by Linda Benson
I open the door about a foot to get a better look. She wears absolutely no makeup and her blond hair is pulled back in a careless ponytail. She’s definitely got the cute factor going, but there’s something about her that seems just a little different from the girls around here.
“Is this your dog?” she asks. Her fingernails are short, chewed down to the nub, and she’s holding a leash with a big yellow dog at the end of it.
“No,” I say. The dog strains against her grasp, shoving his nose into my mother’s prize peonies. I step out onto the porch and shut the door behind me, so my mother won’t come out, although I don’t think she will. She’d probably wilt in this heat.
“We’re trying to find out who he belongs to. He almost got hit by a car this morning.”
I kneel down on the porch next to him. “Hey, big guy.” The yellow dog looks up from the flowers and licks my face. “I’ve never seen him before. Where’d you find him?”
“On Upper Ridge Road.” She turns and points behind her, where the main road heads uphill through a forest of fir trees. “He was standing right out in the middle, panting, like he’d been running from somewhere, and a car almost hit him. He doesn’t have no tag, or nothin’.”
“Do you live up there?” I know most of the girls around here, and I’ve never seen this one before.
“No.”
I’m waiting for her to say more, and watch as she scratches under her nose before she goes on.
“I live down in California. Or I did. I’m staying with my aunt for a little while.”
“Oh.” I glance over at the truck now, a 1990s Ford with a primer-colored right front fender. A woman sits behind the wheel. “So why did you think we owned the dog?”
She nods her head toward the truck. “Aunt Trudy’s got this theory.” She rolls her eyes. “Six degrees of separation.”
Now I’m a little bit intrigued. “Isn’t that something to do with that actor—Kevin…something?”
“Kevin Bacon? Yeah, like everybody’s only six degrees away from Kevin Bacon. Weird, huh? My aunt thinks it works for lost animals, too. We drove down here and started at the first house—that huge brown one.” She points back to the beginning of River Crest Drive, where the McDaniels live. “They didn’t know anything about him, but said two houses down or so had a big gold dog. So we came past that house they’re building.”
I glance next door. Doctor Wyatt’s house has been under construction for almost a year.
“Anyways. Yours was the next house.” She tucks her hands into the pockets of her tight cut-off jeans and grins at me. “So here we are.”
This girl has a strange accent. Not like she’s from Washington, or even California, but maybe like some country singer or something. But I will say she’s got a drop-dead smile.
“We don’t have a dog anymore,” I say. “Ever since Pips, my mom’s little Jack Russell, got stolen.”
“Somebody stole your mom’s dog? Didn’t that just break her heart?”
I think about my mom lying on the couch in front of the television. “Yeah. We never found out what happened to Pips, and she says she doesn’t ever want another dog, after loving that one so much. Anyway, the people in the next house have a big golden dog.” I point toward the big gray house to the right on the other side of a row of manicured trees. “But it’s a retriever, I think. A golden retriever. That might be the one the McDaniels were thinking about. But they both work, and they keep that dog locked up in its kennel most of the time.”
“Golden retriever?” The girl blows a strand of hair out of her face. “This one’s a Lab.” She pulls the dog toward the truck. “I figured this six degrees thing wouldn’t work.”
“Hey, wait up.” I start to walk down the paved driveway with her. I don’t have any shoes on, and the black, tarry stuff is practically melting under my feet. I jump back on to the lawn instead, trying not to show pain. “If you drive all the way to the end of this cul-de-sac, there’s a big gray colonial house that says Barton on the front entrance. Go right on through the gates. That lady’s a big animal lover. Louise, I think her name is. Louise Barton. If anybody would know about a nice dog like this, she would.”
“Okay, thanks.” She grins. “That’s my middle name—Louise.”
“Oh.” I reach down to pet the dog again, scratching him behind his ears. He’d be a great dog to take down to the river when I go with my buddies. Labs are supposed to like water. He might even go rafting with us. “Hope you find his owner.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
A whisper of disappointment slides across her face. She tugs on the leash and jogs back toward the old pickup. The dog gallops beside her. When she points to the bed of the truck, the dog jumps right up in the back and stays there. Cool. The girl opens the creaky passenger door, and the woman behind the wheel starts the engine.
Just like I figured—it’s running pretty rough. Black exhaust makes a sooty spot on the pavement, and I watch as they pull off toward the end of River Crest. Then I sprint back across the hot pavement and cautiously open our front door.
Mom doesn’t even turn her head to look at me. “Who was that?”
“Just some people looking for an address,” I lie. For some reason I don’t feel like telling her the whole story.
“Well, the nerve of some people,” she sighs. “Why don’t they just use their GPS?”
I don’t bother to answer. I race up the stairs to my room with one thought zinging through my mind. I forgot to ask that girl what her first name is.
5-Olive
“He says that dog next door is a golden retriever, not a Lab.” I plop my butt down on the worn seat of Aunt Trudy’s old pickup. The heat from the cracked vinyl stings my thighs.
“Really? Who was that you talked to?”
“I don’t know. A boy.”
“Seemed like a nice-looking boy,” says Aunt Trudy. “Clean cut.”
“Yeah.” Way too clean cut for me, but he seemed friendly enough. “He says the people next door are never home, and their dog’s in a kennel all the time.”
As we drive slowly by the front of the next house, we hear a dog barking forlornly from a side yard. Aunt Trudy shakes her head back and forth slowly. “Those kind of people shouldn’t be allowed to own a dog either.”
Like I said, my aunt has strong ideas. “But he did say we should go down to the end of the street—the Bartons’. That lady might know something.”
“Louise Barton? She’s on the fundraising board for the Humane Society. Has a lot of money, but she seems like a decent sort.”
As we cruise the old pickup along the well-groomed lane by the river, I’m amazed at the size of the houses. Gargantuan. “Geez, who lives in these things?” I whistle between my teeth. “They’re huge. But it doesn’t look like hardly anyone’s even home.”
“You’re right. It’s a lot of house for one family to live in. I guess these people need something to show for all their money and success.”
As we reach the Barton house, the ornate wrought-iron front gates tower over the driveway. We idle the truck into the yard and a woman stands up from her flowerbed. Her hair neatly pulled back into a bun, blond with a little gray showing, she rises slowly and shades her eyes against the sun.
“May I help you?” she asks, pulling her dirty garden gloves off and setting them in her wheelbarrow.
“Louise?”
“Trudy, is that you?” The woman breaks into a smile as she recognizes my aunt. The yellow dog in the back wags his tail madly, as if everyone has forgotten him. “And who’ve you got here in the back?”
“He was standing in the middle of the road this morning. Almost got run over. Any idea who he belongs to?”
“Hmm. Let me think for a minute. It seems like there’s something, or somebody that said something about a yellow Labrador. But this heat has practically fried my brain.”
“I hear you. I can’t believe you’re out working in it.” Aunt Trudy glances my way. “Louise, this is
my niece. She’s a big animal lover too.”
“Glad to meet you.” She reaches inside the pickup, right across Aunt Trudy’s lap, with her hand out.
I put my hand in hers and shake up and down. “Hello.” She seems friendly too, just like the boy back there. Maybe the people who live in these big houses aren’t all so bad.
Louise reaches into the back and strokes the big yellow dog. “Thirsty, huh? Let me get him a drink of water, Trudy. He’s panting. Would you both like something cold to drink?”
I’m dying of thirst. But Aunt Trudy just shakes her head. “No, we’re fine. But the dog could surely use one.”
Louise wanders toward the huge garage, big enough to hold a school bus. “She’s nice,” I say.
“Louise is a good soul, and she’s awfully well-off. Her father owned the telephone company in town. She never had any children of her own, but she adores animals, and does her part to help them out financially.”
“Maybe she’d adopt this dog, or one of your other ones.”
“She’d probably love one, but she travels constantly. Has several houses, and is sometimes gone for months at a time.”
Louise Barton reappears with a plastic bowl filled with water. She’s got a piece of paper folded into her palm. She sets the water dish down in the bed of the truck and the yellow Lab laps at it greedily.
“I remembered who it was. The Sinclairs took off for two weeks, traveling through Italy. They left their dog with their daughter, who lives over off the highway. I can’t remember the name of the road, but her name is Jackson, and here’s her number. I’m pretty sure it was a Lab. I don’t know if this is the one, but it might be. He looks purebred.” She strokes the dog’s long ears and murmurs to him. “Are you lost, boy? Do you belong to the Sinclairs? Too bad they can’t talk, isn’t it, Trudy?”
“Yes. I’ll bet they could tell us some stories. Thanks for the tip, Louise. We’ve been going house to house, asking people,” says Aunt Trudy. She looks a little pale, and sweat beads on her temple.
“Oh, did you stop at the Tellington house?” asks Louise, reaching in for one last pat to the dog. “Their youngest son is still at home, and he’s probably about the same age as—”
But Aunt Trudy is turning the truck around, and does not hear her.
“He’s a nice kid,” she whispers to me, since my window is down. “His name is David.”
I smile at her and wave. I’m not really sure what to say. I guess that’s the boy I met, but he’s not really the type I would know very well. I don’t really know any boys, except for Pendleton. And I haven’t heard from my brother in almost a month, ever since he started basic. We used to be tight as shoestrings. You’d think he’d call and check on me.
“So how many degrees of separation is that?” I ask, as the old truck chug-a-chugs back up to the top of the hill where we live.
“Four,” says Aunt Trudy, like it’s cut and dried.
“Okay.” I’m counting in my head. McDaniels, Golden Retriever, the Nice Boy who might be named David Tellington, Louise Barton, Sinclairs in Italy, Sinclairs’ daughter. The dog is not even home yet, but I’m already up to six. But there’s no sense arguing with Aunt Trudy when she gets her mind made up.
It’s about two miles up the road to Aunt Trudy’s house. Fir trees climb to the sky on one side of the road, and on the other, we pass fields of tall grass with farmers maneuvering tractors through them.
“About time they hayed,” she says.
“Why? Don’t they have all summer?”
“Might rain, any time,” she says. “Got to get it baled, picked up out of the field, and into the barn before it does.”
“But it’s so beautiful out,” I say. “It’s barely rained the whole month I’ve been here.”
“Which is awfully unusual,” Aunt Trudy says. “This is Washington. Might rain any day of the year. And sometimes it does, just when they’ve got their hay all cut and laying in the field, as if God is laughing at them. Ruins the hay. Those farmers have got to time it just right.”
It’s hard to believe that it could rain. It’s almost July, the sun is shining so bright, and it must still be about eighty-five degrees outside. As we turn down the gravel drive into Aunt Trudy’s, the old truck bounces along in the ruts. Dust flies everywhere, and the dogs in the backyard bark up a commotion. It’s not that far from those big mansions down along the river, but it feels like a different planet.
The porch on Aunt Trudy’s old yellow house slants to the right, like it’s going to drop off into the lawn, and the shingles sit crooked on her roof. I never really noticed how shabby the place looked before. But it’s been hard for her, living up here all by herself since Uncle Robert died. She does the best that she can, though, and she is the hardest-working woman I know. Taking in strays all the time.
“Damnation!”
Now what?
Aunt Trudy, sweaty and flustered and looking pretty bedraggled, is cussing up a storm. A lot of it I can’t even repeat.
“That stupid, good-for-nothing peacock is back, and he’s pooped all over the front lawn—and the porch!!”
Sitting on the top of the porch swing, fluffy and preening his rainbow feathers, is the largest bird I have ever seen. A huge, magnificent peacock!
Aunt Trudy slams the car door and springs toward him in a murderous rage. “Get out of here, you blasted nuisance.” She trots across the lawn and leaps up on the porch, hollering at the top of her lungs. “Get out of here. Go home. Move, blast it!”
The big bird, clucking like a huge overgrown chicken, appears insulted. It flies just out of reach, and begins to pull grass from the lawn with its large beak.
“Out of here, I said!” Aunt Trudy spreads her arms wide and begins chasing the peacock down the driveway. The yellow Lab leaps from the back of the pickup and takes up the chase beside her. The peacock, which seems to realize it might be in actual trouble, scoots with amazing speed, half-running, half-flying, just out of reach of Aunt Trudy and the barking dog. I hear it screech with alarm as they herd it all the way down the driveway, turning down Upper Ridge Road in the direction of Tucker Road—a half mile further on.
I sit on the porch swing, stifling a raft of giggles, and wait for them to come back. It’s been a long afternoon and a tiny, scary thought wiggles in my belly—Aunt Trudy wouldn’t ever chase me and Rags off like that, would she?
6-David
Mom looks like she’s conked out for the evening when I wander back inside. But she opens one eye and motions me over. “Your dad’s going to be late tonight.”
That’s no surprise. Dad’s an attorney, and his caseload keeps him at the courthouse or his office for long hours.
“So, what’s for dinner?” I ask.
“Oh, honey, I’m just not into fixing a big dinner tonight. I’ll probably just eat a salad.”
Salad. Yuck. Rabbit food is all right for girls, I guess.
“There’s some left over spinach pasta in the fridge, if you want to heat it up,” Mom offers.
I’m starving, but that doesn’t sound good either. “Don’t worry. I’ll fix something.”
This seems to satisfy her, and she curls into a cocoon and falls back asleep on the big overstuffed couch. The news is on, but I don’t think she’s even listening to it. When my brother Grant first went to Iraq, she watched CNN almost every night. But since he got shipped to Afghanistan, I don’t think she can bear to watch anymore.
I twist Grant’s football ring around on my finger. It’s a little loose, but I’ve worn it ever since he left to join the Marines. Grant’s team won the state championship two years ago, the last year he was home, but he said it would get in the way during rifle training, so he gave it to me for safekeeping.
My stomach growls with hunger, and I ramble into the kitchen and rustle around in the cupboards. I finally throw a bag of popcorn in the microwave. I guess that’ll be my dinner. With nothing better to do, I head upstairs to work on my essay.
“Hone
y?”
“Yeah?” She probably smelled the popcorn. Maybe she’s going to tell me to eat something more nutritious, or maybe even get up and fix something.
“My friend Denise called this morning. I almost forgot about it. She said their dog ran off. He was a purebred Lab, and they paid quite a lot of money for him. Broke his chain and took off.”
“Really?” I’m thinking about the dog that girl had in the back of her aunt’s old truck. “What color was he?”
“Color? I don’t know. Aren’t most Labs black?” My mother sits up on the couch and yawns. She runs her fingers through her platinum hair. “Oh, no, wait. She did say. Said he was a golden Lab. I figured it was a long shot, but since you ride your bike all around, you might have seen him. I told her I’d ask you.”
Wow. It must be the same dog. How come I didn’t get that girl’s name? She said she was staying on Upper Ridge Road. Maybe Louise Barton got their number.
“Why?” Mom asks.
I’m standing halfway up the oak staircase, contemplating my next course of action. I finally realize my mother is still talking to me.
“Why did you ask what color the dog is? Have you seen him?”
“Huh, maybe. No, probably not.” Somehow I don’t want to get my mom involved in this.
“Oh, all right. Well, duty done. Have a good night, dear. Work on your essay, okay? You know how important those advanced placement classes will be. You’ll be glad someday, when you get into the Academy.” She curls her red toenails underneath her and tucks one of the couch pillows under her head.
Someday. That’s all my mom and dad keep talking about. Someday. When I get accepted into the Air Force Academy someday, everything will be freaking fantastic. And when I graduate, my future will be set. Someday. What about now? Does anybody even care what I think now?
My dad and mom get into long involved discussions at the dinner table about what courses I should take when I start my freshman year in the fall. They’ve been down to the counselor’s office together, fine-tuning their plans for my life. Mom wants to make sure I get into the advanced college English classes, because I’m so smart. Ha! Dad says if I sign up for advanced math, I’ll be in a better position to get into the Air Force Academy, and when I get done with that, I can write my own ticket.
