by Linda Benson
I mean, it all sounds good and stuff. If I enroll in the Academy right after high school, my college tuition will be paid to one of the best schools in the country, and then after I serve for like, forever, in the military I’ll have all these great benefits like retirement and health insurance, and I’ll still be only thirty-eight or so, and I can call my own shots in life. Except, why would I want to give away my whole life, until age thirty-eight, to the Air Force? I’m only fourteen years old. I haven’t even had a life yet.
“So you’ll have it ready for me to read in the morning? Your dad says it needs to be turned in soon.”
Geez. Does she never give up? Doesn’t she know it’s summertime? I should be able to relax or just hang out with my friends, or ride my bike up the hill and find out where that new girl is staying. I could probably make it there before dark if I left right now, but if Mom came up to my room and I wasn’t here, I’d get in big trouble.
I could write this friggin’ essay with my eyes closed, if I wanted to, just to get my parents off my case. The military is sort of expected for the boys in our family. Lincoln chose the Navy, and Grant’s in the Marines, and I know it would mean the world to Dad to have one of his sons in the Air Force, like he was. I guess that’s me, since I’m the last one left.
I open my laptop to get started, but I’m actually only thinking about one thing—taking my bike out to Upper Ridge Road first thing in the morning just to check things out.
7-Olive
Aunt Trudy chases that peacock all the way back to Swede Hanson’s place. And I guess she gave him a piece of her mind about it too, but it seems to take a lot out of her. We eat leftover spaghetti and she’s ready for bed by 8:30.
“What should we do about Yellow Dog?” I ask. “Are we going to call that number?”
She pulls her blouse out away from her body, sticky with sweat. “Oh, I almost forgot. Do you have that piece of paper Louise gave us?”
I dig in the pockets of my shorts. “Here.”
Aunt Trudy dials but after a short conversation, shakes her head and puts the phone back in its cradle. “No luck. Their dog is still there. So that’s a dead end.”
So much for her six degrees of separation theory. “Now whatta we do with him?” I ask.
She purses her lips, thinking. “I’ll bet I can find a bigger collar for him, and then we can tie him up out there on the porch, just for the night. I hate to tie a dog up, but he seems comfortable right there.”
“But if we leave him loose, don’t you think he might just find his way home?” I ask.
“Well, he obviously doesn’t know anything about traffic, and I wouldn’t want to find him dead in the road tomorrow morning. Let’s keep him here with us until we find his owner. It’s the right thing to do.”
“I can keep an eye on him, out my window.” The guest bedroom is at the front of the house, and I can see the porch if I stick my head out the window.
We get the dog settled in and Aunt Trudy heads for bed. It’s awfully early, so I try to watch television for a little while, but there isn’t anything good on. I’m dozing off in a chair when I hear it.
Hel-lpp. Me-oww. Me-oww. Hel-lpp. It’s an animal sound, mysterious, loud, drifting in through the open windows, again and again. It’s like a huge cat crying for help. Then the beagle starts howling, and the other three foster dogs bark and there is no way I can think about sleep right now. “Me-oow.” The sound floats in again and again, and I shiver.
“Aunt Trudy?” I tap softly on her door, but there’s no response. I know she’s in there, ’cause I can hear her muttering in a soft snore. Dad snored like that, too, whenever he came home and stayed, which was only a handful of times last year.
“Aunt Trudy?” I ask again. I don’t want to be a pest, but that sound outside is creepy.
“Huhh?” Her head raises, just as the loud call drifts in from her open bedroom window.
“What is that?”
“Oh, it’s just that darn peacock.”
“The peacock?”
“Yes. Stupid bird. I told that Swede he oughta put a muzzle on the blasted thing. It’s sitting up on top of his barn sounding off.”
“B-But, it sounds like it’s right outside,” I stammer.
“They’re loud. The sound carries. Just go to sleep and don’t worry about it.”
“All right.” On the way down to my room, I pet each of the foster cats on their foreheads, and get a margarine container full of cat food for Rags. I stick my head out the window. It seems quiet now. The air is still warm, but I can feel a cool breeze stirring.
“Goodnight, Yellow Dog,” I whisper.
I’m restless all night long. Even though Rags tucks her warm body next to me, I keep hearing the loud screams of the peacock in my head, but I’m not sure if it’s real or if I’m imagining it.
When the first light of day creeps under my window shade, I grab the covers and pull them up over my eyes. Sleep. I need more sleep.
I hear Aunt Trudy in the kitchen, rattling around making coffee. I know she’s already fed all the foster animals—the horses, the dogs, and the cats. She always takes care of them before she fixes anything for herself.
I can tell it’s still early, and I’m trying to drift back to sleep, but I hear the yellow dog rattle his collar and move around outside. I throw back my covers, sit up and walk to the front window. “Are you okay, dog?”
The dog is eyeballing something moving in the road. I notice a bike going by slow, with a boy on it, looking over this way. What time is it? About seven-thirty or eight a.m.? Is that the boy from yesterday? The one from the fancy houses? Why would he be up here on his bike so early in the morning?
Now he’s riding down the gravel driveway, stopping his bike and steadying it with both feet on the ground. I shove my hair up into a rubber band, pull a T-shirt and Levis on, and decide to check on the yellow dog.
I open the front door just a couple inches and peek outside. I don’t see anyone. Maybe the boy, or whoever it was, left.
I walk barefoot across the concrete patio and undo the dog from his rope. He races in happy circles across the front lawn. Then he darts into the trees and reappears with a stick. He drops it at my feet and I throw it out into the driveway, just as the boy on the bike pedals slowly back toward me.
“Hey,” he says. He stops his bike near the end of the driveway, close to the house. The dogs in the backyard start barking like crazy. This boy didn’t seem a bit shy yesterday, on his own porch, but now he looks like he’s not sure he should be here. Maybe because it’s so early.
“Hi,” I mutter, wiping the sleep from my eyes. “How did you find us?”
“Well, you said Upper Ridge Road. And there’s not that many places up here.” He kicks at the gravel under his feet. “I was just out riding around…and I saw the old Ford truck.” He nods toward Aunt Trudy’s pickup, parked in front.
The yellow dog has retrieved the stick. He drops it in front of me and barks expectantly. I look up at the boy and smile. Is this the Tellington boy Louise Barton mentioned? David? He doesn’t look like a David. But I’m not sure I know any boys with that name.
He grins at me. “I think he wants you to throw it again.”
I toss the stick again, and then several more times until I realize the yellow dog could go on with this routine forever. The boy balances his bike against a tree and walks toward me now.
“I think I might know something—about where this dog belongs,” he says, finally. “That’s why I rode up here.”
“Really?”
“My mom mentioned something, after you guys had already left.” He kneels and strokes the dog’s head. “A friend of hers has a yellow Lab that broke his chain and ran off.”
I turn suddenly toward the porch swing. Underneath it, the dog’s red collar that was digging into his neck is on the concrete right where Aunt Trudy tossed it when she pried it off. I walk over, lean down, and grab it. Sure enough, attached to one of the hooks is a link of
broken chain.
“Wow,” says the boy. “Was he wearing this?”
“Yeah. It was practically embedded in his skin, too.”
“That’s just sick,” he says. “And he was chained up like that? No wonder he broke away.”
“What should we do now?” I say. “Aunt Trudy will want to call the owner. But don’t worry. She’ll definitely give them a piece of her mind.”
The yellow dog barks once, twice. The boy and I each reach for the stick and bump into each other.
“Sorry. Sorry.” We mumble it out together, right at the same time, and then start laughing.
“I’m David,” he finally says, when he gets his voice back.
I stick my hand out in greeting. “Olive,” I say. “Olive Louise.”
He gets a funny look on his face, and I know exactly what he’s thinking. How did I ever get a name like that?
“Don’t even ask,” I laugh.
8-David
I remembered her middle name. Louise. But Olive Louise? That’s kind of weird, you’ve got to admit.
“Do you think the dog belongs to your mom’s friend?” she asks. “Do you have the phone number?”
“No.” And I don’t want to go get it, either. “What if he does belong to her? Won’t she just put him back on a chain? That’s a rotten way for a dog to spend his life.”
“You’re right,” says Olive.
The yellow dog woofs, looking intensely back and forth between us.
“He wants you to throw the stick for him again,” Olive says.
I reach down and fling it clear across the driveway, and he races away. “So do people call you Ollie, or what?”
“Ollie?” she laughs, and her mouth turns up in cute little wrinkles. “No, nobody’s ever called me that. Mostly just Olive.”
“But why…?”
“I told you not to ask.”
“Sorry.”
“Okay, my mom craved olives the entire time she was preggers with me. Got it?”
Wow. What a way to name a kid. My two brothers are named good, strong family names: Lincoln and Grant.
“My brother’s name is Pendleton,” she says, as if she’s reading my mind. “He just joined the Army.”
“Pendleton’s a pretty cool name.”
“My parents named him that because they were at the Pendleton Round-up on the night he was conceived.”
I cannot believe she just flat-out told me that. I stifle a smile, and feel like I should be embarrassed. This girl totally cracks me up. “So what’s with all those dogs barking in the backyard?”
“They’re foster dogs. My aunt takes them in when they get too crowded at the animal shelter. Some of them aren’t adoptable, and would be put to sleep otherwise.”
“Really?” I gulp.
“We’ve also got six cats in the house, plus the horses out back. Come on, I’ll show you.” The yellow dog jumps up and down, begging for the stick. Olive flings it down the driveway. I see a small shelter out back, with sagging fences. Olive is already headed that way, taking short barefoot steps on the gravel, so I follow.
A sway-backed pinto horse with a mouth full of hay sticks his head out from the shelter and then turns and goes back to his breakfast. He looks kind of bony.
“Wow,” I say. “Skinny.”
“Yeah, that’s Paintball.” She grins. “Well, that’s what I call him. He was found wandering loose up in the National Forest. Aunt Trudy says somebody just dumped him there.”
“Why would anybody do that?”
Olive shrugs. “I know. Hard to believe, huh? I guess they couldn’t afford to feed him, but still, that’s just mean.”
A huge brown horse wanders over to the fence. “Who’s this one?” I reach between the strands of wire and pat his head. He’s just as skinny as the first one.
“My aunt says he’s ancient, and we’ll probably never get his weight back on. They found him tied to a tree in front of the animal shelter, but they don’t really have any facilities for horses there, so he came here instead. He’s sweet, huh?”
“Yeah, he seems nice.” The old horse pushes his head underneath my hand, clearly enjoying the attention.
“I call him Shakespeare. ’Cause he looks so noble and elegant.”
Elegant? I think. That’s a stretch. “Can you ride them?”
“I don’t know. Aunt Trudy says we don’t really know that much about them. Anyway, it’s been too hot, and she’s always busy. She’s a clerk at the animal shelter thrift shop, and she takes turns working down at the shelter, besides feeding all these animals here at home.”
Olive talks so fast she makes my head swim. She barely takes a breath and rattles on. “So besides the ones she takes in from the shelter, my aunt is always finding animals, too. She says there must be an invisible sign at the bottom of the driveway that says: Lost Animals Stop Here.”
“Is that how you found this dog?” I stroke the big Lab’s ears, and he presses against me.
“He was standing in the middle of the road,” she says, “and almost got hit by a car.” She smiles. “Maybe he was reading the sign.”
“Ha!”
“And Aunt Trudy says there must be another sign down there, too, that says: Dump Your Unwanted Animals Here.”
“Really?” I stare at the pattern of freckles dappling Olive’s nose. Very cute.
“Last year she found a mother cat and four kittens in a box out at the end of the driveway where someone left them.” Olive swipes a strand of hair from her face. “And three other cats have just shown up here, too. Mugsy, Stinker, and Paws. And there was a pony last year that just came trotting up the driveway, and no one ever claimed him, but Aunt Trudy found a home for that one.”
“Wow,” I say. “So what about you? How’d you get here?”
Olive ducks her head suddenly, and doesn’t answer. Me and my big mouth. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.
“Olive, where are you hiding? I’ve got pancakes cooking.” A voice drifts out from the kitchen, along with some delicious smells.
“I’ll be in there in a minute,” Olive hollers toward the house. “I’ve been here a month,” she says, in a quieter voice. “I’m only staying for a little while. I mean, I’m not actually from here.”
“I know, you’re from California, right? Kind of a surfer girl?” I shift my weight from one foot to the other. Olive doesn’t say anything—not one thing. The aroma of pancakes overwhelms me and my stomach growls. “I better get home.”
“So what should we do about Yellow Dog?” she asks, ruffling the dog’s fur.
I hesitate for a moment or two. Is it really right to take a dog back to a life on a chain? “I guess we need to tell my mom’s friend this might be their dog.”
We walk slowly down the driveway together, where my bike stands propped against a tree. “You said your brother’s in the Army. Where’s he stationed?”
“He just went in, and he’s doing basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. I haven’t even heard from him for like, a month.” She looks down at the ground. “I hope he’s okay.”
“Oh, yeah. He’ll be fine. He probably just doesn’t have telephone privileges yet. Or they’re out on a training mission or something.”
“Oh,” she says.
“My brothers are in the service, too.”
“They are?” She looks at me expectantly.
“Yeah, one’s in the Navy, and one’s in the Marines, serving in Afghanistan. I’m applying for the Air Force Academy in Colorado.”
“Awesome,” she says.
“I guess.” I grab my bike and sling my leg across. The yellow Lab, tongue hanging out of his mouth, pants by Olive’s side, waiting for someone to throw the stick again. I push off into the roadway. “See you—Olive.”
She stands with her hands on her hips and watches me. I pedal slowly along the flat part of the pavement, wondering how long Olive will be staying with her aunt. Will I even see her again before she goes back to California?
; When I get to the steep part of the road heading toward home, I push hard on the pedals, trying to ratchet up the downhill speed. Hopefully I’ll make it home before my mom wakes up. Dad was already gone when I left, and I scribbled a note for my mom.
Almost done with essay. Went for bike ride to compose my thoughts.
That was a lot of BS, but at least she wouldn’t come looking for me. My mother can have giant hissy fits if she thinks you’re not doing your homework. Once, she chased me all the way down to the end of River Crest, yelling at me, “Did you finish your algebra?” I had it done in school, but she didn’t believe me, and she didn’t want me out tooling around on my bike. She can be a pain sometimes, and make a big scene. Which is why I hope I can slip right in the door and tear up the note before she even sees it.
Because the truth is, if she asks to see the essay, I’d have to actually lie. Because I haven’t finished it. In fact, I haven’t even started.
9-Olive
I’m walking back to the house for breakfast when Aunt Trudy calls again, with more urgency. “Olive, come quick. Phone call,” she hollers. “Pendleton’s on the line.”
I let out a whoop and tear up the driveway, as fast as my bare feet will let me. I can’t help but smile when I hear his voice.
“Hey, little sister! How’s life treating you?”
“Pendleton! I haven’t heard from you at all. I was starting to get worried.”
“No worries, kid. They keep us out on patrol until all hours, trying to make soldiers out of us. Mostly, when I’ve been free, it’s too late at night to call.”
His voice sounds huskier, more grown-up than I remember. I’ve missed him so much I almost start crying, but I hold it inside. You don’t want to worry someone who’s in the Army.
“Have you heard from Mom?” he asks.
