Father of the Rain

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My father is singing.

High above Cayuga’s waters, there’s an awful smell.

Some say it’s Cayuga’s waters, some say it’s Cornell.

He always sings in the car. He has a low voice scraped out by cigarettes and all the yelling he does. His big pointy Adam’s apple bobs up and down, turning the tanned skin white wherever it moves.

He reaches over to the puppy in my lap. “You’s a good little rascal. Yes you is,” he says in his dog voice, a happy, hopeful voice he doesn’t use much on people.

The puppy was a surprise for my eleventh birthday, which was yesterday. I chose the ugliest one in the shop. My father and the owner tried to tempt me with the full-breed Newfoundlands, scooping up the silky black sacks of fur and pressing their big heavy heads against my cheek. But I held fast. A dog like that would make leaving even harder. I pushed them away and pointed to the twenty-five dollar wire-haired mutt that had been in the corner cage since winter.

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