Trudy
I grew up playing the games of tiny men–tossing the magnolia pods, blossoms unrealized, running my hands over their velvet spikey skins and pretending they were grenades. My neighbor Chris and I hid in the bed of my dad’s ‘52 Chevy pickup, reenacted scenes from Indiana Jones. Sometimes we’d switch to sports, though neither one of us was athletic. We’d smacked a tennis ball with a wiffle bat. I showed a bit more promise with my hand-eye. Chris crinkled his brow in jealousy under his straw white bangs, his eyes as black as his hair was white. In the summer, it bleached even whiter, and his skin turned the color of the copper pots hanging on my mother’s kitchen walls, where we’d take a break for tomato soup and boiled hotdogs. Chris’s mother called mine about a month after we moved in, scandalized that we served her son Kraft Singles. Processed cheese, she said, was the Devil’s food. Cancer wrapped in cellophane. My mother ignored her. Since we were the only two children close to the same age living on our block, we stayed friends.
I had no friends but Chris–spent hours in my room, consumed with books and Legos. Off to the animal shelter we went in search of a solution to my social problems–a German Shepherd mix I named Trudy. I named her after a seeing eye dog in one of my favorite books, and I relished her intelligence, the black of her snout, the way her ears draped at the tips when she looked at me, thoughtfully. Devotedly. The name Trudy meant “loyal” or “beloved warrior” in German, so I knew she would shield me from the bullies and and the loneliness.
“That’s about the closest I’ve come from murdering another living thing!” my father said the night Trudy ate my mother’s birthday dinner. Two pounds of ground beef down the gullet while it sat out waiting to be grilled. I heard him scream my name from three floors up. Trudy cowered by the woodpile in the corner of the yard, and he explained we’d need to install a run, latch her with a chain when we had to leave her unsupervised.
Chris and I, unsupervised, came across his father’s stash of Playboys one afternoon when we were ten. Or he chose to show them to me. Then he asked if I wanted to play a game–pretend to do what we saw in the magazine. I found it all incredibly silly. And I couldn’t stop laughing as he encouraged me to replicate the poses the models made. He approached me like a photographer trying to position me correctly, but I wasn’t sure I liked the way he touched. His mother walked in on us. This was so much worse than processed cheese. And even though she admonished both of us on the spot, she begged me not to tell my parents.
I disobeyed. I told them. And my father went next door to have a chat with Chris and his parents. I had witnessed my friend’s fear of his father. Heard mention of him choosing a belt when Chris misbehaved with hardware proportionate to the sin. I wondered which buckle he’d endure for this. Our friendship ended. I focused on my reading, my Lego building, and taking care of Trudy.
Trudy grew older, safe on her lead, and I went to middle school–a different one than Chris. I almost forgot our families’ feud, almost, until the day I came home and noticed Trudy not looking right.
“I’m not sure what’s wrong,” my mother said. “Old girl just plopped down in the clover. Just like that.”
But I saw the dish by the woodpile. The remnants of hamburger. Never needed to test it for poison. Just held Trudy’s head—rubbed my cheek across her velvet nose as our chests heaved and the games of tiny men played out.
Sally Toner (she/her) is a Pushcart nominee whose poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in Northern Virginia Magazine, Gargoyle Magazine, Watershed Review, and other publications. Her chapbook Anansi and Friends was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019. She received an MFA in narrative nonfiction from the University of Georgia. An empty nester with two grown daughters, she lives in Reston, Virginia with her husband. You can find her at sallytoner.com, salliemander70 on Instagram, and on X at @SallyToner