It couldn’t have happened more than 60 seconds before I came along. The dog was sitting there, on the double yellow line, looking as peaceful as a Hindu cow. But as I got closer I realized it wasn’t calm I was seeing, but shock.

A man in a pickup approached from the opposite direction, and we both rolled almost to a stop with the dog in between us.

“Somebody hit him, didn’t they,” he said. Then he rolled his window up and drove on.

I pulled as far off the road as I could, then I got out and jogged toward the dog, holding my hand out in front of me to stop traffic.

At first the dog wouldn’t move, but a human voice stirred something inside him, and he dragged himself along on a broken leg, and blood poured out of his mouth onto the pavement when he lowered his head.

He’d defecated on himself and with the blood and mud he was a special kind of filthy, and with every step he took he sighed like someone was squeezing the air out of him.

The poor, broken thing followed me onto the shoulder and we walked a little piece up a driveway before he completely gave out and just lay down.

There were four or five houses he could have come from, all with long driveways, and I didn’t know where to start knocking.

The dog was fighting to breathe, sucking in heavy, wet breaths, and I thought he might die right there in front of me, so I picked him up and carried him to the first door.

A man and woman came out, the man first, and he looked at me like I was going to rob him.

The guy said at least four times that he didn’t have a dog and he didn’t want this one dying on his doorstep.

“I never intended to leave this dog here, man,” I said, turning and walking away with the wounded animal in my arms.

The dog was an older puppy, a shepherd mix, a good forty pounds, and he was just about all I could manage to carry for any distance.

He was bleeding all over me and, holding him close, I thought I could hear death rattles down deep inside him.

I carried him across the road and up another driveway. No luck. Then I realized I might be hurting him by carrying him, so I put him down, got back in my car and drove a short piece to the next house.

A woman came to the door this time, and I tried to speak as calmly as I could, but after a minute it became clear that it was her dog.

She said this was the third one of her dogs that had gotten hit, and I just looked the other way and bit my tongue.

She must have thought I had hit the dog and that I was lying to her because her husband went out without saying a word and drove across the road and loaded up the dog, and I drove off, feeling a little wronged.

I went back to the store I’d just left and bought some chocolate milk, and I drove a little piece down a field road I know well, near where I grew up and leaned on the car to think.

I had wiped my hands on my jeans, but there was still blood dried around my cuticles and caked around my wedding ring.

I tried to think of that picture of Jesus knocking on the door with no handle, but I just wasn’t in the mood.

Contact Daily Journal religion editor Galen Holley at 678-1510 or galen.holley@djournal.com.