MIA

He sat every afternoon on the porch, the dog, Nix, at his side, waiting for his boy to come home. He’d received the notice six weeks ago that Ronnie was MIA in Afghanistan. A few days later, an Army chaplain came by. He didn’t particularly care for him, the priest, seeing as how he, Herm, was Baptist and white and the father was black. But he stayed quiet, mostly, listening to what they all had to say, him, the priest, and the neighbors who stopped by, then and again, early on. For two days after the priest came he didn’t speak to a soul, ‘cept maybe to ol' Nix, when the dog didn’t come in right away at dark. He understood that; Nix was the boy’s dog. Now, it’d become days and days of sitting and waiting. Early on he’d decided he would do it until the first snow, sit there, like this. But it was getting close, now. The winds were strong and brittle, hammering out of the west sometimes, swooping down from the top of Mt. Stone others. And sometimes he thought he would sit there no matter what happened, snow be damned – unless the boy came home, that is. Then he would go inside, sit by the fire and have a beer with him. And he’d finally tell him that he loved him. Then, he’d head upstairs. He’d be able to sleep, again.