quiet.”
“There’s no wood,” he pointed out, turning onto our street from Columbia Road. “We said we weren’t going back before spring.”
“We could buy some fake logs on the way down.”
“You can’t burn them in a woodstove. Chemicals.”
“We’ll get Mr. Bender to bring us a load of wood. Or you could chop some. I could chop some.”
“Don’t we have something, a party on Saturday—”
“Just Amy and Dan’s, and it’s an open house, they’d never miss us.”
He made his long humming sound, “Hmmm,” which he thinks I think means he’s taking the subject under advisement but really means it will never come up again unless I raise it, and then raise it again, then again, till we’re both so tired of it it’s a relief to forget the whole thing.
“Oh, never mind.” I flopped back against the seat. “I’ll just go down by myself.”
He chuckled, not taking that seriously. He was right, I wasn’t serious. Then.
We usually come and go through the front door, not the back, because we park on the street—no garage—and the back door doesn’t lead to anything except the alley behind our block of town houses. That night was trash night, though, plus we were running late for the Weldons’, so we’d hurried out the kitchen door with a plastic bag of garbage each, dumped them in our spot in the alley, and walked around the corner to the car.
Which is all to say—what if we’d done that again for some reason, parked and then gone into the house from the back? What if we had? We’d have tripped over a dead dog on the front porch the next morning, that’s what.
Andrew had the door key, so he saw it first. “What—” he said, and started back, scaring me. I saw something black, the size and shape of a soccer ball, wedged between the storm door and the door. We’d forgotten to leave the porch light on; we only had the streetlight to see—an animal, a sweater, someone’s purse…
“It’s a dog,” Andrew exclaimed, bending close. He took off his gloves and touched it. “A little dog. I don’t think it’s alive.” He handed me the key, scooped his hands gingerly under the lifeless black mound, and lifted it. I felt frozen; I squinted instead of looking at it directly, the way I do at scary movies.
I think of that, how squeamish Andrew took it up in his bare hands, dead for all we knew, while I, the great animal lover, shrank back in fear and distress. All I could do was unlock the door.
I turned on a lamp while Andrew set the dog on the rug in the living room. It lay perfectly still—but then it moved, shivered or twitched or something, and after that I could act. Silly, but once I knew it wasn’t dead, I was all right.
Its eyes were open but not fixed on anything. “Is he hurt? Is he just cold? Andrew, who could do such a thing, put a dog in somebody’s door on a night like this and leave it there? I think he’s freezing. Should we take him to the vet? He’s not even shivering. No, there, he just shivered. Are you calling?”
“They won’t be open, we’ll just get the answering service.”
I sat on the floor and pulled the puppy into my lap. “Call and leave a message, then.” It could hardly raise its head. The blue-black eyes finally focused on mine, but only for a second before the dog dropped its heavy little head, thump , on my thigh.
We had a dog when I was young, a stray we named Tramp. My mother let me keep him even though Daddy had just died and she was working two jobs and I was only nine and not that responsible. What a softy she was. Sitting there on the floor, I had a wave of longing for my mother that was so intense, I had to squeeze my eyes shut to keep from crying.
Andrew was talking on the phone in the kitchen. Huddled over the puppy, trying to warm it with my body, I didn’t notice Hobbes till I felt his wet nose on my cheek. “Hey, Hobbes,” I said loudly, so he could hear me. He’s deaf. “Hey, boy. Look here, we’ve got
Alison Anderson, Joanna Gruda
Bickers Richard Townshend