S.Vaughn–DogHeavenDogHeavenbyStephanie.docVIP

Dog Heaven by Stephanie Vaughn Every so often that dead dog dreams me up again. Its twenty-five years later. Im walking along Forty-second Street in Manhattan, the sounds of the city crashing beside me--horns and gearshifts, insults--somebodys chewing gum holding my foot to the pavement, when that dog wakes from his long sleep and imagines me. Im sweet again. Im sweet-breathed and flat-limbed. Our family is stationed at Fort Niagara, and the dog swims his red heavy fur into the black Niagara River. Across the street from the officers quarters, down the steep shady bank, the river, even this far downstream, has been clocked at nine miles per hour. The dog swims after a stick I have thrown. Are you crazy? my grandmother says, even though she is not fond of dog hair in the house, the way it sneaks into the refrigerator every time you open the door. Theres a current out there! Itll take that dog all the way to Toronto! The dog knows where the backwater ends and the current begins, I say, because it is true. He comes down to the river all the time with my father, my brother MacArthur, or me. You never have to yell the dog away from the place where the river water moves like a whip. Sparky Smith and I had a game we played called Knockout. It involved a certain way of breathing and standing up fast that caused the blood to leave the brain as if a plug had been jerked from the skull. You came to again just as soon as you were on the ground, the blood sloshing back, but it always seemed as if you had left the planet, had a vacation on Mars, and maybe stopped back at Fort Niagara haIf a lifetime later. There werent many kids my age on the post, because it was a small command. Most of its real work went on at the missile batteries flung like shale along the American-Canadian border. Sparky Smith and I hadnt been at Lewiston-Porter Central School long enough to get to know many people, so we entertained ourselves by meeting in a hollow of trees and shrubs at the far edge of the