At the corner, there was a small park. It was called Rainbow Park according to a small green sign, but it was nothing more than a concrete slab containing a basketball court with no nets and two handball courts separated by a concrete wall and surrounded by a twenty-foot chain-link fence. Tuesday always gave the leash a little tug and glanced at me as we passed the park. I knew what he wanted, but I didn't like the idea. The park was closed at nightfall. Cops regularly drove down Sixth Avenue, and they would question someone out late. It was that kind of neighborhood. I wanted to indulge Tuesday, but I didn't like to think about that kind of scrutiny.
Then I realized the back handball court, behind the concrete wall, wasn't that visible from the street. I thought about that fact for a few weeks, ignoring Tuesday's tug on the leash, until one night, just after New Year, Tuesday and I ducked out of the house and headed up the hill to Sixth Avenue. It was after midnight. I could see our breath like white clouds, but the tapping of my Bubba Stik was the only sound. Tuesday was walking a few steps ahead of me, pulling slightly on the leash. He wasn't wearing his service dog vest, so he knew something was up, and I could feel his excitement. When he saw the park, he shifted toward it, a move so imperceptible only someone with a leash in hand would notice. Despite his polite suggestion, he expected me to turn down Sixth Avenue, as always, but this time we crossed over to the fence. There was no lock on the gate. I pushed it open and led Tuesday to the back handball court. The streetlights were on along the side street, but the concrete wall between the courts cast a dark shadow. Slowly I knelt and unhooked his leash, bending from the knees to preserve my back.Tuesday stared at me with his natural smile, reading my face. He was excited, but he waited, silently, a perfectly behaved service dog. I shifted my cane to my left hand and pulled a tennis ball from my pocket.
"Do you want to play ,Tuesday?"
He stood up, ready to run but not breaking eye contact until I winged the ball against the concrete wall. As it went bouncing over his head, Tuesday leapt, turning in midair as it sailed past his teeth. I laughed as he took off running, tracking the ball down in the corner then jogging back to me with it clenched in his teeth.
"Another throw, Tuesday?" I said, slinging the spit-covered ball. He missed again, then sprinted after it. By the time he reached me with the slobberball, he was already a little winded.
I threw it again. Tuesday chased, the ball bouncing wildly off the concrete court. I threw odd angles and high hard ones, trying to bounce it past him each time. I expected him to get tired, but the more Tuesday chased that ball, the more he wanted to run. In the Army, we have an expression: "getting smoked." We worked out in the early morning, pushing ourselves until the sweat poured down our skin. As the day heated, the sweat evaporated until, on really punishing days, a cloud of water vapor rose off our shoulders like smoke. By the time I was tired of throwing tennis balls, Tuesday was smoked. It wasn't sweat, since dogs don't sweat, but heat was rising from his core and right off the top of the head. He stood looking at me through a pale cloud, huffing giant breaths of smoke, his tongue dangling and a look on his face I recognized from my own time getting smoked, back before my injuries: exhaustion and joy. He could have run for days.
For the rest of the winter, we went to Rainbow Park. We went between midnight and five in the morning, when the world was quiet. The streetlights buzzed, and every few minutes there was the soft whoosh of a car, but otherwise there was nothing but the thump of a tennis ball against a concrete wall and an occasional word of encouragement as a sleepless veteran leaned on his cane in the shadows and his dog got smoked.
-an excerpt from Until Tuesday by Fmr. Cpt. Luis Carlos Montalvan
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