‘A Eulogy for Rincon’ Contest Finalist

Elizabeth Agre ran away from city life and now hides in the north woods of Minnesota along side the bear, wolves, and bobcats. She dabbles in writing, painting, and taking pictures. If not, she is probably out fishing.

A Eulogy for Rincon

Runner-Up for the Spring Short Fiction Contest 2025

Martina

It was obvious that she had drowned the dog. And that she had loved him, and cared for him nearly up until that point. Or maybe through that moment.

I found the dog in the toilet or next to it. His fur was white and curly and matted close to his small body. He looked like had just had a bath and was snoozing a bit. My training to clean the airport restrooms in no way included what to do with dead animals, and it took me quite a bit of time to notice, realize, and accept that this dog was dead.

I opened the envelope on the floor next to the dog. Rincon’s papers said he was healthy. His tags with his name and her name on it. Her address in the hills, up above La Jolla. Where you couldn’t even see or hear if your neighbor had a dog.

I called airport security, and they came, and then the police came and they took everything away except the puddle on the floor next to the commode. That part I knew how to clean up.

Sergeant Stefan Lubovich

Man, I hate pickup. Ninety percent of the time, it’s a gunshot wound and the blood is everywhere. Somehow, this was worse. The dog looked a lot like Snowball, my dog growing up. Snowball lived until he was seventeen, and went out with a steak and a pet, not like this.

I bagged the animal and the K-9 tags and the paperwork tucked neatly into an envelope beside him. The bags were blue but clear, and so nobody did this but I closed the dog’s eyes so he stopped accusing me. I had nothing to do with his death, but somehow I felt responsible. Like I could have gotten here a little earlier. 

The call that brought me to the airport wasn’t about the dog, not originally. The first call was from the airport gate, where a woman was making a commotion because she couldn’t bring her dog on the flight to Honduras, or Guatemala, or maybe it was Panama. She had to get on the flight, she only had thirty minutes, the gate agent said when she called me. The woman was screaming at the gate agent, you could hear it in the background.

Tanya Mertens

I have seen a lot of whining, and a little anger. People are late, they are tired, and they all take it out on the gate agent. We’re not the highest-ranked airline employees, but we do have quiet power. We, with our screens turned towards us and away from the passengers, can move seats around to accommodate or annoy people as we see fit. We try to make it smooth, we try to make it soft for them. A soft takeoff. A soft landing.

The woman came running towards the gate waving paperwork in the air above her head. She had a small dog on a leash who was doing his best to keep up. He actually seemed to be enjoying the run, tongue out and panting all the way.

She said that the ticket agent had said that there was a problem with the dog’s paperwork. He hadn’t had one of the required vaccines. She said he didn’t need them, that they were going to a place that didn’t require vaccines for dogs. But the airline required the shots, I explained to her. To get on the plane. To make it safe for the humans, not for the dogs.

The woman left with her dog tucked under her arm. I think I heard her crying. I started to go after her but a flight attendant came down the ramp and pulled the gate door shut behind her. The plane left.

Anonymous

Rincon was my whole life, at least my life in the United States. But in my home country, I had three children. I had. Two of them are gone now, one I saw go down to the ground in agony, and the other disappeared right from his dorm at the college. There is only one left, my son, age twenty.

My last baby is in jail now. He has sent me a message that he can get out, but only tomorrow and only if I bring the amount of money he has told me which for my country is a month’s salary but in the U.S.A. is not very much. They say it’s a fine but of course it’s a bribe but there’s no difference if it’s a payment for a  life. My son says they will not shoot him, but if I do not get him out tomorrow they will transfer him to a prison and no one survives there, even if you can figure out where he is it will be too late.

I took the money out of the bank and grabbed Rincon and his food and his papers and I went right to the airport. I bought a ticket for the next plane to the capital to get my son.

Rincon was a good dog. He was the only friend in the United States I could tell all my secrets to, including what I had to do to get out of my country and into this country. What I had to say to the lady at the border was true but also ugly. I only had to tell the border lady one of my stories, and the rest I kept until I could tell them to Rincon. 

I told him the last story about how he was saving my son.

After I said goodbye to Rincon, I bought another ticket to my home country at a different ticket counter and left late that night and by the morning I was standing in the office of the jail and trading the rest of my money for a young man who looked tired, and for the first time ever, grateful.

Jill Bronfman was one of 12 Aspiring Novelists Selected for the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2025, was the Barnes & Noble, National Essay Contest Grand Prize Winner, placed second in the Joan Ramseyer Memorial Poetry Contest, was named a semi-finalist for both the James Applewhite Poetry Prize and The Waking’s Flash Prose Prize, and received an honorable mention in the Storm Cellar Force Majeure Flash Contest. Her work has been accepted for publication in five collections and over thirty literary journals. She has performed in The Bay Area Book Festival, Poets in the Parks, The Basement Series, Page Street, Washington Square Annual Livestream, and LitQuake, and had her story about a middle-aged robot produced as a podcast by Ripples in Space. She has been accepted to residencies and conferences including Looking Glass, WonderMountain, and LitCamp. She is a reader for The Masters Review, and a Poet-Teacher for California Poets in the Schools. She volunteers with 826 Valencia and ScholarMatch helping kids write poetry and teens write their personal essays for college applications.