When God gave him what he needed, He knew it wouldn’t be enough.

Now he’s stuck with something he doesn’t believe in.

Stuck with the visions he keeps for company, with memories that aren’t enough to please his soul. The memories he’s left out, they’re etched in blood on the bathroom wall.

So he sits. And he waits. Waits for something, when there is nothing.

He sits on the wooden bench outside the Medicaid nursing home across the road from the river. There is nothing nearby, not really. The only traffic is weekend vacationers en route to the lake, on their way to campers or cottages, boats, sunset dinners on their docks. He watches them attentively. Watches cars pass with all the hope he has left.

He thinks, maybe.

He thinks, we are family. Still, we are family, still.

He thinks maybe this car.

The car passes.

He thinks, maybe the next car.

He sits with his hands in his lap, his spine erect. A well-seasoned sitter. He sits and tries to let his beliefs cloud over what is real.

Maybe this one.

Family.

Maybe this one.

An orderly comes out through the front door, says, “It’s time to come in for dinner.”

He thinks, just a little longer. He thinks, maybe it’s today. Maybe it’s the next one.

He clears his throat.

Eh hem.

But the orderly doesn’t give him a moment to tell her what he’s thinking. She sighs impatiently and says, “Mr. Bauer. I know you heard me.”

She talks to him like he’s a child, like he’s something not to even pity, but to merely put up with.

There are days where clearing his throat is the only noise he makes. No hellos, no goodnights. No pleases or thank yous.

Eh hem.

Eh hem.

It is a small facility, twenty-two residents. He does not know all their names. People come, people go. He’s been there the second longest. Francis, he’s the only person that’s been there for longer.

He eats dinner in the seat across from Francis. They’ve known each other for years, but the term friend doesn’t quite fit.

Francis needs his memories to move, like a fish needs a river. Mr. Bauer keeps his memories inside, wishing them to die. But he is patient and appears to be a good listener.

“They got this stray dog problem in Arizona,” Francis says, pushing his plate away from him. “Me and the wife were out there ten, eleven years ago. She had a soft spot for dogs. All animals, but dogs the most. You ever been out to Arizona?”

Mr. Bauer clears his throat.

Eh hem.

Shakes his head.

“Dry out there. Open the window of your car, feels like a hair dryer blowing on your face, yes sir. We see all these dogs, out in that dry heat, tongues hanging out of their mouths, and my wife, sweetheart that she was, has me pull over. She’s got this little dish, and she fills it with water and calls one of the dogs over.

“The dog’s chest is hanging low, swollen tits. The dog starts drinking, and we notice milk dripping out of the tits. No pups around. I get to thinking about how sometimes bears, when they have no food around, they sometimes eat their cubs. You ever hear of that?”

Mr. Bauer clears his throat.

Eh hem.

Nods his head.

“I don’t say nothing about it to the wife. Thoughts like that would’ve broke her heart. Yes sir. But I grab a half-eaten sandwich off the dash and give it to her and she feeds the dog. Another dog comes over, then another. The sandwich is long gone, and these other dogs start licking at the one dog’s tits. Licking at the milk. Three, four dogs licking at her tits.

“I tell my wife, ‘Close the door.’ More and more dogs coming into the street. They’re snarling, nipping at each other, trying to get at those tits. All this, right outside a Best Western. Yes sir.

“I don’t want the wife seeing any more of this so I lay on the horn, start driving, trying to disperse the dogs, break it all up. A little ways down the road, we see this wild horse. You know they still have wild horses out there?”

Mr. Bauer clears his throat.

Eh hem.

Shakes his head.

“Least I think it was a wild horse. Beautiful horse, brown with white spots. We slow down to get a good look, and here comes a pack of dogs. Don’t know if it was the same pack of dogs, but they go at this horse. It raises up on its back legs, bucks once, then kicks back. A dog goes flying, dead as a doornail, and the horse takes off, the rest of the pack running after it. Hell of thing. Yes sir.”

Francis takes a long pull of apple juice through a straw, smacks his lips and makes a mmm sound.

Mmmmm.

“Found out later those wild dogs’ve killed people in Arizona. Coyote mutts, they say.”

Sometimes it feels like the ground gives way under his feet. Not in an ‘I’m such an incredible force that even the ground gets out of my way’ way. A literal way. Like rubber, soft rubber. A hallucination between his bed and the bathroom. Sometimes he thinks that maybe the plywood under the thin carpet is deteriorating. Or the floorboards under that are rotting. He thinks that maybe he’s not hallucinating at all. That maybe the ground really does move with his step.

He’s been thinking about death lately, ghosts. About how people might have energies, big and small. That these energies could be attached to a place. In life, an energy could be fleeting, just a small part of who the person is, but that small part sticks somewhere for some unknowable reason. It has no will, no thought, but stays there like a photograph, outlining the person. The energies are there, oblivious of what they were.

He thinks of an afterlife that has nothing to do with us as people. That after death, you are invited to witness the universe from when it began, billions of years before, to when it ended, billions of years later.

He thinks of another afterlife that has everything to do with us as people. That after death we are greeted by someone we loved, but without their flaws or sicknesses—in their perfect form. He thinks of his mother, her personality untarnished by the trauma that shaped her life. About meeting her fresh, happy and pure.

He wants to believe, in anything.

But the only ghosts he knows of are still alive.

The bench he sits on is old. It is not well built. The wood it’s made from hasn’t smoothed over time, but has instead splintered. He wonders if it will be replaced when it is worn through past use. He looks at his hands, arthritis gnarled, and decides that he doesn’t care.

A car comes along the road. He thinks, maybe. He thinks, we are family.

The car passes.

He sits and watches the familiar trees, his closest friends, and thinks of the many ways rain distorts a river.

Another car. It slows. He leans forward. It slows further. Its turn signal flashes. It turns into the driveway.

The woman behind the wheel looks like she’s in her early fifties, the right age. He doesn’t recognize her but sees her tight-lipped smile pointed in his direction.

Maybe.

Every joint in his body pops and crackles as he stands. The woman is walking toward the main entrance now. He shuffles to meet her. The woman sees him.

He smiles.

Clears his throat.

Eh hem.

His voice breaks as he whispers, “Elizabeth.”

The woman looks to the ground, takes a wide berth around him. He watches her disappear into the building. He stands there for a long time, looking perplexed.

And then he sits on the bench.

He sits on the bench every day. With the trees and the river and the wind and the rain. He sits with his hands in his lap, his spine erect.

And then one day, he’s not there.

The bench sits empty.

No one sits on the bench.

And then one day, the bench is gone.

It doesn’t get replaced.