You get ‘em on an overcast day, that light’s just right, and you get that light rain at night, too, that’s that perfect mixture, Jack would say. Killing weeds was his thing. And right below that, it was killing brush. The last day I saw him, it was an overcast day, his favorite kind of day. He was so giddy you’d think he was drunk.

Maybe he was.

I was too young to notice every little thing.

That day, like any weed killing day, he gassed up his four-wheeler with a cigarette in his mouth. And he checked what chemicals he had in his sprayer by spraying some on his jacket and sniffing his sleeve. Like he was testing perfume. The number of things that could have killed him. What finally did caught everyone by surprise. Old age.

Death by years and days.

Old age is not a disease, is what my vet tells me. She’s chiding me about neglecting my dog’s teeth. Chihuahuas, small dogs in general, have a hard time dying with all their teeth in. My little guy’s no different. He’s got two full rows of plaque so thick it’s actually holding in place his teeth, which are all by now so rotten they’re in need of extraction. My vet wants to move forward with the extractions. All of them. I don’t have the money, but I’m pretending to decide one way or the other. While you’re thinking, she said, and she handed me a pamphlet on pet euthanasia that reads because pets are family. Like it’s the only next step. And maybe it is when you don’t have $3,000 to spend on your dog’s mouth.

I adopted my little guy for less than $200 and that pretty much broke me at the time.

At that time I actually thought I could be at home on the street if it came to that. That I could be one of those young PNW men with a dog in a shopping cart. I’m good at writing short works; maybe I could be the sign guy. Find myself a dry place under a Grocery Outlet awning with a stack of cardboard and get to work writing for friends. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do: write for friends.

No work. Anything helps.

Injured and can’t work. No health insurance. Anything helps.

Pregnant and out of a job. Running from an abusive ex. Anything helps.

A job would help more than anything. But anything helps anyway.

I used to be a dancer. Anything helps.

Mary Oliver wrote it doesn’t take much money to live. She may have needed less money when she wrote that than she would need were she alive and writing today. Maybe she’d have kept that thought to herself. You need very little money when you have enough money. You need less money when you’re young, too. Maybe that was it: she was young when she wrote you don’t need much. Regardless, I can’t figure it out. Living seems to take everything I have, my money and my time.

I sprayed blackberries today. I stood downwind and sucked in more than my fair share of unscented brush killer. It’s the perfect day for this, I thought. Maybe I’ll take in a movie once I’m done. Jack used to watch Cinemax at lunchtime. He had two secret shelves of Max After Dark recorded on VHS tapes. His grandson used to sneak them out and change the labels and scandalize me with them.

Do you want to The Princess Bride or The Jerk?

The Princess Bride.

Okay. And he’d pop it in and press play and my whole body’d tense up from yet more exposure to softcore porn.

Jack lived to be 93, I think. What kept him going wasn’t self care. Not by today’s standards, or yesterday’s for that matter.

Anyway, I don’t have a lot of experience landscaping, but I’m a fast learner. And I think I could live to be a ripe old age if given the opportunity to work for you.

Thanks for your time,

Todd