Tomorrow evening
they would march
down the middle of Walnut Street,
right to the basement
of the Catholic Church,
where the town council
would be meeting.
The boys,
the girls,
the dogs,
and Fido
too.
Several times during the discussion
Mark had to run a hand
over his bristly brown hair
to keep his courage from flagging.
What would his mother say?
Everything was moving so fast!
But plans had to move fast,
he reminded himself.
So, fast was good.
Wasn’t it?
Samantha and Alex
had decided they would paint signs.
Lia was going to make up chants.
Trent and Fido
would lead the parade.
All the dogs
were going to be there,
so,
of course,
Fido was coming too.
(Everyone had agreed
that pets were
citizens of Erthly,
and so they had to be in the rally.
Mark had rubbed his bristly hair
extra hard
over that one.)
“Let’s call ourselves
the Dog-Park Pack,”
Alex said.
“The Dog-Park Pack!”
everyone shouted,
and they pumped their fists in the air.
Then they yelled it again
because it sounded so good.
“The Dog-Park Pack!”
The ancient oak
seemed to approve of their plans.
Dog park, it whispered.
The Dog-Park Pack!
But when all of that had been settled,
the most important question
still remained.
“Who’ll make a speech
to the town council?”
Mark asked.
Silence.
Everyone looked
off through the iron fence
as though
something very interesting
were happening
behind the blank,
staring
windows
of the mansion.
Then they looked at Mark.
“You’ll do it!”
Alex
and Samantha
and Ryan
and Lia
and Trent
said in one voice.
“But the mayor is my mother!”
Mark said.
“And she doesn’t want to hear
about dog parks
from me.”
“She’ll have to hear,”
Lia said,
“because she’s the mayor,
and the mayor’s job
is to listen.
You’ve always said so.”
“But I don’t have a dog,”
Mark said.
“I don’t even have
a cat who thinks he’s a dog!”
“That’s all right,”
Samantha told him.
“You’ll be speaking for the common good.”
(Samantha’s mom was a lawyer.
That’s why she knew phrases like
“the common good.”)
“I’ve never made a speech before,”
Mark said.
“Nothing to it,”
Ryan told him.
“You just open your mouth
and talk.”
“If there’s nothing to it,
then why don’t you—,”
Mark started to say.
But just then a door opened
in the big house
behind the spiked iron fence,
and Charles Larue
stepped out
onto the broad porch.
Instantly
all Mark’s friends decided
it was time
to go home.
“Wait!”
Mark called after them.
But no one waited.
They didn’t even
look
back.
Buddy grew sadder and sadder.
She grew thinner and thinner.
When the woman put her bowl of kibble
on the kitchen floor,
Buddy always slid her gaze
toward the bowl,
but she didn’t get up
to eat.
Maybe later,
when she walked by,
she’d take a bite
or even two.
But she never ate enough
to fill her belly
or to make her black coat
glossy again.
“I thought dogs were always hungry,”
the woman said.
“That goes to show
how little I know
about dogs.”
When Buddy went out
into the yard
to use the grass,
she didn’t run back to the door
to be near her new owner.
Instead she settled
into the corner
against the fence
and peered through the slats,
waiting for her boy
to come back.
He didn’t,
of course.
We know why he didn’t.
We know
her boy wasn’t ever going to come walking back
from the faraway city
down the sidewalk
up to the fence
where Buddy waited.
But Buddy knew nothing
of the city
that had swallowed
her boy.
She knew only that there was a place
deep beneath her ribs
that ached
day and night.
It wasn’t that Charles Larue
had ever done anything
to scare the kids.
It was just
that they had told one another
so many stories about him,
no one could quite remember
what was story
and what was fact.
If you live in a small town like Erthly,
you know most
of the people
there.
But since no one actually knew Charles Larue,
the kids had to make do
with stories.
There were the stories
about ghosts
in Charles Larue’s attic,
lost
and lamenting.
There were the stories
about corpses
in Charles Larue’s cellar,
unburied
and stinking.
There were even stories
about how he turned into a vampire
whenever the moon
grew fat.
Kids said he skulked across town,
thirsting
for innocent
blood!
(Why is the blood
that vampires thirst for
always said to be innocent?
Wouldn’t guilty blood
taste just as good?)
So many stories!
So many kids full of stories!
And here stood Charles Larue
watching
the boys and girls
hurry
away
down the street.
He watched Mark,
too,
standing
alone
beneath the oak tree.
Mark decided it was time
for him to go home
as well.
Buddy lay curled
in the corner of the yard,
tight against
the picket fence.
She lay with her pointy nose
tucked
beneath her whiplike tail,
her airplane-wing ears
sagging.
Her entire body
remembered
her boy.
The itch
behind her left ear
remembered his scratching hand.
Her lips
remembered his kiss.
Her legs
remembered leaping
after a high-flung ball.
All gone . . .
gone.
Buddy rose
from the ground.
She turned around
twice,
three times.
She lay down
again.
She got up once more.
Some of the dirt
in the corner,
right close to the fence,
was loose.
Some of the dirt
looked soft,
easy to dig.
Buddy tested it with a paw.
She tested it with both paws.
She threw the dirt behind her,
grandly,
wildly.
She kept on digging.
“Bad dog!”
came a voice from the house.
“Bad, bad dog!
You’re ruining
my yard!”
Buddy stopped digging.
She lay down.
She tucked her pointy nose
beneath
her whiplike tail.
She sighed
deeply.
For just a moment there,
she had
almost
been having
fun.
in the big double doorway
watching the children
disappear down the street.
They always did that.
Whenever he came outside
to see what they were doing,
they ran away.
He didn’t know why they ran.
He had never spoken an unkind word
to a child of Erthly.
In fact,
he’d never spoken any word at all.
He liked children,
certainly.
He’d always wished
he’d had a child
of his own.
He’d been proud
to take care of his lady,
but a child would have been nice.
Maybe two or three.
Perhaps a dog
as well.
But for that to have happened
he’d have needed a different kind of life.
For that to have happened
he’d have needed to find the courage
to say more than
“Pecan pie and coffee, please”
to the redheaded waitress
at the Erthly Café.
In the life he’d been given,
children and dogs
never seemed
to want to come near.
Charles Larue thrust his hands
deep into his pockets
and turned back
to his enormous,
empty
house.
For a long time
Buddy lay curled
in the corner
by the fence.
When she stood,
finally,
she turned to examine
the soft dirt
once more.
She patted it.
She poked at it.
She tossed it behind her.
One paw full,
two.
She stopped to study the house.
Nothing.
Not a sign.
Not a sound.
Maybe the woman had gone away.
People had a way of doing that.
Buddy began digging again.
When the hole was deep,
crumbly,
and coolly inviting,
she scooted
under the fence
and out
into the world.
The world where
she was sure
her boy
waited.
Buddy padded a few steps,
then paused
to look back.
She had never been on her own
before.
Behind her,
on the other side of the fence,
she had a bowl,
a bed,
a ball.
(She had chewed up her bone,
and no new one
had appeared.)
Behind her,
on the other side of the fence,
she had an orange-marmalade stuffed cat,
the one she used to toss into the air
and catch again.
The one she still
rested her chin on at night
when she slept.
Buddy’s paws hesitated.
Even her paws remembered
the orange-marmalade cat.
But then she thought about her boy,
about chasing balls,
ear scratches,
kisses.
And she set off again
at
a
steady
lope.
“Mom,”
Mark said,
“what do people do
when they want to make a speech
to the town council?”
“A speech?” his mother asked.
“Well,” Mark said,
“how do people tell the council
when there is something
they want
the town to do?”
“They just come
to the meeting
and talk.
They tell us
what they want.”
Mark nodded.
Talking sounded easy.
It was a better word
than “speech.”
Except that he hated talking
in front of his class
in school.
What would it feel like
to talk
in front of
the entire
town
council?
In front of his mother, too!
His mother ran her hand
across his bristly brown hair.
“Hey, little porcupine,”
she said,
“why do you want to know
about the town council?”
he said.
Mark turned away,
smiling.
He liked being called
little porcupine.
At least he liked hearing
his mother say it
when no one else was around.
But he knew—
maybe she did too—
that for all their fierce prickles,
porcupines were exceedingly soft
underneath.
Tomorrow he had to talk to the town council.
But could he?
Buddy danced
along the sidewalk.
She was looking for her boy’s house.
She was looking for
her boy.
I’m coming!
I’m coming!
her faithful heart sang.
I’m here!
She stopped to consider
a tall white house.
But that wasn’t it.
She sniffed the bushes
alongside a brick bungalow.
That wasn’t it either.
She traveled
through several backyards.
None had the right look,
the right smell.
In fact,
nothing Buddy found
was right.
None belonged
to her boy.
Finally,
more because she was tired—
and a bit discouraged—
than because it seemed like the right one,
she went up onto the porch
of a stucco house
with green shutters
and lay down
in front of the door.
A black Lab
barked
from behind the picture window.
Go away! he barked.
Go!
This house is mine,
mine,
mine,
mine!
Buddy didn’t bark back.
She just lay there,
waiting
for whatever
or whoever
was going to happen
next.
“What are you doing here?”
The woman opened the door
and flapped a dish towel
at Buddy.
“Shoo!”
she said.
“Go away!”
Buddy leapt to her feet,
but then she stood there.
She didn’t know what to do!
In her whole life
no one had ever said
“Shoo!”
to her before.
A man came to the door
too.
“Obviously a stray,”
he said.
“Just see how thin she is.”
He opened the door a crack,
but when Buddy looked up at him
hopefully,
he closed it again.
“We should call the dogcatcher,”
he said.
“Except this town is too small
for a dogcatcher.
Do you suppose the sheriff
would have time to come?”
Buddy tipped her head
to one side.
“Dogcatcher”?
“Sheriff”?
She didn’t understand those words
either.
“Can we keep her?”
a girl asked,
appearing between the man and the woman.
“Please,
please,
please,
can we keep her?”
“No,”
the man and the woman said together.
“What would we do
with two
dogs?”
the woman said.
She said it
the way grown-ups sometimes do,
as though she were asking a question,
when,
of course,
she didn’t want an answer at all.
The little girl answered anyway.
“I’d love them both,”
she said,
reasonably enough.
The door
shut.
Buddy plodded
down the steps
and out to the sidewalk.
The sun had dropped
behind the steeple
of the Catholic Church.
Walnut Street stood empty.
Was there no one who wanted
a little black dog
with brown paws
and a brown mask
and a sweet ruffle of brown fur on her bum
just beneath her black whip of a tail?
No one at all?
Charles Larue trudged
through the mansion,