The Trouble with Tuck

by Theodore Taylor

  A troubled look creasing his face, my father turned to me. “Helen, this place is for humans with catastrophic problems.”

  I clamped my jaws. Nothing was going to change my mind.

  My mother said, “Are you really sure you want to go in there?”

  I took a long time to answer, then said, “Tuck has a catastrophic problem too.”

  “Okay,” sighed my father, reaching for the door handle.

  I advised Tuck, “We won't be too long,” and got out too.

  My mother said bitingly, “That's an understatement.”

  Just inside the door to the administration building was a fat black Labrador with a graying chin and whiskers. His tail was wagging as we went inside, stopping a moment to pet him.

  The receptionist said, “Henry is our greeter dog. He's ten years old and retired.”

  I thought to myself, That's the very kind of dog we need. Being ten, he'd had a lot of experience. He'd be perfect to guide Tuck around. But since he was the “greeter dog,” I doubted that he was for sale.

  My father asked for Mrs. Chaffey, and we were directed down the wide hallway. There were several other older dogs lolling around, sleeping in the hallway or padding down it. In fact, retired companion dogs seemed to be plentiful, and I was now almost certain we'd drive away with one.

  In a moment, we were ushered into Mrs. Chaffey's office. Dressed in a white blouse, riding breeches, and boots, she was a tall, slender woman with silver-gray hair and silver bracelets on her right wrist. Smiling, she asked us to sit down, explaining that she was going riding in a little while. “We keep a few horses here. It's the right country for it.”

  I looked around her office. On one wall were large photos of four different types of dogs. On another wall was a huge blackboard labeled, “Area Status.” Names of dogs and people were on it, along with dates. From outside, we could hear all the yelping.

  Mrs. Chaffey glanced toward the window. “It's feeding time, and they're always noisy for that. But they're aw-fully good at night. We have a big population here. More than three hundred at all times, of all ages. German shepherds, Labrador retrievers, black and golden Labradors. Those types make the best companion dogs, we've found.”

  My father said, hesitatingly, “The blind people we saw when we came in, are they …”

  “Students,” she said. “We take them to nearby towns or the city six days a week, with the dogs. It's very rou-tine. They're here for twenty-eight days of intensive training with the companions we've selected for them. Then they graduate.” She paused.

  “Now, how can we help you, Mr. Ogden?”

  My father was visibly embarrassed. He said, “Ah, well. Well, ah. Do you ever sell any of these dogs?”

  “Oh, my, no. Never. We breed them here. Send them to farm families for more than a year for human contact, then bring them back and train them, and finally lend them to blind people.”

  “There's no charge?” my mother asked.

  “None at all,” replied Mrs. Chaffey. “We're entirely supported by public donations and endowments.”

  Then she looked at my father, trying to get to the point, and asked, “A member of your family is involved?”

  I blurted it out. “Yes, my dog, Tuck. He's blind.”

  She blinked, and her mouth opened helplessly. In what seemed like forever before she did speak, she looked over at my mother and father. They were squirming.

  Then she said, “I—you see—I hardly expected …”

  She stopped, cleared her throat, and started over again, looking straight at me. “I'm so sorry to hear that.”

  I said, “Isn't there one real, real old one, like Henry, that you could sell us for Tuck? We'll take good care of him.”

  Mrs. Chaffey said, “I know you'd take good care of him.” She nodded toward the board. “See the dogs up there, with the masters and mistresses by each name, and the date we graduated those teams?”

  I looked up at the board.

  “When a dog retires at about the age of eight and is replaced by a younger dog, the retired dog often stays with the blind person's family or goes back to the farm where it lived for a while. Or, in a few cases, retires here like Henry and the others you saw in the hall. They become the pets of staff members.”

  “I'd hoped there'd be just one …”

  Mrs. Chaffey said, “Helen, our dogs are so very special. We select only the best, and it costs more than six thou-sand dollars to train each human-dog team. Our contributors would be outraged if we sold a companion dog. You must understand.”

  Though I swallowed and nodded, I had to lower my head to hide the deep disappointment. I'd been so certain they'd sell us a dog for Tuck.

  Mrs. Chaffey went on. “And, you know, I've never heard of a companion-type dog being teamed with a blind dog. I'm not sure it would work.”

  I lifted my head. “Would you like to see Tuck?”

  Mrs. Chaffey rose from behind her desk. “I'm fond of all dogs.”

  We went out to the car, and I opened the back door. Tuck jumped out, that yellow flag of a tail thrashing around.

  I said to Mrs. Chaffey, “This is Friar Tuck Golden Boy. He's three and a half years old.”

  Tuck smiled in our direction.

  Mrs. Chaffey put her hand to her mouth, as if her breath had been whisked away, murmuring, “He's so beautiful.”

  Though Tuck was smiling at her, his eyes were vacant and useless, beginning to turn that “gooshie gray” that Luke had talked about. No wonder she was upset.

  “He's a very good dog, too,” I added.

  With anguish, Mrs. Chaffey said to my mother and father, “Can't anything be done surgically to help him?”

  Father answered, “We've been told, by a very good vet, that there's no hope for that. He advised us to either put Tuck away or give him to the animal medicine school at Davis.”

  Mrs. Chaffey shook her head and said, “I wish so much that I could help you.” We could see how distraught she was.

  She said to me, “Thank you for letting me meet Tuck. I must go.”

  She hurried back into the administration building, and none of us spoke very much on the way home.

  My grand idea had fallen apart.

  11

  About a week after the unproductive visit to the companion-dog school at San Carlos, just a few days before my school started, Mother let Tuck out for his usual morning stroll at about six-thirty.

  Tuck started off as he did on any other morning, loping down the driveway, but less than ten seconds had passed when Mother heard the sickening screech of car brakes and a muffled yelp. Instantly she guessed what had happened and called out to my father, who was upstairs, shaving. Then she ran outside, still in her blue robe and scuffs.

  A car was stopped in the middle of Cheltenham, about fifty yards from our house, and in front of it was poor Tuck, on his side on the pavement, a still gold mound. Maybe dead. The driver of the car was kneeling down.

  My mother ran to Tuck, and then my father, having pulled on his robe, joined her. There was blood on Tuck's head, and he was quivering, breathing in short gasps, blank eyes still wide with fright. Fortunately the car had struck him a glancing blow as it skidded to a stop, only the bumper hitting him.

  The driver, a student on his way to college classes at Los Angeles State, was very upset, saying, “The dog suddenly ran out in front of the car, as if he hadn't seen me.”

  “He couldn't see you,” my father said.

  Stan had heard my mother cry out and had awakened me. I came downstairs in my nightgown just as my father and the young driver were carrying Tuck to the station wagon. I saw them through the kitchen window. They had Tuck in a first-aid carry, with their hands locked on each other's wrists.

  My mother was already on the phone to Dr. Tobin.

  As I rounded the corner of the house, my father took one look at my chalky face and said, “Helen, don't panic! He's alive. He's hurt, but he's alive.” Closing the back door to the station wago
n, he added, “Maybe you shouldn't look at him. I have to get some cotton. I'll be right back.”

  I'd never been very brave about anyone getting hurt, or seeing blood. I'd always turned away, feeling faint. But this time I made myself do it, opening the wagon door instantly. I almost wished I hadn't.

  Tuck was on some beach towels that my mother had thrown down, and I saw that the gash on his head went from behind his left eye all the way to the back of his right ear. Blood was oozing from it, and the yellow hair was already matted. Tuck was shaking all over, as if freezing.

  He needed me, I knew.

  Climbing in beside him, I pulled one of the towels around him, then began stroking his side and belly, telling him again and again that everything would be okay. I tried not to look at his bashed head.

  Having put some clothes on, my father came back with the surgical cotton and began pressing it against the wound. He asked how I was doing. He knew about the willies I always got when I saw blood. I said I was doing fine, but I wasn't at all. I thought I might faint. Yet I sur-prised myself that morning.

  Stan soon relieved me, stroking Tuck while I dressed, and then we rode to the clinic, like attendants in the back of an ambulance, my mother doing the driving.

  Tuck was in surgery by seven-thirty, wheeled in on a cart.

  Mother and I sat anxiously in the waiting room for more than an hour, but it seemed like weeks. It wouldn't have been much worse if Stan or Luke had been stretched out on the table in there. Unable to shake the fear of Dr. Tobin coming out to say Tuck had to be put to sleep, I fidgeted and kept going to the water cooler.

  Mother said, “Calm down.”

  I couldn't.

  Finally the doctor did come out, saying, “He's bruised mostly, and I had to do some stitchwork. He now has a crown of sutures.”

  “He'll live?” I asked.

  Dr. Tobin laughed heartily, which was reassuring. “Sure, he'll live. You can pick him up tomorrow. I put him under, of course. He'll be groggy for the rest of the day. I want to watch him for a while.”

  Crisis over, my mother glanced at me. “Tuck is just plain lucky,” she said.

  “Maybe you'll take my advice now and pen him up,” said Dr. Tobin. “He won't survive many of these.”

  Next day, we picked up the patient, and aside from where his head had been shaven and the wound stitched up, he didn't look much the worse for having lost to a car bumper. He was limping, though, because of bruises, and Dr. Tobin said to let him set his own rate of recovery. He was still very sore and tender.

  12

  Tuck did take it easy for a few days, during which time I started back to school. He went no farther than the backyard for his morning stroll, or he stayed safely in the kitchen or den. Or up in my room. He'd learned his les-son, we all thought. No more tours over to Denham or Wickenham; no more going to the park by himself, or visiting Mr. Ishihara, crossing the streets.

  Tuck, however, always had other ideas.

  On Sunday morning he apparently felt well enough to jump the fence and take his usual prowl of the neighborhood, even with the black curlicue stitch ends still crowning his stubborn head. One minute he was safely out in the yard, sniffing around, and the next he was gone. He departed while my mother was fixing waffle batter. She just happened to see that flag of yellow tail fly over the fence.

  Next thing I knew, my father was shaking me awake, none too kindly, and telling me to go find my dumb dog.

  I found him, all right, ambling without concern along Wickenham, as if cars had never been invented, as if he didn't have an ugly scar on his half-bald head. I scolded him, but he stood there looking at me with those useless eyes, his tail wagging.

  What was I to do? Hit him for something he'd been doing all his life? I couldn't. But that short Sunday jour-ney surely cost Tuck his freedom.

  My father was waiting with a long rope when we came home, and he said, “Helen, I've had all the scares this week that I'm going to have. And, believe me, we're not going to make a practice of visiting Dr. Tobin every few days. Tuck will stay in this yard whether he likes it or not.”

  Tuck had never been on a rope. I said, “It'll kill his spirit.”

  “Better to kill his spirit than to have him kill himself in the streets. Right?”

  Yes, that was right.

  He'd already tied the rope to a clasp, and that was snapped to Tuck's collar. The other end of the rope was tied to a water pipe that ran around the base of the house.

  I said, “Can't we make the fence higher, Daddy?”

  He shot back, “No,” and stomped off.

  He seemed to be angry with both of us, but my mother said, a few minutes later, that he was just frustrated. He was truly worried about Tuck's safety.

  I stayed out a little longer and watched Tuck as he encountered the new enemy. He couldn't see what this was for, but he certainly felt it. Walking to the end of the rope, he was suddenly stopped, with a jar. He turned, as if trying to figure out what was holding him, then barked at it.

  I went to him and tried to explain. But how do you tell a dog that something is being done for his own good, especially a dog that looks at you out of dead eyes?

  I was now beginning to understand what Dr. Tobin had been talking about.

  After breakfast, I watched Tuck for a while from the kitchen window. He was like the tigers at the zoo, pacing and pacing. He'd go to the full length of the rope, only to be jerked back. Then he'd pull against the enemy, his strong front legs braced against the ground.

  Unable to stand it any longer, I finally went out and took him off the rope and up to my room.

  Seeing us troop up the stairs, my mother advised, “He's got to learn, Helen.”

  “He doesn't have to do it all in one day, though, does he?”

  “He'll be alone here tomorrow,” she reminded.

  In the morning, after Tuck was put back on the rope, one by one we all went off, my father first.

  My school, Montclair Elementary, was less than a mile away, and I usually departed last, walking it each day. I made certain that Tuck's water bowl was full because Septembers in Southern California are nearly always hot. Then I knelt by him to hug him and tell him to be good; I'd be back soon.

  Throughout much of the day, I worried about him and then ran straight home—to be greeted in the backyard by Friar Tuck, off his rope. Only a few frayed feet remained on his collar. He'd chewed through it.

  Though I did talk to him about it, there wasn't much use in scolding him, shaking a piece of rope at him, or yelling that he was a bad dog.

  Instead, I got a snack of oatmeal cookies, which he dearly loved, and off we went to the park.

  On the way home, I stopped by Ledbetter's, and Mr. Ishihara volunteered that Tuck had paid him a visit in midmorning, dragging that short length of rope. “I didn't take it off, so you'd know he chewed through it.”

  “We put him on it yesterday. We had to do something.”

  Mr. Ishihara knew all about Tuck's collision with the car. “Maybe you'll have to keep him inside every day until you come home.”

  “He wouldn't like that.”

  “Maybe he must learn to like it. Be positive with him.” Mr. Ishihara was beginning to sound like my mother.

  I didn't have to tell my father that night that Tuck had mangled the rope. It was all too evident. I also admitted that he'd gone over to Rosemont and Ledbetter's.

  “Well, he'll now lose another privilege,” my father said, with stony intent.

  Tuck would now have to spend most of the day locked up in the house, to which he'd never been confined. And that meant he should have a long walk before I went off to school. So I set the clock-radio alarm for a quarter to six.

  Never one to jump eagerly out of bed and greet the sunrise with a smile, I remember I struggled up and dressed in a daze the next morning. It was still dark outside, which made no difference to Tuck, of course. He sat on my bedside rug, staring anxiously in whatever direction I went, sensing he was ab
out to have a treat.

  My room was next to my parents’ bedroom, and Father appeared in the doorway in his polka-dot pajamas, blowsy and frowning and blinking. “Helen, what are you doing?” he asked.

  “I'm taking Tuck for a walk.”

  “At this hour?”

  “Somebody has to do it,” I said heroically.

  He went away, and I heard him grumbling to himself, “It's still dark out there. She shouldn't be walking the street.”

  Then I heard my mother soothing him. “Tony, come on back to bed. You've got another half hour.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  I went downstairs and out. The morning paper hadn't even been delivered.

  Again that night, my father complained about my walking Tuck in the darkness and now would not let me go out until after daylight, cutting the time we had for his exercise.

  Then, on Thursday, I came home to complete disaster.

  Walking up the driveway, I always yelled, like my father and his beeps, letting Tuck know I was home, so he could stop sinning. Then he'd run to the back door from wherever he was inside, and wait, tail waving.

  That day his tail wagged vigorously all right but I knew something was wrong the moment the door swung open. He'd sinned. Splinters of wood were all over the floor. He'd tried to chew his way out. Chunks of wood had been torn from the back of the door. Teeth marks were also on the door handle where he'd tried to open it. Splinters were on the sill and floor by the kitchen window.

  Tuck had been a one-dog wrecking party while I was in school.

  I talked to him, telling him that he'd done something very bad, but I still couldn't bring myself to hit him, though I wanted to. Waiting to be walked, tongue hanging out, he sat there looking at me with those sightless eyes. I had to pity him.

  Tears of helplessness leaked out of my own eyes as I swept up the debris. A lot of damage had been done, and I dreaded having my mother walk in; even more, my father. I decided not to take Tuck out and to await our fate.

  An hour later, Mother, a bag of groceries in her arms, surveyed all the destruction and said, “Oh, Lordy.” She sat down weakly at the kitchen table and said to Tuck, “What'll we do with you?”