Thousand: Three Hundred Eighty-Three

fingers smell of blood. Blood! Great. As he investigates again, his fingers trembling, he doesn’t find much. Must not be a big gash, he thinks. A scalp wound bleeds a lot, even if it’s just a scratch. Urf, says a dog softly but with a sense of urgency. Dog? The yellow dog. The yellow dog he’d last seen sitting on a black woman’s carpet slippers. Before the weather invaded. “I signed a contract with you?” the man says. The dog stands in front of him, straddling the white line at the edge of the lane, curly tail raised and wagging