News for Dogs

by Lois Duncan

  “Does he really use silverware?” Andi asked, eyeing the knife, fork, and spoon that were neatly arranged on Bully’s place mat.

  “Of course not,” Mr. Bernstein said good-naturedly. “There’s no way a dog could use silverware. He’d have to hold it in his teeth, and then how could he chew? It’s just that the place mat would look rather odd with no silverware, and my wife likes to set a pretty table.”

  It was a pretty table, with silver candleholders and a indentpiece of purple pansies and long-stemmed goblets for ice water. Bruce was relieved to see that Bully didn’t have a goblet. His water was served in a soup bowl.

  Mr. Bernstein took his seat at the head of the table, and Mrs. Bernstein brought in the plates that she’d prepared in the kitchen. The meat loaf looked and smelled delicious.

  “This will just take a minute,” Bruce promised as he started snapping pictures. It was dark enough in the room so he had to use a flash, but Bully didn’t seem to mind. His attention was focused entirely on his plate of meat loaf and mashed potatoes.

  He licked his lips and leaned forward to rest his chins on the table. He had more of those than Mr. Bernstein, and when he squashed them down on the place mat they resembled a stack of pancakes.

  “Mind your manners, dear,” Mrs. Bernstein told him. “You know we don’t start eating until we’ve said the blessing.”

  Everyone bowed their heads while Mr. Bernstein said grace.

  As soon as he heard “Amen,” Bully buried his face in his plate and started slurping.

  Bruce was beginning to feel queasy.

  “I’ve gotten my pictures,” he said. “So I guess we’ll be leaving.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to wait for dessert?” Mr. Bernstein asked him. “My wife’s made a lemon meringue pie. That’s Bully’s favorite.”

  “Please, stay and enjoy it with us,” said Mrs. Bernstein.

  “Well,” Andi began, “if you’re sure —”

  Bruce realized with horror that she was planning to say yes. Andi had never met any kind of pie she didn’t like.

  “We’ve got to get home,” he said quickly. “Our parents will be wondering where we are. Thanks so much for letting us intrude on your mealtime. I’ll try to find the snapshots I took of those puppies. Maybe Andi can arrange for Bully to visit them. She found most of the homes for them, so she knows where they live.”

  As soon as they were back on the sidewalk, he turned to Andi accusingly. “You were really planning to stay and eat at that table?”

  “The table was lovely,” Andi said. “And so are the Bernsteins. And, Bruce — it was lemon meringue pie!”

  “That’s just the point!” Bruce said. “Can you imagine what it would be like to sit across from Bully and watch him eat that? Mashed potatoes were bad enough. He even had them in his ears. But lemon meringue? Give me a break!”

  “Mrs. Bernstein seems like a wonderful cook,” Andi said. “I’m going to have Debbie ask her for the meat loaf recipe. A recipe column for dogs would be a great addition to the paper.”

  “A recipe column!” Bruce groaned. “Andi, I can’t take this! You girls are running the show, and I feel like an outsider. Since you’ve brought Debbie on board as a reporter, I want my friend Tim to be the publisher. Tim knows all about computers. He can download a program that has columns and headlines and sidebars so this won’t look like a grade-school newspaper.”

  Andi was silent a moment, but he knew that he’d hooked her when she asked, “What’s a sidebar?”

  “You can leave that to Tim,” Bruce said. “He’ll make us look professional. If you want me to be your photographer, Tim’s part of the package.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The first one hundred copies of The Bow-Wow News rolled off of Tim’s printer looking so professional that the four of them could hardly believe they had created it. The headline, “Bully Bernstein Loves Meat Loaf,” ran across the top of the front page above Bruce’s picture of Bully in his high chair. The flash from the camera had illuminated the dog’s bulging eyes so they glistened like diamonds, and the stream of saliva at the corner of his mouth reflected the light from the candles on the beautifully set table.

  Andi’s article was indented beneath the photograph, and next to that, in a separate column, was Mrs. Bernstein’s meat loaf recipe.

  “That’s a sidebar,” Tim explained to Andi. “It’s a box for extra information that goes with an article but isn’t exactly part of it.”

  “It looks wonderful!” Andi exclaimed enthusiastically. “This is just like a paper you’d buy at a newsstand!”

  Her resentment at having been blackmailed into having Tim as their publisher had been quickly erased when he had agreed with the girls on the name of the paper.

  “I expected you to be on my side,” Bruce had grumbled. “How can you agree to a name like that?”

  “We want to sell papers,” Tim said. “The Canine Gazette sounds so intellectual that people might worry that their dogs aren’t smart enough to enjoy it.”

  “How much should we charge?” Andi asked him.

  “Fifty cents is standard for newspapers,” Tim said. Then, just as Bruce was getting irritated at the way his friend had walked right in and taken over, Tim went on to say, “I think we should agree right off the bat that all the money we make will go to Bruce until Red Rover is paid for. After that we can start dividing it up.”

  Neither of the girls objected to that suggestion, so Bruce made no more complaints about the name of the paper.

  It had taken Tim several days to master the newspaper format, but now, at last, the first issue of The Bow-Wow News was right there in front of them. Its pages lay in neat stacks on Tim’s computer desk, crisp and glossy and still slightly warm from the printer. Andi stroked the photo of Bully’s face with her fingertips as lovingly as if she were stroking the heads of Bebe and Friday. Then she turned the sheet over to look at the second page, which contained a poem she had written called “Ginger’s Heartbreak.” The poem was about an Airedale whose master wanted to drown her puppies because they weren’t purebreds. It started with the lines:

  T’were just five little balls of fur,

  But, oh, they meant so much to her!

  Then, as an afterthought, Andi had added an additional verse about the puppies’ father, who was denied visitation rights:

  The fence between was high and mean

  And not a puppy could be seen.

  Every time she read those lines she felt a terrible sadness. Even though the Bulldale puppies had ended up in good homes, Ginger had found a new love, and Bully would soon see pictures of the puppies he had fathered, she still found the situation heart-wrenching. Because, what if there hadn’t been a happy ending? What if Mr. Tinkle had followed through on his threat to drown those puppies, and Ginger had died of a broken heart, and Bully had lived a whole lifetime without ever learning what happened to the family he never had a chance to know? The mere thought of so much misery made her want to rush straight to her room and write another poem. But that would have to wait until the second issue. First they had to sell this first one.

  They decided to conduct their sales in an organized manner by making a list of people they knew who owned dogs and working in pairs to visit all of them.

  Tim suggested that each of the boys be partnered with a girl.

  “People are more inclined to buy things from girls,” he said. “My sisters sell tons of Girl Scout cookies, because they’re little and cute and people can’t say no to them. If Debbie and Andi could be cute, we’d make a lot of sales.” He studied the girls for a moment and then said, “I’ll go with Debbie.”

  “Thanks a bunch!” Bruce responded sarcastically, but he was actually relieved. At least with Andi, he knew what he was dealing with. He had no idea what he could expect from Debbie and what she might do to be cute. Anybody who volunteered to write a gossip column was the sort of person who made him nervous.

  So he and Andi set off with fifty copies o
f the paper and, after a stop at home to sell a copy to their mother, continued on down to Aunt Alice’s house at the end of the block. In recent months, every time Bruce had seen their great-aunt, he had found himself doing a double take. On the surface, she seemed no different from what she had always been — a sweet, fussy, white-haired lady who gardened and played bingo. It was only the past November that he and Andi had learned that, back in her younger days, Aunt Alice and her husband had run a detective agency. It was next to impossible for Bruce to incorporate those two images.

  “A newspaper subscription!” Aunt Alice exclaimed when they explained the reason for their visit. “What an interesting coincidence! It’s been months since anybody wanted to sell me a subscription, and now it’s happened twice in one day!”

  “Somebody else is selling a newspaper for dogs?” Andi asked in horror. “I thought we were the only ones!”

  “I’m certain you are, dear,” Aunt Alice said reassuringly. “Yours is the only dog newspaper I’ve ever heard of. Jerry Gordon and his cousin came by this morning selling subscriptions, but those were for magazines, not newspapers, and nothing on their list was about dogs. Has either of you met Connor?”

  “No,” Bruce said, “but I’ve heard about him.”

  “A delightful young man,” Aunt Alice told them. “He looks a lot like Jerry. He’s here in Elmwood for the summer, visiting the Gordons, and he and Jerry are raising money for charity by selling magazine subscriptions. I wasn’t familiar with the titles, but they all sounded interesting.”

  “Did you subscribe to one?” Andi asked her.

  “Yes, a magazine called Happy Housekeeping,” Aunt Alice said. “And I definitely want to subscribe to The Bow-Wow News. How much is it?”

  “Fifty cents for one issue or three dollars for the summer,” Andi said, feeling a bit guilty, since she knew her aunt didn’t own a dog. “You don’t have to do this, Aunt Alice. We know you don’t like dogs much.”

  “But I do like my great-niece and great-nephew,” Aunt Alice said, beaming at them. “And it’s not that I dislike dogs, it’s just that I’m allergic to dog hair. I’ll take a subscription for the summer. Just wait a teensy minute while I run and get my purse.”

  She disappeared into the house, and Andi whispered to Bruce, “Do you think she’s packing a gun underneath that housecoat?”

  “Of course not,” Bruce whispered back. “That detective stuff was years ago, back when Uncle Peter was alive. That is, if it ever happened. Dad and Mom may have been kidding us.”

  Aunt Alice came bustling back with three one-dollar bills. She handed Andi the money and reached for a newspaper.

  “Oh, my!” she gasped, catching sight of the front-page photo. “I know Mrs. Bernstein from Garden Club! What in the world is she doing?”

  “Serving dinner,” Andi told her, although she thought that was obvious. Mrs. Bernstein was holding a plate piled with meat loaf.

  “Who’s that in the high chair?” Aunt Alice asked. “Is that their grandchild?”

  “That’s Bully, their bulldog,” Bruce told her. “Like it says in the headline, Bully loves meat loaf.”

  “I can’t wait to read the story,” Aunt Alice said, staring at the photo with fascination. She hurriedly kissed them both good-bye and rushed into the house.

  “That went rather well,” Andi remarked, fingering the crisp new bills.

  However, the rest of their sales efforts weren’t so productive. They sold a copy of the paper to Andi’s fifth-grade teacher, who considered reading very important, and a copy to one of the families who had adopted a Bulldale. Beyond that, they weren’t very successful. Almost everywhere they went they were told that Jerry Gordon and his cousin, Connor, had been there just ahead of them selling magazine subscriptions.

  “I don’t normally read many magazines, but when Connor described the ones on this particular list they sounded irresistible,” one woman told them. “And half of all the money they make goes to charity.”

  It was late afternoon when they ended their route at the Bernsteins’, where the huge wooden fence threw a shadow over half the front yard. The couple purchased ten copies to send to relatives. Their faces grew tender when Bruce gave them his snapshots of the Bulldales.

  “That littlest one has Bully’s eyes,” Mrs. Bernstein said softly.

  When she read “Ginger’s Heartbreak” and came to the verse about Bully, her own eyes filled with tears.

  “That poem is extraordinary,” she told Andi. “I can’t believe a mere child could describe Bully’s feelings so perfectly. You’ve known him for such a short time, yet you captured his soul! And I never realized the depth of poor Ginger’s feelings. I misjudged that sweet dog so badly. ‘T’were just five little balls of fur’ — oh, poor Ginger!”

  “We’ve got to go,” Andi said, starting to tear up herself at the beauty of her poem.

  “Not yet!” Mrs. Bernstein cried. “Bully would never forgive me if I didn’t give you a little thank-you present.”

  She disappeared into the kitchen and came hurrying back with two slices of lemon meringue pie.

  When they got back to Tim’s house, he and Debbie were there waiting. They looked very pleased with themselves.

  “So, how many copies did you sell?” Bruce asked them.

  “All of them,” Tim said with a grin.

  “All fifty?” Bruce couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You mean, you got twenty-five dollars?”

  “Would you believe twice that?” Tim said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a check. “I asked my dad if we needed to set up a special bank account, but he said he doesn’t think that’s necessary. Andi can endorse the check over to you, and you can deposit it in your savings account. That can be our Red Rover Fund.”

  “But fifty dollars, all from one person?” Bruce exclaimed. He looked at the signature. “Margaret Tinkle. Isn’t that Tiffany’s mother? Don’t tell me the Tinkles bought fifty copies of our paper and paid a dollar apiece for them?”

  “It was Andi’s poem,” Debbie said. “They reacted to that strongly.”

  “Really?” Andi asked in amazement. She had seen how deeply her poem had affected the Bernsteins but had never imagined that it would have that effect on the Tinkles. Maybe her poem had softened their evil hearts. It was said that great writers had the power to influence their readers. If, at eleven years old, she could already do that, what incredible things might she accomplish when she was older? Her mind went sweeping across the years that lay ahead of her, and she saw herself quite clearly as an old, old woman of forty or so, getting out of bed in the morning and tottering straight to her computer to get to work changing people’s lives for the better.

  “Andi and I only sold fifteen copies,” Bruce said. “That means we’ve got thirty-five left. Let’s try to sell them out in front of the pet store.”

  “That wouldn’t be legal,” Debbie said.

  “That was part of the deal we made with the Tinkles,” Tim explained. “We can’t sell any more copies of this first issue.”

  “What do you mean, we can’t sell more copies?” Andi demanded. “We own The Bow-Wow News. We can sell as many copies as we want.”

  “No, we can’t,” Bruce told her, staring at the memo line on the check, on which Mrs. Tinkle had printed, Payment in full for all rights to Andrea Walker’s poem “Ginger’s Heartbreak.” “When we deposit this check, your poem will belong to Mrs. Tinkle. We won’t have the right to use it.”

  “They don’t want people to read that poem,” Debbie said. “It makes them sound like awful people, which, of course, they are. The extra twenty-five dollars was to stop us from selling more copies so their friends and neighbors won’t see it.”

  “You shouldn’t have agreed to that, Tim,” Bruce said. “Not without asking Andi.”

  But to his surprise, Andi did not seem to be upset.

  “Fifty dollars is a lot of money,” she said. “I bet a lot of grown-up poets don’t get that much. And I can
always write other poems. I’ve got a pile of them stacked up inside me. All I have to do is pick up a pencil.”

  Her mind leapt ahead to their second issue:

  Just five sweet, cuddly balls of fuzz,

  But, oh, how hard the parting was!

  Maybe the Tinkles would buy fifty copies of that one, too.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Bruce first encountered Connor when he was on his way to Aunt Alice’s house to deliver the second issue of the paper. Connor had just pulled into the driveway of the Gordons’ house next door and was climbing out of a silver Miata, exactly the car Bruce dreamed of owning one day. It looked out of place next to Jerry’s scuffed-up skateboard, which was positioned against the garage door in its usual attack mode.

  Bruce’s first reaction was a startled impression that he was looking at Jerry Gordon, four inches taller and twenty pounds heavier, and that Jerry had somehow managed to charm the people at the Department of Motor Vehicles into giving him a driver’s license two years before he was eligible.

  Then he immediately realized that this thought was ridiculous and the young man was Jerry’s visiting cousin.

  “Nice wheels!” Bruce said, for he felt he had to say something. The two of them were standing directly across from each other with just a small strip of lawn between them. “I’m Bruce Walker. I live a few houses down from here.”

  He braced himself for Connor’s response, recalling with a shudder how unpleasant his first meeting with Jerry had been. The resemblance between the cousins was so remarkable that he felt as if he were meeting Jerry all over again.

  But Connor gave him a friendly smile and came over with his hand extended.

  “Thanks! I’m Connor Gordon,” he said. “Aren’t you and your sister the kids who are publishing a newspaper?”

  “That’s us,” Bruce said, taking his hand and shaking it. Connor’s grip was firm and self-confident and his smile seemed genuine. “How did you know about the paper?”