Allegheny Lane
The worst part of walking a dog is the scooping. This presumes you're the type to clean up. Jule was the type. He took trash cans to the curb every Thursday as his dad asked him to do. He finished chores by sundown every weekend so he could play games. He flagged improper comments on the high school's social media. Jule did his homework, attended class on time and ritually said “good morning.” Scooping Shadow's poop was part of Jule’s life.
This changed last winter. Every night at eight o'clock, 16-year-old Jule fastened Shadow's harness under the fur, slid a can of bear repellant into his coat pocket and adjusted the leash while calling to his parents: “Walking Shadow!” Mrs. Goldstein, salting ice on the walkway across the street, often waved to the gangly teen-ager from her yard. Jule smiled, waving back. “Need help?” He'd ask. The elderly woman shook her head. “I've got this. But—thanks!”
Dog and boy walked along Duquesne Avenue at a steady pace until they came to 11th Street, when the sidewalk sloped down a hill. As they strolled, street lighting filtered and flickered through the branches of towering elm trees, which lined the avenue, leading into a dense forest on the other side of a creek. Shadow paused and sniffed every few yards, until Jule gave a tug and they kept walking down the hill. At the bottom, they stopped at the creek, where Duquesne Avenue ends at the narrow, winding Allegheny Lane. Jule liked to pause here. It was dark, so he could listen to water trickle as Shadow picked up any scents in the forest wind. Jule would close his eyes and breathe the night air before turning back to go home.
As Shadow and Jule stepped away from the creek to walk back up the hill, nearing the dark corner house, a rush of cold air swept down the hill. Shadow lingered on a patch of lawn in front of the house, refusing to move as Jule tugged at the leash. “C'mon, Shadow,” he said, yanking the leash. Jule froze when he looked up.
A hulking silhouette loomed in the front window. Against the dim backlight, the figure appeared to be a tall, big man. From what Jule could see, the man held a blunt object which he kept driving downward. Jule’s mouth fell open. When Shadow started barking, the figure stopped and, turning to face the front window, appeared to grow larger. Drapes quickly enshrouded the rectangular picture window. Everything went black. Jule stood still as Shadow went into a low growl and they heard the creak of a door. Jule yanked the leash. “Shadow!” He commanded. Then, he dodged up the hill with Shadow trotting along his side.
Jogging past 11th Street, Jule caught his breath as Shadow panted. Jule slowed and together they walked back home. “We're home!” Jule called to his parents as he entered the house, turning the front door’s master lock behind him as Shadow panted and patiently waited to be liberated from harness and leash.
Later, up in his room, Jule, who went by rules and gave people the benefit of the doubt, thought about what he had seen. What did I see? Jules reflected. Chuckling at himself, he concluded: not much. He pulled a textbook out of his book bag, studying calculus and reading his notes for an English exam. He read a chapter in the assigned literature, nodding off and on during the last several paragraphs. After saying goodnight to his parents, Jule went to bed. He slept restlessly.
Over the next few nights after dinner at eight o'clock, Jule walked Shadow to 11th, descending the hill and pausing by the creek at Allegheny Lane. Each night, they stood near the water's edge opposite the house where, earlier that week, they'd seen a hulking figure strike down with an object and heard the front door start to open. Shadow whimpered, panted and smiled, waiting for something to happen, as Jule stood guard—over what he wasn't sure—and fixed his stare on the picture window. Nothing happened. Drapes did not open. Neither did the front door.
Until, of course, it did. This happened two weeks after Jule had first seen the menacing figure, which is how he'd come to think of what he had seen. The stranger opened the front door while boy and dog stood at the corner facing the dark house, their backsides to the creek. Lights in the kitchen backlit the man—Jule determined that the figure was clearly a man that, by Jule's estimate, stood at least six feet three inches tall—and, in his left hand, was either a mallet or an axe (Jule couldn't be sure). The stranger stood. So did Jule. The man did not move. Neither did Jule. The standoff ended when Shadow started yelping. Jule slowly walked up the hill.
For weeks, as the season's snowfall and decorations illuminated the darkness along Allegheny Lane, Jule and the mysterious stranger repeated this nightly showdown, sizing one another up, waiting for something to happen—always with the object or the yapping dog’s leash in hand. Shadow's bark became more insistent. It seemed to Jule that the man's grip grew firmer—as if he was becoming more resolved.
To do what? Jule did not know.
He found out on December 27th. This is when, as Jule stood by the creek, as Shadow yelped in a rhythmic series of three loud barks, the hulking man came running and screaming toward the dog and boy from the doorway with what was obviously an axe raised high above. When he reached Shadow—now in a mad, barking frenzy—and Jule, the man threw himself into the space between Jule and a grizzly bear which, in that instant, rose on its hind legs behind Jule. Diverted by the commotion, the bear turned and loped into the darkness. Shadow kept barking. The stranger got up and turned to see the slender boy shivering in fear.
“Are you alright?” The man asked as Jule nervously nodded. “Good,” he told the teenager. “I thought you were a goner.” Jule did not say, though he admitted to himself, that he thought he was a goner, too.
Scott Holleran's writing has been published in the Advocate, Pittsburgh Quarterly, San Francisco Chronicle, Dallas Morning News and the Wall Street Journal. He interviewed the man who saved Salman Rushdie about his heroism, wrote the award-winning “Roberto Clemente in Retrospect” and his story, “Deal with God,” was published in an anthology in spring 2024. Listen to Holleran read his fiction at ShortStoriesByScottHolleran.substack.com and read his non-fiction at ScottHolleran.substack.com. Holleran lives in Southern California.
