
Kickass and the dead Monday morning
Kickass, the doorstop dog, joined the keeper in witnessing the eerie arrival of a Monday morning when the world did not come to life. There was a drab cemetery gray to the March view across town and over to the river bluffs. The streets that would normally be alive with vehicles as people rushed to appointed Monday morning places, were almost totally deserted. The yellow school buses were nowhere to be seen and there were no delivery trucks or contractor pickups towing tool trailers.
A siren wailed briefly from the direction of the highway, and then there was silence so complete it could be felt through the window glass. The keeper tried to imagine the thousands of school kids, and the delivery drivers and contractors and everyone else isolated out of sight on a Monday morning when the world did not come to life.
Then there was the wailing siren again. It meant trouble for somebody had come to a sharp focus. For the keeper and Phyllis and everyone else, trouble on this Monday morning is spread nowhere and everywhere, like a plague, and there is a great dread as to its focus.
A lone car passes on Reeve Road–maybe a nurse going to work.

