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He kept his vigil until the shadows lengthened.
Finally accepting the situation, he knew he must soon leave her side. Hunger
and grief competed in his belly. He studied the paper stuck to the
chocolate-smeared wrapper. He sniffed it. He licked it. He liked the sweet,
floral taste of the ink and the sugar. He quivered. He shivered. Before a
minute passed, Dandelion chopped, chewed, and gnawed the ticket into a clean,
digestible, plump clump. Mrs. Mooney always believed her dog was priceless; in
that moment, he became the most valuable creature in Kentucky.
Minutes later, Damian Mooney rushed home. He carried a
three-day beard, wrinkled clothes, and the distinct aroma of gin and cheap
perfume. Fresh from wooing a barmaid, he fished his house key from his jeans
and stopped cold. His mother had collapsed on the porch.
He saw her, but he didn't check for a pulse. He
stepped over her body, grabbed the purse near the doorway, and ducked inside to
call 911. His voice to the dispatcher was a practiced, weary performance—teary
on cue. He gave the address and hung up quickly, the "grief"
evaporating the second the line went dead.
He frantically dumped the purse. Tissues, peppermint
discs, and a checkbook. Nothing.
When the ambulance arrived, the attendant sighed. He
checked her pulse and pronounced her deceased. Damian stood nearby, wringing
his clammy wrists.
“She told me,” Damian said, his voice cracking with a grief
he tried to mask as sorrow. “She called on her drive home. She heard it on the
radio, and all her numbers matched the grand prize. 147 million dollars in the
Powerball.”
The technician studied Damian while covering Mrs.
Mooney with a white sheet. Damian sat down hard in the doorway, right next to
Dandelion.
"Of course,” Damian said, shifting his weight and
roughly clinching the throat of the dog as he addressed the technician, “I am
distraught and demolished by the death of my mother.”
The dog yelped, pulled away in pain, and retreated to
the edge of the porch, watching the man with dark, knowing eyes.
The EMT shook his head in disgust. “Death is a story
of sorrow. I lament my job, but I find comfort in knowing the dead awaken on
the other side. We are each a sliver in a river of souls. Did you find the
ticket?”
Damian jumped to his feet. “Mother said she wouldn’t
let it out of her hand! But hell, as soon as I got here, I checked the glove
box, the pocketbook, and the billfold. I even rolled her over and rummaged
through her skirt pockets. I’ve been through every dresser drawer, the jewelry
armoire, and the lockbox. I checked the floorboards of the car twice!”
“A valuable prize,” the technician observed, eyebrows
raised at the admission of looting a corpse before the sirens had even faded.
“I’ve searched everywhere but under the porch!” Damian
shouted. “It has to be here. I am her only living son. I’ve remained true-blue.
I’m a ‘mellow fellow,’ really. I’d get the whole jackpot.” He pursed his lips,
licking them dryly. “I’m just... flabbergasted by her untimely extinction.”
The technician paused as he flexed the gurney wheels,
preparing to leave. “Did you know she was dead when you got here?”
Damian shifted his feet, looking at the porch boards
as if trying to wipe a stain from his shoe. “I assumed she was a goner.”
“What is to become of the dog?” the EMT asked, biting
his lip.
“I’ll drop the mutt off at the pound,” Damian
shrugged. “Upon reflection, I’ve never had much affection for this mangy pooch.
Mother said he had papers, but he looks like a plain old dog to me.”
The technician watched Dandelion. The dog was sitting
calmly now, licking a brown concoction of chocolate and high-security thermal
paper from his nose. If dogs can smile, Dandelion was beaming.
“If dogs giggle when they snarl,” the technician
thought as he loaded Mrs. Mooney into the back of the ambulance, “then
Dandelion and Mrs. Mooney are the only ones who will ever rest in peace.”
The Moral of the Mutt
Damian spent the next three weeks tearing up
floorboards and digging under the porch. He spent his last few dollars on a
metal detector, convinced the "golden ticket" was buried in the dirt.
He never looked at the dog. He never noticed how Dandelion sat in the yard, fat
and happy, watching the frantic, gin-soaked man destroy the house in search of
a fortune that had already passed through a very different kind of system.
In the end, Damian got exactly what he deserved: a
pile of splinters and a vacant bank account. Dandelion, meanwhile, was adopted
by the EMT, who had a hunch that any dog who could survive the Mooney household
deserved a steak dinner—and perhaps a comfortable rug to dream about the day he
ate 147 million dollars.
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