Sparky's Gift

"Not that I know of, Marvin," he said.

"That's right," I said. "Because I respected you. But you never once gave me the benefit of the doubt, did you? You just accepted what that fucker showed you without question. You always said I should stand up like a man when I've been wronged. Well, that's what I'm doing right now. So you people had better get your heads out of your asses. Did you know he tried the same thing with Darla?"

"What?" Dale asked. "You mean Darla Thompson? In Accounting?"

"Yes," I said. "I saw the picture and told Roger to knock it the fuck off. This is all about him getting revenge on me for that. Now he's going after Jane."

"That can't be true," Dale said.

"Well it is," I said. "I'm telling you, Dale, Roger is trouble with a capital T. If you don't nip this in the bud right now, you're going to face the mother of all lawsuits, right along with him."

"You know I don't take threats too kindly," Dale said. I could hear the anger in his voice.

"This isn't a threat, Dale," I said. I heard him breathe heavily for a few seconds.

"I'll think about what you said," Dale told me. "You'd better be able to prove all this."

"Don't worry," I said. "I will. You'd better be ready to make this right." I ended the call and looked at my watch. Theresa lived about 40 miles or so out of town, and I had just enough time to get ready, so I showered, changed and grabbed Sparky's leash. She knew the leash meant she was going for a ride and came up to me, her tail wagging, her mouth open in what looked like a grin. I put the leash on her and petted her.

"You believe me, don't you Sparky?" I asked. I swear it looked like she nodded her head. We got in the truck and I headed out, getting to her small house just in time. I saw Jerry's truck already parked in the small driveway.

Theresa let me in when I knocked on the door. Of course, Sparky got everyone's attention right off the bat. Jerry shook my hand as Theresa gave me a cup of coffee.

"I'm so sorry to hear about all this shit," he said. "Darla told me what you said about Roger doctoring a picture of her."

"That's not all," I said. "He claimed it was taken the Saturday you guys were at our place."

"I'll kill the fucker," Jerry said.

"You'll need to stand in line," I told him.

"We drove by your place on the way over here," Jerry said. "We both saw his car in your driveway and all the downstairs lights were off."

"I'll strangle the motherfucker," I growled.

"You'll have to do it after dinner," Theresa said, putting a large meatloaf on the table. We sat down and enjoyed her dinner. "I'm sorry I couldn't make anything better," she added. She even gave a small slice to Sparky, who gobbled it down in no time. Normally, I wouldn't give Sparky "people" food, but I made an exception in this case.

"This is perfect," I said. "It's the best I've eaten in two days." After we ate, we gathered in the living room and discussed the situation with Roger.

"Dale gave him your old job," Jerry said. "He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. Messed up the wheelabrator so bad it'll put us at least a week behind." The wheelabrator was a large device that used shotblasting to clean, polish and remove burrs from the iron after it had been formed into product.

Items were placed on a turntable and spun as millions of tiny beads were used to basically sand-blast the product. Once complete, the product was smooth as a baby's behind, ready to be finished or plated. There's more to it, but that's basically it in a nutshell. The machine we had was fairly old and required a fair amount of maintenance.

"That's not all," Jerry said. "He's been bragging to the guys on the floor about how he's working to get inside Jane's panties. A few of us, myself included, think he's full of shit, but seeing him at your place, I don't know. It sure doesn't look good." I looked at Darla.

"You work with Jane," I said. "Has she said anything?" Darla shook her head.

"Not directly," she said. "But Roger has come up a few times and closed the door after he's gone into her office. She looks a bit flushed after he leaves. I don't know what's going on, but it sure doesn't look good."

"You think they're actually doing it in her office? In the middle of the day?" Theresa asked. Darla shook her head.

"You know how thin those walls are," Darla said. "If they were fooling around, we would probably have heard something. No, I think he's trying to wear her down with his bullshit." Just then, my phone buzzed repeatedly. I looked and saw several text messages from a number I didn't recognize.

"I'm fucking your wife right now," the first one said. We read through the rest, shocked.

"God, she's so fucking tight. Not any more," the next message read.

"Don't worry, Marv, old buddy, I'm taking real good care of this pussy for you," the third one read. "Maybe I'll get her pregnant for you. That way you'll have to pay her child support. Ha Ha. LOL."

"Jane says you're never going to touch this pussy again," the fourth message read. "It's mine now. ALL MINE!"

The next two messages showed pictures. The first one was a close-up of someone's cock inside a woman's pussy. I laughed. The second showed a close-up of the same woman with cum leaking out of her pussy.

"What's so funny?" Jerry asked.

"That stupid fuck," I said. "That's not Jane in those pictures."

"How do you know?" he asked.

"I've been married to Jane for 20 years," I said. "Believe me, I know what she looks like between her legs. I don't know who the guy is, but that ain't her."

"What are you going to do?" Darla asked.

"I think I'll give ol' Dale something to think about," I said. "Let's see if he gives Jane as much of a chance to explain herself as he did me."

"You're cold-blooded," Jerry said. I nodded my head.

"Yup," I said. "Maybe this'll wake the old man up." I forwarded the messages and pictures to Dale's cell phone and waited for a reply. I also forwarded them to Jane's cell. I unblocked her number to see if she would answer. I also told her I forwarded them to her father and would be filing for divorce on the grounds of adultery based on those photos. Let her put that in her pipe and smoke it, I decided.

We talked well into the night, but Jerry and Darla had to leave so they could get to bed. After they left, I pulled out a couple hundred dollars and handed it to Theresa.

"Marvin, I appreciate it, but I can't take this," she said.

"Yes you can," I told her. "And if you need more, let me know."

"Thanks, Marvin," she said, giving me a hug. Sparky put a paw on her, so she bent down and hugged my furry friend. After I put Sparky back on her leash, we went to the truck and headed back to the hotel.

About halfway to the motel, Sparky began moving around, hinting that she needed to go to the bathroom. I recognized the signals, and pulled into a small rest stop located about 10 miles from the motel. It was dark and I couldn't tell if anyone else was around, so I grabbed the pistol I kept in the glove box and put it in my coat pocket.

I put Sparky on her leash and let her out of the truck. We walked around for quite a while in the dark as she looked for a place to relieve herself. We were halfway up the hill to the restroom before she finally did her business. I grabbed a bag from the bin in front of the restroom and picked up her mess, then realized I had to use the bathroom myself, so I went in to take a dump while Sparky waited outside the stall. I cleaned up, grabbed her leash and went back out into the cold night.

I noticed something was wrong right away -- my truck was missing. I could see the tracks in the fresh snow where someone had gotten inside and driven off in it, but I never heard the engine. I looked around but there was no one else around. Crap, I thought. What else could go wrong?

I pulled out my phone to call 911, but the battery was dead. Dammit, I thought. This was turning into a freaking nightmare. With Sparky on her leash, I began walking in the general direction of the motel, knowing I had a good ten miles to go. It was cold and dark, and there were no lights on the road whatsoever. Worse yet, the snow was coming down fast and collecting on the road, making it slick. I hoped someone would drive by, but there was no such luck.

It was slow going and I nearly fell into the ditch several times now that the snow was covering the road. After a couple hours, I saw lights ahead and remembered seeing a church on the road, so I hoped someone would be there and let me use the phone.

I got to the church and someone at the door told me I had to tie Sparky up outside. I tied the leash to the railing on the church steps, petted her and told her to stay.

"Can I please use your phone?" I asked. "Someone stole my truck back at the rest stop and I need to call the police."

"Yeah, sure," the man said. "Come on in. There's coffee on as well." I thanked the man, grabbed a cup of hot coffee and called 911. It took a while for me to speak to someone who seemed to know what the heck he or she was doing. Finally, a female voice came on the line. I recognized the voice as belonging to Faye Armbrister, a friend from high school. Call it one of the benefits of living in a tight-knit community, I guess.

"Faye, is that you?" I asked.

"Yeah, is this Marvin Coolidge?" she asked in response.

"Yes it is," I said. "I'm trying to report my truck being stolen." I gave her the license plate number and the description and waited while she looked.

"Well, it looks like one of our deputies ran across it about an hour ago over on Highway 57. Guess whoever took it wasn't able to make Dead Man's Curve and went over the embankment. Looks like it rolled a few times going down," she said. "It's been towed over to Rupert's Auto from what I can see."

"Damn," I said. Dead Man's Curve was well known in the area as a death trap. Quite a few people, including my own parents, had lost their lives on that curve.

"Yeah," she said. "There's been a lot of accidents tonight. Lots of ice and snow. I'm sorry."

"That's okay, Faye," I said. "Thanks." I ended the call and looked at my watch. I had been on the phone for at least 30 minutes. I found the man who let me in and explained the situation.

"I really don't want to call anyone to come out this late with the snow and all," I said. "Would it be alright if my dog and I stay here tonight? She's well behaved and house-broken and I can rack out in one of the pews." The man thought for a couple of minutes before nodding his head.

"I suppose it'd be okay," he said. "Go get your dog and I'll round up some blankets."

"Thanks," I said. I headed outside and found that Sparky was gone. Surely she couldn't have gotten loose, I thought. I had the leash tied pretty tight and Sparky wasn't one to run off. Perhaps someone untied her leash. I looked and saw her tracks in the snow and began following them, calling out her name.

I walked down the road for what seemed like forever, calling her name. Soon, the falling snow had covered whatever tracks were there and I saw no sign of her anywhere. I was exhausted, both mentally and physically and sat down in the snow on the side of the road. Suddenly, it all hit me at once -- the pain, the humiliation and the despair.

Why did all of this have to happen, I asked myself. What did I ever do to deserve this? First I lose my job, then I lose my wife and my home, then my truck. And now, my dog, the one thing I thought would stay loyal to me, deserted me.

And both my wife and my father-in-law refused to even hear my side. All because of one dickhead's lie. For the first time since all this shit started, I wept bitterly. I looked up at the sky, watching the snow come down.

"Why?" I yelled at the sky. I got no answer. Then it hit me. My parents had died 10 years ago. Maybe I could join them and all my problems would be over. Either that or I could just sit here and freeze to death. Maybe a snow plow would come along and bury my body in a snow berm and I wouldn't be found until spring.

Fuck it, I finally said to myself. No matter what, I'm screwed. I pulled the pistol out of my jacket and made sure the one remaining bullet was in place so it could do what it was designed to do.

I put the barrel in my mouth, screwed my eyes shut, cocked the pistol and pulled the trigger. But the trigger wouldn't move. What the hell, I asked myself. I just had this thing out to the range a couple weekends ago. It worked just fine then. I pulled and pulled with all my strength, but the trigger wouldn't move. Then I heard it.

"Mister, why are you trying to hurt yourself?" I heard a little girl ask. Shocked, I turned to the voice which seemed to come from my left side. I saw a little girl who couldn't have been more than six or seven years old, wearing a red velvet dress and a white blouse. She stood in the snow in her highly-polished black shoes. She had to be freezing in this weather, but she didn't appear to even notice the cold.

"Who are you?" I asked. "Why are you out in this weather? Where are your parents?"

"I'm a friend," she said. "Why are you trying to hurt yourself?" I broke down as I told her my story. I cried even harder as I told her about Sparky deserting me.

"I didn't do anything wrong," I said, my body shivering, my eyes blinded from my tears.

"He knows," the girl said. I looked at her.

"Who knows?" I asked.

"Him," she said, pointing up. "The one whose birth you're celebrating. He knows you didn't do anything wrong."

"Then why is this all happening?" I asked.

"Because," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "The rain falls on the just as well as the unjust. You've been forgiven much, Marvin Coolidge. And as much as you've been forgiven, you need to forgive."

"How do you know who I am?" I asked, confused. She smiled shyly.

"Your parents told me all about you," she said. "And it's not time for you to join them." What the hell was this, I asked myself. Am I talking to a hallucination now? Am I crazy or something?

My parents have been dead for a decade. There was no way this girl could know them. Maybe I was suffering from hypothermia. I looked back at her, trying to figure out who she was. She seemed familiar to me for some reason, but I couldn't place it. Her eyes suddenly lit up.

"Here she comes," she said.

"Who?" I asked.

"Sparky," she said. "Who else?" I looked in the opposite direction and saw Sparky running toward me, a set of headlights behind her. Soon, my faithful dog was all over me, licking my face. I held her tight, tears falling down my face. She was wet from the snow, but I didn't care. My Sparky was back.

I looked back at the headlights, which had stopped by now. I saw two figures in front of the car, but the lights blinded me and I couldn't make out who it was. It looked like a woman and a man, but I didn't recognize them. Then I heard the woman and I knew who it was.

"Marvin," Jane called out. "Is that you?" She began walking faster toward me and soon was standing over me. "Oh my God, Marvin, I thought you were dead. I was so worried when the sheriff's office called and said your truck had run off the road and rolled over. I thought I lost you for good. We were driving down the road looking for you when we saw Sparky. She barked at us and started running back so we followed her." She saw the pistol in my hand.

"What were you planning to do? Please don't tell me you were going to kill yourself." The man came over to me and helped me to my feet. He took the pistol from me and emptied it. I could see it was Dale.

"C'mon, son," he said calmly, "let's get out of the cold and get you home."

"Home?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Home. Where you belong. With your wife." I looked back but the little girl was gone and there were no tracks in the snow. Where did she go, I asked myself. Dale looked at me.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Did you guys see a little girl there a couple minutes ago?" I asked. They looked at each other and shook their heads.

"No, we didn't," Jane said. "There wasn't anyone else there. You've been out in the cold too long. Come on, get in the truck. We have some blankets and hot coffee for you." They put me in the back seat of Dale's dual cab pickup. Jane got in the back with me and wrapped a heavy blanket around me. She grabbed some towels and began drying me off.

Fortunately, I had put on thermal underwear before I left for Theresa's place or I would have been in worse shape than I was already in. Dale opened the front door and Sparky jumped in. After Dale got in the driver's seat, he poured a cup of hot coffee from a thermos and handed me a cup.

"I need to get my things and Sparky's food from the motel," I said, my voice wavering. "You wouldn't mind if we went there first, would you?"

"No problem," Dale said. "You still out at that motel over on Highway 41?"

"Yeah," I said, warming my hand with the cup of coffee. My hands began to tingle as I held the warm cup. Jane held my head as Dale drove to the motel. I could feel her tears as she held me and softly stroked my hair. We got to the motel a few minutes later and I grabbed my things and checked out. Then we headed home.

Home, I thought to myself. I couldn't think of a better place to be at that moment. By now, I had warmed up enough that I could sit up straight and talk without shaking.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Well, after I got those texts you forwarded from Roger, I called Dad," Jane said. "I can't tell you how pissed off I was." Dale laughed.

"Yeah," he said. "Kinda reminded me of your mother. I called Roger up right away and fired him on the spot. Then I called Jerry. I think Jerry and some of the other boys had a few words with him, if you know what I mean. He had us all snookered." I knew what he meant. For a moment, I almost felt sorry for Roger. Almost.

"Except for you," Jane said, looking at me sadly. "You had him dead to rights. I'm so sorry I doubted you, Marvin. I should've known better. I was just so shocked when he showed those pictures to me."

"So why was Roger at the house earlier this evening?" I asked. She looked at me, surprised I knew. "Jerry told me earlier this evening he saw Roger's car at the place."

"Roger was there," she said. "He was talking a bunch of crap about you, telling me he was so sorry I had to deal with a cheating husband."

"He was trying to get you in bed, you know that, right?" I said. Jane nodded her head.

"I know," she said. "I told him to leave and then I got those texts from you about 30 minutes later."

"You didn't do anything with him, did you?" I asked.

"Oh hell no," she said. Jane had never lied to me before, so I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. She looked at me, tears in her eyes.

"Can you ever forgive me for not believing you?" she asked. Dale piped up.

"And I can't tell you how sorry I am for not giving you a chance to explain, son," he said. "Can you forgive me as well?" In all the years I had known him, this was the first time I had ever seen him apologize for anything. I thought about what that girl told me. Perhaps, I thought, I should try this forgiveness stuff, even though a part of me wanted to lash out.

"I forgive you," I said. "Both of you." Jane wrapped her arms around me and smothered me with kisses.

"I love you so much, Marvin," she said, tears falling down her face. Soon, we were home. Dale helped me carry my things inside as Jane put on a fresh pot of coffee. After we got everything in, Dale, Jane and I had a group hug in the front room. For a moment, I thought I saw the hint of a tear in Dale's eye.

"I feel so bad about all of this," he said. "I promise, I'll make it all up to you. Both."

"What about Theresa?" I asked.

"She's got her job back, with a raise," Dale said. "I also plan to give her a public apology the first day back at the office. Oh, and don't worry about that severance check. We'll call it a bonus instead."