Lucky had nothing but his dog. His possessions changed day to day. He called them points and kept them in a shopping cart. Lucky got most of his points from the churches and homeless shelters where volunteers gave him clothes and tins of food. “One point,” he said. Lucky pushed a shopping cart full of points around the neighborhood. That was all he did. 

Lucky named his dog Lucky. He liked being Lucky, so he made his dog Lucky too. Lucky the dog was a robust golden retriever. Robust like his owner. They looked alike. They smiled the same.

Lucky said, “Good scratch,” when he smiled and his neighbors smiled back. His neighbors rarely gave him points. When they did, Lucky said, “One point. Good scratch.” He smiled and waved. Lucky had a good reputation with his neighbors. They liked that he smiled and waved. They liked his dog too. He talked about his dog often and at irregular volumes. Lucky thought his dog was God. “One point. Good scratch. My dog is God, do you know?” He had nothing else to say. Lucky said little and moved often. 

He called trouble, “bad scratch.” Lucky only ever got into trouble at night when he parked his cart and pitched his tent to sleep. He bound his cart with tarp and parked in alleys, along wire fences, anywhere. Lucky never parked for long. His tent attracted the police. Police officers did not like Lucky as much as his neighbors liked him.

It was the same every time. Lights flashed. Car doors slammed. The dog squirmed. “Hush,” Lucky quieted his dog. He heard a click, and a beam of light pierced the tent. The zipper squealed. A police officer poked a flashlight through the opening.

 “What?” Lucky asked. He gasped and rubbed his eyes. The beam from the flashlight made him see spots. “One point?” He made a face and thrust an arm out. The police officer clicked his flashlight off. He tucked an arm in his Kevlar vest and said, “Sir, I have to ask you to leave. You can’t sleep here.”

“Bad scratch,” Lucky frowned. “My dog is God,” he said. He yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Do you know my dog?” The officer lazily regarded the dog. “No,” he said. “And I don’t care. Please exit your tent and disperse.” The officer left one arm in his vest and stood so that Lucky only saw his legs through the tent’s open door. “Bad scratch,” he said. His dog huffed.

“Sir,” the police officer ordered. He rocked the tent. “Please exit your tent and disperse.” Lucky grumbled. He wrapped his dog’s leash around his wrist. He exited the tent. He crawled out on all fours and stood up to the officer. The officer looked down at Lucky.

“My dog is God,” he said again. Lucky stuck his tongue out.

The police officer pursed his lips and tapped the butt of his flashlight against his chin. He said that neither dogs nor God had anything to do with the law, which he enforced. He defined the law as rules of conduct, “agreements,” he said, “between people that keep them from hurting each other.” He explained that laws came from a legislative body called Congress. Then he explained courts and city councils and state legislatures. Lucky followed along. 

“Finally,” the officer said, “I enforce the laws that keep us safe.” He smirked. “No dogs. No God. Just the lawful and the lawless.”

Lucky chuckled. “Not a law,” he laughed. “My dog is God.” He patted the dog on the back. The dog wagged his tail. 

 “If your dog is God, let’s hear him speak. Let’s hear the word of God.” 

The dog smiled. “The word of God is quiet,” Lucky said. “Good night.” He turned back towards his tent.

The police officer lost his patience and grabbed Lucky by the collar. Lucky reflexively swatted at the officer. The officer overturned Lucky’s cart. The dog started barking. The officer drew his firearm from his holster. “Woah,” Lucky yelled. “Woah, woah.” He tugged at his dog’s leash and put his hands up. His dog settled on his haunches. Lucky slowly backed away with his hands in the air. The police officer followed him with the barrel of his gun. Lucky nervously eyed his overturned cart. He put one finger in the air. “One point,” he said. “One point.” 

“What?” the police officer asked.

“The tarp,” Lucky said. The tarp came undone from around the cart. “The tarp.” The police officer backed away slowly and motioned to it with his firearm. Lucky slowly approached. He knelt to the ground. He reached for the tarp one inch at a time. His eyes never left the police officer. When he had a hand on the tarp, he yanked it hard and ran. He ran with one hand holding the tarp, the other his dog’s leash. He ran for his life. The tarp fluttered in the wind.

His mind reeled from the officer to the gun to the cart to the gun to his dog to the gun to the awful gun when he suddenly lost his balance. Lucky’s toes caught on pavement. The tarp caught around his body. His face scraped across concrete. Lucky rolled. The dog yelped. 

“Whoa there,” someone said. Lucky laid on the ground. “Bad scratch,” Lucky said. His dog licked his face. “Let me help you,” someone said. An arm gripped Lucky’s arm. It pulled, and Lucky rose. His temple burned. Sweat and blood. “Bad scratch,” Lucky said. He landed outside of a bar. The sign read “Bookender’s.” The man who pulled him up wore black pants, a black shirt, black shoes, and black socks with a white rag in one pocket. A lit cigarette dangled from his lip. 

“Yeah, bad scratch,” he said. He pulled the cigarette from between his lips and tapped the ash so that it fell between his feet on the sidewalk. The smoke curled around his fingers. “You having a rough night? Should I call an ambulance?”

“No,” was all Lucky said. He stood and stared. He felt the blood beading on the side of his head. Lucky wiped one hand across his face, which smeared the blood. He took the tarp and wiped it across the smear. It burned his eyes. The bartender fingered the rag in his pocket. Lucky’s dog walked up to him and stared. He wagged his tail. The bartender knelt to the dog, scratched his ears, and smiled. The dog smiled back. “Good boy,” the bartender said. “What’s his name?”

“Lucky,” Lucky said.

“Good boy, Lucky,” the bartender said. “What’s your name?”

“Lucky,” Lucky said. “My dog is God.”

“That is very lucky,” the bartender said. “Do you live around here?” Lucky did not respond. The bartender played with the dog. “Do you live anywhere?” the bartender asked. Lucky did not respond. “I thought not,” the bartender said. “I used to be homeless too. Until I got this job,” he jabbed a thumb at the bar. “Except I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. I had to blow the owner to get it. We don’t talk about that much, but it happened. Now we talk about church. We went to the same church. When I was younger. I stopped going.” The bartender grimaced. 

“Bad scratch,” Lucky said. The bartender looked at Lucky.

“Be that as it may,” he did not understand. “It’s unfair, and you have my sympathy. It’s unfair that you’re homeless. It’s unfair that I’m a cocksucker. Neither of us showered today, right? That’s unfair. Odds are, we will both die without ever going more than three hundred miles from this spot, and that’s unfair.” Lucky stared at the bartender. “How’s this for fair?” he asked and reached into his pocket. He retrieved a money clip full of bills. He pulled off a twenty-dollar bill. “Good scratch,” Lucky said. He took the bill. “One point.”

“I have to get going,” the bartender said. “A comet’s coming tonight. Make a wish for me.” The bartender followed a couple inside.

Lucky stood there with the twenty-dollar bill in his hand. He crumpled it into a ball and shoved it in his pants pocket. He looked at his dog. Lucky the dog wagged his tail. “The comet is coming,” Lucky said. He tugged on the leash and walked away. Lucky walked towards Sweet Street Park, the green area at the heart of his neighborhood. His mind wandered to the comet in the sky then to the dark corners of the park then to sleep then to a hot sandwich and a cold soda in the morning. “One point,” Lucky said. “The comet is coming, and my dog is God.” He dragged his tarp behind him. Imperceptible flakes of dried blood wilted off of the tarp.

The dog nosed the grass in the park. Lucky stretched his body on a park bench. He wrapped the tarp around himself. He sighed and closed his eyes. The dog started barking. Another dog wandered by with gray fur and black spots. He had bright blue eyes. He was not as big as Lucky’s dog, and his fur was shorter. The second dog stopped when Lucky barked, raised one paw in the air, darted forward, darted back, and darted forward again. Lucky’s dog rushed the other. They ran in circles and nipped each other’s heels.

Lucky thought, this is a dog who has heard the voice of God. Be just and fear not, he thought. The second dog bounded. Lucky the dog stood or a moment, dipped down, and pounced. They reared and rolled. They laid low and leapt. Lucky saw them dancing. Lucky heard them singing. Dog songs, he thought. Beautiful dog songs. The word of God. My dog is God. My dog knows Jacob and Esau. My dog knows king Solomon. My dog knows Christ. My dog knows the penitent thief.

Lucky beheld his dog when the comet came. A streak of light split the sky. The sky turned white then gold. Lucky shielded his eyes. Then he looked. The light looked beautiful. The dogs stopped and stared. Lucky laid on his back. The dogs stood on their feet. The comet arced slowly. Lucky suddenly felt weightless. He rolled three times on the bench. His dog must have felt something too. He ran in a couple of circles then stopped. He made a shrill sound. “What’s wrong…” Lucky began to say when another flash of light erupted. He covered his eyes and curled into a ball. He heard a low thrumming sound. When Lucky uncovered his eyes, he saw his dog aglow in a pulsing halo. The second dog watched like Lucky. Frozen in place like Lucky. Lucky the dog stood there for a moment, glowing. Without so much as a bark or whimper, the dog lifted up off of the ground and ascended swiftly to the sky. He went higher and higher until he disappeared in the comet’s tail. The comet passed. Night flooded back. 

Lucky laid there bewildered in the dark. He got up off of the bench. He walked towards the second dog who looked up at the sky also. They stood there staring when something glimmered. A shape blotted out some stars. Lucky heard a whooshing sound and a thump. The shape fell to Earth. Lucky looked – his dog’s collar. He picked it up and spun it in his hands. The second dog woofed. Lucky knelt down, fastened the collar to his neck and attached his leash to the collar. “Good scratch,” he said. “One point.”