Somewhere along the way that woman lost sight of what a real boy is, mostly what a real boy needs. Food, sure. A warm bed to snuggle into at the end of a long day. But a boy needs love most of all. A boy needs to be told he’s a good dog.
Good boy, I mean.
Well, there isn’t as much difference as you’d think. Treat a dog like he’s worthless and that’s the way he’ll turn out. Same thing for boys. I could tell by the way Luke carried himself, his shoulders already hunched, that he had no idea of his worth, what he could do in the world if he was given half a chance. Too many years like that and he’d be acting as mean as Billy.
Deep in my canine soul, I knew one sure thing: Luke had to get away from that place. The Good Shepherd had nothing to do with it as far as I could tell.
12
THERE WASN’T MUCH I could do for Luke once the dough lady sent me packing. I headed away from the home with no plan for what to do next. Something about this kid had me stuck in that no-sheep town, always watching my back for Billy or the truck from the pound. The kid needed me. I guess that was it. He needed me like nobody else ever had.
Sniffing my way down the street, I kept thinking about all those boys. I couldn’t figure out what they were doing in that place. Had they all run away from home? Were they captured one at a time like stray dogs? Why didn’t their moms and dads come and get them back?
From my short time at the pound, I remembered the happy reunions between dogs and their owners. But some dogs got stuck there too long. There were terrible stories about what happened to you if you didn’t get a home, stories that made my fur stand on end.
They wouldn’t do that to boys, though, would they?
By instinct I had been moving toward the darker end of town, onto streets with broken streetlights and boarded-up houses. People in the darker places were easier on dogs. As a rule, they didn’t get all worked up over a tipped trash can. You got your higher-quality garbage in the better neighborhoods, but you could end up paying for it with your freedom.
I turned into the yard of a house with a wide, sagging porch and nice thick bushes to hide in. To look at the place, you’d have thought nobody had ever lived there, but the porch underneath was a regular rat hotel. I stuck my nose in, and the tenants ran in all directions. Which was fine with me. Sleeping with rats isn’t my idea of a good night’s rest. They never settle down. Always scratching or sniffing. I don’t know how they get any sleep at all.
But I wasn’t sleeping so well myself. Too much on my mind. Billy, Tiffany, You and You Too. Had it been right for me to run? Shouldn’t I have stayed, stuck it out with my friends? Tried harder to talk them into leaving?
What did my life amount to anyway? Was it even worth saving? The truth, it seemed to me then, was that I wasn’t getting anywhere. I’d come no closer to where I belonged. In all my time on the road, I’d seen exactly two sheep. Two! And they were stuck in a truck. All I got there was a snoot full of memory.
Where was my life going now that I was free again? Without honest work, what good was I? I was a beggar and a thief, nothing more. I knew the Goat Man wouldn’t be proud of me, and I didn’t even want to think about Dad. A smarter dog would have found the sheep by now. It was another fitful night, just me and my thoughts and those rats.
Morning came at last. Light seeped in under the porch. My hiding place was dismal in the morning light—broken bottles, cigarette butts, a bicycle wheel threaded with spiderwebs. I crawled out, did a couple of rolls in the dust to get the kinks out. I wasn’t in a very good mood, and my empty stomach ached. I started back toward the home, giving my ugliest sheep eye to every cat that crossed my path. Scared the heck out of a lady’s Chihuahua, too, but then everything scares those skinny little things.
Something new! A long white banner was stretched across the chain-link fence at the Good Shepherd Home for Boys. There were words on it and stick figure drawings of people walking into the Home and coming out with boys.
So that was it! The Good Shepherd Home was a pound for boys. They lived there until their parents came back, or somebody else adopted them. Adoption was all the dogs ever talked about at the pound. Man, did they ever carry on when the people came. All but me and the sheepdog. We learned to let our best selves shine. Then Billy came and, well, you know the rest.
Luke was waiting at the end of the fence. As soon as he saw me, a big grin broke out on his face and he came running, waving something in the air.
“Hey, Jack! Guess what I got for you! A bone!”
Well, it was a bone all right, not a shred of meat on the thing. But I gnawed on it some to make the kid happy. I could only guess what he’d gone through to find me the very thing he thought a dog would love.
Somebody had cleaned Luke up. He was wearing his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes—that’s what the Goat Man called them—and his haystack hair was slicked down with something sweet-smelling and sticky.
“Come on,” he said. “There’s a place where you can hang out and wait for me. It’s Adoption Week. I gotta do this dumb lineup thing again.” He waved for me to follow. “Hey, don’t forget your bone!”
I followed him around the side of the building. When we got to a narrow doorway, he stopped and looked around to see if anybody was watching. “There’s just tools and stuff in here. I found a rug for you to sleep on.” He opened the door to a small room, dark and musty, smelling of gasoline. It was jammed with tools, like the kid said, and the usual cobwebs. Never stop spinning, those spiders. On the floor was a nice little striped rug.
But I couldn’t go inside, not even for Luke.
“Come on, boy,” he said, stepping in. “It’s all right.”
But it wasn’t.
“What’s the matter, Jack?” He knelt down and began to pet me. I could tell that he was trying real hard to understand. But even with people language, how could I have explained what it’s like to be locked up? Even the home didn’t lock the boys inside. I knew Luke wouldn’t do that to me, but somebody else might. I couldn’t take the chance. Luke unbuckled my harness and gave me a rubdown.
“Luke! Lucassssss!!”
Luke jumped up. “Criminy! That’s Mrs. Pinch! I gotta go.” He bolted out of the toolroom, dragging my harness behind him. “Wait for me, Jack!” I heard him call. “I won’t be long. Nobody ever picks me.”
That stopped me in my tracks. What did he mean nobody ever picked him? What kind of people wouldn’t pick Luke? I had to see these people who came to Adoption Week. If they didn’t like Luke, they couldn’t be very smart.
I hung around until several cars and one old pickup truck pulled into the parking lot. As the people got out, I looked them over. They seemed okay to me. For people, I mean. A little serious, but that was to be expected. You didn’t want to adopt a dog or a kid if you hadn’t thought a whole lot about it. I mean, it isn’t like getting a fish or a rabbit.
Then I saw the perfect folks for Luke. They got out of the pickup and crossed the parking lot, hand in hand. The lady had a round, pink face, a happy kind of face. The man made me think of Bob. He was shorter and younger than Bob, but he walked with that same sure stride. And his hair? It was like Luke’s without the sticky stuff, a real haystack.
My stomach was growling something fierce, but I had to see what would happen. I had to see the look on Luke’s face when his new folks picked him.
The windows on this side of the building were long and low to the ground. That made it easy for me to look in. Most of the rooms were empty. Well, empty of people. There was furniture and stuff. Then I found the room with the kids. I crouched low so that I couldn’t be seen, stuck my nose on the ledge, and watched.
The boys were all dressed like Luke, with dark pants and clean white shirts. They stood in a single line, their hands at their sides. They weren’t like the dogs at the pound. You could see they were trying very hard to behave. The tall ones stood with their shoulders back, like soldiers. The smallest ones looked a little frightened.
I didn’
t see Luke at first, and then I did. He was at the very end of the line, scowling down at his shined-up shoes. His fists were stuffed into his pockets.
On the other side of the room stood the parents. I mean, the people who wanted to be parents. They looked a little frightened, too. The dough lady Luke called Mrs. Pinch was there, and so was a tall man with gray patches of hair on his head and a very long nose. I couldn’t hear what the man was saying, but his mouth kept moving for a very long time. I saw the boys laughing at something he said.
All the boys but Luke. Luke never looked up, not once, and he didn’t laugh at all.
Then there was all this shaking of hands. Strangest thing. In their long line, the boys walked up, did this little bow, and shook each person’s hand. The parent people smiled and looked the boys over as they passed like, well, like sheep.
Luke was the last in line. He slumped along with hunched shoulders, dragging his feet. He shook hands without looking up once, not even when he got to the perfect folks.
It was downright discouraging. What was the matter with the kid? Did he like living with the dough lady? Didn’t he want a real home? I watched until several of the boys had been picked and left holding the hands of their proud new parents. The folks with the pickup left without anybody.
When Luke came out, I couldn’t even look at him.
“Come on,” he said, as if he were mad at me. But I knew he wasn’t. “Let’s get out of here.
“I don’t care about any of that stuff,” he said, kicking a stone halfway across the parking lot. “Bunch of dumb people. I wish old Pinch and them wouldn’t make us do that. They just want to get rid of us, is all. Especially us big kids. Nobody ever picks us, no matter what we do!”
But you don’t even try, I wanted to say. Even the boy who’d pushed Luke around had been trying his best to get some parents. He stood straight and tall, like he was proud of himself. He shook hands like he really meant it. Not Luke.
Well, that boy didn’t get chosen either. But he’d tried. You had to respect that.
We left the home behind, Luke scuffing his feet as if they were too heavy to pick up. He was wearing his old clothes again and his torn tennis shoes. “There’s probably something the matter with me,” he muttered. “I mean, besides the reading. Things get mixed up in my head sometimes. It’s probably in the records. Probably says I’m crazy or something.”
We crossed several streets. Luke kept wiping his runny nose on his sleeve. “At least I got the quarter. We all get one for being good. Hey, I know! Let’s get an ice cream.”
You know how ice cream can cheer a soul right up, but I’d never tasted any till that day. Luke bought us a vanilla ice cream cone, and we shared it sitting on the sidewalk. People kept stopping and smiling at us, as if we were putting on a show. If Billy had been there, he’d have charged admission.
But I didn’t want to think about Billy, not ever again.
“My dad bought me an ice cream cone once,” Luke said, taking a big swipe with his tongue. “That’s why I always get vanilla. ’Cause it’s what he bought me.”
We were making a real mess of that ice cream, but it was real good. Not as good as goat’s milk, but close.
Luke frowned. “My dad wasn’t a famous runner, Jack. I just said that because … well, because that’s what I tell everybody. The only time I ever saw my dad run was when the cops were chasing him. That was the last time I saw him, too.”
He gave me the tip end of the cone. Then he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I never did have a mama, is the thing. Well, I guess I did when I was born, but I don’t know what happened to her.”
Luke turned out to be a real talker. Moms passed us pushing baby carriages. A little boy floated a balloon from his perch on his dad’s shoulders. Luke kept right on talking. I think he’d been waiting a long time to stick all his words together. Now that he had somebody to listen, he wasn’t about to quit.
“When my aunt called the home? I looked around for something of my dad’s to keep, you know? Something to take with me. That’s when I found the stopwatch.” He reached into his pocket and took out the pieces he’d picked up off the tracks. He rubbed his thumb back and forth across the biggest piece.
I laid my head on Luke’s lap, wagged my tail to let him know I understood. He smiled then. It was like the sunrise, that smile. Like the sun forgetting the night it had left behind. There was still a lot of hope left in this kid. He had to have some folks, that’s all. He had to.
I’d done my share of looking, and I knew.
13
IT WAS THE SECOND DAY of Adoption Week, and Luke hadn’t learned a thing. I watched him from my post beneath the window ledge, hoping he’d catch on. He didn’t. He just wore this long, ugly face and slumped along. Nobody wants a sulky dog. Boy, that is. And nobody was picking Luke. I found myself rooting for the guy who’d bullied Luke. At least he was trying. But nobody picked him this time either. I guessed Luke was right, people only wanted the little kids.
Well, they were cute. Like puppies, you know, only with people faces on them.
Luke came out after a while, in that same bad mood and with no money for ice cream this time.
His bad moods never lasted, though. That was another good thing about him.
“Let’s go visit Raggedy Annie. She’ll give us cookies and stuff. She gave me a dime once. All I did was sweep her porch.”
The whole way there, Luke never stopped talking. “Know how many times I didn’t get picked?” He almost sounded proud, but I knew he wasn’t. “Guess!”
Well, I just didn’t want to, you know. It was going to be a sorry number, I was sure of that.
“Twenty-six times. First couple of times, I got real excited. I mean, it was like this big thing! Like you were going to win a prize if you were good. I knew I was going to be picked. I even dreamed it once, how I got these real cool folks and my own room all to myself.”
Twenty-six times? That sounded like a lot. Was Adoption Week every week?
“I ran away once. I didn’t want to stand in that line again, not even for a quarter.”
Maybe the boys who smiled got two quarters. Did he ever think of that?
“The whole thing stinks,” he said.
The give-up words. I’d heard them before from a couple of terriers.
He was still talking when we got to Raggedy Annie’s. Some place that was. You never saw so much stuff. Bundles of rags were piled up all around her tiny house, in the yard, on the porch, on top of an old car. I just shook my head. You know, the way dogs do. People get the craziest ideas.
Raggedy Annie came to the door after Luke rang the big brass bell that was hanging beside it. “Well, look who’s here!” she said, pushing back the screen. She had a friendly smile with only a few chewing teeth. “And you’ve brought a friend.” That lady could hardly get through her door, that’s how big she was. I could see then where she got her name, or where Luke got it. Because that’s what she wore. Rags. They were tied around her head and around her big middle. Her faded dress was shredded along the bottom. Even her shoes were tied on with rags.
She leaned over and patted my head. “Nice doggie,” she said. “I’ll bet you’d like something to eat. Boys and dogs are always hungry.”
Now here was one smart lady.
She went back inside, which took some doing.
“See? What did I tell you?” Luke whispered. “Rags and junk all over the place! I think she’s a little, you know …” He twirled his finger around his ear. “But she’s real nice.”
He was right about the nice part. Out she came carrying a plate of cookies for Luke and a big, fat hot dog for me.
We chowed down while Raggedy Annie told us about her day. She’d been bundling all morning, she said, and now she was waiting for the truck to come. The rags weren’t rags at all. They were old clothes. “Perfectly good clothes,” she said. She collected them from all over. Nobody was as good at finding clothes as she was. You could tell she was proud of th
at. Then, when there were so many piles she could hardly breathe, a truck would come and take them away. The clothes went to people who couldn’t afford to buy any, is the way I understood it.
“Poor people?” asked Luke.
“Oh, yes,” Raggedy Annie said. “So poor you can’t even imagine. And you should see some of the clothes that get thrown away! Well!” she said. “Look at this!” She reached into a pile and pulled out a black, slinky thing with shiny stones on the sleeves. “And this!” Out came a coat made from the skins of rabbits. Never could understand why people dress themselves like animals. “Some of this looks brand-new!” She clicked her tongue. “Such waste.”
Luke turned those cookies into crumbs in no time. Raggedy Annie took his plate, then narrowed her eyes at him. “You didn’t bring your reading book, did you?”
Luke hung his head. “I forgot.”
She sighed through her nose. “How are we ever going to get you up to speed if you don’t practice?”
“I don’t like reading,” Luke said. He was whining again. Hurts a dog’s ears, that sound. The kid gave up too easily. Raggedy Annie didn’t like that any more than I did.
Her eyes went wide. “What kind of smart boy doesn’t like to read?”
“I’m not smart,” he said, scowling.
Raggedy Annie stuck her hands on her hips. “Well, now I’ve heard it all. A smart boy who doesn’t think he’s smart and who doesn’t like to read. Wait right here. Don’t you leave, hear?”
She kind of rocked side to side to get her big body going and went back into the house.
“I really did forget,” Luke whined.
I nosed my way into the pile of old clothes and got comfy. It was like walking down a city street, all the people smells in there.
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