Little Mercies. Heather Gudenkauf

“It just seemed like the right thing to do,” she finally said, not able to meet his gaze.

      Her father stood there for a moment staring down at her, his shirttail flapping like a flag in the hot Nebraska wind, his jeans hanging low on his hips, the band of his boxers peeking out. “Guess I can’t argue with that line of thinking,” he said at last, lowering himself into a sitting position next to her. “I’m thinking that wasn’t the best birthday present for a little girl, was it? You probably wanted new shoes or your ears pierced. Something girlie like that.”

      “No, no,” Jenny protested. “It was a great idea for a present. I just felt...sorry for it.”

      They both looked down into the small trench. “Well, how about we commence with the ceremony and then go to the Happy Pancake for supper?” her father asked, looking at her with weary, bloodshot eyes. Together they filled in the tiny hole covering the white paw with dusty earth. “Would you like to say a few words?” her father asked solemnly.

      “I’ve never been to a funeral before,” Jenny admitted. “I’m not sure what I should say.”

      “Well, I’ve been to my share of funerals and mostly there’s a lot of praying and crying. You can say whatever comes to mind and it’s all right.”

      Jenny thought this over for a moment. “Do I have to say it out loud?” she asked.

      “Nope, some of the most powerful words ever spoken are said right here.” He tapped his tobacco-stained fingers sagely against his chest.

      Jenny stood silently over the tiny grave for a moment and then her father took her by the hand and they walked the quarter mile to the Happy Pancake, both retreating to the restroom after the waitress raised her eyebrows at their dirt-encrusted fingernails.

      “The Chocolate Chip Happy Stack is $4.99, if that’s not too much,” Jenny said hopefully, scanning the prices on the menu. “And you can have my bacon if you want it.”

      “Get whatever you want, Peanut. We’re celebrating today,” her father said buoyantly. Jenny peeked skeptically at her father from behind the plastic folds of the menu. Usually, whenever her father announced a celebration, he said he was going to invite two friends over and two friends only. Brew and Ski. Her only consolation was that the Happy Pancake promised a strictly family atmosphere complete with thirty-seven kinds of pancakes and a man who dressed up in a smiling pancake costume and made balloon animals on Sundays. Beer and his problematic friends were nowhere to be found on the menu.

      “I guess I’ll have the Happy Hawaiian Stack then,” Jenny decided. She had already tried three of the thirty-seven pancake varieties and was determined to try each.

      “A fine, fine choice, madame,” her father said in his fake French waiter accent, causing her to giggle.

      “So what are we celebrating?” Jenny asked in her most grown-up voice after their orders were placed and they were both sipping on tall frothy glasses of orange juice.

      “Hold on to your hat...” he began, and Jenny indulgently clapped her hands atop her head. “We are going on a trip!” her father said, emphasizing each word with a hand slap to the Formica tabletop.

      “What kind of trip?” Jenny asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously, thinking of their truck leaking dangerous black smoke from beneath the hood the last time her father tried to start it.

      “I got a call from my old friend Matthew,” her father said, pausing when the waitress appeared with their plates and slid a pile of steaming pancakes topped with pineapples, whipped cream and a brightly colored umbrella in front of Jenny. He waited until the waitress retreated before continuing, “You wouldn’t remember him, you were just a baby the last time we saw him, but Matthew called and said they were looking for some workers at the John Deere plant over in Iowa.” He looked at his daughter hopefully.

      “That doesn’t sound like a trip,” Jenny said miserably, staring down at her pancakes, the whipped cream already sliding from the stack in a buttery sludge. She pushed her plate to the middle of the table. “That sounds like moving.” She suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore.

      “It’s right on the Mississippi River. We can go fishing, maybe even buy a boat someday. Imagine that, Peanut.” Her father stabbed his fork at a piece of sausage, a wide grin on his face. “We could live on a houseboat if we wanted to.”

      This was an interesting thought. A houseboat. But Jenny pushed the thought aside. “What’s the name of this place,” Jenny asked grumpily, pulling her plate back and pinching off a piece of the pancake with her fingers.

      “Dubuque. And besides the Mississippi River, there’s a dog track and a river museum with otters and alligators and all kinds of cool things.”

      Silently, Jenny began eating—she wasn’t sure when she and her father would get their next decent meal. Eight hours from now they would most likely be splitting a bag of chips and a stick of beef jerky. Her belly felt uncomfortably full, her tongue thick with syrup. Her father was going on and on about how great Iowa was going to be, how the John Deere plant paid fifteen dollars an hour, how they’d move into an apartment, but just for a while. Once they were settled they could move into a house where she would have her own room and a backyard. Jenny wanted to ask him if there would be a breakfast nook. It sounded so cozy and comfortable, a small corner of the kitchen, surrounded by sun-filled windows. But her stomach hurt and she didn’t want him to think that she approved of his plan in any way. Jenny licked her syrupy fingers one by one. “When do we leave?” she asked in resignation.

      “How ’bout tonight?” her father asked, smiling broadly, his right cheek collapsing into a deep dimple that women loved. Then, leaning in so closely that she could smell sausage intermingled with this afternoon’s beer, he lowered his voice. “You run on home and start packing. I’ll pay and catch up with you in a few minutes. We got a bus to catch at midnight.”

      Jenny knew that her father wasn’t going to pay for their supper, but at least he was letting her get out of the restaurant before embarrassing her to death. He was thoughtful that way.

       Chapter 3

      I creep down the hallway, the wooden floor sighing creakily beneath my bare feet. I peek into the kids’ rooms. First Leah’s and then Lucas’s. Leah is tented beneath her thin white sheet, her bright pink comforter covered with multicolored peace symbols kicked to the end of the bed. A faint glow shines through the cotton and I’m hoping that she has a flashlight beneath the covers reading a book like I used to when I was little. But I know my daughter too well. It’s her handheld video game, one that Adam’s parents, Hank and Theresa, gave her a few months ago for her ninth birthday. A confusing game where the avatar goes back in time, trying to save the stolen prince and return him safely to the enchanted kingdom. It’s a lot like what you do for a living, El, Hank told me happily after Leah opened the brightly wrapped package, whooped with joy and called to thank her grandparents.

      Now that would be a superpower, I think to myself. To be able to step into a time machine and travel back a week, an hour, a minute, a second before some indescribable thing happens to a child. To stand before a parent brandishing a cigarette, a stepparent with a lurid leer, a caregiver with a raised fist and say, “Do you really want to do this?”

      “Hey, Leah,” I whisper, closing the bedroom door behind me and trying not to wake Lucas who, across the hall, is buried beneath his own blanket like a wooly bear caterpillar, even though it’s still eighty degrees outside and the air conditioner is less than reliable. Neither Adam nor I have had the time to call the repairman. I peer beneath her sheet and smile at my firstborn daughter. She looks up guiltily at me from beneath a forelock of dark hair damply pasted against her forehead.

      “It’s nearly midnight, turn that thing off,” I chide, holding out my hand for the game. She presses a button and suddenly we’re plunged into darkness but for the star-shaped night-light plugged into the receptacle next to her bed.

      “I