Mutt's Promise

by Julie Salamon

  Luna didn’t know how far away the moon was, but she loved to dance so much, she would be willing to try.

  chapter six

  PUPPY DAYS

  After the thrill of her first dance, Luna scampered to the comfort of her mother’s warm belly. She snuggled there, watching the boy until he disappeared. She yawned with contentment, remembering his sunbaked human smell as he lifted her into the warm summer air.

  The peaceful moment was soon disrupted as her brother and sisters piled around her. She grunted from under the crush of furry bodies.

  Teeth gripped the skin on her neck and plucked her out of the crowd.

  “C’mon, Luna,” said her big brother, the bruiser Gilbert had named Chief. “Stand up for yourself.”

  Luna blinked her eyes, wondering for a second who he was talking to.

  Mutt’s deep voice chimed in.

  “You are my daydreamer,” she said, licking dirt off her smallest baby’s head.

  Luna watched as Mutt looked at Chief.

  “You are the biggest and the strongest,” Mutt said. “You look like your father, but you are steady like me. I won’t be able to take care of you pups forever. I’ll be counting on you, Chief, to watch over the rest, especially Luna.”

  Chief responded by rolling on his back, and brought Luna along for the ride, her scruff clamped in his teeth. Not wanting to miss the fun, the other pups jumped in.

  From the pile of fur and ears and tails, Chief called out, panting from exertion, “Don’t worry, Mother. I’ll watch out for Luna.”

  “And one day she will do the same for you,” Luna was pleased to hear her mother say. “Strength is like a seesaw; sometimes up and sometimes down.”

  Luna wasn’t sure what a “seesaw” was, but she understood what Mutt meant, though she couldn’t imagine what she could do for Chief. He was so big and she was so small.

  Day by day Luna and her siblings ventured farther away from their patch of the farm, the area surrounding the house where Gilbert’s family stayed. The two Happys—Happy and Alegre—usually led the pack. Carefree types, they were the first to run across the gravel road that led to the fields, and up to the entrance into the barn across the way. Chief was close behind, barking at them to slow down.

  “I’m the chief,” he panted.

  Happy and Alegre just laughed at him as they ran even faster.

  Luna got frustrated with them because she couldn’t help herself from stopping every so often to dance and dream.

  Then she would call out, “Wait for me!”

  But she didn’t panic too much. She knew that if she trailed too far behind, Chief would circle back to bring her along.

  Together and separately, she and the others discovered the ways of their little patch of the world.

  Every smell, every crack in the earth, was an invitation to adventure. The puppies kept their noses stuck to the ground as they dashed about, inhaling the fragrance of hay, poking their heads into the inviting spaces provided by parked tractors and plows. Life was one surprise after another.

  It didn’t take them long, however, to learn that not every creature was delighted by their presence.

  The revelation came the day Alegre and Happy led the pack inside the barn, with Luna panting to catch up. When her sisters reached the other side of the barn, Luna watched as they almost ran over a bunch of tiny creatures bouncing around like little yellow balls.

  “Watch where you’re going!” squeaked one of the balls.

  Before the puppies could retort, they were startled by a fierce noise.

  “Get out of here!” clucked a giant hen, screaming at them as she spread her dark reddish brown feathers into a menacing pose. Luna was terrified. She had never seen anything like this, but she understood immediately that this crazy creature could be dangerous.

  She and the other puppies scattered, madly jostling to get out of the barn, across the gravel road, and back home. Luna watched as Chief and the others dived under Gilbert’s house like a squadron of tiny jets back from a dangerous mission and disappeared!

  Her heart started to beat very fast. Then, without realizing what she was doing, she began to skip backward and forward.

  Soon she heard someone barking, “Luna! Luna!”

  It was Chief.

  “What are you doing?” he asked her.

  She stopped and rubbed her head against her brother’s neck.

  “You guys all disappeared and I was scared,” she said. “So I started dancing to calm myself down.”

  Chief sighed.

  “C’mon,” he said.

  Luna bounced alongside her big brother.

  They ran up to Mutt to find their sisters were still yelping about their adventure.

  “You should have seen this giant thing,” Happy said.

  “. . . that chased us and yelled at us,” said Alegre, finishing her sister’s sentence.

  “It wasn’t all that big,” Chief said as he sat down next to his sisters. “Just weird and very, very noisy.”

  He lowered his head onto his paws and yawned.

  “They’re wimps,” he said, looking at his sisters.

  Happy and Alegre began to object in unison.

  Mutt laughed.

  “Calm down, all of you,” she said. “That weird, noisy thing was Penny the hen.”

  “You know her?” Chief asked.

  “I do,” said Mutt. “She was my first acquaintance here on the farm. Those little yellow things are her chicks.”

  Luna whispered, “What are chicks?”

  Chief piped up. “Those are baby birds,” he said, “like we’re baby dogs.”

  Luna sighed. “How do you know so much, Chief?”

  He scratched the ground with his paw. “I pay attention,” he said. “I have to. I’m the oldest.”

  Luna and her sisters piled on top of him.

  “Oldest!” Alegre barked. “Just because you came out first?”

  Mutt spoke up. “That’s right,” she said. “Just because he came out first.”

  She smiled at her biggest, oldest puppy.

  Happy asked, “Why did that old bird have to be so mean? We weren’t doing any harm.”

  Mutt replied, “She’s watching out for her chicks the way I’m watching out for you.”

  “Guess we are pretty scary to those chicks,” Chief said, looking pleased.

  Luna giggled at the thought of seeming scary to anyone.

  “Let’s go chase a chick” became the puppies’ rallying cry, though they always stopped shy of the area where Penny marched around her flock of chirping babes.

  Luna began to keep up with the rest. She would never forget those early days when nothing was ordinary and the smallest adventure seemed grand.

  chapter seven

  MUTT’S PROMISE

  Gilbert tried not to play favorites, but he loved Luna best.

  He didn’t say it, but Luna knew.

  Often when the other puppies roamed, she was content to hang out with the boy. When he began to teach her tricks, she learned quickly because she was eager to please him.

  Soon, when Gilbert commanded, “Dance, Luna,” and sang the words to the song about the moon and olives, she knew she was supposed to kick with her right leg, then the left, and then turn all the way around. Then he just had to hum the tune and nod—and Luna would dance.

  When he ordered her to run, she ran. When he told her to sit, she sat. Without needing an explanation, she understood that he believed she was special.

  One day when Luna finished her dance, Gilbert didn’t clap the way he usually did.

  “You have to bow at the end,” he said to her.

  Luna cocked her head, which was her way to say that she didn’t understand.

  “Like this,” Gilbert said as he raised one hand
in the air and lowered his head.

  Luna didn’t get it. When Gilbert bowed, she ran over and tried to jump up and lick his face.

  “I know this may seem silly to you,” Gilbert said, “but the bow is your way of saying ‘you are welcome’ when the crowd applauds.” Luna didn’t know why he sounded frustrated.

  Next time she danced for him, he clapped and said, “Bow.”

  Luna just looked at him. She didn’t understand.

  The time after that, Gilbert pushed down on Luna’s head after he clapped, and said, “Bow.”

  She thought he was playing a game and flopped over on her back, but he just sighed instead of petting her.

  The next time Luna finished dancing, Gilbert surprised her by dropping a cracker on the ground. But when she bent over to grab it in her teeth, he snatched it away before she got to it.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  Slipping the cracker into his pocket, he told her to dance. When she was finished, he told her to sit, and then he dropped the cracker on the ground again.

  When she started to run for it, he commanded her to stay. Though she was puzzled, she stayed, waiting to see what would happen next.

  Gilbert began to clap his hands.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Luna slowly walked over to the cracker and bent her head to reach it. This time Gilbert didn’t stop her.

  “Good bow, Luna!” he said.

  Now she understood what he wanted! After that, when she heard the sound of clapping, she gave a little bow, whether there was a cracker there or not.

  She was pleased to see how delighted Gilbert was. She loved it when he said, “You are so smart!” She was happy when he began to confide in her, the way he confided in Mutt.

  He told Luna how hard it was when his dad used to live apart from them for months at a stretch. “He worked for people who treated him worse than a dog,” he said. “Not like Mr. Thomas.”

  Luna put her head on the ground and covered her eyes with her paws at the sound of that.

  “Whoops, sorry,” Gilbert said. “I meant worse than the way some crazy people treat dogs.”

  Luna whimpered.

  Gilbert continued. “My dad did such a good job here that Mr. Thomas made him foreman and let him bring us with him for the picking season. That was good, but hard, because every year I start school here and then have to leave after a couple of months, when we move south for the winter crops and I have to start another school.”

  He told Luna about his father’s dream, to open a restaurant with Gilbert’s uncle, who lived in a big city.

  Luna didn’t always get what Gilbert was saying, but sometimes the most important part of being a friend is knowing when to just listen. And Luna knew how to listen.

  When she was around Gilbert, she felt as though she could do anything. But she hadn’t shaken off her shyness. When she was out roaming with the other puppies, she stuck to Chief like a gnat.

  Often she preferred to stay by her mother’s side.

  “Why didn’t you go with the rest?” Mutt asked her one afternoon.

  Luna lowered her head.

  “They were heading over to the big house and I was scared,” she said.

  Mutt lifted her paw and laid it gently on Luna’s small back.

  “What were you scared of?” she asked.

  Luna shrugged and then offered a list.

  “Of Mr. Thomas, of the tractor, of thunder, of cows, of worms—”

  Her mother laughed. “Of worms?”

  It was true. Luna had jumped in terror when a worm crawled on her paw the other day.

  Luna nodded and continued. “Of not seeing Gilbert again—”

  Mutt interrupted again.

  “Why are you worried about that?” Mutt asked.

  “I don’t know, but I am,” Luna replied. “And Mama, what if I have to go away from you? I won’t know what to do.”

  Mutt gazed at Luna for a while, then said, “When I was your age, I was afraid like you.”

  Luna looked at her mother.

  “I don’t believe you were ever afraid of anything!” she said.

  Mutt licked her baby pup.

  “Oh, I was afraid of many things,” she said.

  A strange look came across Mutt’s face. “I just remembered something,” she said. “My mother used to scold me for being a scaredy-cat.”

  Luna giggled. “That’s so silly!” she said.

  Mutt smiled.

  “I was a bit of a scaredy-cat,” she said. “Mainly because I didn’t know much, and when you don’t know what things are, they can seem frightening.”

  Luna nodded. She understood exactly what Mutt was saying.

  “But that changed,” Mutt said tenderly. “I found something I was good at and I became less afraid.”

  Luna listened carefully.

  “As you know, I’m an excellent watchdog,” Mutt said, not bragging but simply stating a fact. “That’s my talent. And one day you will find yours. I promise you that.”

  Luna curled up into a ball.

  “I could never be like you,” she whimpered.

  Mutt lowered her head to touch Luna’s.

  “You are more like me than you know,” she said. “Now, go out and play! It’s a beautiful day.”

  chapter eight

  THE END OF SUMMER

  Luna sensed that changes were coming, and it wasn’t just because the days were shorter and nights were cooler. Mutt seemed to be testing the puppies. Now when they went swimming in the pond, instead of watching them from under the big tree, she headed back to the house. Sometimes when she rested in the crawl space where they were born, she barked until they ran away instead of lifting her paw in welcome the way she had before.

  Luna saw that Gilbert noticed too.

  “Mutt, stop barking,” he yelled at her when she let loose a barrage of noise, aimed at her puppies. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Luna watched as Mutt walked over to Gilbert and sat down next to him, raising her paw.

  “I don’t get it,” the boy said, kneeling down and shaking her uplifted paw. “For weeks you barely look at me because of the puppies, and now you want to be my friend again but you push away the pups.”

  Mutt whimpered and laid her head on Gilbert’s lap.

  He scratched her ears and said with exasperation, “Dogs!”

  When Gilbert left, Luna tiptoed up to her mother. Before Mutt could growl, Luna dived next to her.

  Mutt started to push the puppy away and then sighed as she allowed Luna to snuggle next to her.

  “What’s going on, Mama?” Luna asked.

  Mutt gently nuzzled Luna and then she explained.

  “Dogs understand what people find hard to accept,” she said, “that we can create new life but we can’t own it forever.”

  Luna felt frightened.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  Mutt licked Luna’s face gently.

  “I am proud of you, Chief, and your sisters,” she said. “You are stronger every day. Now what happens to you depends on you—and on fate.”

  Luna was confused.

  “Okay, but why do you have to be mean to us?” she asked.

  Mutt smiled. “I’m not being mean,” she said. “I’m just making sure you learn to take care of yourself.”

  Luna cocked her head and started to say something. But Mutt stopped her with a frisky head bump.

  “Now go play while you can,” Mutt said. “Winter will be here soon enough.”

  Luna scampered away and almost ran into Gilbert and his father. They were in the middle of an intense discussion.

  Gilbert picked up Luna and stroked her ears as he continued talking to Lorenzo.

  “Papa, what are you saying?” Gilbert asked. “Won’t t
he puppies be here when we come back next year?”

  Lorenzo didn’t answer right away.

  “Gilbert, a lot can happen in a year,” he finally said mysteriously. “Who knows where we will be? Maybe our plans will change.”

  Luna’s ears lifted. What is going on? she wondered. First Mother is talking about winter coming and now Gilbert’s father is saying he doesn’t know where they will be?

  Gilbert seemed as confused as she was. “What do you mean?” he asked. “I want to come back here. I don’t even want to leave!”

  His words made Luna growl.

  Lorenzo smiled. “This is a different song than the one you usually sing,” he said. “Every year you can’t wait to get out of here and be with your cousins in Florida. Every year you say you hate starting school here and then having to switch.”

  Gilbert burst into tears. “That was before I met Mutt,” he said. “And Luna! What would she do without me?”

  Luna pressed her body tight against Gilbert, as if she were trying to glue him to her so he couldn’t go away. Gilbert hugged her until she yelped.

  Lorenzo was about to say something but was interrupted by the other puppies. They had come back to find Luna, and now that they saw her in Gilbert’s arms, they wanted his attention too.

  As Chief, Happy, and Alegre raced around them, Gilbert kept his hold on Luna.

  “Hey Luna,” Gilbert whispered. “When I’m gone and you see the moon, think of me and the song about olives. And don’t forget the tricks I taught you. I’ll test you when I see you next time!”

  For the first time in her life, Luna understood what sadness meant. The air felt heavy as she watched Lorenzo put his arm around Gilbert and as she heard Gilbert’s words.

  “Wherever I am,” he said to her, “I’ll watch for the moon and think of you, waiting for me to come back next summer.”

  She licked his face and he laughed.

  “Okay,” he said. “Sealed with a kiss.”

  For the next few days, Luna barely left Gilbert’s side. She was there on his last day at the farm when Mr. Thomas walked down to Gilbert’s cabin to say good-bye. The door was open. Gilbert and Luna watched as the farmer gazed around the cabin, where all the little touches that made the cabin a home were gone—the curtains Gilbert’s mother had hung, the photographs, the pots she used for cooking.