Memory Infallible

I grew up in a small town. A real small town, not a suburb or anything like that. One of those sleepy and monotone, grey kind of towns with one general store connected to a gas station. The type of town where you know the names of all the people who live there. The kind of town you pass through on a road trip without stopping. A town you might never know exists if not for the stories of the people who lived there and got out. One of those magical towns.

I was a young boy back then. That was a lifetime ago. Before I became an old man in an old chair with old friends. All us old timers have old stories from our hometowns. Tall tales you’d never believe and you’d have to have been there for.

There was a smooth, brown hill in the center of that small town on which yellow grass grew in patched clumps among the stomped dirt and sitting atop was a great gnarled pear tree. I never saw a tree like that before or again. I mean, I have seen pear trees before, just not one like that. Twisted, creeping, almost like a willow.

A large black dog was chained up to the trunk of that tree with a chain that had links three times thicker than you can get at the hardware store. The black dog was the size of a bear and no one ever claimed ownership of him. Even the old timers in town, like Joe, the mechanic, would say,

“Nope, the black dog has always been there far as I can remember. Just eatin’ those pears as they fall to the ground. Nope, somethin’s wrong with that mutt, I tell you.” Then the phone would ring and Joe would inevitably curse and run to some appointment or deadline he forgot about.

My grandma would sometimes talk to us about the dog and the pear tree. She would say,

“That dog guards them pears with it’s life. I tried to feed it once, left a bowl of kibble just at the base of the hill. He jus’ kicked it down the hill and went back to pacing around that tree.” She would call it a different tree each time she told the story. An apple tree, an orange tree. I would remind her each time and she would say, “oh right, my memory isn’t what it used to be you know.”

Me and my friends, Kev, Lane, and Terry, would pass by the black dog and the pear tree every afternoon on our walk home through town after school. As curious, indestructible youths, we tried many times to get close in an attempt to pet the black dog or grab a pear. If the dog even sensed you coming near, it would lock its milky, white eyes on you and snarl. Take a few steps closer and it would bark ferociously, lines of drool arcing out between razor white fangs. The chain wrapped around the tree trunk shaved the bark down with each twist. I wondered if that chain would eventually cut it down but deep down, I knew nothing would ever fell that tree.

One day after school, as the deep orange dusk threatened the daylight, me and Kev sat across the street on a bench, watching the black dog sniff around the hill at chains' length. We shared a bag of gummy bears and gazed in silence, our imaginations going over the possibilities.

“I bet he is like, a devil dog. You know?” Kev said through a mouthful of gummies.

“Yeah, totally,” I agreed.

I remember taking a red gummy bear and looking at it in my hand. Looking into the translucent head of the candy animal. The gelatin in a hazy stasis behind the vacant dents for eyes and blank look on it’s bear face. I bit off the head.

“You know what,” I began to share my working theory, “I bet that the pears on that tree are like memories. Like, all the memories of the old people who live in this town are hanging there on those old branches. Like, they are kept in the pears. Then, when people forget things-”

“Like how Joe forgets things?” Kev gulped down chewed gummy bears.

“Yeah, like when Joe or other old people forget things, the pear drops down from the tree onto the hill.”

“Then the black dog eats it?” Kev lit up as he caught on to my tale.

“Yeah, yeah! Then, like, then the old people forget that thing. You know, once the dog eats the pear!”

Me and Kev chuckled and the dog suddenly gazed over at us, as if it understood what we were saying. Our laughter sputtered out and we sat there in a silence that hung in the street between the three of us as the blue sky went dark. The crinkling of the bag of gummy bears the only sound.

We told our story to Lane and Terry who each slapped their foreheads and gasped in realization and regret that they had not thought of this obvious explanation first. The weeks and months following, we would stop and sit across from the tree and point to each pear we could see and name it as a memory of Janice who knits sweaters for dogs, or Thomas who is the history teacher with gout.

When one dropped and the black dog gobbled it up, we would argue at what it was.

“Where he parked his car!”

“What she had for breakfast!”

“The name of his sister!”

One summer we had all made a plan to sneak out of the house at night and try and see if we could steal one of the pears. I was hesitant but Kev, Lane, and Terry were adamant. We met across the street from the pear tree and the black dog was asleep, curled a few feet from the trunk. The street lights acted like lanterns casting an ominous, haunted light over the scene and we saw it. One pear laying on the hill, untouched.

We huddled debating through hissed whispers who would be the one to go grab it. We went back and forth, arguing and pointing fingers at each other and the tree until suddenly, Terry was gone. He had peeled off while we were all trying to not be the one to go. We all hid behind the bench on the sidewalk and peeked out across the street. We could see Terry creep into view from the backside of the hill, the black dog huffing away in a deep sleep.

We watched Terry walk so slow that the movement was almost imperceptible, making it over to the fallen fruit and after he picked up the pear, he held it up in triumph. The black dog snorted in it’s dream state and we all waved in panic, signaling him to return with shaking arms and jumping up and down. We all believed that the dog could rouse at any moment and rip him in half. Terry disappeared and returned to the group a few minutes later brandishing the pear like a trophy and then, before we could get a good look at it, he took a bite with a juicy crunch.

As his teeth ripped through the fruit, the dog shot bolt upright and barked an alarming bark I had never heard before. Sounded like it echoed through the entire town, like it echoed through the entire world. I remember my heart going cold and the hair sticking up on my arms and neck. Feeling like something was wrong. We were all watching the dog pull and shake the tree with the taught chain as it leapt towards us, furious we had stolen one of it’s precious fruits. Terry audibly gulped his mouthful down and gestured with the pear saying,

“What’s his problem?”

We all released a nervous chuckle and then Terry hit the sidewalk with a thick slap, the pear rolling out into the street. He began twitching and convulsing immediately, his eyes were rolled up into his head and foam was coming out of his mouth, tears down his cheeks. We didn’t know what to do and I ran, knocking on doors to get someone to help. Terry went into a coma later that night and he died three days later. Doctors said it was some kind of spontaneous aneurysm or something.

That was the year before I moved away for school. We never talked about what happened that night and after the funeral we didn’t walk home together anymore. None of us stopped across the street playing ‘guess the memory’ while pointing at the tree. I never talked to Kev and Lane again after I left and I never returned to that town again.

Now, as my 87th birthday gets closer, my own memory is beginning to fade. I do remember that tree though, and that black dog. I wonder if the pears that hold my memories are becoming over ripe and dropping to the hill to sit on the patchy grass clumps. I wonder if that dog is devouring them right now and which ones they could be. How could I know?

I think of Kev and Lane and if they are still in that small town. If they are now the old timers telling the tales of the pear tree and the black dog who was always there, guarding the fruits. Are they forgetting the names and places now? Is that ageless dog still twisting that chain around the trunk of that tree until the memories grow and fall?

I remember my friend who took a bite of that cursed pear that horrible summer night. I remember standing in silence at his funeral. What was his name again? It started with a T. It was T - something. Apologies, my memory isn’t what it used to be.