Love Me Tender Read Free

Hound had been promoted to more than just a family dog. Only later did I see that it warned of the storm to come.
    We borrowed Miss Nelda's car—in case we found Hound and wanted to give him a ride home. We couldn't put him in Daddy's car. Even Kerrie and I sat on blankets in the car so shoe buckles or a zipper pull wouldn't scratch the leather. It's mint. Dog toenails could not touch that leather.
    We drove further than we could've walked, calling out the windows and watching down driveways for him. Mel told me Hound was a four-month-old puppy when she met Daddy. She pounded the palm of her hand on the steering wheel, telling me. Hormones.
    “He's even older than I thought,” I said as we stopped for a red light. Mel let her forehead rest on the steering wheel. I tried to lighten the mood. “Hound will be home when we get there. He'll have called out for pizza.”
    “Your daddy has loved that dog longer than he has loved any of us.” This without lifting her head.
    “Green light.”
    Mel pulled herself together and continued driving. She said, “This is the stuff of lifelong grudges, Elvira. If I don't get that dog back, your daddy and I have turned a corner.”
    “Don't let's go off the deep end,” I said. It was some-thing my friend Debs's mother said pretty often, helpfully, since she's a family therapist. I thought it might help Mel.
    “Elvira, if you say that to me again, I'll put you right out of the car and you'll have to walk home.”
    “Then you'd have to explain to Daddy how you lost me too.”
    She pulled over to the side of the road so fast Kerrie shouted from the backseat, “Hey! This is how people get whiplash.”
    “You too, smarty-pants,” Mel said to Kerrie. “Out.”
    “We'll write when we find jobs,” I said once we were standing on the curb. Mel drove a block and a half, then pulled over again to wait. She had the nerve to honk twice to hurry us along.
    Kerrie and I took our time getting to the car, calling Hound.
    Some hours later and still no Hound in sight, Mel panicked and called the animal shelter to see if he'd been picked up. He hadn't. “Well, can you keep an eye out for him? It's my husband's dog,” Mel said to the person on the phone, and started to cry again. “I will just have to kill my-self if I've gone and lost him over a few fleas.”
    They gave her a hotline number that she called, thinking it was another shelter. It turned out to be a crisis center where they pretty much talk people out of jumping off buildings.
    “I'll save this number for your daddy,” Mel said.
    One of Daddy's customers called the next day, practically the minute after Daddy got home, to say our dog was hiding behind her garden shed. She believed Hound had been the victim of a joke, that somebody's kids were let to run wild with dog clippers.
    Hound died in his sleep that very night. He was old, and maybe running around the neighborhood hadn't done him any good. But it wasn't Mel's fault, even Daddy said so.
    Mel said she would always feel guilty, but maybe after a while she'd stop feeling like she had to scrub her skin with Brillo pads to take her mind off it.
    It was a rough weekend, but I thought that was likely to be the end of it.
    I was wrong.

Chapter 3
    OVER SUPPER one night, Daddy made an announcement. “There's an important competition coming up, and I'm taking part in it.”
    Mel had lately gone from morning sickness to evening backache, but she took this well enough. “What kind of garden do we need to grow?”
    “Not gardens,” Daddy said. “I'm making a comeback.”
    “A comeback?” This was Kerrie, who didn't know the word.
    “Your daddy's going to be the King this year,” Daddy said, which only caused Kerrie to get that crease between her eyebrows. “I have to go pick my music.”
    “Mel?” I said after he'd gone down to the cellar.
    “Don't ask me,” she said. And then added, “I think I'm having a nightmare.” She followed him downstairs, where they had a long