by Bobbie Pyron
Daddy kind of laughed, but his eyes didn’t. “I want you to look after your mama for me. She’s not real happy about this.”
“But you’ve been on the road before,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but she always had her llamas before to keep her busy and Meemaw to help out. This is different. It’s just going to be the two of you.”
I swallowed hard. I hadn’t thought about that. It was a fact Mama loved those llamas more than just about anything.
He patted my cheek and smiled. “Don’t worry, though. I’ll call a bunch and send postcards. March will fly by and I’ll be back before you even have time to miss me.”
I missed Daddy already. “I wish we could go with you,” I said. “Like old times.”
He pulled me to him. “Me too, honey. But just remember: Every night I’ll be looking at that same big ol’ moon as you and your mama are.”
I almost pointed out that it’s hard to see the moon in the city, but I didn’t. “I’ll try to remember,” I said.
The next morning, after Daddy loaded the last of the instruments into his van, he grabbed me and Mama up in his strong arms and hugged us tight. “I will miss you girls more than you can ever know.”
Mama started to say something, then buried her face in his old canvas jacket. He tipped my face up and said, “Don’t forget what I told you about the moon, Abby.”
“I won’t, Daddy,” I said around a lump in my throat the size of China.
He kissed Mama for a long time, and then he was gone.
Mama wandered around the house the rest of the day like she needed a map to figure out where she was. She’d start one thing, then put it down. She sat and stared at her computer screen but didn’t type a single thing. Finally, I said, “Mama, let’s go to the Swishy Washy.”
The Swishy Washy was the Laundromat where we did the laundry every week. Mama maintained it was hard to feel bad when you said a name like Swishy Washy.
Mama stared out at the rain falling at the edge of our tiny porch. “I wonder if it’s snowing at your grandmother’s?” she said. “I hope the llamas are getting enough to eat.”
I went over and stood next to Mama, resting my hand on her shoulder. “Come on, Mama,” I said. “Let’s get out of this house.”
SPRING
CHAPTER 32
Tam
As the days passed, the wind shifted south, bringing the warmth from valleys four thousand feet below. Snow fell from burdened branches. The air filled with birdsong. Squirrels ran across the snow, tree to tree. Despite the frequent storms, the very fingertips of March touched the high mountains. The days were longer now, the sunlight stronger.
Every fiber of Tam’s being wanted to be home. Spring meant time outdoors with the girl after long days indoors during the winter. Spring meant exploring along Clear Creek as the snow receded, revealing a symphony of new smells. Spring was waiting in a warm patch of sun on the front porch for his girl to come home from school. Time, the time was near for his girl. The fever of spring with the girl drove Tam beyond exhaustion and hunger. His heart ached for his girl.
As Tam rounded a sharp curve in the road, he startled a large snowshoe hare nibbling the tiny green shoots of grass at the edge of the road. The hare froze at the sight of the dog, then bolted.
Tam shot forward. In two swift pounces, he grabbed the back paw of the hare. The sweet taste of blood filled his mouth.
Just as Tam was about to pin the hare with his front leg, a huge, feathered form streaked down from the sky. The bald eagle struck at the front of the rabbit. The bird beat his wide wings, lifting his prize upward.
Tam did not let go. This was his kill. He grabbed the meaty thigh of the hare and jerked back.
The eagle screamed in outrage, beat his wings harder.
Tam sank all his weight onto his back legs and shook his head back and forth. The tip of a wing raked Tam’s face. He squeezed his eyes closed and pulled back harder.
The eagle screamed its frustration again and beat its wing across the bridge of Tam’s muzzle. Pain exploded in his head.
The eagle released the rabbit, then rose above Tam and dove downward, talons outstretched.
Tam’s eyes widened as the huge bird fell upon him. Razor-sharp talons raked his back, his hip. The force of the eagle’s blow rolled him end over end. The precious rabbit slipped from his mouth.
The eagle spotted the rabbit just beyond Tam’s reach. He hopped and flapped toward the dog’s kill.
But hunger quickened Tam’s instincts. With a snarl, he charged the bird. He grabbed the hare around the middle and dashed for the deep forest, where the eagle could not follow.
With one last cry of outrage, the eagle rose above the forest and drifted away.
Tam hauled the dead rabbit up onto a large flat-topped boulder and collapsed in exhaustion and pain. He licked the oozing blood from the furrows left on his hip by the eagle. Then he turned his attention to his first meal in days.
As the sun rose high above the sea of gray mountains, Tam slept on the sun-warmed boulder. Bits of fluff and blood clung to his front paws and the edges of his mouth. Bloodstained snow and scattered bones were all the evidence left that the hare had ever lived.
A week later, spring fled the high mountains. A wild storm chased down from the north, roared across the high peaks and ridges, catching life unaware.
Tam had sensed a change coming the day before and had quickened his pace. Still, there was no predicting the crack of thunder, the plummeting temperatures. Snow swept across the high country and the far ridges in thick curtains of white.
Tam left the open road and sought shelter in the forest. Ice and snow stung his eyes. His face turned white. The swirling storm bent trees low and stripped limbs.
A half mile off the downhill side of the Parkway, Tam found shelter in an old shed. The door was long since missing, one corner of the tin roof torn away. But inside it was dry.
He scratched out a bed among dried corn husks and feed sacks. He laid his head across his tired paws and watched the storm through the open doorway. Thunder bounced from one side of the range to the other. Tam squeezed his eyes closed and whimpered.
Tam had never understood the electric flashes that split the sky, the booming thunder that shook the earth beneath his feet. It was everywhere and nowhere. But the girl had always kept him safe until the thing went away.
As lightning lit the silvered winter woods and thunder cracked overhead, Tam burrowed as far beneath the feed sacks as he could, reduced to a trembling ball. The dog who had faced down bear, shotgun, and eagle, whose brave, loyal heart had carried him hundreds of miles in winter wilderness, cowered before the unseen, alone.
Seventy-four miles to the north, Ian Whistler stood in the Galax, Virginia, post office, watching the unexpected storm beyond the glass doors. He had just mailed the postcard he’d written to his family while he’d waited at the Galax garage for yet another repair to his old van. He was supposed to catch up with the Clear Creek Boys in Richmond. He was eager to get back on the road. But this storm just might force a change of plans, at least for the night.
A figure hurried up the steps of the post office, shoulders hunched against the blowing snow. His coat flapped around his legs. He clutched a sheaf of papers in one hand while the other clamped his hat to his head.
Abby’s father pulled the door open for him. “Heck of a storm, isn’t it?”
“Not fit for man nor beast,” the old man said. He took his wool hat from his head and beat the snow off against his leg. “But it’s for a beast that I’m out in this weather.”
“How’s that?” Ian Whistler asked.
“Missing dog,” Doc Pritchett said, holding up the flyers. “A good friend of mine’s dog went missing a few weeks ago.”
“That’s sad,” Abby’s father said. “My little girl lost her dog back about five months ago. She’s still tore up about it.”
The old vet turned his back and surveyed the community bulletin board. Notic
es for garage sales, pot-luck dinners, and moving sales covered the board.
“People get mighty attached to their pets,” he said. He rearranged a few of the older notices. “My friend who lost this dog is recovering from a heart attack. I’m hoping if I put up some of these flyers for her, she’ll stop worrying so much. But I have my doubts.”
Doc Pritchett pinned a flyer to the middle of the bulletin board. He heard a gasp from behind him.
“A sheltie?” Abby’s father said. “You’re looking for a sheltie?”
“Why, yes, that’s what he is. You’re familiar with shelties?”
Ian nodded. “Yes, sir. That’s the kind of dog my little girl lost too. Back in the fall.”
“That’s a shame. And a surprise too. They’re normally loyal little dogs.”
Abby’s father rubbed the back of his neck. “My wife and daughter were in an accident up on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. The dog was in the back of the truck in a crate and was thrown out. We never found him.”
“Did you put flyers up?”
“We did. Even had a photo of him and offered a reward. But it’s been months and no word.”
Doc Pritchett glanced back at the flyers. “A photograph would certainly help. Unfortunately, my friend hadn’t had him that long, only a couple of months.”
“So he’s a puppy?”
The vet put his hat back on and rewound his scarf. “No, an adult. She found him half dead on her property. No collar or anything. She nursed him back to health. He ran off when she had her heart attack. Haven’t seen him since.”
Something nagged at the edge of Ian Whistler’s mind. He was just about to ask what the sheltie looked like when the vet pushed open the door. “Well, I better get the rest of these put out. Don’t want to be out on the roads any later than I have to.” A gust of wind blew snow across the floor. “You take care now.”
“You too, sir. And good luck finding your friend’s dog.” He watched the older man hurry to his car, then turned back to the flyer. Goose bumps ran up his arms as he read:
MISSING:
MALE SHETLAND SHEEPDOG ABOUT
THREE YEARS OLD. MOSTLY RED IN
COLOR WITH WHITE PAWS, CHEST, AND
NECK. REWARD OFFERED. IF FOUND
PLEASE CALL IVY CALHOUN AT
276-555-2512
Abby’s father shook his head. Galax had to be more than two hundred miles from where the accident had happened. No dog could survive a journey that far, especially in the winter. Still…he read the description again. He didn’t know much about shelties, but he did know Tam’s red coat was unusual.
He removed the pin from the bulletin board and took one of the flyers. He folded it and stuffed it in his coat pocket.
Blowing snow ticked against the glass doors of the post office. It was snowing harder now. Abby’s father sighed as he climbed into his old van. Looked like he’d be spending the night in Galax.
He leaned closer to the windshield and scrubbed his sleeve across the frosted window. “Not fit for man nor beast,” he said aloud.
CHAPTER 33
Abby
“What’s that you’re doing?” Cheyenne asked from across our table in the cafeteria.
Without looking up from my sketch pad, I said, “I’m drawing a map.”
She leaned across the table to get a better look. “Of what?”
“My daddy’s music tour,” I said.
Cheyenne returned to her book. “And how long’s he been gone, as of today?”
I sighed. “Two weeks, three days, and four hours.”
She shook her head and closed her book. Next to Olivia, she’s the readingest person I know. “Better get used to it, girlfriend. Sometimes my daddy’s gone for months at a time.”
I wasn’t at all sure I wanted Daddy to be a millionaire country singer.
“Harley’s way into maps too,” Cheyenne said. “He draws them on his computer, though.”
I looked up. “No fooling?” I’d never met anybody but me who liked to draw maps.
“No fooling,” she said. “He wants to be a cartographer when he grows up.”
That didn’t make much sense to me. “He wants to take pictures of cars?”
Cheyenne snorted. “No, you hillbilly. A cartographer is a professional mapmaker. Harley has all these expensive mapmaking programs on his computer. You can tell him to start at point A, give him points B and C and D, and tell him where you want to end up, and he can make a map of it. He can even tell you how long it will take you to get there…all kinds of stuff.”
She plucked the sketch pad from my side of the table and studied my map. “Huh,” she said, cocking her head to one side. “This is pretty cool. It’s more like a story than an actual map, isn’t it?”
“Yep,” I said. I pointed to a snowy scene in Virginia that showed Daddy squinting through the windshield of his van. “That’s Galax, where Daddy had to get the van fixed and ran into an unexpected snowstorm. And there,” I said, pointing to a picture of Daddy sitting in a cornfield beside the road, playing his guitar, “is where the van broke down outside of Lexington, Kentucky, and Daddy had to wait forever for help. So he just decided to play his guitar while he waited.”
“You don’t have any pictures of him performing,” she pointed out.
I closed up my pad. “No,” I said. “We don’t talk a whole lot about that when he calls. He’s been playing in some big cities, though. Richmond, Virginia; Columbus, Ohio; Branson, Missouri. I think he’s on his way to Kansas City now….” I trailed off. “He sounds like he’s having the time of his life, but I get tired just thinking about all those places.
“I know it makes Mama tired. She’s been sleeping a lot since he’s been gone.” I twisted the end of my braid. “It’s made her sick too. She doesn’t know it, but I’ve heard her throwing up sometimes in the morning in the bathroom.”
Cheyenne raised that one eyebrow of hers. I’d practiced like crazy trying to do that. My eyebrows, though, wanted to do everything together.
“But you know what?” I asked.
Cheyenne shook her head. “What?”
“We were driving to the Swishy Washy yesterday and we heard Daddy and his band on the radio!”
“I bet that made your mother feel better, didn’t it?”
I frowned, remembering how Mama went from shocked to happy to sad in five seconds flat. “Not really,” I said. “I think it made her feel worse.”
The bell rang. “I guess she’s just heartsick without Daddy and the llamas,” I said.
Cheyenne slung her book bag on her shoulder. “She’s got you, though.”
I shrugged. Mama had said me and her and Daddy were a three-legged dog without Meemaw. But without Daddy, we were like a two-legged dog. And I couldn’t for the life of me see how a two-legged dog could get along.
That night, a bad dream about Tam woke me up. In it Tam was trapped in a cage of ice, with snow piling up all around him. He tried so hard to get out, but he couldn’t, and there was nothing I could do to help him. I woke up, my heart pounding.
I got up to get a drink of water from the kitchen. The light was on. “Mama?” I called.
No answer.
I looked in her and Daddy’s bedroom. She wasn’t there.
Something told me to look out on the porch. And there she was, sitting in one of the chairs, her legs pulled up under her robe, looking at the full moon.
“Hey, Mama,” I said.
“Hey, honey,” she said. “What are you doing up this late?”
“I had a bad dream,” I said. “About Tam.”
Mama must’ve heard the tears all tied up in my throat. She held out her arms to me. “Come here, Abby.”
I crawled into her lap, just like when I was a little-bitty thing. Problem was, I’d gotten bigger and Mama hadn’t. But neither of us cared. She wrapped her arms around me and rested her chin on my head.
“Isn’t it a beautiful moon?” she said with a sigh.
And it w
as. It was full and yellow as a gold coin. “Meemaw said Grandpa Bill called that a Carolina moon.”
“Mmm…,” Mama murmured. “That’s a beautiful name. It sounds like something he would’ve said.”
She sighed. “I wish your dad were here to see it with us.”
I sat up and looked at her. “But he is, Mama.” And then I told her about his watching the same moon too.
“He just has to follow his north star, Mama,” I said.
She smiled at me in a sad-but-happy way. “Is that right?”
“That’s what he says. He says everybody has a north star, something that gives them a reason to keep going. Being a professional musician is his north star, just like Tam was—is—mine.”
Mama and I gazed at that big ol’ moon for a long while. I thought about all the times I’d watched the moon with Tam. Was he watching the moon too? I shivered in the night air.
“Let’s get inside before you catch a cold,” Mama said. “It may be spring, but it’s not that warm.”
She tucked me under my quilt and kissed my forehead. “I love you, Abby Whistler,” she said.
“I love you too, Mama.”
Just as she was about to close my door, I sat up and said, “Mama, what’s your north star?”
I knew what she’d say: her llamas. Or Daddy.
Instead, she smiled and said, “You are, Abby. You are.”
CHAPTER 34
Tam
Scents and sounds Tam had not encountered in weeks rose to the top of the field in the early evening air: wood smoke, the slam of a car door, gasoline, the rich scent of turned earth. He smelled the horses standing in a barn, the apple trees on the verge of bloom.
He slipped back through the barbed-wire fence and into the forest. He trotted for another half mile on the road until the sound of water drew him away to a small stream. Ice edged the stream, thin as fine lace. A ledge of ice broke beneath his weight, plunging his front feet into the icy water. He drank long and deep until he could no longer feel his front paws. Tam was too tired and lonely to care.