Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [24]
She let him figure her out slowly, smell her as much as he needed to, always offering her open hand slowly, letting him sniff. When he stood, she understood that he needed to make the compulsory crotch sniff. “Hope your memory is good; you only get one full, unfettered snoot there.” He raised his head and breathed in the scent glands that traveled easily to him through her jeans. She crouched to stroke his head, to find out what he liked. Was it under the chin, behind the ears?
The dog was polite, he let her touch him, but he couldn’t tell her much because his heart wasn’t in it. “Take your time, big guy,” she said to him as she refreshed his water for the second time of the day, made sure that the few kibbles he had taken were replaced.
Fussing over him would only wear him out. She settled into a chair to read one of the mainland newspapers that she had mostly avoided for months. She was instantly distracted by the thought of a person shooting a dog with a bow and arrow. She knew little about this sort of weaponry. To her it was an obscure art. Once while on vacation in San Francisco, she and Bob had seen an archery range in the Golden Gate Park. They stopped to watch an Asian woman preparing to shoot by going through tai chi motions, slowing herself to a point of stillness, then picking up the bow with exquisite grace, placing the arrow, and joining in a moment of perfection before she released the entire arrangement by simply letting go. Bob had turned to her and said, “Is it just me, an East Coast guy, or does everything out here look like sex?”
She could not imagine the graceful woman ever doing anything as cruel as shooting a dog. She couldn’t picture any person who would.
“Who in the world would do this to a dog?” asked Tess. She had come to stay with the dog while Rocky went to work. Sam had burst the membrane on her compound of isolation; letting Tess in had been easier. When Rocky came home, she found the older woman and the dog sitting together on the floor, Tess with her back against the wall, her legs stuck out like a young girl. The dog, like all good dogs, kept himself between Tess and the door. When Rocky opened the door, he stood and she cringed to see him rise to a seated position.
“Did you give him the antibiotics?”
“Of course, an hour ago. He gets one more before you go to bed. I can stay the night you know.”
“We’ll be all right. Well, maybe you should stay until I take him outside to pee. If he falls or something, it’s easier for two people to carry him.” Rocky knew the dog wouldn’t fall, but she did want Tess to stay a little longer. Something about her felt good.
Rocky and Tess put on their coats and coaxed the big dog outside. The wind came in surges, just like the surf of the ocean. The dog gratefully peed, wisely not trying to lift a hind leg, but squatting like a puppy. She was called into service to help with the black dog when Rocky brought him home. The sight of the wound on his shoulder made Tess wince and imagine the blasts of red and orange that the dog had endured before Rocky had found him.
“You can’t keep calling him Black Dog. That’s like calling someone Furrowed Brow or Capped Tooth,” said Tess as she and Rocky sat once again in the dog warden’s kitchen.
Rocky reached over and patted the dog. “Somewhere that dog has an owner and he has a name. I just can’t change his name. That’s horrible to think about, being hurt and lost and no one knows your name and suddenly you are called Roberta or Ethel,” said Rocky.
“No one is called Ethel anymore. I suspect there is no danger there.” The wind swooped down on the house, seeming to come straight down in a vertical stab from the sky rather than across the ocean.
“I want to wait. I’ve got calls in to the animal shelters and dog wardens on the mainland. I called in an ad to the newspaper. I already know that he doesn’t