The first sign promised UNIMAGINABLE RICHES. The next, stapled to the trunk of a black ash, added AND SO MUCH MORE.

I kicked at a pile of reddish pine needles, peeling back the sole of my yellowed New Balance.

Riches could ruin you. Two years after my dad won the Louisiana State Lottery, his new girlfriend found him floating in the pool in the Lake Charles McMansion he couldn’t afford the taxes on. 

The air was hot for October, and the smell of dead leaves baking in the sun confused my brain. George had wandered off long ago, but I could hear him barking and bounding in the brush from time to time, happy as a child.

I was about to give up when the third sign presented itself, affixed to an ailing dogwood.

RAPTURE AHEAD.

The next arrived tied to the foot of a rabbit, darting across my path.

BUT YOU HAVE TO WANT IT.

The poor creature’s ribs were visible. Its brown fur was tinged with gray, like an aging heartthrob. I offered it a nibble of my Snickers, and it snatched the whole thing away.

Of course I wanted it. Who wouldn’t want it? What was that sign trying to do, scare me? Make me think this was some kind of monkey’s paw situation? Some cursed apple? I didn’t believe in any of that. The truth was, sometimes people do get something for nothing. Sometimes people do get handed a free lunch.

And it can taste just fine.

NOT.

FAR.

NOW.

A dark heart formed in the center of my cutoff sweatshirt. My dad’s squid ink hair plastered my forehead. I had to get back to Great Clips.

Suddenly there was George, half a football field away. He’d gotten into something. Squinting, I thought I saw brownish gray fur, glistening with tomato sauce. 

Despair welled in me but wilted into a kind of shrug. When you own a dog, you’re always having to forgive them their animal nature.

It wasn’t until the next sign (CAN YOU TASTE IT?) that I remembered the Snickers. George once ate an entire chocolate bunny and spent the night vomiting yellow. I’d held his shaking paw as we’d raced through red light after red light, trying to find an open vet in Shreveport.

I could no longer see him. If I abandoned the path now, I knew I’d never find these trees again. Happiness could be just beyond that bush there.

Calling his name, I turned and walked into the grass. The sun set as I searched, gilding all the dead things gold.

Later, driving home, scratching the bristly warm fur of his belly, I wondered if maybe he’d known to avoid the bar because he remembered that chocolate bunny from years ago.

But animals don’t learn like that, I don’t think.