“Poor thing. What’s he upset about?” Bernadette asked.
“The dog, I think. He likes dogs. His room is full of stuffed dogs. My husband painted puppies on his walls. He named every single one of them.”
“Bus-ther,” Rusty piped, his screams ending abruptly, “Thunny, Bo, Daidy, Luthy, Tham, Oliber —”
“His older sister is highly allergic,” his mom went on, pulling him to his feet, “so we can’t have one of our own.”
And the screams started again, this time with stomping feet as Rusty jumped up and down on the sidewalk.
“Oh, I hear you. I know all about allergies,” Bernadette said over the noise. “I carry antihistamines everywhere. Have you ever tried those with her?”
“I wish that was enough,” Rusty’s mother said, growing visibly tense. She pulled her son close, clamped an arm across his chest to keep him still, and stroked the top of his head, trying to soothe him, to no avail. “But she has asthma really, really bad. Between the two of them, we’ve had enough trips to the hospital to last us ten lifetimes.”
Rusty started bobbing his head as he wailed.
“Say there,” Cecil said, stooping down to Rusty’s eye level, which was a long way when you’re almost six and a half feet tall and talking to a seven-year old, “what if I let you read to Halo here today? That could be your job. She likes stories.”
Rusty stopped bobbing. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and nodded.
“You go on in with your mom and pick out a book. We’ll be right behind you.”
His mother mouthed a silent ‘thank you’ as Rusty darted inside.
When they were both gone, Bernadette laid a hand over her heart and said, “That was the nicest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do for that boy. He’s a special needs child — Down syndrome — so he has his moments.”
“Nice?” Cecil harrumphed. “I just couldn’t stand to hear him scream for one more second, that’s all.”
—o00o—
“You wead?” Rusty held the book above his head, as close to Cecil’s face as he could get it.
Cecil fought a scowl. “Why don’t we ask Mrs. Kratz to read that, so everyone can hear it?”
Still holding the book up high, Rusty pondered the suggestion. He didn’t seem convinced. He waved the book back and forth. “You wead.”
This time it was a direct command, not a request. Cecil craned his neck sideways to stare Bernadette down. When she finally looked his way, he raised his shaggy eyebrows in a plea for help. She bustled from behind her desk and wrenched the book from Rusty’s grip.
“Ohhh, would you look there! The Misadventures of Sam Beagle.” She fanned through the pages, then clutched the book to her chest. “Brook and Olivia love this book. And your friend Alex told me it’s his favorite, too.”
Upon hearing the name, a little boy with curly brown hair waved at Rusty from where he sat on the floor in a circle with the other children. They had all been instructed by Bernadette to treat me like a new kid: they were to be polite, to remain quiet, and they were not to invade my personal space. If they could follow these rules, Bernadette would teach them how to make friends with me. If that went well, I would return next week.
They may have kept their distance and their voices low, but they stared at me relentlessly. As if they’d never seen a dog before. It was more than a bit unnerving.
Bernadette combed Rusty’s hair with her fingers. “So, is it okay if I share this book with the others?”
He tugged at his lower lip and rocked on his feet. “Yaw, is okay.”
With a brush of her hand, Bernadette indicated for Cecil to take a seat just beyond the circle. As he trudged over to the chair, Rusty followed a foot behind, staring at my bobtail.
“Wha’ happen?” Rusty said, pointing to my nub.
His knees cracking as he sat, Cecil shrugged. “I s’pose she was born that way. You don’t have a tail ...” He turned Rusty by the shoulder to check his britches. “Or do you?”
Rusty giggled, then plopped down beside me. “Is boy?”
“Girl,” Cecil said, even though that fact had already been established.
“She pwitty.”
“I think so, too.” Cecil put a finger to his lips, then pointed at Bernadette. “Shhh.”
The children all fell quiet and went unusually still as Bernadette began to read. It was like she’d cast some spell over them. She held the book before her so the kids could see the pictures, looking over the top of the page as she read the upside down words. Gradually, they stopped staring at me to focus on Bernadette, her expressive eyebrows lifting and folding at turns, her lips drawing tight with tension on one page, then as she flipped to the next her whole mouth going wide in an ‘O’ of surprise. A few feet away, Rusty clutched his hands to his own mouth, then scooted closer to me. By the time Bernadette reached the end of the story, his elbow was brushing my fur.
He walked his fingers across the floor tiles, then tickled one of my toes. “Fwiends?”
I slurped at Rusty’s cheek, which elicited a giggle of delight. It reminded me of Hunter. Happiness exploded inside my chest like fireworks in the distance: bangles of color swirling against an expanse of sky, their booms reduced to muted echoes. Every time he laughed, smiled or touched me, however tentative, the same sheer joy filled me with that excitable, floaty feeling.
Later, Rusty ‘read’ the same story to Cecil and me. He didn’t get very far on his own. Cecil had to help him sound things out, even though Cecil himself stumbled over some words. Sometimes Rusty made words up or embellished on the story. But every once in a while, he got a few words right all in a row. The pride that beamed from his eyes was priceless.
Cecil displayed the same patience with Rusty that he always had with me, but the effort of dealing with a child seemed to exhaust him more. That didn’t matter to Rusty, though. As long as I was Cecil’s dog, Rusty would be firmly attached to him.
When Rusty’s mother gathered him up in her arms later and he flapped an arm to wave goodbye, I puffed my cheeks out in a sigh of contentment. This had been a good day. A very good day.
I was glad for that. Glad I had survived Ned Hanson’s care. Glad I had been rescued by Cecil. And, most of all, glad that Bernadette had barged her way into our lives.
—o00o—
The scalloped edging of the umbrella fluttered in the summer breeze. For the fourth Monday in a row, Bernadette and Cecil (the more I heard her say his name, the more I thought of him that way) sat at the round table, sipping on their lemonades. Beneath the shade of Cecil’s chair, I stretched my legs out and laid my head between my paws. Our table was tucked in the furthest corner of the garden area of the café, which was surrounded by a wrought iron fence topped with flowerboxes overflowing with sunny yellow marigolds and trailing pink petunias. Neither the waitress nor the other patrons had ever said anything about my presence. Perhaps it was my intense stare that warned them to mind their own business?
I could still feel the impression of Rusty’s arms around my neck. Today his face had smelled of bubblegum and mint toothpaste, his knees of freshly cut grass and his shoes of damp play sand. At the start of the reading hour, Bernadette had read to the children a book called Charlotte’s Web. Disappointed there was no dog in the story, I focused my attention on Rusty, who lay against the bean bag chair pulling at his lip while his fingers raked my fur.
I learned so many things in those treasured hours at the library: about tropical rain forests and the many-colored birds that inhabit them, about cowboys and their cattle and horses, about wizards and witches and the spells they cast, about the dinosaurs of long ago, and about space ships that slipped through wormholes and boats with pirates that sailed on rough seas. But what I liked most were the stories with talking animals. That, to me, was the most magical thing of all. It was all I ever dreamed of.
Today a new little girl named Marissa had been there. She shrieked when she saw me and hid behind Bernadette, who tried to coax her out in the ope
n. Minutes later, she peeked around Bernadette’s hip, and said, “I don’t like dogs. They bite.” Then she brought her forearms up to cover her face and began to sob.
“Not this dog,” Bernadette tried to reassure her. “Halo loves children. See how good she is with Rusty?”
All dogs can bite, I wanted to say. But we won’t, as long as no one gives us reason to.
Bernadette could do little to comfort her. The girl ended up sitting on top of the desk behind Bernadette as she read from the book.
The rest of the children had always been friendly, if not a little overzealous. I tolerated them all, but only Rusty interested me. Rusty with his gentle fingers, his soft lisp, his shyness. Every week when reading hour was over, his mother had to unlatch his arms from around my neck. “My fwiend,” he declared. Then, “B-bye, Hay-O.”
I liked the way he said my name.
Of course Bernadette did most of the talking while she and Cecil ate their dinner. But on this occasion, both of them, I noticed, forgot to slip me a single French fry. It was as if their attention was turning more and more to each other. I might have resented it if I weren’t so amused by the whole scene.
“Down syndrome. Rusty can be a challenge when he’s frustrated, but otherwise he’s the sweetest little boy. He’s really taken a shine to Halo. Have you noticed?” Bernadette sopped the gravy from her plate with a roll. “His parents do the best they can with him. I’ll give them credit for that. Missy and Jack have ten children between them. Rusty is the youngest.”
“Between them? She can’t be more than twenty-five, if that.”
“Missy got pregnant at fifteen and married a car dealer named Austin Watts from Richmond. He was ten years older than her. Why her parents agreed to the marriage, I’ll never ... Anyway, he beat her silly. She finally had the sense to walk away — four kids later. Jack’s first wife ran off with some man from —”
Cecil held up his spoon. “I get it.”
“Sorry. We have a lot of downtime at the library. Gossip tends to fly.”
“So I gather.” He dumped a pile of salt on the side of his plate, then squirted a glob of ketchup next to it. “You like your work there?”
“I do. I like helping people, seeing all the locals, getting to know them. You can tell a lot about folks by the books they check out. But since ...” — her usually cherubic face morphed into a frown of distress and, looking over the top of her glasses, she lowered her voice — “since everyone started reading on their phones and those little mini computers ... What do they call them? ... Those tablets. Well, people don’t come to the library like they used to. Sad, in a way. When they’re done reading, they just delete the book. Delete it. Like it was never there. Do you believe that?”
“Can’t imagine it.” Cecil raked a handful of fries through the salt and ketchup, then stuffed them in his mouth so he wouldn’t have to say more.
I kept my eye on a bumblebee as it floated from flower to flower. I’d caught one of those in my mouth once and paid for it with a swollen face and bloated tongue. Cecil had hauled me to the vet for that, where they forced some bitter syrup down my throat with a syringe. Visits to the vet never ended well. The only other time I’d been there had been to get ‘spayed’. I was still unclear what that was about, but I woke up feeling like my innards had been sucked out through a straw.
Bernadette tapped her knife on the table. “Cecil, can you tell me what I just said?”
His hand paused in midair, two golden crisp fries pinched between his thumb and forefinger. He looked at them, then at her. Squinting, he opened his mouth, shut it. Tilted his head. “Something about phones at the library?”
She burst out laughing. “Look at us, will ya? Acting like an old married couple. I’d be mad as a hornet if I didn’t enjoy your company so much. I have to admit, when you proposed the first date, I spent three days planning what I’d wear.” She pulled her chin back. “It was a date, wasn’t it?”
He eyed her seriously. “Did you tell your lady friends that’s what it was?”
The napkin in her lap suddenly absorbed all of Bernadette’s attention. She smoothed it repeatedly before answering. It wasn’t often she was at a loss for words, so this occasion was particularly memorable. “I might have.”
“In those exact words: I have a date with Cecil Penewit?”
She nodded.
His hand crept across the table. He turned it palm up. When she stared at it blankly, he said, “Give me your hand, Bernadette Kratz.” She put her hand in his, one long fingered blue-veined hand cradling her plump, bejeweled fingers. “Then that’s what it was.”
For once, Bernadette had nothing to say. It was a sure sign that their relationship had taken a serious turn.
“Cecil, what ... I mean, when I dropped by that first day, it was almost as if you didn’t want the company. Like you’d rather have been alone. What changed your mind?”
Squinting thoughtfully, he wiped at the corners of his mouth with a paper napkin. “It’s been a few years since Sarah was around. More than a few, actually. Going on seventeen now. I’d gotten used to the silence, I s’pose. But then, then it occurred to me that maybe we aren’t supposed to be alone all the time. There are a lot of hours to fill between breakfast and bedtime. The day goes by faster when you have someone to share it with.” He reached beneath the table and scratched under my collar. “Isn’t that so, Halo, ol’ girl?”
I rubbed my snout against the inside of his wrist. His hand curved around my head, until he was rubbing my ears. Finally, he understood.
The waitress brought another basket of fries. Around us, spoons clinked in iced tea glasses, forks scraped at plates and the conversation hummed pleasantly. Cecil and Bernadette ate in silence, comfortable in their newfound familiarity, like two people who had known each other for a very long time.
Sometimes, there are no words that can convey what is between two people. How can there be, when even those two people do not yet fathom what it is they have?
chapter 15
Its smell was distinct: decay. But I could tell this was a place of reverence, of remembrance. A hallowed place from where souls ascended.
Cecil parked the truck beneath the shade of a maple, cut the engine, and rolled the windows down. We sat there awhile, taking in the serenity and beauty. Ribbons of asphalt cut across swaths of manicured lawn. In the gridwork of greenery, the stones were lined up as far as the eye could see, the regularity of it broken only by the occasional columnar juniper, sprawling oak, or bed of pink shrub roses. Beside some of the slabs sat bouquets of plastic flowers on small metal stands, their colors long since faded from the sun’s relentless assault.
Across Cecil’s lap lay a fresh bunch of daisies, plucked from the tiny garden beside his front door. He had wrapped their stems in newspaper, carefully broadening the protective cone so as not to crush the delicate, snowy petals. Pollen had tinged Cecil’s fingers a luminous yellow and when he brought his fingertips up to brush at the corner of his eye, he left a golden smear there.
“Come on, girl.” He sniffed and cleared his throat. The newspaper crinkled as he curled his fingers around it. “Time I introduced you to my special gal.”
We got out of the truck and went a few rows down, where we turned right. I followed close behind him, keeping my distance from the granite columns. At the eighth stone, he stopped. Next to it, very close, was a much, much smaller stone. For several minutes, he stood in silence, head bent, the flowers clasped to his chest. His lips moved and every so often I caught a few whispered words: “Yea though I walk ... shadow of death ... no evil, for you are with me ... Amen.”
He removed the flowers from their wrapping and laid them at the base of the bigger stone. Then he placed a single flower next to the smaller stone. All too soon, they would wilt and wither under the intensity of the June sun, but for now they were a colorful dash of vitality in an otherwise inert scene. His fingers traced the letters on the larger stone lovingly, as if each stroke and curve r
epresented some long ago memory.
“This was my wife Sarah, Halo. We were together thirty-seven wonderful years. Never raised any children — not that we didn’t want them — but it just wasn’t in the cards for us. God has his own reasons for everything. Sometimes they don’t make a lick of sense, but you abide by them, just like you abide by the speed limit and parking signs. And then He saw fit to take her from me one day, seventeen years ago. Cancer, the female kind. She was only fifty-six. Still spry as the nineteen-year old knockout I married at the little white chapel down in Foxtail Hollow, up until the very end. I suppose it was a blessing she didn’t suffer long, but when she died ... I was the one who suffered, instead.”
He braced a crooked hand against the top of the slab and sank to his knees, his joints cracking. His forehead touched the smooth surface of the stone. He drew in several slow breaths, as if somehow he could capture the words he sought in a random lungful of air. In the end, they came in staggered bits of thought, scattered memories resurrected.
“We met at the root beer stand just west of town. Well, that’s not true, exactly. I was two years older than her and she was still a senior in high school. She knew who I was, but I’d never paid her no mind. That was the first time I ever talked to her. Took me an hour to work up the courage, though. There she was in her little red skirt, white button-up blouse, and that funny little cockeyed hat that said ‘Big Bob’s’, skating from car to car, tray balanced above her bent arm. Truth is, I kept hoping she’d dump one of those trays in the parking lot so I could jump out and help her sweep up the glass. Never happened. My buddy Frank prodded me to introduce myself, but I was sure I’d seen her with Roland Pflaumer the week before at the bowling alley. A gal as fine as that, I figured, had to have a steady guy. Frank finally pushed me out the car door. And I mean pushed me out. Landed right at her feet. She hopped over me and still managed to hang onto her tray. That was the beginning of something special. I never needed anything more than her and that farm I call home. Children or no, we were happy. She told me she could tell what I was thinking just by the way my eyebrows twitched or my mouth slanted — and she was usually right.
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