Nothing, Nothing

I can’t find it.

Squirreled away somewhere within our perpetually messy house lies a trove of gummy candies – our favorite to share – but without my grasp. I cannot, for the very life of me, remember where I hid the pastel bags with all their happy faces and false advertisements. My headache isn’t getting any better (not that sugary confections would help) and I can feel the pressure build within as I stumble from room to room.

Where on earth did I put them?

I search the usual haunts (the places I hide cigarettes whenever I cave to old feelings): dust. I ransack the truck (tools that really should be put back in the tool bag) and the car (why haven’t I finished vacuuming this filthy thing? Oh, that Red Bull is unopened!).

Nothing.

I begin to doubt whether I had actually stashed any candies away after all. Perhaps, perhaps I merely mixed up the memories from another time. I have lived here a year and have been visiting this place – our home – for the better part of a decade, long before we decided to make anything official, to really try our hand at doing what our hearts have always desired but what our egos would always sabotage at first chance.

“What are you looking for?”

“Nothing, nothing,” I mutter. If she knows where I hide things, then the jig is up. A man deserves some secrets to his life. But there’s a far cry in distance between a mistress and a sweet tooth.

The dogs are equally intrigued by my increasingly frantic maneuvers; the cat doesn’t give two shits what I’m up to. He licks at his missing toe, the product of his playing escape artist several months ago. The dogs watch with big dumb eyes, their heads cocked in curiosity, ears pricking up with ever slur and slammed drawer.

Nope. Not in the office desk either. My head continues to thrum.

It wasn’t always like this, you understand. Once upon a time, I didn’t need to hide anything within my place. All my sins and successes were available for anyone to view should they come a wandering. It wasn’t unusual to see the remnants of a twelver, another on standby, next to a near empty pack of reds, the perspiration of the latest opened can staining whatever mail it happened to be resting upon. Typically, a birthday invitation. So many goddamned birthdays and not a single gummy.

But that was back in the day, back before we decided that we had had enough of pretending our love wasn’t real or reciprocated. 19 years she gave me the shoulder, meeting my advances with polite smiles and firmer No’s. I confessed my love once to her, near on 10 years ago, just the two of us, a hot tub, and her plane ticket. Wrote it all down and everything, some 10 pages of allegory and bad writing, but me all the same on the page. She read it in silence, the bubbling of the sauna keeping pace with her racing heart and my still mind. It felt good, you understand, to finally – finally! – just admit what I was feeling and no longer beat around the bush. And watching her take it all in, to devour my words, to devour me, I had shot my shot and watched it fly wide.

“I’m going to bed,” she said. “You can’t just say this to me now.”

I watched the bubbles form and burst, replaced by puffs of steam. We locked eyes and said nothing more.

We had bid one another good-bye then, all those years ago, both accepting that our paths had crossed and were now headed their own direction, independent from one another, free to live our lives and love our loves.

She would confess her own love this summer past.

Without delay, I left the deserts and journeyed to the mountains to be with her. To spend the rest of my days at her side, in the very house I had been a frequent visitor and guest o’er the years – but never a lover. The remnants of the twelver and half-empty packs of reds didn’t survive the trip. They stayed back in the desert, becoming fleeting memories and occasional vices, with no room for them here in our mountains.

And now I’m hiding (and losing) gummies in this place.

The pup looks at me as I stamp out of the office, her front leg wrapped in a bright pink cast, the remnants of a hit-and-run from some poor son-of-a-bitch who’s going to have a tough time explaining that one to Saint Peter. Who the hell hits a dog in a residential area and speeds off? She shakily stands herself upright – the hind leg being out of socket until the surgery – and joins me in my search. Useless as a sniffer, she pokes her head into every cabinet I open, trying to help me find the gummies but not fully understanding what sort of odd game we’re playing. Dumb dog.

Our dumb dog.

She joins me, my ever-energetic pup, and we check outside in the feed box. It keeps the coons out so surely it’ll keep the missus from poking around needlessly. After all – who’s going to check the feed storage for Sour Patch Kids?

A dozen curious chickens perch on the railing, craning their heads to see what tasty treats I am about to pull from their magical food box. A dozen more wait eagerly in the yard below, the opening of the back door and my steps upon the patio the surest sign that something is about to be thrown their way. The stray cats linger alongside the rubberneckers and the groundlings, nonchalant and completely disinterested in what me and the pooch are up to. The chickens pay them no mind, no longer afraid of the toms, matching them in size and temperament. All these fat bastards want to do is eat kibble or grain.

No dice. No gummies hidden outside. I moved all the feeds, supplements, litter, and pellets aside in my effort to find the damned things. The Dalmatian looks up at me, her expression one of childlike novelty. “What exactly are we looking for,” she seems to ask.

“Nothing, nothing,” I mutter. I turn my back toward the house, facing the meadow beyond our elk-proof fence (the chickens could not care less about the fence, routinely fluttering over it to antagonize my neighbor’s dogs). We didn’t mow the back this summer, opting instead to let the wildflowers take root and take over. A flood of yellow welcomes us, a small harem of cow and bull elk working their way through the uncut meadow grasses and wildflowers. The ground within the half-acre fence line bustles with eager chickens and playful cats, wrestling and chasing one another, some finding themselves dangerously close to disturbing our honey bee hives.

19 years of cold shoulders and this girl gets me a honey bee colony and hive for my birthday. No honey harvested yet, we mutually agreed: first we’re going to make sure we can keep these things alive through the winter.

The wrestling cats and annoyed chickens avoid the hives, bouncing near enough to anger the bees on guard duty but far enough away that the colony doesn’t send out their suicide squads to chase them away. We learned that lesson the amusing way when I insisted that the bees were inside, merely sleeping to avoid the cold. I had rapped upon the hive with my knuckle. “See? They are perfectly fine.”

She got stung twice; I didn’t.

I shudder in the cold – winter is right around the corner. I turn back toward the house, holding the door open for Hop Along to get herself inside. The chickens aren’t allowed. They go back to pecking at whatever catches their fancy.

We search through the garage, the dog and I, as I pull aside old bottles of older mead to see where I might have stashed my sugary goods. A few boxes of my desert belongings are still gathering dust here. Our home is comfortable, but certainly isn’t roomy. Decisions were made and not all of my things made the cut. Posters that once hung proudly in my bachelor pad of Sin and Vice languish here. “You are not hanging Vladimir Lenin in our house,” she said.

Shame, really. It’s a brilliant propaganda piece.

We root and rummage through boxes and bundles to no avail. I find old knickknacks from the desert that once held a special place in my heart; here, they’ve been replaced by crippled dogs and a full-time missus of unconditional and unbreakable love. Perhaps they will find time to migrate inside to the warmth of the house itself, but until then, they can remain out here. I’ve got candy to find, dammit. My head continues to throb, exacerbated by the changing weather and constant shuffling around in dusty rooms.

But try as I might, my hunting skills are terrible. Three years and I’ve yet to bag a turkey; one year and I’ve yet to bag my candy. I sigh. So this is it. “Come on, girl.” I whistle. She hops along and we go inside.

It smells grand. She’s humming as she busies herself over a pot of something – I am not allowed in the kitchen whilst she’s on her mission, a quirk we learned about one another fairly quickly. The dog saddles up to her, nuzzling her leg with her snout and crippled foot. She gets a pat. I get warned off with a spoon.

20 years later and she’s still shooting down my shots.

1 year on and we’re hiding candies. Cooking meals. Raising chickens. Petting crippled dogs and healthy ones too. Growing a garden. Managing the bees. Not mowing. Admiring flowers. Digging ditches and planting plants. We laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh at the silliest of things. We make small talk about our days. We share our plans with one another and our hearts with the world. Folk ask me about my wife – it got a lot easier just going along with the term rather than explaining the nuances of it.

She’s a good woman, my missus. Shame I couldn’t find those sour gummies for her.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing, nothing,” I mutter. No need to say what she already knows: I’m in love. We always have been.