Blog # 7- Kristi DeMeester

This is an excerpt from a short story I'm working on called "Walker."

Lakeshore Drive is quietly coming awake as I lace my old sneakers, the laces browned and crumbling at the ends, and clip Clara’s green leash to her collar. She waits patiently beside me, her blonde head dipping towards the ground as she sniffs before looking up at me with knowing brown eyes. I tousle her ears before asking, "So what do you think about today, old girl? You think we can do it today?" But Clara just blinks at me before turning back to the smells coming from under her paws.

It is still cool on this early Tuesday morning, and a hint of winter lingers in the air despite the yellow of the daffodils obscenely pushing their way through the brown earth. Cherry trees line the street and have exploded into a fairy land of cotton candy pink blossoms. Greenery buzzes beneath the dirt. Birds fresh from their tropical vacations call to one another with swooping voices, then fall momentarily silent before calling out again. There is a distinct blending of the scents of coffee and laundry detergent coming from the first house on my right, and I envision that the owner has opened the back door and welcomed the spring morning inside as the coffee brews in the kitchen. For a moment, I want to turn my brain off and just enjoy the quiet beauty of the morning; I want to just be a man out walking his dog, but the old itch burns underneath my skin, and I know that I must scratch it.

It is best to hit the streets early in the morning and during the week because then you will know who walks their dogs every day, who leaves their doors unlocked as they walk Rover or Spiff or Bella around the neighborhood, stopping to pick up the dog’s waste in a special pink, powder-scented bag so as to not offend the nose. The owners I meet on the street nod at me as I pass with Clara, some even stopping to pat her and exchanging a few words with me about the weather. I am unassuming in my community college t-shirt, my gray gym shorts, my ball cap pulled low to hide the hollow darkness of my eyes, my non-descript brown hair clipped short to make me more difficult to identify, my face clean shaven. I become any other guy walking his dog. Shit, I even toy with the other walkers a bit, telling them my name is Walker. Just good old Walker out walking his dog.

I never spend too much time on one street. Just enough to make me a safe part of the neighborhood, just enough to make me innocent and far from their thoughts when they wonder who could possibly break into their homes, rob them blind, think about raping their wives and daughters. But I never do that last thing. I’m not that far gone yet.

And they never see me when I take Clara back to my old Toyota pickup, the red faded to the rusty color of blood, which I parked down the street and out of sight. And they never see me when I return the next morning to park the truck and unload Clara for our daily walk. I slip into the fabric of their lives as easily as water moves through a stream, and I learn their habits before making my move.

Clara doesn’t mind. She walks beside me as I watch the neighborhood, learning the ways of the dog walkers, whom I learned long ago are the easiest targets. The dog walkers, always leaving their doors unlocked, always leaving their homes anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour after they walk the dog as I watch them come and go, come and go. They really are stupid if you think about it. They give me all of the information I need, and all I have to do is watch. Of course, Clara is the necessary ingredient in all of this. Without her, mother’s eyes would peer at me from behind lacy curtains, and lipsticked mouths would work furiously at the receiver of a telephone as word passes from house to house about a strange man out walking alone. But Clara is my godsend.