“Meathead is a sad, violent, and sweet depiction of adolescence and the weight of loss. The colors depicted are bright and visceral, the story smells like summer, and the dialogue shines with familiarity. This is devastating and beautiful prose about the things we remember, the traditions we create to cope, and how death often seems both timeless and final.”
—Kiley Reid, contest judge and author of Such a Fun Age

Meathead

by Luna Adler

Winner of the 2020 Flash Contest

We heard it before we saw it: our neighbor, Mike, grunting as he lifted the dog into the back of his truck, adjusting the body so that it was covered by a blue tarp. Goodbye, Meaty, we said because we’d never learned his name and God he was a dumb, vicious dog. Goodbye, Meathead. 

After Mike drove off we sat there a while longer. Me sucking the last of a blue Fla-Vor-Ice out of its plastic, my sister Sonia and her friend Grace with beers tucked up under their knees in case our parents came home early. Remember how he used to go at you when you were real little? Sonia asked. Remember that time he got loose and bit Ms. Morgenstein? Eventually it got dark and the beers were just fizzy sloshes at the bottom of their bottles and the mosquitoes got bad, so we went in. 

Do you think he’s gonna dump him in the river? Sonia was picking at the little crusty bits around her belly button ring and I tried not to look because once you start looking at someone’s infected belly button it’s hard to look away. 

Naw, Grace said. She’d put three slices of pizza in the microwave and we watched them spin around and around, lit up orange. He’s gonna dig a pit for him down behind the soccer field. That’s where we buried Timpy. 

We played two rounds of spit while we ate and then I heard a door slam, so I went to the window and the security light clicked on and there was Mike. His boots were wet, the leather a whole shade darker at the bottom, and when he took out the empty tarp it unfurled like a flower. 

After he stuffed the tarp in the trash can and went inside, I did my routine, which meant I blinked my eyes twice and then made a clicking sound with my mouth and tapped my nose. I did this whenever I saw roadkill or someone talked about dying and whenever Mom caught me she’d say, Cut that superstitious shit out, Lydia Jane. But she wasn’t there so I ran through it twice, for Meaty. 

When I turned around, the girls were talking and I didn't interrupt them—didn’t tell them that Mike was back with wet boots and an empty tarp and that Meaty was definitely, for sure, 100% gone. They didn't care. Weren’t wondering what would happen to his collar, his leash, the chewed-up toys scattered all over the yard. Would never know that Meaty was probably at the bottom of the river because it’s easier to tie a brick to a dead dog than dig a grave for it. So I went and sat by Sonia’s knees and let her French braid my hair.

The day that Meathead died is what I think of first, twenty-three years later, when Sonia calls me screaming. I don’t do my routine anymore after my years of therapy, no more blinking or clicking or tapping. I get in my car and drive, spilling coffee all over my lap and down my legs because I accidentally took my mug with me. I veer through town and get onto I-95 and drive for fifty minutes with coffee soaking my crotch and my sandals, take exit 99 for Waynesboro. 

Sonia lives in a red brick house, ranch-style, that her husband bought and flipped and then bought back for her as a wedding present. He’s gone now—has been gone, is managing a chain of spas in Sacramento—so the house and their son, Addison, was what she had left of him till today. I open the door without knocking and find her facedown on the couch, vomit caked on the floor. 

Remember Meaty? I ask after I make tea and bathe her and comb her hair. After I talk to the police and the man at the morgue and call her ex. Remember Meathead? I ask because I don’t want to hear her talk about my nephew’s skin smeared across asphalt, his helmet cracked, the cherry leaves cutting patterns in the sky as he lost consciousness. I give her two Klonopin from my personal collection, which I keep in an old film bottle in my purse, and she starts to breathe more evenly. Not like she’s gasping for air through a tear in her chest. 

What a fucking vicious dog, I say, because I’m trying not to think about the wet leather of my Chacos and the shit that gets left behind. How we’ll have to clean Addison’s room and throw out the tubs of creatine stacked high up on the pantry shelf and have a yard sale for all his workout equipment. And how before all that, Addison’s bike will be brought home by the police and placed in the yard, its steel frame piercing and exact among the soft folds of flowers, the uncut grass. How they’ll just leave it there in front of the house, the metal spattered with little specks of blood, dirt-dark. Balanced on its kickstand like a present. 

Published September 13th, 2020