Henry’s father held up one hand. “Is this breakfast table material?” he asked.
“No,” admitted Henry. “But it’s really interesting. Cats can digest—”
“Henry,” said his mother.
“Okay. Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Did that person return All-of-a-Kind Family yet?”
“What person?”
“Whoever checked it out.” Henry didn’t particularly want to read All-of-a-Kind Family, but it was the only book by a T author in the fiction section of the children’s room at the public library (where Henry’s father was the head librarian) that Henry hadn’t read yet, and he didn’t want to go on to U without completing T first. Henry had set out to read everything in the children’s room three years earlier. Now that he was eleven, a lot of the books were too babyish for him, but he wasn’t ready to give up on his project. He was too close to the end.
“I’ll check today,” said his father.
“If it’s back, could you bring it home with you? Please?” asked Henry.
Henry’s father pulled a pad of paper from his pocket and wrote a note on it. “If it isn’t in, what should I bring you?”
“Oh, I guess just any book about a dog would do.” Henry paused, then added, “As long as the author’s last name begins with A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, or T. Nothing after T.”
Henry’s parents looked at each other and sighed. “You’re sure you don’t want to—” his father started to ask.
Henry interrupted him. “Nope. It’s my rule.” He looked at his watch and pushed his chair back from the table in a hurry. If he was going to leave the house before his parents did, he would have to hurry. In a town as small as Claremont, most people, Henry’s parents among them, could walk to work, and Henry was not about to trail after his mother all the way to school just because Matthew was gone.
Henry put on his backpack, which weighed more than usual since he had decided to bring along activities so he could entertain himself during recess. He had packed his current sketch pad, three books (it was good to have a choice of reading material), and a stack of baseball cards. He crossed his lawn, stopped, and stared at Matthew’s house with its forlorn, left-behind look. He threw a stone at the living room window, but it landed harmlessly in the middle of the yard.
“Stupid Matthew.”
Henry set off down the street. At his back were the woods and the yellow DEAD END sign. He thought that placing a DEAD END sign at the dead end itself was pointless, since you could see the dead end right there where the road came to a complete stop and the forest began. Ahead of him was the corner of Aspen Avenue, then the corner of Mountain View, then Morton Road, then Nassau, and beyond Nassau, three more intersections, and then another pointless DEAD END sign at the base of the mountain on the far side of Claremont.
Henry paid attention to the houses on Tinker Lane as he passed by. He realized that he barely knew anything about the people who lived in them. To his left was the large Victorian home with the wide white porch and the window frames painted in shades of lavender and gray. Over the years, he and Matthew had made up so many stories about the little old lady who lived there that now he couldn’t remember what they had invented and what he might have heard his parents say. A little old lady who almost never comes outside, he thought. Matthew had said the word for a person like that was recluse. Henry stopped in front of the house and took a good look at it. It was enormous. Did just one person truly live there all by herself? He noted that in the yard on both sides of the house bird feeders hung from the oak trees. He saw a birdhouse nailed to a wooden post and a birdbath in a small garden, the basin now filled with autumn leaves.
Henry moved on. He crossed Aspen and started down the next block. A noisy group of kids was ahead of him, on the other side of Mountain View. They poked one another and laughed and shouted and jumped in the leaves piled along the sidewalk. One of the kids was Owen, Henry thought, and another was Antony, who was in Henry’s grade. Antony, he now recalled, had four brothers and sisters.
Henry watched the short yellow school bus pull up in front of a tidy white house, and he stopped walking for a moment. The short bus was transportation for kids in the classroom at the end of the south wing of his school, the room called the Learning Center. The door of the house opened now and a woman pushed a wheelchair through it and down a ramp toward the driveway. A small girl sat in the wheelchair. The door of the house opened a second time and a boy ran down the ramp and joined the group of kids ahead of Henry. The boy was Mackey Brannigan, who was also in Henry’s grade. How many times, Henry wondered, had he and Matthew walked down Tinker Lane lost in their world of baseball players and books and paid no attention to the old lady’s house or the short bus or Antony and Owen and Mackey?
The bus pulled away from the curb, the kids crossed Morton and turned the corner onto Nassau Street, and Henry continued down Tinker by himself.
If I had a dog, he thought, I would name him Buddy.
4. BONE
The shed had been a good home for Squirrel and me. It had been warm in the cool weather, it had sheltered us from rain, and it had hidden us from the Merrions. But it couldn’t protect us from everything. The yipping coyotes reminded me of that. And the man with the gun reminded me of that. Early the morning after Squirrel and I were frightened by the second blast from the gun, I rose from our bed on the floor. I looked around the shed; looked at the nesting boxes on the far wall, sleepy cat eyes peering through some of the holes; looked at the abandoned barn swallow nest; looked at the open window and beyond to the branches of a birch tree.
Squirrel had been stretched out on the burlap sacks, breathing deeply, but when she felt me get to my feet, she opened her eyes. She sat up, and I touched my nose to hers. I was going to leave our home, but I couldn’t leave my sister.
I slipped through the door. The other creatures in the shed were starting to stir, and several of them blinked at me, but most paid no attention. Squirrel and I lived in a separate dog world and were of little interest to the cats and mice and insects. I began to trot along the bushes at the edge of the Merrions’ yard, but I stopped every so often to glance back at the shed. The first time I did so I saw only the open door. The second time, I saw Squirrel’s snout poking through the door. The third time, I saw Squirrel standing in front of the shed. And the fourth time, I saw that Squirrel was following me. I had passed the garbage pile by then, heading into new territory. When Squirrel caught up with me, we trotted along side by side for a while. Every now and then Squirrel would turn to give me a lick. We bounced through the woods, the rising sun warming our backs.
That day was like no other Squirrel and I had experienced. Gone were our familiar landmarks. Gone was the garbage pile. Gone were the shed cats and Matthias and the man with the gun. Gone was everything, good and bad, that we had known. We made our way through woods that were just like our own and at the same time entirely different. Here were familiar things—ferns and saplings and bramble bushes, chipmunks and garden snakes and grasshoppers, blue jays and crows and chickadees. But we had no idea what we would find over a rise or across a stream or beyond a boulder.
At first we felt frisky. We chased each other. We played in a brook. I pounced on a butterfly. By the time the shadows were growing longer, though; by the time the air, which had warmed as the sun had risen, was becoming cooler again, our stomachs were rumbling with hunger. And I didn’t know where to find food. We would need to hunt.
I walked ahead of Squirrel now, but my steps were slower than when I had left the shed. I was on the lookout for rodents when suddenly the trees ended and my sister and I found ourselves at the edge of a wide field. A tractor sat at one end of the field, and from somewhere not too far away came a sound that I knew meant cars. Squirrel and I had heard the Merrions’ car many times on the lane to their house. When we were old enough to roam from the shed, we had discovered a road much bigger than their lane with many more cars.
The sound I heard now was of lots of cars traveling very fast.
I perked up my ears and listened for other sounds. Then I put my nose in the air and sniffed. Squirrel and I needed a meal—quickly. The field seemed like a good place for rodents, so I set off through it and soon enough I caught the scent of rabbit. But a long chase through the field after a very fast bunny led not to a meal but to the busy road and the cars.
I didn’t like the road and neither did Squirrel. Cars and trucks bore down on us in rushes of hot wind, blowing dust in our eyes. Squirrel turned back toward the field in a hurry, but now I caught the scent of something else, something better than bunny.
Chicken.
I could smell chicken nearby.
My mouth watered.
But where was the chicken? I sat up straight, ignoring the rushing traffic, and stuck my snout in the air again. I sniffed and sniffed and sniffed, my nose twitching. And suddenly I knew exactly where the chicken was. Across the highway I could see a paper bag on its side. My nose told me that chicken was in that bag.
I stood poised by the edge of the road as car after truck zoomed by, and I waited for my opportunity to run. I was still waiting when I heard Squirrel let out a sharp bark. Before I could turn to her I felt hands, human hands like those belonging to Matthias, scoop me up in the air. I twisted around and found myself looking into the face of a man who was breathing very hard. I swiveled my head around and saw that Squirrel had been scooped up by a woman. By the side of the road a little distance away, a car was idling. And far, far across the road was the chicken, its scent still easing its way to me on the wind.
The woman who was holding my sister said, “Look, they’re just puppies. What are they doing way out here?”
The man put his face very close to mine and said in a deep voice that was like Mother’s warning growl, “You guys could have gotten yourselves killed. This is a dangerous highway.”
“Well, honey, they don’t know any better,” replied the woman. “They’re little. They must have gotten lost.”
That was when the man said, “Do they have any collars or tags?” and he began to explore my neck with fingers that were not gentle like Matthias’s.
Once, not long after Mother had decided that Squirrel and I could explore the woods on our own, we had come across a pond and—SNAP!—a fierce turtle had reached around with his long neck and nearly clamped his jaws on my front paw. We were careful around turtles after that.
Now I snapped at the man like the turtle had snapped at me. “Hey!” he shouted. “You little brat! Don’t do that again.” He gave me a shake and I could feel my teeth rattle. I looked at Squirrel, who was squirming in the woman’s hands. The more my sister squirmed, the tighter the woman held her until finally Squirrel let out a squeak.
I tried to bite the man again, but he tucked me under one arm, opened the door of the car that was stopped by the side of the road, and stuck me in the back. The woman stuck Squirrel in next to me. Then they climbed into the front seat.
“What are we going to do with them?” asked the man.
“Keep them!” exclaimed the woman. “They’re cute.”
Before I knew it, my sister and I were speeding down the road, getting farther and farther away from the chicken.
The man and the woman were named George and Marcy. I think that they wanted to want Squirrel and me, but that they didn’t really like animals very much. Also, we were too much trouble. Squirrel got sick in their car, and as soon as Marcy carried her inside their house, she peed on the floor. George shouted, “Bad dog!” then in a very loud voice and tossed her out the front door. He brought her back inside, though, and Marcy put us in the kitchen and then I made a puddle on the floor, and Squirrel pooped in a corner.
“Well, it’s pretty clear that they’ve never lived in a house,” said George.
He lifted the lid on the garbage pail in order to throw away a handful of wet paper towels, and that was when I smelled something just as good as chicken—turkey. Plus eggs and cookies and bread and bologna. In a flash, I darted to the pail and knocked it over, and Squirrel and I snatched at the spilled food and swallowed what we could grab without bothering to chew it. We retreated, growling, under the table, and this time Marcy yelled, “Bad dogs!”
We fell asleep beneath the table.
When we woke up later that night, Marcy was setting my sister and me in a large box lined with newspapers. We didn’t like the box. And we needed to pee. We whined and howled, but Marcy didn’t take us out of the box. Instead she picked us up, box and all, carried us into a room with no windows, and set the box on the floor. This was the darkest space I had ever been in. I couldn’t see a speck of moonlight. I couldn’t hear a single sound either—no cats purring or owls calling or even coyotes yipping. Nothing. There was only silence and the deep black.
Squirrel and I had to pee in our sleeping place. We didn’t have a choice.
I fell asleep at last. When I awoke, the night was over. A door had opened into our room and flooded it with light from a window across a hallway. I saw Squirrel next to me. And I saw a hand on her back. I leaped forward and bit the hand. Marcy slapped me on my nose. I yelped.
I could hear George call, “What is it?”
“The tan puppy just bit me!” said Marcy.
“Okay,” replied George. “That does it. Those dogs go today.”
Marcy said no, but as soon as she left the house, George put on a pair of gloves, found a box that was smaller than the one we had spent the night in, and slammed it onto the floor of the kitchen. He did these things in silence, except for the slamming, and he moved very fast and very heavily. Squirrel and I were under the kitchen table and we had backed up against the wall, as far from George as we could get, but his hands came after us anyway. He shoved aside a chair and grabbed me by the scruff of my neck. He ignored me when I tried to whip around like the snapping turtle again and bite his gloved hand, and he stuffed me into the new box. He stuffed Squirrel in next, and then he carried the box a little distance and tossed it onto something that caused us to land with a bounce. I heard the sound of a car starting, and soon Squirrel and I were on another ride. When we whimpered, George told us to shut up and he whacked the box. After that, we didn’t make any noise.
We rode in the car for a short time and presently it slowed down and the top of our box was ripped open. The glove reached in and grabbed me by my neck, and in the next instant I was sailing through the air. I landed on something hard, smashing my nose, but I didn’t stop to lick at the blood. I turned around, looking for Squirrel, and there she was sailing through the air too. Before she had even landed, George’s car sped up. It zoomed away, making a great deal of noise.
I heard a cracking sound when my sister hit the pavement, but she didn’t yelp or whimper, just staggered onto her hind legs before flopping down again. I stood up. I wanted to run to her, but one of my front paws hurt so much that at first I couldn’t put any weight on it. I sat for a moment, shaking and panting.
Squirrel and I had landed on a patch of asphalt wider than any road I had seen. It was wider than a stream, wider even than the Merrions’ yard. And it was lined with rows and rows and rows of stopped cars. Beyond the cars was an enormous building, and people were going in and out of it through tall glass doors.
I tried once again to stand up, and this time I was able to put weight on all of my legs. I began to limp toward Squirrel and had almost reached her when I heard someone exclaim, “Hey, did you see that? Someone threw those puppies out of a car!”
Then another voice said, “Are they all right?”
Two women were walking along one of the rows of cars. They were carrying large bags made of paper. Now they began to run toward Squirrel and me. When they reached us they set the bags on the ground and knelt down.
“Oh, my goodness,” one of them said. This woman had hair so long that it tumbled over her shoulders and halfway down her back. Also, the middle part of her was fat but the rest was not.
br /> “I think they’re okay,” said the other woman. This second woman was wearing a hat and it was as blue as a jay’s feather.
“Look how cute this one is,” said the woman with the long hair. “Look at her brown eyes. I wonder if she’s a golden retriever.” She held her hand out toward me. “I always wanted a puppy. I’m going to take the tan one home.”
“But what about the spotted one?”
The woman paused. “I don’t think I can manage two dogs. And the other one isn’t as cute. I’ll just take this one.” She stretched her hand even closer to me, and held it steady. I sniffed it. “Anyway, someone else will come along soon and find the spotted dog. That’s why that guy dumped them at the mall, you know.”
The woman with the long hair sat down on the asphalt. She talked softly to me, like Matthias used to do. After I had sniffed her hand again she put it on my back and stroked me. She kept whispering and stroking, whispering and stroking. And then she picked me up. I squirmed, and she held me tightly but not too tightly and said, “You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.” She wiped my bloody snout with a tissue.
The woman with the hat picked up all the bags, and the woman with the long hair held me firmly in her arms, and they began to walk away from my sister. After a while they stopped walking and the woman with the hat opened the door of a car. She put the bags inside while the woman with the long hair slid into a seat and settled me in her lap, in front of the part of her that was so fat. She never stopped talking to me in her low voice, murmuring that I was a good girl (she had a surprise coming) and that I was brave and strong and that she was going to take me to a vet. (I didn’t know then what a vet was.) She patted me, and I didn’t feel the need to bite her, so she kept patting and I kept my teeth to myself.
The woman with the hat started the car and drove it slowly along the asphalt. I was beginning to feel sleepy, but suddenly I stood up on my hind legs, put my front paws against the window, and looked outside. We were passing my sister. She was sitting where she had landed, gazing around at the cars and holding one of her front feet off the ground.