WALKING SUNSHINE
This morning, my fiancée and I take Sunshine for a walk along the river. It’s a quick ten minutes from our apartment, crossing over a couple streets, before descending into the valley where the water’s surface gyrates. We follow her, admiring the sun and the contrails of passing jets. Sunshine struts and waddles down the dirt trail, tail wagging. My fiancée and I stop to take a selfie, our teeth bright and straight, our eyes, hers blue and mine brown, dazzling. Our friends call us the cute couple, the power couple, the pair to watch out for.
When the trail slips down to the river’s edge, Sunshine jumps into the water. She dives for submerged sticks, strikes the surface, and laps at the projectile droplets from her paws. Inside each drop is a rainbow, and her teeth snap together, biting the water playfully.
With the leash coiled in my fiancée’s hand, I snap pictures with my phone. In one of the photos, the diamond ring projects streaks of white light, obscuring her black leggings and her blue fleece top.
Sunshine’s being so good this morning, I say. I capture her teeth in mid-bite. My fiancée stoops and finds a rock. I see her examine the calcified white residue on the dark blue surface. Sunshine pauses with the river covering her paws, tail between her legs, fixated on the rock. My fiancée throws it and Sunshine leaps, the source of the ripples resonating like an ever-expanding vinyl record. She can’t find it; her paws shovel water, hoping to expose the stone.
A jogger runs by and waves.
I pick out a pale green stone and lob it to Sunshine’s right. She pounces, dives her snout forward. Seconds later, as I snap photos, she cradles the rock in her teeth. The rock looks like a jewel set in white gold.
She always finds yours, my fiancée says.
A bicyclist passes, flickering behind the pines.
Not always, I say.
We walk the trail and Sunshine shakes off water every now and then. I show my fiancée pictures of us and Sunshine from earlier, Sunshine at our feet, river in the background, Sunshine chasing squirrels, my fiancée laughing, holding the coiled leash.
A couple walks by hand in hand. They nod at us. She wears a red skirt and in her free hand carries a daisy with crushed petals.
My fiancée arches her back, rubs her belly. Do you think Sunshine and the baby will get along, she says.
Yeah, I say, taking in the blue sky. What about Angela, I say. Clare? Kortney?
No, I still like Emily, she says. After my mother.
The couple rounds the corner of the dirt trail. A magpie flies and Sunshine sees it. She chases after the bird into the woods. We stumble after her, but she is gone, lost in the low branches and entwining thrushes. I say, try going up the trail more. I’ll go this way.
I walk into the woods. I hear my fiancée yell Sunshine, Sunshine, until her voice grows faint. Pine and cedar encroach on each other, and bushes with leaves of starbursts sprout. I shout Sunshine, but it’s obvious after a minute she can’t hear me. Sticks, pine needles, and small green leaves cover the ground. There are no pawprints, but there are empty beer and soda cans, and a lone tire, its inner cavity filled with rain from days ago. With as little noise possible, I step over fallen trees.
Ahead, I hear rustling of debris. Sunshine! The sound grows louder with each step. Did she catch the magpie? Is her mouth full of bird? I peek around the base of a giant cedar to see the couple from earlier, clothes neatly folded next to them, except for her red skirt, which they use as a blanket. In the clearing, she straddles him, and in the full sunlight, his hands hold her hips, her hands press down on his chest, the noise of their bodies somehow quiet, almost muted. It’s too much to handle; I back away.
A hundred yards from the couple, I decide to call my fiancée. With the phone ringing, I step to the edge of another clearing. Wild grass and weeds grow in the void of pine trees. In the center of those weeds, next to a forgotten tractor, rusted red and orange, angled like a broken batwing, stands my fiancée. Before her cowers Sunshine.
My fiancée brandishes the leash like a whip. You come when I call you, she says to Sunshine. Her ears push back and blood drips from her jowls. My fiancé strikes her on the snout. She strikes again when Sunshine looks at her.
My call goes to voicemail, and I realize she probably left her phone at home.
I wait on the trail by the clearing for them to find me. You found her, I say.
She says, I found her, she’s a little shaken, but she’ll be fine.
What about the blood on her snout?
Bird, she says.
After we turn a corner of the trail, lost again in the woods, hearing the river far away, she says, Lois.
We hold hands. I say, That’s a fine name. My fiancée holds the leash. We pass a family with a stroller as Sunshine leads the way home, marking our way with droplets of blood.
