Spotted Dog Last Seen

by Jessica Scott Kerrin

The teacher could hardly think for the rest of the day. He busied himself by cleaning his apartment, despite the sticky heat, and he wrote another poem to add to his collection of the ones he had already written about her. He even toyed with the idea of bringing some of his poetry to read to her on their first date, but then thought no, too soon.

  He tried on four different pairs of pants and seven shirts before he settled on what to wear. He tried to fix his thick wavy hair, but it would not cooperate. It never did. He brushed his teeth. Twice. Then he got into his car with the broken air conditioner, rolled down all the windows, hoping she wouldn’t notice, and drove out to the neighborhood where she lived.

  He was not familiar with her neighborhood. It was new, with young trees and no shade, and all the houses looked the same. He got lost a few times, and when he finally found her street, he was terribly late. Nearly frantic, he anxiously scanned each house for its street address before scooting past to the next one.

  The heat was unbearable in the car, even with all the windows down. Everyone who lived on the street was inside.

  Not everyone.

  While looking out the side window for the next house address, he felt a sickening thud on the hood of his car. He automatically hit the brakes. The teacher peered through the windshield. A little boy flew into the air, reaching out to him. The little boy landed near the curb. The little boy did not move again.

  The teacher flung his door open and rushed to the little boy. The buzzing sound of a nearby lawnmower stopped. Screen doors creaked open up and down the street like question marks. The teacher knelt beside the little boy. He was dead. The teacher yelled for help anyway.

  A crowd gathered and several people pushed him out of the way to attend to the little boy. Others shouted, “Call 911!”

  The teacher staggered backwards, away from the crowd, away from the body of the little boy, and he collapsed on a lawn with his head in his hands.

  Why? Why?

  Why did that little boy run in front of his car?

  He briefly looked up. Across the street, jammed under a parked car, was an orange rubber ball.

  And beside him, standing alone, not with the crowd, was another little boy about the same age, stiff and motionless, staring at the teacher. That other little boy hardly blinked, his arms hung at his sides. He said nothing. He was so pale, like a ghost. And then that boy’s mother rushed to him, scooped up her small son and carried him inside their house.

  “Derek?”

  I looked up from my bed. My mom stood at my bedroom door.

  “What are you still doing up? You have school tomorrow.”

  “I’m almost done my book,” I said. “Just a few more pages.”

  She hesitated.

  “Is everything okay?”

  I looked at her, but who I saw was a younger version of my mom, my mom who had hugged me so hard after the accident that I thought she’d never let me go.

  “Just a few more pages,” I assured her.

  She closed my door. I went back to where I had left off. The last chapter.

  After the police investigation, which ruled the little boy’s death an accident, the teacher could not get past his grief. He had trouble leaving his apartment, he ate very little, and he cried several times a day. Letters and bills piled up, and the thought of going back to his old school in the fall to teach made him feel sick to his stomach.

  Finally, someone from his school board paid him a visit. After he reluctantly agreed to let her in, he told her he was stuck. He could not move forward. He could not get past the accident. He could barely leave his apartment with all the curtains drawn shut.

  She handed him a letter of transfer, which meant he could move to a nearby town, teach at a new school and start over where no one knew about the accident.

  After she left, the teacher sat at his kitchen table for a very long time. He struggled to remember what it felt like to be in front of a classroom. He started to remember fleeting bits and pieces. A couple of times, he remembered moments of joy. The questions students asked with their hands up. The smell of new books. The school buzzer calling everyone in from recess.

  He got up and made himself a sandwich. He opened his living-room curtains and stood at the window while he chewed. He realized that he loved teaching, and he was good at it.

  The teacher signed the letter of transfer. And then, while he was settling in his new town, while he got to know his new students and while he made room for a lost spotted dog who loved movie scripts, he wrote it all down.

  I looked at the clock on my night table. It was 1:14 a.m. I put The Spotted Dog Last Seen into my knapsack and pulled out Creelman’s book about rockets. I studied the crayon marks on the cover and the uneven scissor cuts inside.

  The work of a four-year-old. The work of Dennis.

  I slid that book beside my treasured journal of t-shirt sayings on the bookshelf above my desk. Then I crawled back into bed and turned out the light. I lay there, piecing together everything I knew.

  Dennis.

  Mr. Creelman.

  Murray Easton.

  Loyola Louden.

  The mystery novel code.

  Trevor Tower’s time capsule.

  The Spotted Dog Last Seen.

  The pile of letters.

  I knew then what was in those letters. The first ones were by Mr. Easton’s former students. Just like Murray Easton, they had written about their own tragedies, their own sadness, their own disappointments as a way to get unstuck, as a way to move forward. The later ones, the ones on top of the pile, were from others who had discovered the locker before us and who had also read The Spotted Dog Last Seen. Having found a safe place for their own painful stories, they had kept Mr. Easton’s assignment going.

  Trevor Tower did keep secrets after all.

  When I woke up in the morning, something was different. I should have been tired from the late night, but I wasn’t. In fact, I had slept well.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked at breakfast.

  “He had to leave early for a meeting,” my mom said, pouring milk on my cereal. “Did you finish your book?”

  “Yes,” I said, and took a couple of crunchy mouthfuls. “Mom, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure you can,” she said, sitting down with her coffee and toast.

  “It’s about Dennis,” I said.

  She froze.

  “Is this about your nightmares?”

  “Actually, I didn’t have one last night. But I’m curious. Do you remember anything about the driver who hit him?”

  My mom set down her piece of toast with only one bite gone.

  “I don’t remember seeing him at the time of the accident. I brought you inside as soon as I found you on the lawn. You were in shock.”

  “So, you don’t know who the driver was?”

  She thought some more.

  “I remember that there was a police investigation. The driver was found to be not at fault. The police decided that Dennis’s death was an accident. It was in the newspaper.”

  “There was an article in the newspaper?” I asked.

  “I have the article,” she said quietly, studying my face.

  “You do?”

  “Yes. Our family doctor back in Ferndale told me to keep it, in case you wanted to know more when you got older.”

  “Can I see it now?” I asked, trying very hard to steady my voice so as not to alarm her.

  “Okay,” she said.

  She stood and went upstairs. I could hear her open a closet door, followed by some rummaging sounds.

  My thoughts turned frantic. What if she had lost the article after all these years? Having finally come so close to the truth about that terrible day, would it now slip away forever?

  “Here,” she said, handing me a yellowed newspaper clipping, its yell
owness reminding me of Creelman’s notes on our first day of cemetery duty.

  I studied the photograph at the top of the article. It was Murray Easton, head down, leaving Ferndale’s law court building. He was all alone. The caption below read, “Child’s death by local teacher ruled accidental.”

  Twelve

  _____

  Ferndale

  WHEN I GOT TO school that Thursday, I waited on the front steps for Pascal and Merrilee. Pascal was the first to arrive.

  “Wait with me for Merrilee,” I said. “I’ve got something to tell you both.”

  “Something about our case?” he asked eagerly.

  “You could say that,” I said, my knapsack weighing heavily at my feet. My head was swirling with the truth.

  “What’s up?” Merrilee said when she arrived moments later.

  I led them inside the school to a quiet part of the hallway where a table with year end lost-and-found items were on display: scarves from last winter, one rubber boot, calculators, skipping ropes, a mountain of school uniform parts and a harmonica.

  “Oh, that’s where it went,” Merrilee said, pocketing the harmonica. “I thought I’d lost it the last time I practiced at the cemetery.”

  She turned her attention to me as if she’d said nothing peculiar at all.

  “I read the book,” I confessed. “The Spotted Dog Last Seen.”

  “Already?” Merrilee and Pascal asked at the same time.

  “Yes. The whole thing.”

  “How did you read it so quickly?” Merrilee asked incredulously.

  “I took the copy from the locker right after we broke in. I’ve been reading it ever since.”

  Merrilee’s jaw dropped.

  “So much for teamwork,” Pascal muttered.

  “Loyola was right,” I said, ignoring Pascal. “You’ll both need to read Murray Easton’s book over the weekend if you want to complete the last assignment before the school closes on Monday.”

  “Complete the last assignment?” Pascal repeated. “Sounds like work! And school’s almost over. You said it yourself.”

  “You’ll see. You’ll want to complete the last assignment like the others,” I insisted.

  Merrilee and Pascal just stood there.

  Like Wooster and Preeble.

  Perhaps it was my sober no-nonsense tone that confused them. I must have sounded like Creelman.

  I turned and walked away.

  That weekend, my mom and I drove to Ferndale. My dad stayed home, inspired by the spring weather to clean up his workshop. He waved to us from his wide-open garage door, then turned to face the contents.

  “Good grief!” I heard him say as we got into the car.

  On the way there, my mom made small talk.

  “I can’t believe you’re almost done grade six,” she said.

  “It’s no big deal,” I replied, staring out the side window, a canvas bag of art supplies at my feet.

  “It is a big deal. You’ll be leaving Queensview Elementary behind. You’ll be saying goodbye to all your old teachers. You’ll be going to a brand-new school — junior high! — and meeting new friends this fall. You’re growing up so fast.”

  Her voice got all choky as she gripped the steering wheel.

  I looked down at my t-shirt. It read, Every great achievement was once thought impossible.

  “We had the time-capsule ceremony on Friday,” I said to lighten the mood.

  “Whose locker was chosen?”

  “Marcus Papadopoulos.”

  “What did he put in?”

  “The usual stuff. His gym socks, which I don’t think he washed the entire year. An Egyptian pharaoh mask he made in art class. His dad’s old toy model of the Batmobile. His sex education book. And an empty ant farm he made for the science fair.”

  “When will his time capsule be reopened?” she asked.

  “Fifty years,” I said.

  My mom whistled.

  “That’s a long time,” she said.

  “I’ll be old by then,” I added.

  “I certainly hope so,” she said, almost to herself.

  We drove in silence as we entered Ferndale. When she pulled up to the cemetery gate and parked the car, she turned to me.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  I paused. Only a few months ago, cemeteries gave me the creeps. But I had come to understand the special kind of silence that surrounded them. It was a silence created by countless untold stories, and it blanketed the gravestones like a homemade patchwork quilt.

  “Yes,” I said, grabbing my bag of art supplies. “You called and got permission, right?”

  “I did,” she said, putting the car keys in her purse.

  Ferndale’s Bellevue Cemetery was much like Twillingate. It was surrounded by a black iron fence with a large swinging gate that was locked up with chains at night. We wandered through the oldest section nearest to the gate. It was crammed with teetering gravestones made of slate or sandstone mixed in with the wolf stones, marbles and obelisks in the middle distance. We even passed some white wooden crosses poking up from the lumpy ground.

  Everything faced west.

  The inscriptions were eroding.

  But the sky was surprisingly blue.

  If it had been any other day, if we had not been on a mission, I would have pointed out some things to my mom. Like what the skulls and crossbones really meant. Like how different types of stone weathered at different rates. Like how to tell an eroded number 1 from a number 4 by using a simple mirror trick.

  Instead, we worked our way past the old-timers into the newest section of the cemetery, where granite blocks stood perfectly upright and gleamed in the spring-almost-summer sunshine.

  There were so many.

  So many.

  “Do you remember where?” I asked.

  My mom stopped and looked around uncertainly.

  “I’m not sure. It was such a sad day.”

  “I remember a stone lamb,” I said.

  She stared at me.

  “That’s right. A lamb. An innocent lamb. I remember that, too.”

  So we picked our way up and down the rows in search of Dennis’s lamb.

  Up and down.

  Up and down.

  Up and down.

  “Derek,” my mom called.

  I caught up to her.

  We stood in front of Dennis’s gravestone.

  Such a small thing. Just his name. The short time between his date of birth and his death. And the words deeply etched in stone beneath the dates that read, How much sorrow, how much joy is buried with our darling boy.

  I walked up to the carved stone lamb that was resting on top of Dennis’s gravestone, its head turned slightly toward passersby. I placed my hand on its little head and was surprised to feel its warmth.

  I reached into my bag and pulled out Creelman’s book of epitaphs, Famous Last Words, along with my note to Dennis’s mom tucked between the covers. My note read, I will always remember your son and your father. Sincerely, Derek Knowles-Collier.

  I had placed the book in a plastic bag with a sealed top, for protection from the weather. I was about to lay it at the base of Dennis’s gravestone, when I discovered a small toy rocket leaning against the back of the stone. There was a tag tied to it with a ribbon. I bent down to read the tag.

  Your grandfather faltered by the wayside, and the angels took him home. Now he can teach you all about the twinkly stars.

  “What does it say?” my mom asked.

  But there was no way I could read those words out loud. My throat was squeezed too tight. Instead, I shook my head, laid Creelman’s book at the base and handed her the toy. Then I busied myself by digging out my art supplies.

  I followed Creelman’s instructions perfectly. I made a beautiful
rubbing of Dennis’s epitaph while my mom sat on the grass and quietly watched, cradling the little rocket on her lap.

  When I was done, I carefully folded the rubbing into a square and packed up my supplies.

  We put the little rocket back where we found it, next to Creelman’s book.

  “All set?” my mom asked, her arm around my shoulders.

  But I knew what she really meant.

  “I’m okay,” I said, and I gave her an extra long hug to prove it.

  It was late when we got home, having stopped along the way for supper. Tomorrow was the last day of school, only a half day, really, because we would be let out at noon. But I still had a few things to do before I went to bed.

  Back in my room, I found a large envelope and slid the folded rubbing of Dennis’s gravestone inside. Then I added the yellowed newspaper article about Murray Easton, all according to my plan. But there was something missing. I lay down on my bed to think.

  Dennis’s death was not my fault. I knew that now with undeniable relief. I also knew that it wasn’t Murray Easton’s fault. And it wasn’t Dennis’s fault, either. So I wanted to add something to the envelope that would free us all from that terrible day.

  Some kindly act.

  Some words of comfort.

  Something.

  But what?

  That night, I had the nightmare one last time. It started the exact same way as it always did.

  I am sitting on the front steps eating a popsicle, checking out a scab on my knee. The cement is warm beneath me. I can smell the fresh grass. The lawn has just been cut, and my dad rolls his mower to the backyard. A screen door squeaks, and it’s my friend, Dennis, from the brick house beside us. I wave. He’s holding an orange rubber ball.

  Dennis cuts across the newly mown grass. He kicks the ball to me. I try to kick it back, but I miss. He laughs. I laugh, too, as I scramble to get the ball. I kick it to him. He misses. We laugh.

  The sun is warm.

  The grass is sweet.

  The orange ball is tricky.

  We are the only ones playing outside on our little street, with the young trees just planted and the houses brand-new. It is too hot for most people, and there is no shade. They stay indoors where it is cool. My mom is on the couch with a headache, a bag of ice around her neck. We are the only ones outside, except for my dad, who is cutting the lawn in the backyard, and Murray Easton, who is driving his car with all the windows down along our street, searching for an address.