taught me. 

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There was a time where I thought I was going to die. I thought I saw the dog a couple of times back then, but really it was only that I wanted to see him. That’s what my mom said. But you shouldn’t want that, she’d say. I’d be out walking, going by the gas station or the bus stop and I’d see a long black tail swishing out from under a bush, but it wouldn’t really be there—nothing would be there when I pulled the branches back. 

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Walking to the convenience store I thought about how I would wake my mom up when I got back to the house and we would eat our ice cream together in her bed like we used to. Sometimes when she got home from work late, so late it was morning almost, she used to wake me up like that. 

But when I went in the store, they didn’t have any, not even one for us to share. 

I went up to the counter to ask Shawn, the lady who’s always working there no matter what time it is, but she said they were out. She told me they’d probably have some more later in the week, they were waiting on a bunch of things. Then she asked did we have everything we needed back at home, which I laughed at. Because that was why I walked there in the first place, to get something we needed. But I said that we did, we had everything. I hate when people ask you stuff like that. What they already know the answer to. 

People are always looking for something to feel sorry for. That’s what my mom told me. So they can feel better about themselves. So I guess it was good, I could give her that. And she did say she was sorry when I walked out of the store.

Did I have everything I needed? There was a lot of things I needed and a lot that I had already. What difference would it make if I got anything at the convenience store? But if you want to be sorry about it, you can be. 

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The last time my mom saw the dog wasn’t that long ago. It was just a little while after she started working at the bar. Pretty much every night she was working, but it was good money. She got the job from a couple of friends who have been working there forever. 

She was driving when she saw him. She was so tired she was afraid to get behind the wheel, or she should have been afraid. She should have known better. That’s what she said. But she was too tired to be afraid. She was too tired to do anything, but she had to get home. She had to drive. 

My mom worked all the time back then. Sometimes all night. And then she got off in the last few hours of dark, and sometimes she’d be too tired to get home and she would sleep at a coworker’s house, Aunt Jean’s or sometimes CJ’s. Because at that point it was so late it wouldn’t even matter if she came home, since I’d be in bed asleep anyways. It wouldn’t make a difference. 

But this time she said she was thinking about me and how she knew I was at home sleeping and she just wanted to come home and lie down with me, just to rest for a minute before she had to get up again and keep going. She hadn’t been home in a couple of days already. Sometimes it was like that: she would work, and see CJ, and work, and see Jean, and you wouldn’t stop to think of how long it had been. 

It had been a couple of days, she said, and she knew I’d be in her bed when she got there, how I used to always sneak into her bed and try to wait up for her but I’d always fall asleep. I might not really have been asleep yet, but I don’t know. There’s no way of knowing. 

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There was a time where I thought my mom was going to die. I stopped sleeping in her bed. She kept telling me the dog was in there with her, sleeping, she knew it. Just wait and see. She hardly left her bed anymore, not even for Aunt Jean or the bar or anything. She said she could feel his breath under the blankets, the humidity. He was in there with her. Burning her up. Making it so hot in there, under the blankets. But it wasn’t true. 

The dog doesn’t stay in one place for very long. He doesn’t sleep in your bed for weeks at a time. Anyone who has seen him knows that. 

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The last time my mom saw the dog she was driving home from the bar where she worked. It was late at night, too late for there to even be other cars on the road. She was in autopilot. Just letting her body do the driving. She shut her eyes for just a second. And then she saw the dog. 

He was so much smaller than she remembered from the other times. And he looked helpless—she could see his ribs and the knobs of his spine on his back and his fur was all patchy and he had scabs on him. He isn’t always like that. She told me. Sometimes he is beautiful. Shining long black fur and his wet pink tongue hanging out. But still, she knew it was him. When you see the dog, there’s no mistaking it.

She swerved out of the way, and then her eyes opened. And then she didn’t understand what she was seeing—red light and blue light and glass. There was a glare all over, on everything. It was wrong: there shouldn’t have been anyone else on the road. She didn’t think there had been. That’s what she told the police. She hadn’t even seen the other person. She hadn’t even hit her brakes. Still, it was her fault. That’s what they told her: she shouldn’t have been driving in the first place. 

Her eyes must have shut for just a second. That’s how she tells it. But she hadn’t been dreaming when she saw the dog. That’s just how he seems sometimes. 

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I used to be so scared to see the dog, even though my mom said when you see him you won’t feel scared at all. She said it’s seeing the dog that you’re scared of—you’re scared that you will see him—but then when you do see him, finally, there isn’t anything left to be scared of. It’s already happened. What will it feel like? I asked her. When I see him? But she couldn’t say. 

There’s no way of knowing until it happens. When it happens, that’s when you’ll know. When you see him. There’s no use dwelling on it. Just hope it isn’t my voice you hear, telling you it’s him. 

Still, every time I thought I saw the dog I’d get so scared. That’s how I knew it wasn’t him: a tail sweeping out under a bush—a snout hanging out from a passing car, tongue flapping in the wind—a blur of black going by my window. I’d get so scared I’d cry. And I wouldn’t hear anyone’s voice.

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When I finally did see the dog I wasn’t thinking about him at all. I was walking to the convenience store, my hands sweating on my money in my pocket. I was thinking about AC, about ice cream. I didn’t bother looking around when I saw him. I didn’t stop to see if anyone else was there or if they saw him too. I didn’t need anyone else to tell me what was happening, that I needed to get home, to run home to my mom right that minute. 

I’d barely left the parking lot when I saw him, the real dog, shaggy and so tall he startled me, so tall I thought he might not have been a dog at all, but something else, something I didn’t have a name for—when I finally saw him, trotting up towards me on the sidewalk, panting in the noontime heat and sun, I didn’t hear her voice at all. I heard my own voice. Mom? It said. And then there was a silence. And that’s where she was.