Watching You Leave

DeeOhGee(Rocket)slept beside me in the 4 degree air of the tent last night as content as if we have shared a wayfayer home for all of his year or two of life. During the night I would set my hand out from my down bag to comfort him as he adjusted his circle tighter for warmth in the deepened night. To comfort me.
It is no easy thing for me to watch dog hair stipple carry without stressing over it, while worry doubles over the secret life of water turning to useless stone while we sleep, and now two stomachs talking in the center of the night reguardless how heavily I bank them with fuel just before the grey coated sun leaves for the land of the dead.
It is not for me to guide my own steps I have been counseled by scripture over and over again until I began to hear, so I take off my hat that is not keeping my head warm anyhow and ask for guidance from a force I can not see. The concrete steps draw the warmth out from behind my legs as I reach for words with the toe of my boot kicking off snow that forgot how to melt helping me to think. DeeOhGee wraps me with his lead that tails from his harness. He thinks I am talking to him, or maybe he is answering me in words only he can hear. When I am content with my north bound letter I look at the surgical wound DeeOhGee volunteers to show me as he rides his back for a belly rub. My young friend took it upon himself to remove all his post-neutering stitches in the last two days, throwing in an infection for good measure. The wound is a empty eyesocket pulled half shut, weeping clear fliud onto red shaved skin rising like a gorge. DeeOhGee shows me the answer. He is not ready. We are at an abandoned farm house stowing bails of forgotten hay, a short walk from the Dalhart kennel. I see Kat drive up in her white short-bed pick-up loaded with a tall pallet of dry food. Shouldering my pack I move my hand over DeeOh and we walk across the dirt road that takes us to her.
When Kat is a finger in the lip of DeeOhGee's wound I know that I will practice for the walk alone today. I do not yet know that DeeOh will be in the truck in minutes, driving across Dalhart to the vet who will decide in her nod or frown whether I will be able to cup my hands to my face tomorrow and smell the scented oil of a dog that has already begun to be a comfort as I lash tack once again to my pack and cart to be moving on in all the uncertainty that a wind has heading over a blind ridge.
At the Dalhart Christian coffee shop and book store a woman with a strong European accent tells me that Jesus is with me though she has yet to know my voice. She eyes my pack while her young boy tests her out for a new book. She comes closer as I explain my pack. "If you need a place to get out of this weather while you wait I would like to give you my number."
I tell her I will be okay in a smile. When I think the better of it, and the unknown abilities of keeping my friend in tow I reconsider and look up and she is gone. Writing on in my journal as becomes coffee cold and flat I look up at nothing wondering if I have just pushed away an answer. I have been at the Labunski family home for two weeks. I am no longer asked for stories as is normal, an itch nobody speaks of settles on any room I am in though nobody speaks of it. It is time to go. I pack and re-pack my gear in a rare fear I try to verbalize but fail. Already I have feel the thin red thread move from DeeOhGee through me. Our roads are connected. Being selfish though will not ease a dogs pain after two days of walking, topped with 45 miles to the next town of uncertainies, and then onward again. I chew a snickers that I can not taste finger punching the computer at the library knowing I could not walk one mile with that draining gash between my legs. Every tax that comes with walking with a dog vaporizes as I see myself walking on alone as stay hairs attached to gear take their leave. Before me is a scale strung near balance. a hand unseen moves from one scale pan to the other altering favor. I wait for the scales to stop moving. I wait for a knowing.