Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [25]
“Good for you,” said Tess to the dog. “I don’t plan on getting a chip either. He needs a strong name, one with deep, mellow tones to match his voice. And a name with an eccentric sense of dignity. He is one of the most dignified dogs I have ever seen. He looks like an ambassador. Who knows, we might come up with his real name.” Tess squatted down by the dog and looked into his dark eyes. “Lloyd. Lloyd!” she said. The dog lifted one ear up.
“That could make him seem like a criminal. Don’t people named Lloyd end up robbing banks?”
“No, that’s Wayne and only when it’s the middle name,” said Tess.
As a temporary name, they decided it would do.
It was bad enough that the dog was injured and was now recovering from surgery, but something else was really wrong with him, something that Rocky had seen in his eyes on the day she found him. He had lost someone and it was horrible for the dog. Rocky knew that food, a warm bed, lots of water, and encouraging words would not be enough. He longed for someone.
She tried to picture what might have happened, how a big dog like this would have gotten separated from his owner and then shot with an arrow. Maybe it was the owner who hurt him, a deranged, despicable person, the kind of person one reads about in the grocery store tabloids. But no, this dog would be different if that was the case, he’d be shy, passive, hide his tail between his legs. Or he would be aggressive and in a state of constant vigilance. That wasn’t it. Maybe someone stole him from his really loving owner who was grievously worried and had put up lost-dog posters in the hometown of someplace like Oklahoma.
After Tess reluctantly left, Rocky squatted by the Lab. “I’d sure like to hear your story.”
Chapter 7
No one on the island, except for Isaiah, knew she was a psychologist. Not that being a psychologist was so extraordinary, but it was what she had been and now she was nothing that she had been before. Here, the work was cleaner. Relocate the raccoons, the skunks. Capture dogs abandoned by the summer people, the new litters of kittens destined to become feral. Pick up the dead seagulls. Report on beach erosion. The beach erosion part was extra, not a part of her original job description, and the first time that she gave Isaiah a report on changes along the beach after a storm, he told her that the animal warden’s job had obviously expanded.
“Don’t go writing yourself a new job description. All we’re paying you for is animal control,” said Isaiah as he leafed through a three-page document.
“You’re the one who suggested it. I’m just trying to systematize things, to help the next person on the job. I’ve put some beach markers along the shore, and measured the distance to water at high tide and low tide. Nothing fancy,” she said as she leaned back in one of his straight-back chairs.
On her own accord, she added other duties to her job. Walk on the cliffs, look official. Clean up litter that she couldn’t stand to look at any longer. Here the work had a beginning and an end, like house painting or carpentry, and if she didn’t want to talk to anyone, she didn’t have to. She filed weekly reports for Isaiah and left them in his mailbox if he wasn’t around.
She had been slow to get to know people other than her boss and Tess. But she had a neighbor, Elaine, a teacher at the island grade school. They had passed each other on the dirt road for months, their cars kicking up spirals of dust. When she saw Elaine at the grocery store, her arms filled with white plastic bags, struggling to get out the door, Rocky had an impulse to turn her head and pretend she didn’t recognize the woman, but it was too late.
“Hello, neighbor. Can you get the door for me? I feel like a pack mule with all this stuff,” Elaine said with a broad smile.
Rocky accepted the invitation to dinner because she was out of practice at declining. How had she and Bob said no before? “Let me get back to you after I check at home.” That’s right, that’s what