How to Look for a Lost Dog Read Free Page A

decided it was a burn. She called Child Protective Services and that very night the police arrested my father’s father, and that was when my father and Uncle Weldon went into foster care.
    â€œWe were always placed together with the same family,” Uncle Weldon told me once. “We weren’t split up. But we never stayed with any family for very long.”
    My father and Uncle Weldon lived with seven foster families before my father turned eighteen.
    They lived in five different towns.
    They had a total of 32 foster brothers and sisters.
    They went to nine different schools.
    The longest they stayed with any family was 21 months.
    The shortest they stayed with any family was 78 days.
    One night last year when my father and I were eating supper at 6.17 p.m., I said to him, “Did you have a favourite?”
    â€œA favourite what?” asked my father.
    â€œA favourite foster mother.”
    â€œYes, I did,” said my father. “Her name was Hannah Pederson.”
    â€œThat is very interesting,” I told him, recalling Mrs Leibler’s conversational tips, “because ‘Hannah’ is a kind of word called a palindrome. That means you can spell it the same way whether you start at the beginning or the end. My name is not a palindrome because if you spell it backwards it’s E-S-O-R, not R-O-S-E. But it does have a homonym.”
    My father said, “Don’t get started on homonyms, Rose.”
    So I said, “Did you have any favourite foster brothers or sisters?”
    â€œYes,” said my father after a moment.
    â€œHow interesting,” I replied. “Did any of their names have homonyms?”

5
When We Got Rain
    Now I will tell you about when we got Rain. On the Friday before Thanksgiving last year I was waiting for my father to come home from The Luck of the Irish. I knew he was at The Luck of the Irish because it was 7.49 p.m., which meant that the J & R Garage had been closed for 2 hours and 49 minutes. I had made hamburgers that night and I had already eaten mine because I don’t like to eat dinner after 6.45 p.m. What was for dessert was Popsicles, and I had also already eaten my Popsicle, which was a Highcrest brand Orange Burst.
    I was studying my list of homonyms when I saw headlights circle around the kitchen and I heard a car pull into our driveway. I decided that it was my father’s car. Next I heard a door slam. Then I heard another door slam and I decided that my father had brought Sam Diamond home with him. Sam Diamond is a man who drinks at The Luck of the Irish with my father and sometimes comes here to sleep on our living-room couch. After a few seconds I heard footsteps on the front porch, and then I heard a sound like a whine, which was not a sound I had ever heard Sam Diamond make.
    I sat at the table and stared at the door.
    My father appeared in the porch window. “Rose, for lord’s sake, get up off your butt and come help me,” he yelled.
    I didn’t want to help my father with Sam Diamond. But when I opened the front door and looked out through the screen at the rainy night, I saw that my father was standing on the porch holding a thick rope in his left hand and that at the other end of the rope was a dog. The passenger in the car had been the dog, not Sam Diamond.
    The rope was tied around the dog’s neck. The dog was very wet.
    â€œWhere did you find a dog?” I asked my father.
    â€œBehind The Luck of the Irish. Could you bring a towel out here so I can dry her off?”
    â€œThe dog is a she?” I asked.
    â€œYes. The towel?” This was my father’s way of reminding me to get the towel to dry off the wet dog.
    â€œAnd don’t bring a white towel,” my father called after me. “She’s muddy.”
    I brought a green towel to the porch and watched through the screen door while my father wiped the dog’s feet and back. “She’s for you,” he said to me.