The Doghouse
Somewhere near Winnemucca.
January.
Mom killed the engine to rest.
After midnight, maybe, the gas line froze.
No one else on the road.
Cold enough to fear the worst.
A semi pulled over.
Two men inside.
Not threatening, exactly,
but the kind of help you don’t feel good about needing.
My brothers and I climbed in the back.
The men patted the space between them.
The doghouse, they called it.
Mom took it.
Small talk. Awkward laughs.
Just enough to keep the air moving.
I don’t remember their faces.
Or the smell of the cab.
Just her shoulders.
Stiff, turned inward.
She put us in that position,
and she was the one who had to sit in it.
Not out of strength,
but necessity.
We found a motel.
Breakfast in a desert diner.
Someone fixed the car.
The ordeal cost two days.
A bargain.
When I think back,
the memory’s blotted.
Maybe repressed.
That might be when I first learned
how fear stays in the body.
We don’t get over things.
We just learn to move around them.