The woman set down her bucket. “You’re Henry, aren’t you?”
“I—” said Henry.
“I didn’t know you had a dog.”
Henry was surprised this woman knew anything about him at all. “Well,” he said at last, “I don’t. But I’ve seen one around here. A stray. And I wanted to . . .” He paused. How much should he tell this woman? “I just wanted to give him some food.”
“Oh, the tan dog?” said the woman. “That scruffy one? The one that looks like a golden retriever? I saw him yesterday.”
“But not today?” asked Henry, disappointed.
“No, not today.”
“Oh.”
“I know he’ll appreciate some food,” the woman went on. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”
“Thanks,” said Henry. He started off down the sidewalk again, then stopped and turned around. “How did you know my name?” he asked the woman, privately thinking, Don’t be a witch, don’t be a witch.
“I know everyone on Tinker Lane,” she replied. “I’ve lived here longer than anyone else. My name is Letty Lewis,” she added. She poured birdseed into a feeder hanging from a tree. “You’d like that stray dog for yourself, wouldn’t you?” she asked. “But your parents have probably said you can’t have a dog. That’s like parents. Just like them. Exactly the kind of thing parents would say.”
So she was a witch after all. Henry backed away.
“You probably have a plan for keeping the dog somehow,” Letty Lewis went on. “Well, that’s very sensible of you. I’ll keep my eye out for him and let you know if I see him. I could tell you when you’re on your way to school tomorrow morning. Or on your way home.”
“Okay,” replied Henry. “Thanks.” As he set off down the street again, he said over his shoulder, “Letty Lewis? The dog’s name is Buddy.”
Henry searched for Buddy most of that day and didn’t see him, so he decided to start the Rehabilitation Plan over from scratch on Monday. As soon as he returned home from school he set out from his backyard and walked through one backyard after another, calling for Buddy and fingering the treats in his pocket. He was nearing Mountain View when he crossed through yet another yard and realized he wasn’t alone. He heard voices above his head and looked up to see an elaborate tree house, a pair of legs dangling from the doorway. The legs, which were attached to a boy, scrambled down a ladder as fast as a monkey, and jumped to the ground. They were followed by four more scrambling pairs of legs. Henry found himself facing Antony, and two boys and two girls who looked very much like Antony.
One of the boys, small and fierce, who was wearing a pirate’s hat, glared at Henry and said, “State your business here, matey!”
“Peter,” said Antony, “that’s enough. This is Henry. He lives down the street. Hi, Henry.”
“Hi,” Henry replied. “Have you seen a dog?”
“What kind of dog?” asked one of the girls.
“A tan one. Who doesn’t have a home.”
The girl clutched at her heart. “Oh. A homeless dog. That is the saddest thing I ever heard.”
Antony rolled his eyes. “I saw a tan dog a couple of days ago. He was over in Owen’s yard. Why are you looking for him?”
“I just . . . want to feed him.”
“We could help you find him,” said Antony. “These are my brothers and sisters,” he added. “Peter, Sal—”
“I’m Sal,” said the smallest boy. “It’s short for Salvatore.”
“Sofia and Ginny,” Antony finished.
“Really?” said Henry. “You’ll help me?”
“Sure.”
Henry and Antony and Antony’s brothers and sisters looked and looked for Buddy that afternoon, but by suppertime they had not seen him.
“Not his hide nor one single hair,” said Sofia, the dramatic sister.
The next morning Henry set out along Tinker Lane and saw Owen and Antony and the group of kids ahead. He now knew that the other kids were Sofia and Ginny and Peter and Sal. They were standing in a bunch at the end of Owen’s driveway.
“Henry!” called Sal. “Look what we brought you!” He withdrew two cans of dog food from his backpack. “We thought maybe if you left the food out, the dog would come to you.”
Now, why hadn’t Henry thought of that? “Thanks,” he said, slipping the cans into his own backpack. “That’s a great idea.” And then, as if he had done so every day of his life, Henry walked to Claremont Elementary with Owen and Antony and the others. The Rehabilitation Plan was several days off schedule, but Henry wasn’t too concerned. Something interesting was happening on Tinker Lane.
13. CHARLIE
Bang!
From the end of Charlie’s bed, Sunny lets out a whimper.
Charlie, groggy with sleep, reaches down to pat her. “It’s okay,” he tells her. “It’s just a hunter, and he’s not even nearby. I know you don’t like the gunshots, but we can’t do anything about them.”
Sunny has never liked loud noises. She jumps if a door slams or if the television comes on too loudly. She’s miserable during thunderstorms. And now it’s hunting season again.
“Darn old hunters,” mutters Charlie from under his covers. They’re scaring Sunny and ruining Charlie’s Saturday, on which he has planned to sleep late.
Bang! Bang!
Sunny slinks across the bed, tail between her legs, dark eyes even darker with alarm, and paws desperately at the covers. Charlie lifts them for her and she burrows underneath and presses herself hotly against his stomach.
“Poor old girl,” murmurs Charlie.
After several more shotgun blasts, Charlie knows he won’t be able to go back to sleep, so he slides out of bed and peers at the clock. “It’s after nine, Sunny,” he announces. “We might as well get up.”
Charlie, shadowed by Sunny, pads into the kitchen. He finds his mother there, removing serving dishes from the cupboards and setting them on the table, which is already crowded with plates, ladles, recipe cards, tins of spices, a turkey baster, and the Elliots’ Thanksgiving platter, the one with the cornucopia painted in the center.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” Mrs. Elliot greets Charlie. “You slept late.”
“Until the hunters started shooting,” Charlie replies, and yawns. “What’s all this?”
“Just five days until Thanksgiving. I have to start getting ready. Aunt Susan and everyone will be arriving on Tuesday. I have a lot to do before then.”
His mother, humming, returns to her work, and Charlie thinks about Thanksgiving as he fixes himself a bowl of cereal. They didn’t celebrate it the year before. RJ had been buried just several weeks earlier, and Mr. and Mrs. Elliot never mentioned the holiday, although Charlie knew they thought about it all that Thursday as they went silently about their chores. His father spent the afternoon working in the barn and his mother began to answer the condolence notes that had been arriving in the mail. Every day she’d sorted through the letters, slicing the envelopes carefully with a silver letter opener, reading the notes, and then placing them tidily in stacks on a tray in the kitchen. The stacks had grown into towers, which began to teeter, and Mr. Elliot eyed them at breakfast on Thanksgiving. Nothing was said about the towers, but as soon as Mr. Elliot disappeared into the barn, Mrs. Elliot found her fountain pen and her best stationery, sat down at the table, and reached for a note on top of one of the piles. She didn’t stop writing until it was time to go to bed and Thanksgiving was mercifully over.
But now, a year later, Mrs. Elliot is humming and planning and poring through cookbooks. “Charlie,” she says, “I’m feeling festive. See if you can find some Christmas music on the radio.”
Charlie fiddles with the dial, but the best he can come up with is a recording of the previous year’s Thanksgiving service at a church in Chicago. “That’s nice. Leave it there,” says his mother, who begins singing, “We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves,” in her low voice.
Charlie eats his breakfast sitting on a stool at
the kitchen counter since the table is so crowded with the beginnings of Thanksgiving dinner. He gazes out the window, listening to the distant gunshots. The morning is raw and overcast.
“You’d think the hunters would stay home on a day like this,” he says crabbily to his mother.
She gives him a rueful smile. “You just have to get through it,” she replies, and Charlie knows she means hunting season.
“Well, I don’t understand why the hunters have to go out there and kill for sport. For sport. It would be one thing if they actually needed the animals they shoot. You know, to make coats or whatever. But they don’t. And half the time, they don’t even eat what they kill. Like with deer, they just cut off their heads and hang them in their living rooms. How would a hunter like it if a deer came around and cut off the head of someone in the hunter’s family just so he could hang it over his mantelpiece and say, ‘Look! I was finally able to add a twenty-two-year-old man to my collection.’ ”
“Charlie!” Mrs. Elliot is trying not to laugh and also doesn’t want to get caught up in this discussion that she and Charlie have had many, many times in the past. She glances at her watch. “Honey,” she says, “it’s still early. Don’t waste this day being angry. Why don’t you give me a hand in the kitchen? Or make place cards for Thursday. That would be helpful.”
“Mom. I’m not seven,” says Charlie, imagining himself crayoning turkeys and Pilgrims on construction paper. He finishes his cereal and sets his bowl in the sink. “I think I’ll take a walk with Sunny.”
“All right. But stay out of the woods on our property,” replies Mrs. Elliot over the sound of another gunshot. “I don’t want you in the woods until hunting season is over. And wear something bright red.”
The flat rock, on which Charlie and Sunny have shared many picnics, is not on the Elliots’ property, and anyway the day is too cold for picnics or for sitting outside and reading. In fact, Charlie notes with satisfaction, the air feels cold enough for snow. Maybe the first snow will fall on Thanksgiving Day. Maybe they’ll have a white Thanksgiving this year and a white Christmas too.
Charlie and Sunny set out for a walk around the Elliots’ yard. Charlie stands for a while considering the vegetable garden. In one corner he and his mother have already planted garlic cloves, which will sprout early the next spring. Not much else remains—a few tangled vines from the winter squash and some very resistant crabgrass. Charlie pulls these up and tosses them onto a brush heap nearby. The day is now growing foggy and Charlie realizes that he hasn’t heard gunshots for half an hour or so. “Good,” he says aloud to Sunny. “Maybe the murderers have all gone home.”
Sunny, who is sitting neatly at the edge of the garden, front feet lined up perfectly and her tail sticking out straight behind her, tilts her head and gives Charlie a grin, and this makes Charlie laugh.
After lunch, which the Elliots eat hastily so that Mrs. Elliot can get back to her preparations, Charlie’s father says to him, “Can you come help me with something in the barn?” There’s a look on his face that Charlie can’t quite read. Secretive? Amused? Mysterious? Conspiratorial?
“Okay,” replies Charlie, intrigued.
Charlie and Sunny follow Mr. Elliot to the barn. They walk past scattering, clucking hens, past the stacks of painting supplies, past the makeshift office, to a stall near the back wall. Mr. Elliot steps aside so Charlie can enter the stall first, and Charlie sees something large perched on a workbench. The something is covered with a sheet.
“What is it?” asks Charlie.
His father lifts the sheet. “I’m making it for your mother for Christmas.”
“Is it . . . a dollhouse?”
His father nods. “It’s going to be.”
“It’s really great, Dad, but Mom is . . .” He pauses. How to say this delicately? “Mom’s a grown-up.”
Mr. Elliot smiles. “I know. But she’s always wanted a dollhouse. And look.” He shows Charlie a sheaf of papers. They’re plans for an elaborate Victorian house, complete with a gabled roof, gingerbread trim, and window boxes. “I know she’ll like this. Even if she is a grown-up. She’ll have fun decorating it and making furniture for it. The only thing is that I’m not sure I can finish it on time. Not without help. Would you like to help me? You did such a good job making the stool last summer.”
If a dollhouse is something his mother really wants, then Charlie is happy to work on it. Plus, he likes the idea of a Christmas secret in the barn. “Okay,” he says. “Sure. But you’ll have to show me what to do.”
Charlie and his father work until Charlie realizes that outside the light is starting to fade, and also that he hasn’t seen Sunny in quite some time.
“When did Sunny leave?” he asks.
“I’m not sure,” his father replies, his eyes on the plans.
“I’d better go find her,” says Charlie. “I want to know where she is.”
Charlie walks across the yard to the farmhouse. “Mom? Did Sunny come in?”
“No,” calls Mrs. Elliot from the kitchen. “I thought she was with you.”
Charlie walks through the house anyway, calling for Sunny, but his mother is right. She isn’t there.
He stands in the yard and looks in all directions. The fog has lifted, but he still can’t see very far in the late afternoon light.
“Sunny! Sunny!” calls Charlie. He listens for a bark or for the sound of her muscular body crashing through the underbrush.
Nothing.
“Sunny? . . . Sunny!”
This has happened before. Sunny doesn’t come right away and Charlie envisions all sorts of awful things that might have happened to her. Then, finally, Sunny comes flying to him from the far reaches of their property, looking as though she has a good story to tell.
Charlie begins to walk through the field. “Sunny! Sunny! Suuuunny!”
“Charlie?” Mr. Elliot is jogging through the field behind him. “Haven’t you found her yet?”
Charlie is now feeling very nervous and his nervousness is making him cross, which is why he almost says to his father, “If I’d found her, why would I be calling her?” But instead he says breathlessly, “No. Not yet. I haven’t seen her or heard her and she isn’t in the house.”
“We’ll find her, son,” says Mr. Elliot, and despite his fears, Charlie warms at the sound of the word son.
Charlie and his father decide to separate so that they can each walk along one side of their property, at the edge of the woods.
“Sunny! Here, girl!” calls Mr. Elliot.
“Come, Sunny!” calls Charlie. He would like to look in the woods too, but remembers his mother’s warning about hunters.
And finally, when Charlie thinks he can bear the search no longer, he spots Sunny far ahead. In the dim light he can just see that her rump is in the air, her front legs scrabbling excitedly in the brush. She has found something enticing—a mouse or a mole or a vole—and she is determined to claim it for herself.
“Sunny!” Charlie cries with relief. Then, “Dad! I see her! She’s way over there.” He waves his arms in the air and points ahead to Sunny’s wiggling rump.
Charlie begins to run, and Mr. Elliot crosses the field at a good clip, his long legs pumping the way they must have done years ago when he was a star on the Monroe County High School football team.
“SUNNY!” Charlie shouts in his loudest voice possible, and finally, finally, Sunny hears him. She raises her head—she has not caught her prize after all—turns, and lopes toward Charlie. Her doggie grin is in place. She has had an enjoyable afternoon.
Charlie and Sunny are not twenty feet apart when a gunshot sounds, this one very close by, and Sunny jumps, all four feet off the ground.
“It’s okay, Sunny,” Charlie says, still running toward her. “Just a loud noise, remember?”
But Sunny has landed in a heap and doesn’t move.
Charlie falters. He feels his father by his side.
“Stop right here,” says Mr. Elliot, placing his
hand on Charlie’s shoulder.
Charlie ignores him. He shrugs away and runs to Sunny, calling, “Get up! Get up now.”
Sunny is lying very still, more still even than when she sleeps. Charlie stoops and turns her over gently. His hands come away slick with blood.
“No!” Charlie shouts. “No! Dad!” He peers through the trees. A hunter must be close by. “Stupid idiot! Stupid idiot! Dad, some stupid idiot hunter was shooting onto our property. That’s illegal. Stupid idiot,” he says again, and he’s whispering now, stroking Sunny’s lovely snout, her silky ears.
Charlie hears a rustling, ever so faint, farther off in the field, and he jerks his head up. He can just make out a figure. Someone is walking slowly, very slowly and carefully, toward Charlie and Sunny from the direction of the Elliots’ house, a shadowy object cradled in one arm.
“Go away!” Charlie yells, but the figure keeps coming until finally Charlie can make out Mr. Hanna’s destroyed face. Charlie is on his feet in seconds and he rushes toward the old man. “Murderer, murderer! You murdered Sunny.”
Mr. Hanna shakes his head, but he can’t speak. He kneels by Sunny. His mouth is trembling and his eyes leak tears. Charlie raises his fist. Maybe he would have hit Mr. Hanna and maybe not, but before he can find out, his father’s hands grab him from behind and pull him backward, and it’s at that moment that they all hear the sound of someone running—crashing—through the woods, running away from what he has caused. And Charlie sees that Mr. Hanna isn’t carrying his gun. He’s carrying a sack of apples, which, Charlie finds out later, he was bringing to the Elliots as a Thanksgiving gift.
Mr. Hanna has dropped the bag and now he traces his hand down Sunny’s graceful body, stroking her slowly all the way from her ears to her tail.
Charlie doesn’t know what to do; has absolutely no idea. He wants to apologize to Mr. Hanna, but he can’t find his voice. He wants to take off into the woods after the hunter, but as soon as he steps toward the trees, his father puts his hands on his shoulders and turns him around.
Charlie falls to his knees. “I want her back!” he cries. He begins to sob. “I want him back.”