Say That Again

by Sasson, Gemini

  —o00o—

  “Hannah, lunch is ready!” Jenn called from the kitchen window.

  Hannah was almost done waiting. Her daddy had just put the tractor in the shed and was walking toward the mailbox. She’d wanted to get the newspaper herself, but she wasn’t allowed by the road. Besides, out by the mailbox was where the school bus picked Maura up and Hannah didn’t want a school bus to come and take her.

  “Hannah?” Jenn stepped out the door, then said to her husband, “Hunter, bring her inside when you come in, will you? She’s been out there watching you mow the whole time. Who knows what’s on her mind?”

  Smiling, Hunter waved at Jenn and went on down the lane. Hannah went to the picket fence, watching. This was as far as she was allowed to go. Her parents had said they’d put the fence up when she was little to keep her from running out onto the road. She didn’t remember ever doing that.

  Hunter walked up to the mailbox and looked inside. He pulled the paper out, tucked it under his arm, and turned back toward the house. But before he started up the lane, he paused, looking down the road toward Gramma Lise’s. He began walking that way. A few steps later he broke into a jog.

  Standing on the bottom board of the fence, Hannah waited, her impatience mounting. Grasping a picket, she swung her body side to side. She wondered why her daddy was running away with the newspaper that she needed. More than that, she wondered what he was running to. Gramma Lise and Grampa Brad were not walking down the road. Their sheep appeared to all be safe in their pasture. There was nothing there, as far as she could see.

  After disappearing from view behind a clump of trees, Hunter reappeared briefly on the other side before bending down. He stayed there for much too long a time. Hannah swung side to side harder. She felt the nails of the board loosen, but she went on swinging. What was he doing?

  Finally, he stood and started back. When he got to the other side of the trees, Hannah could see he had something big, fuzzy, and dark draped between his arms. He turned down their lane. The board popped loose. Hannah stopped swinging. She was too mesmerized by what she saw in her father’s arms to move.

  A dog! He was bringing her dog to her!

  She let go of the broken board and hopped down. Unable to contain her excitement, she jumped up and down, up and down, up and down.

  “Hannah,” her mother began, “what are you —?”

  But Jenn stopped cold as Hunter stepped through the gate. She pressed a hand to her chest. “Oh, no. Is he ...?”

  “Still breathing,” Hunter made his way carefully up the steps. “Pulse is faint, but regular.”

  Jenn held the door open for them. “I’ll get your bag out of the truck.”

  “As soon as you do that, find Maura. Have her keep Hannah in check, will you?”

  By then, Hannah had stopped jumping. Something was wrong with her new dog. Terribly, terribly wrong. His eyes were closed. He was sleeping, but the kind of sleep it was hard to wake up from. Like after her accident. And there was blood coming out of his nose.

  She followed Hunter inside as he laid the dog on the kitchen table and then probed him gently all over. When Jenn came in and set his bag down, he took a light out and pried the dog’s eyelids open to shine it in his eyes. The dog moaned and tried to lift his head, but he wasn’t very strong.

  “Did he get hit by a car?” Jenn said.

  “I suppose it’s possible, but it looks more to me like someone hit him with something and dumped him by the road.”

  “How awful. Who would do that to a dog? I hope the monster gets his due.” She stroked the top of the dog’s head. “They say animal abuse is the first sign of a serial violent offender.” Then, as if she suddenly remembered Hannah standing there, she said, “I’ll fetch Maura from her room.”

  Hunter’s back was to Hannah. Without making a sound, she tiptoed to the table. For a while, she watched her daddy looking inside the dog’s mouth.

  He glanced at her, smiling sadly. “I’m going to patch him up, okay? Then we have to figure out who he belongs to.”

  Which seemed like such an odd thing to say, because he was their dog now. Whoever had left him like that didn’t want him very much.

  Hannah stroked the dog’s head with gentle pets, like her daddy had taught her to do with Gramma’s baby lambs. The dog’s eyes opened a crack, as if he’d been waiting for a sign that she was there.

  “I’m Hannah,” she said.

  His breathing was faint, but she heard him like a faraway whisper: Echo.

  “I like that.”

  “Like what, sweet pea?” Hunter asked.

  “His name.”

  “Oh.” Hunter blinked at her. “What is it?”

  “Echo. His name is Echo. Like when you make a sound in the hills and it comes back to you.”

  Taking out a syringe, Hunter filled it with liquid from a tiny bottle, then tapped at it to get the bubbles out. He explained to Hannah that this was to make the dog sleepy and not hurt so much, until he got better. “Have you seen him before?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then how do you know his name? He’s not wearing a tag.”

  “Because he told me.”

  Her daddy’s eyes said he didn’t believe her. Just like he didn’t believe her about the bird or the fish. But it was pretty obvious to her by then. Other people didn’t hear these things. Only Hannah did.

  Jenn walked in with Maura.

  “Who told you what, sweetie?” Jenn said.

  Hannah pressed her lips together. Jenn and Hunter looked at each other. He leaned his head toward the hallway and her parents went and stood there together. They lowered their voices, but Hannah wasn’t deaf. She could still hear them.

  “She says the dog’s name is Echo.”

  Echo was mostly black, with white on his paws and chest and a thin white stripe on his nose. His fur was shiny, like a blackbird’s. He was kind of skinny, like Hannah, with long legs. What she liked most about him was his poofy little bobtail. She just wished he felt better.

  “How —?” Jenn began.

  Hunter held up a finger. “She says he told her his name. She also told me that on the day of the accident, a bird and a fish spoke to her.”

  Jenn tried to hide a smirk, but couldn’t. “So she’s St. Francis of Assisi now?”

  “She’s definitely dog-obsessed.”

  “I’ve noticed.” She gestured toward Hannah’s half-done picture board. “What do you suppose brought this on? I know she gets hooked on things, but there’s usually something that sets it off.”

  For a few moments, Hunter didn’t answer. Hannah stared hard at him. Was he going to remember his promise? For weeks now, he’d been avoiding talking to her mommy about it, even though he kept saying he would. And now he’d found a dog. A dog just for her. A dog that needed her as much as she needed him.

  She laid her head on top of Echo’s chest and listened to him breathing. His fur tickled her cheek.

  “I ...I may have promised her a dog when she was in the hospital.”

  “You what?!”

  Hunter shushed Jenn, then nudged her into the living room.

  “You want to know something weird?” Hunter said to Jenn, his voice low. “Maybe it’s just coincidence, but this dog looks an awful lot like the one we saw when Hannah went missing from the campsite. You know — the one that was carrying Faustine, before dropping the toy and running off?”

  Leaning sideways, Jenn peered into the kitchen. “Now that you mention it ... I suppose it could be. But wasn’t that dog smaller, kind of scrawny?”

  “A half-grown puppy. Remember, that was almost six months ago.”

  “Hunter, don’t read too much into that. Anyway, the last thing we need is a dog. Maybe when she’s a little older ...”

  Hannah couldn’t hear them after that, but her mommy didn’t sound happy. That was okay. She didn’t have to be. Echo was her dog. She would take care of him. They would look out for each other.

  Her parents retur
ned to the kitchen, bustling about.

  “Maura, will you keep an eye on Hannah for a few minutes?” Hunter said. “Your mom is going to help me take this dog to my clinic, where I can do some X-rays and —”

  “Is he going to die?” Maura blurted, her face twisting in disgust as she caught sight of the blood pooling on the table.

  Hannah’s head snapped up. She stared at her sister in horror. Was there something they weren’t telling her?

  “Maura!” Jenn corrected.

  “What? You have to admit he doesn’t look too good.”

  “Go sit with your sister in the family room. Let her pick the movie. Gramma Lise will be here any minute. I’ll be back in less than an hour, all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Maura peeled her little sister away from Echo. “Come on, squirt. You get to watch your favorite movie again. Yay. One more round of My Neighbor Totoro. Magic seeds and a cat-bus and kids with eyes too big for their heads.”

  She pulled Hannah toward the basement stairs, but her little sister writhed out of her grip, watching as their mother held the door open and Hunter scooped Echo up in his arms. The door shut behind them. Hannah rushed to it and pressed her nose to the glass, watching as her daddy pulled away in his truck and her mommy followed behind in her car.

  She stayed there even after Gramma came. Even after her mother returned home. Stayed until she saw her daddy’s truck pull in the driveway hours later.

  With a weary sigh, he ruffled her hair and pulled her up into his arms. She rested her head on his broad shoulder.

  “Echo’s going to be okay, sweetie. He’s going to be okay,” he murmured into her ear. “But he’ll need to stay in the animal hospital for a little while, all right?”

  Hannah nodded. She should have felt better then, but she didn’t. Echo needed her.

  “Maybe Mommy can bring you to see him in a few days. Right now he’s pretty bruised up and tired. He needs to rest. Like you.” He set her down and turned her shoulders toward the hall. “Go on, now. Get ready for bed.”

  Reluctantly, Hannah trudged to the bathroom, where Gramma Lise helped her change and got her started brushing her teeth. Then her grandma rejoined Jenn and Hunter in the kitchen. Toothbrush still in her mouth, Hannah tiptoed to the end of the hall.

  “His mandible is fractured, but thankfully there doesn’t appear to be any cranial damage. Maybe a slight concussion, but nothing serious. He’s missing a couple of teeth now.”

  “Was he micro-chipped?” Lise asked.

  “No. Nice collar, but someone had unclipped the tags. Like they didn’t want anyone to be able to trace him. Judging by the injuries, the dog wasn’t hit by a car. No, I’m more sure than ever that someone struck him.”

  “With what?”

  “Who knows? A bat? A shovel, maybe? They walloped him one good blow. Just thank goodness they didn’t keep at it.”

  Lise’s cell phone rang. “Excuse me, it’s Brad. He’s been on patrol tonight. I’d better take this.” She stepped out onto the back porch to talk to him.

  “So what happens to the dog now?” Jenn asked Hunter. “And I don’t mean his medical treatment.”

  “I’d be afraid to put an ad in the paper for a lost pet. And given what he’s gone through, taking a chance on relinquishing him to the shelter ... I couldn’t do it, Jenn.”

  “So you’re saying you want to keep him?” She waited for him to answer, but he couldn’t seem to find the right words. “Hunter, you know how she’s been with animals. She doesn’t mean to hurt them. She doesn’t think things through. There’s a disconnect. We’ve talked about it before. She’s just too young to understand the implications of a single action. Besides, it’s only going to break her heart worse if we have to give the dog up later. Better to do it now.”

  “Jenn ... we can’t. I promised her. Anyway, she’s not the same kid she was before —”

  “So you keep reminding me. Fine. Suit yourself. Just remember that I’m on record as saying this is not one of your best ideas, Hunter.”

  “Don’t worry. If anything happens, I take full responsibility.”

  Hannah hurried back to the bathroom to finish brushing her teeth. As she rinsed her mouth out, she heard her grandma come back in the house.

  “Brad says they took some man into custody for domestic violence tonight. The guy was pretty riled up, despite the fact that he had a gunshot wound to his leg.”

  “His wife shot him?” Jenn said.

  “Girlfriend, I think. He was getting a little too rough with her. He stepped out of the house for a while, and when he came back she was standing there with a gun and told him to get out. He tried to take the gun from her, and, well ...”

  “Hah, serves him right.”

  chapter 14: Echo

  Sometimes where you end up is where you were supposed to be all along. Even if you didn’t plan on going there.

  I hadn’t expected to find myself with another family. I could have been content with Ariella, even with her long work hours, had it just been her. Although I had never felt any special bond with her, at least I was well cared for. But Mario had made his opinion of me clear and it hurt that Ariella had not saved me or stood up for herself. Maybe she didn’t feel that she could.

  I had tried to stand up for her. I had finally tried. And all it had gotten me was a pan upside the head and another car ride to hell.

  Only, this time it hadn’t ended all that badly. I mean, I hurt like the bloody bejeebers — I couldn’t open my jaw or chew. Even swallowing water was hard. There was a hole in my gums where two teeth used to be and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to grow any new ones there.

  My head. Oh my head. Hours after I woke up fully, my brain was a fuzzy mess, like the inside of one of those stuffed toys Ariella gave me. Hey, I had to rip one open to see what was inside — and then a second one, just to see if it was the same. My nose was swollen, so I couldn’t breathe through it. My balance was off. All I had to do was tip my head and the room spun and flipped around me.

  Yet the first time I opened my eyes after Mario threw me out of the car ... that was the first time I fell in love. She was small, young, with pale yellow hair and tiny hands and eyes as blue as the sky on a cloudless winter day. A human child, which should have thrown me off because the only children I’d known so far had been mean to me, but she was ... different. In a good way. A kind way.

  Different like me.

  She spoke softly and moved slowly. Her name was Hannah. It was the only word I heard before I drifted mercifully off.

  Hannah ...

  —o00o—

  How disappointing when I came to that the first face I saw was not Hannah’s, but some older man’s. Not old old, but a grown man. With serious, questioning eyes and a gentle touch. Something about his voice and the look in his eyes was vaguely familiar, as if I already knew him, but of course I didn’t. I was sure I’d never seen him before. And yet ...

  He did all sorts of things to me, like poking the soft parts of my belly and putting tubes in me where tubes shouldn’t be, sticking needles in my skin and sometimes taping them to my front legs so they stuck, other times injecting me with a magical liquid to leave me feeling like I was floating above myself. I learned to look forward to those injections — not that I liked getting stabbed with sharp objects, but they took away the pain that, when it returned, turned me inside out with misery.

  He kept me in a metal box of some sort, with a wire door on one side. Like the ones the cats were kept in at the shelter, only bigger. I didn’t have the energy to stand and look about, but I was vaguely aware of a bright row of lights above and more cages across from where I was. I heard other animals, and sometimes human voices, but it was all as if in a dream.

  Had Hannah been a dream? An angel? I began to wonder.

  Days drifted by in a fog. Nights, marked by the absence of those bright lights, came and went. My strength and clarity of mind returned gradually, until I could sit up and look out to see the other anima
ls across from me, looking equally scared and unhappy. The days had never seemed so long. Not even when I was sitting in the backyard at the Grunwalds’, waiting for winter to end.

  Was this all there was to life? Pain, disappointment, crushed hopes, unrelenting boredom? Why did humans fail so horribly in their care of me? Why did they even insist on bringing me into their already dysfunctional lives? And was it even possible that somewhere out there was a person who could love me for who I was?

  When I had looked into Hannah’s eyes, I thought I saw that love, felt it, if only for a moment, but then ... this. As much as I wanted to be left alone sometimes, even I wanted to be loved by that special someone.

  Apparently, it was not to be. Life was meant to be endured, not enjoyed. The tough survived. The soft got the crap beat out of them.

  Still, I couldn’t help but hold the slightest glimmer of hope that there was something more in store for me. That I was meant for some purpose greater than I could yet comprehend.

  In front of me sat a bowl of cold gruel. It was my puppyhood all over again. The sandy-haired man, the one who controlled the magic water, had put it there earlier, urging me to eat. Why bother? My stomach was empty, but I wasn’t truly hungry. Although he’d removed the tube that went down my throat, the effort required too much energy. Even though I could move my jaw now, it was still very sore. My tongue felt thick. Drool dripped from the corner of my mouth, dampening the fur of my neck. Swallowing water was like gulping down stones. I remembered what that was like — I’d tried it as a puppy and quickly learned a rock in your gut meant a belly ache and then a painful poop. Now that was something I hadn’t done in days.

  I rested my muzzle between my paws, but after a few minutes my jaw began to throb. The magic was wearing off. Where was he when I needed him? Couldn’t he just put the magic liquid in a bowl and let me lap it at will?

  The dull throb grew to a sharp, constant pain, stabbing upward through my skull. I rolled over onto my right side, the metal cage bottom cool even through my layers of fur, hoping that the sensation would pass, but it only grew worse. Along with it, my agitation mounted.