Given all I have to think about—the plight of Ukraine, the aches that have supplanted connective tissue in my body, the price of eggs—you would not think my mind would somehow get stuck on wondering about Dolly. But there she is.
Dolly was a small,
frizzled blonde girl who occasionally drifted into my buddy’s yard when we were
hanging out there during my early teens. My buddy always gave her a cookie, and
she barked “thanks” in an impossibly deep and gravelly voice—one that sounded
like a chain slumping down onto a metal deck.
Dolly often had a
dirt-smeared face, and she mispronounced the word rabbit. “Raddits,” she
called them. Naturally, we urged her to say “raddit” as often as possible.
“Where does she come
from?” I asked my buddy one day.
My buddy shrugged and
pointed up the alley. “Somewhere in that direction.”
So, that’s the crux of
it. Here at the waning end of my life, with all that I have to consider, I am
again wondering where Dolly came from.
—Mitchell Hegman
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