The bakery dog and the moving shade

The bakery on the corner had one table and three chairs. All taken by nine. I started coming earlier, before the woman behind the counter had finished arranging the pastries.

Vila Nova de Milfontes in late July. The heat was already heavy by ten.

The dog was there every morning. A brown mongrel with short fur and a torn ear. It slept against the bakery wall, in the strip of shade where the building’s shadow fell across the pavement. Its ribs showed when it breathed in. People stepped over it on their way out with paper bags.

Each week the strip moved. The dog followed it, a few metres at a time, dragging itself along the wall to the curb, then past the curb. I noticed it in the second week. By early August the shade barely reached the pavement at mid-morning. I’ve been here long enough to have a usual order. Coffee on the bench across the road, bread from the counter. Eating alone here had become part of it. The dog was part of it too.

By mid-August the dog was sleeping in the road. Not at the edge. In the lane, on warm tarmac, with cars going around it. An old man in a white van honked once. The dog lifted its head, looked at the van, put its head back down. A woman in a small car slowed and steered wide. Two teenagers on a moped didn’t bother.

The van went around.

I don’t have a good reason for watching this dog so much. Maybe because it made a decision about where to sleep and stuck with it. The decision put it in the path of a van and it didn’t care. That’s probably not it. I’m not sure what I keep looking at when I sit on that bench.

I’ll tell you the rest if I remember it.