The dog just nodded and hung its tongue out.
—
AT HOME IN MANKATO, Virgil unhooked the boat and did a bit of cleanup, then went inside and cleaned up himself. Frankie was at home: “We figured you’d call about now,” she said. “The last of the hay just went in the barn.”
“I was hoping you’d hold off until I got there,” he lied. “Are you in any shape to receive visitors?”
“I suppose,” she said. “I’m all hot and sweaty, and I was thinking of going out to the creek.”
“I will be there in fifteen minutes,” Virgil said.
When Virgil got to the farm, Frankie’s youngest son, Sam, was working on the front porch with some two-by-two boards, a saw, and a hammer and nails. He was making stilts, Virgil realized, on his way to a Gold Arrow Point for his Cub Scouts Wolf Badge.
Virgil got out of the truck and Sam called, “You bring me anything?”
“Yeah, myself,” Virgil said.
“Big deal,” Sam said. Though he was only a second-grader, he said, “I can’t get these fuckin’ foot supports to hold. The nails keep pulling out, and when I use bigger nails, the wood splits.”
“You need to drill holes, and use screws and Gorilla glue,” Virgil said. “And don’t say ‘fuck’ or I’ll tell your mother, and she’ll kick your young ass.”
He walked around the truck and popped the passenger door, and the yellow dog jumped out and looked around. Sam, on the porch, stood up and gawked. “All right! We got us a dog?”
The dog loped up on the porch and gave Sam a sniff and a lick, and Sam shouted into the house: “Ma! Ma!”
“What!”
“We got us a dog!”
“What?”
“We got us a dog!”
He opened the door and ran into the house with the dog a step behind him, leaving Virgil in the driveway by himself.
From inside the house: “We got us a dog!”
“What?”
“We got us a dog,” Virgil said.
—
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