Dog and I Read Free

the basket were three small furballs.
    â€œYou can have your pick,” she said.
    There may be no tougher decision in life. It is easier to decide on a job than a puppy, easier to pick out a new car than a new dog.
    One was dark brown with black spots. One was black with brown spots. Both of these were male. The third was almost the spitting image of the mother. She had silky, curly blond hair and a small face that held the biggest, saddest brown eyes I had ever seen in my life.
    She was also the only girl—something I hadn’t figured on. Like most stupid humans, I had always thought of dogs as male and cats as female, even though an eleven-year-old is perfectly aware that one of each is necessary to produce more of each.
    I picked them up one by one and turned them over, the little things biting at my hands with razor teeth, their little tails whipping. The males were cute, and aggressive, but the little female was … beautiful .
    I was instantly in love. “I guess I’ll take this one,” I said. There was no guess about it. The dog had already decided.
    â€œThey’re weaned,” the woman said, “but maybe you should feed her some cream for a bit.”
    I nodded, but I wasn’t really listening. I was staring at this beautiful, tiny little creature that lay upside down in my cupped hands. I was holding her like a communion wafer (that winter I’d started serving in the Anglican church down by the river). It seemed oddly appropriate.
    I fished out the change. She counted it, nodded, and put it into the pocket of her housecoat. She turned and began going up the stairs.
    The other puppies were whining and squealing. I wondered if they knew their sister was leaving. Perhaps they were just hungry. The woman, however, paid them no attention at all.
    She showed me— us —to the door, did not even reach out to pat the little puppy she would never see again, but suddenly showed her first genuine concern for the dogs. “Keep her warm,” she said. “It’s getting cold out there.”
    It was freezing now. Much colder than when I’d started out. The wind cut through the sweater as if it were nothing but holes—which, of course, it was, even if tightly packed. It was also beginning to darken. I’d barely have time to get her home before I’d have to head off to collect and deliver my papers. This was when most newspapers were still afternoon events, something people read at leisure in the evening rather than in panic in the morning.
    The wind was now coming hard straight off the bay. It had turned into a day where it is somehow easier to walk backwards than forwards, so I did, switching every now and then to check my bearings.
    I carried her for a while in the pocket of the sweater, the same pocket that had held the change. I have never forgotten the sensation of that moment all these years later, the strange feeling of walking along with a live dog in my pocket. A dog so small that no one passing by in the cars and trucks would ever even notice. A dog that was wiggling and twisting so much that I had to keep a mitt over the pocket to make sure she didn’t suddenly pop out like a jack-in-the-box that has triggered its own lid.
    After a while I moved her from the pocket to inside the big sweater and then inside the second sweater. I folded my arms over my stomach as if I had a bellyache, she spread herself long and tight along my body heat, and I hurried faster to get her home.
    I still had her there when I came into the house. My glasses were steaming up so fast I knew they wouldn’t clear for several minutes, so I just tossed them onto the kitchen table. My mother was at the stove. I folded up the two layers of sweater, pulled her out, set her down, and watched, in shock, as she first peed and then pooped on the kitchen floor.
    Any who doubted my mother’s heart earlier cannot doubt it now. She said not a word. She cleaned it up herself