The sun was a flaming frisbee as it rose. The Boulevard Rue des Poulet looked as it did seven years ago--enough time for a single revolution of the planet but not enough to gain the support of enough bulldog-proles to unseat Rusty the Poodle King--the last time Chi Chi walked its lengths. He knew the scrutiny of a daylit walk in the capital city spelled trouble for one of his past. But since the disappearance of Ladybird (a.k.a. Wiggles), his friend and lover, he knew a sense of abandon and resignation that almost welcomed a brand of trouble that might bring with it the diminution or outright end of his pain--and besides he loved the smell. As Chi Chi walked he felt a gathering unity in the pull of his hunger, his heartache, and what might well have been heartworm; in the bent reflection of the sun in the now-broken shop windows, and tumbledown shacks beyond, he saw the fleeting radiance and splendor that had gilded the capital city years ago inspiring in all its denizens some kind of ecstatic impulse to just sprint and sprint until they had to lie down on one side, their chests heaving and tongues darting, the nip of water they had just lapped up from the communal fountain, commemorating Rex the founding father and kibble-giver, now on the pavement around their faces in almost its entirety. These images raced through his head with similar frenzy. Illusory as they may have been they only stopped when Chi Chi would have to attend to a persistent itch where his neck met his face or when he thought he smelled news on a tree or fence. He thought he smelled something of note several times yet their was no news--the entire province seemed to have lost its bone yet no one knew where to look; the Poodle-King's sleight of hand had worked; the Bulldog-proles seemed to have forgot almost everything, again, contenting, and seemingly sustaining themselves, with whatever they could find whether it was a scrap of turkey roll, an empty bottle, discarded lightbulb, or styrofoam popcorn packing pieces. Indeed, their had been no news for the year since Chi Chi became a self-imposed exile--living with a nice family in Halifax. He didn't blame the Halvorsons for thinking he was a compelling refutation of the logic that mutts are smarter. They'd tell him to come, he'd stay. They'd tell him to stay, he'd pee. Chi Chi had never known mediocrity in any form. But to say that which follows from a sapping of the will to live is not mediocrity would render the term entirely useless. However, the Halvorsons never seemed to care and arguably loved Chi Chi more for his failings, for the couch he destroyed, for the Easter ham that could not be resurrected. And it was this feeling that dogs were essentially good and worth fighting for that compelled him to return. However, this was not the sort of goal the completion of which would usher in a subsequent period of unfettered elation. This was something Chi Chi thought the world deserved before he left it.
TO BE CONTINUED...
