W. Bruce Cameron

by The Dogs of Christmas

  He wondered what he was going to say to Kerri. Something told him she wasn’t going to be happy with this choice.

  But ultimately, Kerri would agree with his decision, wouldn’t she? No, not easily. Josh knew she wouldn’t accept it without argument, but he had to do it. He had to.

  For some reason he found himself thinking of Amanda, and a strong anger coursed through him. “It’s no one’s fault,” she’d explained lamely as she packed her belongings into her car. As if the choice were made for her, as if her decisions were out of her hands.

  Yes it is. It is someone’s fault, it’s your fault, Amanda.

  Things were usually someone’s fault. This, leaving the puppies to the coyotes, was his.

  Just as quickly as it had come, the rage left, like a storm cloud that stabbed a single hot bolt of lightning at the ground before passing over the ridge and out of sight. His thoughts returned to Kerri, and he decided that for now, he wouldn’t tell her anything about keeping the remaining puppies for himself.

  Josh took in a deep breath, looking around at the yellow grass and sparse shrubbery that bordered his property. He’d have to build a pen for his dogs, one with a roof on it—mountain lions could leap over even a high fence.

  When he heard the small squeak, Josh turned his head. It had been an animal sound, a little squeal. There it was again.

  Josh’s eyes widened. Could it be? He thought it had come from under his deck. Stooping down, he peered into the cramped, dark space, trying to see.

  He spotted Rufus’s tail first, the little white spot catching his eye and leading him to see the white face at the other end. “Hey!” Josh yelled, exultant. They were alive!

  A man could crawl under there, and that’s what he did next, his palms registering the rocky, cold ground. The puppies stiffened at his approach, Cody picking up on Rufus’s agitation and sniffing frantically for a clue as to what this new threat was.

  “Hey, Cody! Rufus! Come here, little guys.” Josh gathered the dogs to his chest and wriggled his way back out. They weighed close to ten pounds apiece, now. Once he could stand back up he held them together up to his face and kissed them over and over. “Oh, you guys, I’m so glad you’re okay!” he cried, dangerously close to tears. They seemed as intimidated as Oliver had been in Lucy’s mouth, but Cody braved a little lick on Josh’s nose.

  When he opened the door to the back bedroom Lucy stood up and the puppies at her teats broke from her and fell away, squealing in protest. They immediately started lunging to reattach themselves, but Lucy stepped out of the box and went up to Josh to examine Rufus and Cody. She sniffed them up and down and they squirmed, their little tails wagging like crazy. The look she gave Josh seemed full of relief and gratitude.

  Josh put the two wayward puppies in the box, but Lucy didn’t seem to want to return. “I’ll fix you some food,” Josh promised the puppies. They started to squall as Josh headed into the kitchen, Lucy trotting at his heels. He petted the mommy dog and she licked his hand. Josh had a sense that there was a bond between them of shared adversity, of having been through something profound together.

  The puppies attacked the soft food without any of their previous hesitation. It was as if, having survived a dangerous adult experience, they saw themselves as grown-up dogs now.

  The phone was still dangling from its coiled wire, the connection dead. He fed the puppies first, and then called Wayne back. Leigh, his wife, answered instead.

  “Did you need to hang up so you could come up with excuses?” she demanded lightly.

  “No, I had a thing happen. Did Wayne tell you I’ve got puppies?”

  “Yes! Can we bring Isabella over to see them?”

  “Yeah. I’d like that.” I do know some children.

  “Maybe we could get together after Thanksgiving.”

  “Um…”

  “Or, I know! Do you have plans for Thanksgiving?”

  “Actually—”

  “It would be really fun if you came over.”

  “I was actually sort of—”

  “There’s someone I want you to meet. Thanksgiving would be perfect.”

  “Leigh—”

  “I know what you’re going to say, Josh, but come on,” Leigh admonished. “You can’t just sit around for the rest of your life, waiting for, for … I don’t know. You need to move on. I hate how you do this, sometimes.”

  “What would it be like if I finished a sentence during this conversation?” His light tone belied his words—Leigh cared about him. It felt good.

  There was a quick silence and then Leigh laughed. “Hey, sorry, it’s just that Wayne said you weren’t interested in Brooke.”

  “I don’t know who Brooke is.”

  “She’s in my yoga class.”

  “What I am hoping to do by the end of this phone call is see if you and Wayne and Isabella want to come here for Thanksgiving.”

  Leigh was silent for a long beat. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. You’re right, I do need to see other people, especially you guys, more often. My work sometimes leaves me isolated. And it makes more sense to come here because I don’t even know how I’d get all these puppies over to your house.”

  “It’s Thanksgiving. Who’s going to cook?”

  “Me.”

  “You.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re going to cook.”

  “Come on, I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just a dinner. I’ll look it up.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “The pie’s going to be good, anyway. A friend’s bringing it.”

  “A friend?” Leigh replied, spearing the word like an owl on a field mouse. “Who? What’s her name?”

  Josh found himself grinning. “Kerri. So, what do you think?”

  “Kerri. Where did you meet her?”

  “I’ll do everything, all you have to do is show up.”

  “From work? Who is she? How long have you been going out?”

  “So probably this is where I tell you that if you want to meet Kerri, you need to come to Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “You do not tell me that! Josh.”

  They decided that Leigh and Wayne and their five-year-old, Isabella, would spend Thanksgiving at Josh’s house. Josh had known that once he baited the hook with Kerri, it would be a done deal.

  Look up how to cook Thanksgiving dinner, Josh typed into his task list.

  The puppies were sleeping in a heap in the box, probably exhausted from their terrifying travail. Lucy didn’t follow Josh down the hallway to check on them, just stood watching him with a don’t you dare wake up the kids expression on her face.

  Josh stood and gazed on his puppies for several minutes. Give them up? Impossible. They were his dogs. Nothing could change that.

  When he walked back into the living room, Lucy stood holding a stout stick, almost a small log, in her mouth. She must have pulled it out of the kindling box. Her eyes were alert and merry, her ears up.

  “You got a stick? A stick?” Josh asked.

  Lucy stood rigid. When Josh cautiously approached, she moved her head, holding the stick away, but didn’t try to run. What was he supposed to do, throw it so she could bring it back? Not in the house, surely. But this was the first time since he’d owned her that Lucy had wanted to play.

  He grabbed the end of the stick and that’s when he figured it out: Lucy set her paws and growled, pulling back. Josh put more strength into it and Lucy tugged back, firm yanks that nearly pulled Josh over.

  They played tug-on-the-stick for about five minutes, and then Josh let go so Lucy could win. She lowered her head and dropped the stick on the floor as if daring Josh to come after it.

  “You are so silly,” Josh told her. Grinning, he went into the kitchen and Lucy followed, not protesting the end of the game. She was like that: willing to accept whatever happened, from being dumped on him by Ryan to having a box full of new babies thrust at her. They were a team—Josh felt as if, among all those he’d e
ver cared about in his life, Lucy was the only one he could rely on to stay by his side.

  “You’re my best friend, Lucy,” Josh told her.

  She sat with a don’t best friends deserve a treat? expression on her face, and Josh gave her a small piece of cheese and some leftover chicken and some microwave bacon.

  When the puppies woke up, Josh fed them and then tried an experiment. He pulled a rocking chair into the center of his living room, Lucy curled up on her pillow, watching him curiously. He tossed a blanket over the chair, tenting it so it was a large, shapeless mass. Then he went to the back room and picked up Rufus and Cody, who had been nuzzling each other in a corner of the box.

  “Okay, let’s see if I’m right,” he told the little dogs. He set Rufus down first, then Cody, both of them on the kitchen side of the living room. Then Josh stood on the other side, near the big window. “Come, Lucy.”

  Lucy regarded him curiously. Clearly, in her opinion, nothing was happening that justified rousing her from her comfortable position. “Come on, Lucy!” Josh called, clapping his hands.

  Lucy eased to her feet and went to Josh’s side, her eyes saying, There’d better be a point to all this.

  “Okay. Come on, puppies! Come on!” he called.

  Rufus regarded him while Cody, agitated, began inching unsteadily toward Josh. Whether it was his calling or the smell of their mother that was drawing him, Josh didn’t know, but he could see that Rufus didn’t like the blanket-covered chair thing in their path. He eyed it, moving with Cody, who was blundering straight ahead while Josh continued to call.

  As they got closer, Rufus turned into Cody, bumping him along the length of his body. The soft collision reset Cody’s direction, and when it happened again the little dog was no longer on a collision course with the chair.

  “Good dog, come on, Rufus! Cody!”

  Cody slowed down, a little unsure until Rufus nudged him again. They were safely beyond the obstacle now, and they could both smell Lucy. “Such good doggies,” Josh praised. When they got to their mother, they furiously beat their little tails. Lucy lowered her head and sniffed them.

  Rufus had somehow decided to take responsibility for Cody, to steer his brother in the right direction when he was off course or headed toward something he shouldn’t. That’s why it had been the two of them under the front deck. That’s why when Cody got lost in the closet, Rufus was in there with him.

  “You are absolutely amazing, Rufus,” Josh marveled, picking the little guy off the floor and kissing him on his brown spot. Rufus sniffed Josh’s face, but seemed anxious to get back to Cody, so he picked up Rufus’s brother and carried the two of them back to their box.

  “Now,” Josh declared with more confidence than he felt, “Thanksgiving dinner.” He typed “Thanksgiving recipes” into his search engine.

  He’d look up how to cook the turkey and all the other stuff.

  What could go wrong?

  THIRTEEN

  Radar was a little white dog, ten pounds of flat-out energy. The puppies were all bigger than Radar, but they still ran with their uncoordinated gait, and thus stood no chance of catching him as he tore around in the front yard. The puppies tried, though, swarming in hapless pursuit. Every time Radar would cut a sharp corner the puppies would crash into each other, rolling on the ground, gamely leaping right back up.

  Josh and Kerri stood in his front yard and watched this comical scene, laughing with pleasure. Kerri wore a gray woolen cap that set off her light blue eyes, and that smile of hers—Josh was laughing at the dogs but he was gazing at her smile.

  “Poor Cody doesn’t understand what’s going on,” Kerri lamented.

  “Oh, he knows more than you might think. Plus he has Rufus,” Josh replied, telling her about his experiment in the living room. They watched as the puppies, bumping into one another, cranked a tight circle on the heels of Radar. Rufus was on Cody’s outside flank, turning him like a sheepdog.

  “You’re right!” Kerri stared at him in wonderment.

  “The vet says a little light gets through to Cody, but not much, not enough to really see anything. No idea why—Cody’s just blind,” Josh reported. “So Rufus is his eyes.”

  “Wow. I’ve never heard of a guide dog for a dog,” Kerri marveled.

  Radar smelled something interesting and abruptly stopped. The puppies helplessly piled into one another as the largest dogs, Oliver and Sophie, hit the brakes at the front of the pack. Radar let the puppies climb on him for a minute before streaking off again.

  Lucy appeared at Josh’s side, poking him with the stick in her mouth. Josh grabbed it and Lucy set her feet, tugging back. When she started growling, her puppies slowed in their pursuit, glancing over at their mother in alarm. But Radar darted back, enticing them, and the chase was on again.

  When Josh let go of the stick, Lucy danced away, then immediately approached with it, waving it at him. Josh dropped to his knees and hugged her and she licked him, wagging her tail.

  “You are so good with her,” Kerri observed. Josh glanced up at her and there was that smile. He regretted that he was sprawled on the ground with his arms full of German shepherd instead of Kerri. “You’re lucky you found each other.”

  “I know,” Josh agreed.

  Lola broke away from the dog game and went to Kerri to be cuddled, as if Josh’s embrace of Lucy meant that it was official puppy-hugging time. Kerri held Lola cradled in her arms for a moment, then set the puppy down and pulled a small silver camera out of her pocket. “I want to get some pictures of the puppies for our website. We’ll put them up now and say they’ll be available for adoption after Thanksgiving.”

  Josh stood and dusted himself off.

  “What’s wrong?” Kerri asked, watching him. “Why that look?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It’ll be hard to say good-bye to the little guys,” she speculated, reading his mind again.

  “Yeah,” Josh agreed. Except I’m not doing that.

  He wasn’t sure how Kerri would react when she found out that he’d essentially been lying to her about giving away his dogs. It wasn’t something he liked to think about, but he needed to figure out a way to tell her. Tell her, without losing her.

  Kerri had him lift each little puppy and pose it for the camera. Five separate times he buried his nose in puppy fur, smelling their puppy breath, feeling their rapid heartbeats through the palms of his hands.

  “So, okay,” he announced with finality as he set the last puppy in the photo session, Oliver, down on the ground. The puppy ran off to join the hunt for Radar, who was still circling tirelessly, wound up with his berserk energy. He took a breath. “Want to stay for dinner?” he invited, his voice as casual as he could force it to be despite the small tremors from his pounding heart.

  “Oh,” Kerri responded.

  “We could stream a movie after, maybe,” Josh continued, rushing it a little. “Or I’ve got all these holiday DVDs. White Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street…”

  “I can’t.”

  “Sure.”

  “No, I mean I’d like to but I have to go to Wyoming today.”

  “You have to go to Wyoming today,” Josh repeated, looking for the part he was supposed to understand.

  Kerri sighed. “It kind of came up last minute. See, in Denver, there’s a law about pits, pit bulls—the breed is banned. It’s ignorant, because they can be the sweetest and most gentle dogs, but that’s it, there were a few attacks so now if your pit gets out and is picked up, they put it down. So the rescues there run sort of an underground railroad. We grab the pit bulls out of the system and hustle them out of the jurisdiction before they can be euthanized. A shelter up in Cheyenne has room for two dogs, so I’m headed up there in a couple of hours with these two pits and then I’m staying a few days with a girlfriend from college.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  She was smiling at him. “Don’t look so bummed. I’m coming for Thanksgiving, right? I’ll see you then. Next
week.”

  “Yeah. No, I’m fine, I think it’s great, what you’re doing.” He kicked at the dirt. Why couldn’t he seem to communicate what he needed to say to this woman? Why was he so, so … stuck?

  As soon as Kerri left with Radar, the puppies shut down as if someone had thrown a switch. They collapsed in a pile, making it easy to scoop them into a blanket and drag the whole bundle down the wooden floor to their box. Josh didn’t need to sing to them; they went to sleep unaided.

  He walked back into his living room. The table was set with a linen table cloth, candles, and flowers. A small box of chocolates with a red ribbon sat next to where Kerri would have been sitting during dinner, near the ice bucket where he would have nestled the white wine after pouring them each a glass. The frozen chicken alfredo was in the microwave, ready to be heated, and the deli counter had prepared a salad and a fruit plate—nice small portions.

  Josh eased himself into his chair and Lucy came over and put her head in his lap, her look saying, Maybe next time.

  The day before Thanksgiving, Josh went out onto his property with the chainsaw and headed toward the stand of blue spruce his father had planted as a windbreak along the ridge that marked their property line. When he was a kid, his whole family would troop out for the Christmas tree selection, Janice and Josh always disagreeing on which one was most perfect. Now it was just Josh and his dog Lucy, who raced along the cold ground, nose down, snorting. When she looked back at him, her tail wagged as if she were saying, See how much fun we can have if we just leave the kids at home every once in a while?

  It felt good to exert himself a little, his breath coming out as gusts of steam. The past several days had glazed the leaves with frost, the temperature not making it out of the teens. Still no real snow, this odd, dry winter—he hoped they’d have a white Christmas, but at this rate it didn’t look good.

  Oliver, frustrated he hadn’t been allowed to go along on the adventure, was yipping at the big front window when Josh returned. None of the other puppies was visible—they were off in the back bedroom—but they came running when Josh opened the door. He put the tree where it always went and broke out his collection of bulbs and lights, which the puppies assumed he was doing for their benefit. Sophie wanted first dibs on everything in the boxes, and went dizzy staring at the bulbs all dangling out of her reach on the tree. They attacked the garlands and wanted to chew the lights. When he was finished, the tree looked ridiculous, everything crowded at the top so the puppies couldn’t get at it.