a dust cloth in his hand.
He smoothed the cloth over
this vase,
that figurine,
the cracked feet of the old velvet sofa.
The enormous house echoed
with the tap-tap-tap of his feet
on the polished floor,
with their hush-shush
on the carpet.
The rocking chair creaked
when he gave it a push.
A small figurine clinked
into place on the shelf.
But Charles Larue paid no attention
to the echoes
in the old house.
Only the dust held him,
the constant,
constant
dust.
He paused at a desk,
opened a drawer
and touched a sheaf of papers.
He didn’t need to unfold the papers
to know what they said.
“Last Will and Testament,”
they said.
“The house to Charles Larue,”
they said.
“The house
and the land
and the tall iron fence
with spikes.”
He shut the drawer
and sighed.
A dozen times a day
he did that,
opened the drawer,
touched the papers,
shut the drawer,
sighed.
Who knew his lady
would go off
to die among strangers?
No matter
that they called themselves family,
they were strangers.
Who knew she would die
and leave this house,
this enormous old house
and all its dust
to him?
When his lady had lived,
he had promised
he would keep this house,
always.
For her.
Now
if he could wish his promise away,
he would.
He would gladly wish
the whole huge house
away.
What good was an empty house?
What good was
an empty man?
Charles Larue ran his dust cloth
over a picture
on the wall
and sighed again.
His house.
His.
He’d had a good life,
taking care of his lady.
He had prepared her meals.
He’d kept the furnace running
and the lawn neat.
He’d driven her into the countryside
on Sunday afternoons.
He’d been a young man
when he’d come to her,
almost a boy.
She’d called him Larue.
Just that.
“The dinner is lovely, Larue.”
“Larue, thank you for driving so carefully.”
“What would I do without you, Larue?”
A good life.
Everything he had done
for his lady
he had done
with care and with satisfaction.
But never
in his saddest dreams
had he thought he’d spend
his last years
dusting
this enormous old house
for no one
at all.
Charles Larue moved on
to
the
next
room,
dust cloth in his hand.
Buddy trotted along in the gathering dark,
searching.
She passed a school
and three churches,
a grocery store,
a post office,
a hardware store,
a bank.
But she paid no attention
to any of it.
She turned
into the town park
to sniff at the base of a tree.
Dogs she had never met
had left messages there.
She added a comment
of her own,
then settled
beneath the rusty swings.
She laid her chin on her paws.
How she missed
her orange-marmalade stuffed cat!
She thought about going back
to the house
where the woman didn’t throw balls
and didn’t kiss her
on the lips
and didn’t pick up
the stuffed cat
and pretend to run off with it.
But she had left
in such a hurry
that she had quite forgotten
how to go back.
The truth was,
Little dog,
lost.
A couple
strolled through the park.
His arm circled her waist.
Her head rested on his shoulder.
Boots crunched.
Sneakers whispered through the grass.
“See that mongrel over there?”
said the boots.
“Must be a stray.”
“Dear little dog,”
the sneakers said.
“What’s she doing
alone
in the park
at night?
The poor thing must be lost.”
“Careful!”
said the boots.
“Don’t go close.
You never know
about strays!”
“Who’s she going to hurt?”
asked the sneakers.
“See how small she is?”
“You can never be sure,”
the boots said.
And then,
“Hey, you!
Out of here!
Shoo!”
This time Buddy understood
the word.
No problem.
She scrambled
from beneath the swings
and ran.
She didn’t pause to look back at the voices,
coaxing and cross,
until she reached the edge of the park.
“Shoo!” the boots said again.
“Go!”
Buddy shooed,
head low,
tail tucked,
airplane ears sagging.
When the park lay far behind,
she stopped beneath
the protective cover
of an old oak tree.
She sat on her ruffled bum.
She tipped her head back
and howled,
long and loud.
Mark lay in his pajamas
on top of the bedcovers.
He often lay on top of the bedcovers
on summer nights.
The breeze that slipped
through his window
kept him cool.
And that way
he didn’t have to make his bed
in the morning.
A fresh puff of air
stirred his bristly brown hair.
Before he’d gone to bed,
he had spent hours—
at least it had seemed like hours—
trying to write a speech
for the town council.
His wastebasket was full
of failed attempts.
He’d finally come up with two sentences,
the barest kind of start,
just two sentences
worth keeping.
“Dogs need to run and play,” he’d written.
“Kids need to run and play with their dogs.”
That was hardly enough,
but he hoped,
once he’d said those two sentences,
&nb
sp; the rest would come.
He closed his eyes.
Tomorrow evening
he had to speak
in front of the entire town council.
In front of his mother, too.
What would she say when she saw him
and all his friends
and all their dogs
and Fido,
the orange-marmalade cat,
at the council meeting?
Even if she said nothing,
what would her face say?
Would a crease dig deep
into that pale space
between her eyebrows?
Would her eyes spark?
Would her mouth make a straight, tight line?
Would she be angry
or,
even worse,
would she be
disappointed . . .
in him?
Were dogs really citizens of Erthly?
Was Mark
himself
a citizen of Erthly?
Or was he
only
the
mayor’s
son?
He’d gone to bed
finally,
but every time he’d fallen asleep,
he’d jerked awake
again,
his heart pounding,
his face hot.
Always it was the same dream.
He stood
in front of his friends
and in front of the town council
and in front of his mother,
his mouth filled with sand.
Not a word would come out.
That wasn’t the worst part,
though.
The worst part
was what he was wearing
in his dream.
Or rather
what he wasn’t wearing.
He stood in front
of practically the whole town
with nothing on at all!
Naked!
Bare!
And everyone stared at him,
stared and waited for him to speak,
and he had nothing,
nothing,
nothing.
Nothing on
and nothing
to say.
Not even
two sentences.
Now he lay awake
on top of the covers,
waiting for the next puff of breeze
to dry the sweat
of his dream.
He didn’t intend to go back to sleep again.
He’d just lie there,
waiting for morning
to come,
waiting for the day
of his humiliation
to come.
A cry
drifted along Walnut Street,
more mournful than any tears.
It rode a puff of breeze
into the bedroom
where Mark lay,
holding himself awake.
Bark! Bark! Bark!
A-wooooo-ooo-ooo!
Bark! Bark!
Awooo!
Mark popped up like a jack-in-the-box.
The cry came again,
thin and clear.
It sounded exactly like,
“Mark, Mark, Mark.
I need yoooo-ooo-oou!”
Surely he was imagining things.
Wasn’t he?
Still,
he slipped from his bed,
tiptoed into the hall
and through the living room
to the front door.
He moved stealthily,
careful not to bump the small table
where he and his mother
deposited the gatherings
from their day
when they came in.
He turned the door handle . . .
quietly,
quietly.
He stepped outside.
At the edge of the front stoop,
he paused
to listen
again.
The night thrummed
with crickets,
wood frogs,
cicadas.
The poplar tree
in the front yard
rustled its usual
Hush . . . shush . . . shhhh!
Nothing more.
“Call me again,” he whispered.
“Please, call me!”
Mark! Mark!
came the response,
as though the owner of the voice
had heard him
and obeyed.
I need yoooooooou!
Mark vaulted down the steps
and set off
toward the voice,
running.
Charles Larue stood in the tower
beneath the witch’s-hat roof,
looking out over Erthly.
The little town was dark,
just a streetlight
here and there.
The lights weren’t bright enough
even to show up
the potholes on Walnut Street
or the rusty swings in the park.
Nor were they bright enough
for Charles Larue to see
the black and brown dog
with airplane ears
sitting beneath the oak tree
by the tall iron fence
with spikes.
His own fence.
His own spikes.
He could hear,
though.
Not the potholes or the rusty swings,
but Bark, bark, bark.
A-wooo-ooooo!
One long-ago winter night
he had heard a call like that.
It had been a stray
shivering
at the iron gate.
Charles Larue had asked his lady
what he should do.
“Shall I bring it in?” he’d said.
“The poor thing
must be cold and hungry.”
“Do you know anything about dogs,
Larue?”
his lady had asked.
“No,” he’d had to admit.
“I’ve never had a dog
in my life.”
“Can you tell if this one is sick?
Or full of fleas?”
“Probably not,”
he’d said.
“Then, I think we’d better take
the creature
to someone who knows more
about dogs
than we do,”
she had replied,
not unkindly.
And he had put the dog in the car
and taken it
to an animal shelter.
in the next town.
When he’d come back,
he had cleaned the car
very thoroughly.
What,
after all,
did he know about dogs,
sick or well,
flea-ridden or not?
And that was the last time
he had been near
a dog.
Bark, bark, bark.
He knew no more about dogs now
than he had then.
He certainly wouldn’t know
what to do with one
if he took it in.
A-wooooooooo!
Nonetheless,
Charles Larue
hurried down
the winding stairs
toward the sound.
A block from his house,
Mark stopped
in the middle
of Walnut Street,
remembering.
His mother had rules,
important rules.
Erthly was a small town,
a safe town.
But even in a small, safe town
you didn’t leave your bed
in the middle of the night
and,
without telling a soul,
hurry down the main street
in your pajamas,
in your bare feet.
Not even when you heard
your name
being called
by a dog.
What if his mother woke
and found
him missing?
For a long moment
Mark stood
still
in the silence.
“Call me again,”
he whispered.
If he heard nothing more,
he would go back
to his bed.
He would go back
to lying awake
in his bed.
And then
there it was!
Yooo-oo-u!
Mark’s heart lurched.
It seemed to be trying
to free itself
from the cage of his ribs
to reach the voice
even
before
he
got
there.
He followed
his pounding heart
toward the sound.
Charles Larue threw open the big double doors
with the lion’s-head knockers,
hurried across the broad porch
and down the walk,
unlocked the gate
in the tall iron fence,
and pushed through
to the other side.
And there,
there,
beneath the oak tree . . .
a dog.
A small dog
with the funniest-looking ears
he had ever seen.
And there
too . . .
a boy,
running fast toward the dog!
Charles Larue stood
perfectly still,
waiting to see
what
would
happen
next.
Just as Mark approached the oak tree
in the night dark,
he saw the gate open.
He could make out a small man
with a great bush of white eyebrows
and a great beak of a nose.
(There wasn’t enough light
to make out
the robin’s-egg blue
of the eyes
between eyebrows
and nose.)
In the night dark
he could also make out a small dog
with airplane ears
that drooped
just at the tips.
Such sweet ears!
Mark knew the man,
of course.
It was the mysterious Charles Larue.
Mark didn’t know the dog,
but
certainly
this was the one
that had been calling him.
Seeing Charles Larue
stopped
Mark’s feet
cold.
Seeing Buddy started them up again . . .
slowly,
cautiously.
“Here, little dog,” he called.
“Come, dog.”
Mark kept his gaze
on Charles Larue
as he spoke.
He didn’t really believe all those stories.
At least he didn’t think he did.
Still,
though his hand,