Part 3
“She grew up fast,” Arthur said, a warmth creeping into his voice that hadn’t been there before. “Within six months, she wasn’t a shivering little thing anymore. She was a solid, heavy-boned dog with paws the size of coasters. And she changed the gravity of that cabin.”
He looked out the dark window, but I could tell he was seeing the gray coastline.
“When you live alone in a place like that, the silence eventually rings in your ears,” he explained. “But with Macy, the silence was gone. There was the clicking of her nails on the pine floorboards. The heavy thud of her tail against the wall when I woke up. The way she would aggressively shove her wet nose under my elbow when she decided I had spent too much time reading.”
Arthur smiled, rubbing his thumb over the spot behind the dog’s ear. Macy let out a low, contented groan.
“We spent hours on the beach. I’d throw driftwood into the freezing surf, and she’d plow right through the breakers to drag it back. For the first time since my wife died, I actually started looking forward to mornings. I thought maybe I had finally found a quiet way to live out the rest of my life.”
Arthur stopped rubbing the dog’s head. He leaned back against the seat, and the weariness suddenly returned to his face, pulling at the corners of his eyes.
“Then, last winter, I made a stupid mistake,” he said. “I was inspecting a wooden staircase that led down from the cliffs to the lower beach. It had rained for three days straight, and the wood was coated in this slick, green ocean algae. I wasn’t wearing the right boots. I turned to call Macy, my heel slipped off the edge of a step, and I went down.”
He didn’t add any dramatic flair to the description, which somehow made it sound worse.
“I tumbled down maybe twenty feet of steep, jagged wood and rock,” he said quietly. “When I finally stopped, I couldn’t breathe. My right femur was shattered. I had broken three ribs, and one of them had punctured something. I couldn’t reach my radio. I couldn’t even push myself up on my elbows. I just lay there in the mud, freezing, tasting blood in the back of my throat, waiting to pass out.”
Macy stirred on the floor, sensing the shift in his tone. She lifted her head and rested her chin heavily on Arthur’s knee.
“I don’t remember much after the fall,” Arthur continued, his voice thick. “But the highway patrolman told me the rest later. Macy didn’t stay with me. She scrambled up the cliffside, pushed through the heavy brush, and ran straight out onto the coastal highway.”
Arthur swallowed hard, staring at the dog.
“She didn’t run around in a panic. She planted herself right in the middle of the northbound lane. A guy driving a heavy utility truck came around the bend, saw a yellow dog standing in the pouring rain, and slammed on his brakes. The driver said she didn’t budge. She just stood her ground, barking violently at the grill of his truck. When he finally opened his door to yell at her, she grabbed the cuff of his jeans and practically dragged him toward the edge of the cliff.”
The compartment was entirely silent, except for the rhythmic, metallic clatter of the train wheels over the tracks.
“Her paws were torn up from the asphalt,” Arthur whispered. “But she got him down there. He called the paramedics. They airlifted me to a trauma center in Portland.”
He took a slow, deep breath, letting it out through his teeth.
“They put steel rods in my leg. I spent a month in a hospital bed, and then nearly eleven months in a rehab facility, learning how to walk again without falling over. It was agony. But the physical pain wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that the facility didn’t allow dogs.”
Arthur looked at me, his eyes shining faintly in the dim light of the compartment.
“My friend, the one you saw at the station, took her in. He took incredible care of her. He’d send me short videos on my phone. Macy sleeping on his rug. Macy eating her dinner. But he told me she spent the first three months just sitting by his front door, staring at the handle, waiting for it to turn.”
Arthur carefully bent forward, ignoring the stiffness in his right leg, and pressed his forehead against the top of the dog’s head. Macy closed her eyes, leaning her entire weight into his chest.
“I promised her I’d come back,” he whispered into her fur. “I promised.”
He sat back up, wiping a hand quickly across his face. “I was finally discharged yesterday. My friend brought her to the station tonight. This is our first time being together in almost a year. We’re going home.”
He didn’t say anything else. He just let his hand rest firmly on her back, feeling the steady rise and fall of her breathing.
A while later, the train’s intercom crackled to life, announcing the approaching stop. It was the small coastal town Arthur had mentioned earlier. The sky outside the window was beginning to lighten, turning from black to a pale, bruised purple. We were arriving.