COLORADO SPRINGS — With gentle words, John Wilson coaxes Triton through the parking lot of the motel, back toward the open lot behind it. Triton, the family’s 11-year-old bulldog, sniffles and shuffles next to him, close and slow enough that the leather leash rests limp in John’s hand.

Triton is old, and he is unwell. His fur is patchy, and he walks laboriously, with each step a conscious decision. His his face is weathered, like he’d been to war and back. John knows this. The dog was bred by Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer, and John had flown Triton in years earlier as a Valentine’s Day gift to his wife, Denise.

In the motel that is now home for the couple and their two grandchildren, Triton sleeps between the two full beds. The bed closest to the door is John and Denise’s; a Captain America action figure stands upright on the headboard, and the big comforter and pillow cases have the words “live every moment” printed on them.

The other bed, piled with stuffed animals, is for Nikea and Mariah, the teenage children of Denise’s oldest daughter. The two girls have been with Denise and John, both veterans, since they were small. Tinsel, the family’s other dog, usually sleeps with them. The family put several pads down on the ground, just in case Triton doesn’t make it outside.

The motel room itself is full: The upper shelves of the kitchen closet are stuffed. The dresser drawers are packed with DVDs, a big word search book, cards, more puppy pads. The small table in the corner, where the girls use their cellphone hot spots to do their homework, has a small placard reminding guests to save water.

Out in the lot, John looks down at Triton, who’s standing still behind him, sniffing the grass. He knows how worn down Triton looks, but he’s afraid to take him to the vet. What if he does, and he’s told to put the old dog to sleep? He shakes his head.

“I don’t want him to suffer. But I can’t do it now. I can’t do it now,” he says. A Queens native, he was a cop for 10 years in New York City before he joined the Army in 1996. He has a soft voice, a bit nasally, and sometimes his old accent slips in and his voice stretches around vowels. “I can’t. I can’t. I — I can’t do it now. I really can’t. I know the quality of life, I know all of that. But he’s a soldier right now. It’s going to kill Denise.”

John is an eternal, sometimes almost defiant, optimist. But as much as he knows better days are ahead, he knows the family is teetering. The family’s been living in this motel on South Nevada for two weeks, since they were finally, successfully evicted from the apartment they’d lived in for 13 years. John, a veteran of Iraq, lost his job as a cook within days of the pandemic hitting last March. Fifty-five years old with COPD, he’s had no luck in finding jobs since.

John was first in court in October. The family’s lease had run out on May 31, and they hadn’t renewed it. They had little money: After John was laid off, the family got by on the boosted federal unemployment benefits, which ran out as the summer dragged on. His landlord sought to have them removed in October, and an El Paso County magistrate agreed.

Though there was a federal protection against evicting people who were behind on rent because of the pandemic, the Wilsons fell into a loophole. They were behind on rent, yes, but they were also living on an expired lease. They didn’t have money to move. They didn’t want to be there anymore — even John the optimist doesn’t have many kind words for his landlords — but they couldn’t leave, either.

In October, Gov. Jared Polis enacted a sweeping eviction moratorium that arrived in literally the nick of time to keep the Wilsons in their apartment. The stimulus money a few months later helped, but the money doesn’t go far when you’re in debt, with two teenagers.

“Utilities were through the roof,” John says. “The phone bill — oh my God, I’d never seen a phone bill like that.”

The moratorium ended on New Year’s Day. They paid their landlord more than one of their stimulus checks to fill in some of their past due rent. (The landlord did not return a request for comment.) But, the Wilsons say, the property managers made it clear that the family needed to leave. They weren’t interested in negotiating, John and Denise say, or giving them time.

John had no luck with the Pikes Peak Workforce Center, and online resumes he’d filled out for places like the Family Dollar or Dollar Tree went unanswered. He wants to work, he insists.

“I’m not going to ride anything,” he says, Triton still standing behind him in the low light of early evening. He’d resisted getting any held from the military until now; he’d never been in combat and was certain that others needed the help more than him. “Whatever I get, I earn. I’ve worked, I’ve risked my life as a cop.”

“I deserve a little unemployment,” he says, as if trying to convince himself. “I deserve that.”

He says repeatedly that he’s not bitter. He knows the landlord was just doing what she had to do (Denise is less forgiving). The sheriff’s deputy who came to serve the eviction notice in late April, he was just doing his job. Things are bad now, John allows, but they’ve been worse, and they’ll get better again.

One of his granddaughters told him that once she’s done with school, she’ll get an ID and start working.

“I said, ‘I know, honey, but I made a promise that I’m going to take care of everybody,” he says. “And in a way I feel like — “

His voice breaks and then thickens.

“I let them down a little bit. A little.” He looks up from his leathered hands to the parking lot in front of him. “A lot.”

He pauses and pulls the emotion back in. “I just don’t say it too much. I feel like I let them down big time.”

He pauses again.

The girls were in the front of the old apartment doing their schoolwork when the sheriff dropped off the notice. It was a Thursday. He told the girls the family had until Monday.

So they packed up “like nuts.” John focused on practicality: shoes, socks, clothes, essentials. He couldn’t find the big album of family photos he’d taken over the years, where you can chart the girls’ evolving hairstyles and music sense (they’re now into K-Pop). The rest would go into storage, until the family had a home again.

The day they moved out, there was a “mass exodus” at the apartment complex of evictions, Denise says. The Wilsons walked past longtime neighbors, all of them packing up and leaving.

Now, the family’s waiting for their tax refunds to come in. They took turns calling the IRS to get an update, and they think they’ll either have the money or know when it’s coming on Monday. That’ll form the deposit, moving costs and rent for their next place. They’re grateful to the people who run this motel, but it eats up most of John’s unemployment check.

Stability’s that close, John says. Another check away from a bit of breathing room.

In the parking lot, Nikea and Mariah pull up. They’d gone to the old apartment, which still has some of the family’s furniture, to move more into storage. At one point, the girls had taken a shopping cart, loaded it up and walked it down the street to the storage locker.

John had been talking about not giving in to bitterness and knowing, to a certainty, it was going to get better. He interrupts himself when he sees Nikea balance a big empty freezer in her arms and walk it into the motel room.

“Look at this!” he says. “She’s lifting it by her damn self!”

He’s inflated again. He calls out to the teenager — “Hey muscles!” Together, he and Triton, still shuffling, cross the parking lot to welcome the girls home.