“I hope your son has a good homecoming.”

“He’ll have everything he needs. His wife loves him, she’ll be glad to be with him, that’s all a man needs, really. And maybe a good, loyal dog but you can do without that, look at me.”

I laughed.

“Yeah, this memorial day I am going to remember, Elmo, a good warrior dog. A dog who would do what you say. Dora doesn’t want me to remember, Elmo.”

“Well, no.”

“Yeah, she wants me to forget all about what it’s like to have a real dog. I’ve seen Dora hunt. She walks in a circle around a biscuit, 50 times and then lays down next to it as if she found that biscuit in the wild and took it down. There’s my hunting, she says. I just hunted that biscuit right there.”