He’s right. I am freaking out. “We’ve got to wash this wound out to make sure it’s clear of Simon’s saliva.” I continue to scrub, adding soap and rolling his finger between my hands. “Have you had a tetanus shot recently?”
“Yes,” he replies.
Hmmm. I wonder if he was bit by a fish. Do fish bite? “Did you step on a rusty nail or something?”
“No, I got a tattoo.”
Tattoo?
“Why are you in a panic?” he asks.
“Well, he might have rabies. Simon is a stray, remember?” Carver’s face loses its mountain-climber glow. His cheeks are a shade of parsnip rather than cherry. Not good. I am nearing the end of a nervous breakdown and Carver’s poor finger is at its epicenter.
Now I’m fixated on finding out where his tattoo is hiding. “I mean, he probably doesn’t have rabies. In all the time I’ve worked here, a dog has never come in with rabies. It’s just a good idea to wash the area for a solid fifteen minutes.”
I’ve got to keep calm. Raccoons get rabies. Bats get rabies. Good-looking guys from Northern California do not get rabies. I keep washing, slowing down the pace a bit.
“So how do you know if a dog has rabies?” Carver asks warily.
“Well, you really have to do an autopsy on the brain to confirm it for sure.”
“My brain?”
“No, the dog’s brain. But the dog is quarantined for ten days and if he shows signs of rabies, like being scared of water or becoming really aggressive, he’ll be put down. Then they’ll do an autopsy on his brain. I’m sure you’ll be okay, though.”
“How do I know if I have rabies?”
“Same stuff. You’d be delirious. It takes anywhere from two days to two weeks to know, but Simon’s been with us for”—I tally up the days in my head—“thirteen days, and he has shown no sign of rabies. His paw was infected; that’s why he’s bandaged up.”
“Oh,” he says. “So you don’t think he has rabies?”
“Well, unless he gets strangely aggressive by tomorrow and starts trembling at the sight of his water bowl, I’d say you’re safe.”
“Does biting my finger count as strangely aggressive?”
There’s a red dot on Simon’s kennel tag, meaning he has to be approached slowly. He needs time to smell the scent of someone, time to figure out what’s next. I should have told Carver this, but his finger entered Simon’s cage before I had a chance. “He’s sort of sensitive,” I explain.
“Phew,” Carver sighs. The pink is coming back into the circles of his cheeks. “For a minute there, I was feeling a bit like Old Yeller.”
My scrubbing comes to a pause. I look into those green eyes of his.
Carver referenced Old Yeller. He’s notably more good-looking than he was two seconds ago. I resume cleansing, feeling the muscles in Carver’s hand relax beneath the lather.
I totally get what he means when he says he feels like Old Yeller. (It was one of my favorite books as a kid, and I have seen the movie twenty-seven times.) Old Yeller got rabies while trying to protect his family from a wolf. And his young keeper, Travis, in a tear-jerking moment, is forced to kill him with a shotgun so that he won’t suffer.
If Carver is Old Yeller, then I am definitely a female version of Travis. Unlike Travis’s mom, mine isn’t hollering over my shoulder, commanding me to shoot my Old Yeller. I might get to keep him. (At this point it should be noted that I want to keep him.)
I’m still washing his finger. Neither one of us is in a panic anymore. Suddenly, I realize that I might be washing his finger because it thrills me to touch him, so I pull my hands away.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you or anything. I have a tendency to jump to the worst-case scenario. I’ll go get my mom so she can take a closer look.” His eyes are warm, glinty. The tattoo on his body becomes a mystery that I must soon solve, even if I have to request politely that he remove articles of clothing so that I can break the case.
I walk out of the bathroom, toward my mom’s office.
I’m excited about Carver and want to tell him that you have to earn a dog’s trust before you reach out to him. It’s not the bark. It’s not the bite. It’s the saliva and the stuff in it you can’t really see that will always get you in the end.
A dog is most dangerous out of its element.
—Michael Kaplan, The Manifesto of Dog
That afternoon, Carver sweeps the empty reception area with his pointer finger mummified in gauze.
I steal glances at him from behind my desk. Mom was convinced Simon didn’t have rabies, and coated Carver’s finger in a shield of germicide before bandaging it. She also didn’t push for tetanus shot details, so he didn’t mention the tattoo thing to her. It’s becoming clearer to me why this guy is considered a genius.
Carver bends down and whisks dog hair into a dustpan. “Edgar Allan Poe died of rabies.”
I try to make shuffling noises with a pile of paper so that I appear busy. “I thought Edgar Allan Poe died of alcoholism.”
“I guess he had these weird seizures that made doctors think he had rabies. He had a bunch of cats, you know.” Cats. Figures.
Carver returns the cleaning supplies to the closet and says, “I was going to head down to the beach after work. You want to join me?”
I held his finger for an excessive amount of time today and his jaw just twitched and I’m going to say yes even if I have to spend a lie from the fall account to go. “Yes,” I answer. Yes!
Ten minutes before closing time, Carver is back in the kennel run with Vernon. Nina walks into the office. Her blue hair is pinned atop her head like a spiky cactus flower. “Hey, Nattie Girl,” she says. She places her elbows on the counter of the reception desk and gives it a knock.
I lean up toward her and whisper, “Do not mention Spud’s party. In case my mom walks in.”
“Turn your phone on,” she says.
I’m hesitant, because doing so would violate the Mom code of cell phone etiquette, but I pull it from my pocket anyway. Nina takes a seat and begins to press buttons.
Her message magically appears on the screen of my phone: MET C AT SPUD’S. HOT! NICE! PERFECT 4 YOU!
I text back. SHHH! HE MIGHT WALK IN.
Nina: MEET ME & K AT RT. 6:30. PIZZA. TALK.
And me: CAN’T. HAVE PLANS WITH C.
Nina reads this and lets out a little whine. OMG! UR BLUSHING! TTYL. WANT FULL REPORT. I look over at her and smile.
Nina bites her lip, then opens her mouth in a silent scream.
After Nina leaves, Mom emerges from the exam room with her last client of the day, Coco, a scruffy but endearing dwarfish affenpinscher who bounds out, her owner pulling her back as if small Coco has the strength of a Great Dane. I process the payment and print out a receipt of services.
Once Coco’s thin claws click on the tile floor out the door, I ask Mom if I can go to Rescued Threads to help Kirby and Eve with inventory.
She looks over her glasses at me. “Be home by nine.” I don’t push for the extra hour she gave me last night. I know it’s early in the summer, but I still have three lies saved up in my annual bank account and have definitely reconsidered spending them according to season. I may just splurge and spend them all this summer!
Carver and I meet at Roberto’s, since I want to avoid leaving the clinic together for fear that Mom might notice. We order take-out rolled tacos and two cups of iced ruby red jicama punch.
I feel strangely comfortable with Carver as we walk toward the beach. Normally, when I like a guy, I’m paralyzed by nervousness. But with Carver, even though there’s an undercurrent of anxiety, it’s not crippling me into silence. I can actually have feelings for Carver and talk to him at the same time: the emotional equivalent of rubbing my tummy while patting my head.
We take our tacos down to the beach, where the torches of evening campfires ignite the fire pits scattered across the sand. The sun still lingers in the sky and beachgoers traipse through the water in their bat
hing suits.
“I guess we have to steal,” says Carver, looking into the distance.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Steal campfire. It’s no worse than looking at someone’s private collection of doll heads,” he adds. I laugh.
“Is it illegal?” I’m only half joking.
“Not to my knowledge. Follow me.” I match Carver stride for stride as we walk toward the ocean. We reach the perimeter of a family circled around a large fire pit. “Perfect,” says Carver, sitting down in the sand. We’re about ten feet away from the family.
I kneel down next to Carver. “Are we stealing right now?”
“When the sun goes down, we’ll be close enough to the fire for its warmth to reach us. You can’t say this isn’t the best spot.”
He’s right. We’re nestled on a hill of sand with an unobstructed view of the water. “Yes, it’s great,” I say softly.
After removing our shoes and socks, we devour our tacos. Carver struggles a bit because his finger is wrapped in so much gauze. His big toe is still bandaged from the splinter. He’s taken a beating the last couple of days.
We talk about Carver’s trip to Africa with his mom in the fall and his possibly wanting to delay college for an entire year instead of a semester. “I just feel like I’ve been on an academic rampage since kindergarten. I want to take a break.” He grabs a handful of sand and lets it pour from his cupped hand like an hourglass. “That’s one reason I’m here. I wanted to get away from everything I’ve ever known and go with the flow of something different.”
What if he comes back from Africa and decides to live in Beacon? What if he becomes a permanent resident in the room above the garage? What if… “So why do you think Simon bit me?” Carver interrupts my stampeding thoughts. The breeze ruffles his hair.
I wipe my mouth with a napkin. “It depends on who you ask. For instance, my dad would say you’ll never be able to answer that question.”
“Why is that?”
My toes burrow into the sand. “Well, his theory is that you can never fully tame a dog because the possibility that it will act on instinct is always there.”
I stop to look overhead at a swell of pelicans dipping down toward the water. “When Dad lived with us, our dogs had to sleep in these plastic crates at night. It didn’t seem right for them to have to be in there, all squashed and caged. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I’d let them out so they could sleep with me on my bed. In the morning, my dad would be furious. He’d explain to me how important it was that dogs be treated like dogs, not people. He believed that a dog’s behavioral problems could be linked back to its owner treating it like a person instead of a dog.”
“What do you think?” asks Carver. He’s a good listener, makes me feel like he cares about my opinions.
“If you’re going to have a dog, it should be part of the family. But I do agree that dogs can never be completely understood by people because we are not dogs. Does that make sense?”
He brushes his hair away from his eyes. “Yeah, it does.” Carver is looking at me intently, despite a group of girls in bikinis who are close by. “It’s pretty brave of you to disagree with the Dog Guru.’”
“Yeah, it’s easy to disagree with someone who’s hardly ever around.” I cough up a slight laugh. “It’s funny, because I disagree with my mom about a lot of things, but not about how she handles the dogs.”
“I’m just amazed by how the dogs on the exam table allow her to poke and prod them. I’ve not seen one growl or bare its teeth at her.” It’s obvious Carver respects her as much as the dogs do.
I turn to watch the water brush along the sand below us. Mom is good with the dogs, probably even more instinctive with and trusting of them than the Dog Guru himself is. If only she could do that with me …
I look at Carver, who unleashes an understanding smile, like he’s reading my mind. His crooked tooth peeks out from his lips. “Carver? Do you think you could not tell her I was here with you tonight?”
“No problem,” he says. Of course he doesn’t need to press any further. A week with my mom is more than enough time for anyone to figure out that she’s domineering.
Once the sky darkens, the flare of the campfire next to us transforms into a crackling full-fledged blaze. Carver moves a bit nearer to it and motions me toward him. We sit close together, but not close enough to touch. There is so much to learn about him, but sitting here listening to the bumbling waves and fizzing sea spray tells me something, too, in a way words can’t. It feels good to be here with him.
The family next to us sit around the fire, their faces lighting up with its glow. We can hear their laughter, their conversation. And as we eavesdrop, I understand what Carver means by “stealing” campfire, because the fire reaches beyond the family surrounding it and spreads to us, where I take it, knowing I’ll never be able to give it back.
A leash offers even the worst-behaved dog salvation.
—Michael Kaplan, The Manifesto of Dog
On Sunday Mom, Grandma, and I attack the dandelions in our yard. (This is one of the only flowers I know by name—and it’s a weed.) We are thankful for Carver and his one helping hand; it saves us from being on our knees until midnight.
Never before has weeding been so enjoyable. I think I could be in a swamp of crocodiles and have a good time with Carver. After dinner, we all assemble in the den and join Grandma in watching The Biography of Lauren Bacall.
On Monday I walk to the corner to meet Kirby and Nina. Nina leans against the wooden beam of the stop sign. Kirby is not here yet.
“You were supposed to call me!” She pops up from the ground. “Details.”
I tell Nina about stealing campfire at the beach. “Did you kiss?” she asks.
“No, but I feel comfortable around him. Like I could eat a bar of chocolate and burp and the earth wouldn’t split open.”
“Here comes Kirby,” Nina says.
Kirby emerges from the fog and walks toward us.
“So you’re not returning phone calls?” he asks me when he reaches the stop sign.
“Look,” I say, raising my scratched hands. “I spent the entire day yesterday weeding.”
“Fine,” says Kirby. “But you shouldn’t let all this yard work go to your head. You have a responsibility to your friends, after all.”
In our cooperative groups at school, we are asked to read Thomas Jefferson’s secret message to Congress regarding the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the West, 1803. Laney gives me dirty looks throughout our reading and sounds angry when she reads aloud the chunk Richard has delegated to her.
Later on, at work, Carver and I swap smiles. We both go back to check on Simon throughout the day, just in case, to make sure he’s drinking water and not showing foaming-at-the-mouth signs of a rabid dog.
After work Mom drives Carver and me home, where Grandma has prepared an omelette bar for dinner. The omelettes are perfect, airy and buttery. Carver piles avocado on top of his while I drizzle mine with homemade raspberry sauce.
Instead of going up to his room after our meal, Carver offers to do the dishes. Mom protests, not wanting him to get his bandage wet, but Carver covers it tightly with plastic wrap and persists. This allows me to take Pip, Otto, and Southpaw out for a walk in the fresh summer air.
When I return from walking them down the street, plastic bag of poop and all, Carver is sitting outside on the porch step. He steps into the street to greet me. And on cue, Laney Benning strides out of her house and into the street with us, as if she’s some modern-day Lewis and Clark exploring the asphalt and nosing into someone else’s territory.
Pip nudges Carver’s hand for a rub. Carver obliges. Southpaw commandeers his other hand. Otto uses the full slack of his leash to rush over to Laney and sniff her butt. Laney tries to bat him away, but Otto, staying true to his German shepherd roots, persists in his genetically fearless manner, keeping his nose on the target.
Laney starts to swat at Otto m
ore assertively. “Otto, sit,” I say. He walks over to me, panting, and obeys. Southpaw sits next to him quite regally, her long neck graceful, as if she knows full well that her missing leg only adds to her character.
“What’s up?” Laney’s question is obviously directed at Carver.
“Nothing much,” Carver says.
“Want to go for a walk?” she asks.
Carver is stooped down with Pip, who is in dog heaven. Pip’s one eye is closed as Carver massages behind his golden ear with his unbit hand. Carver glances at me. “What about you, Natalie? You up for it?” The muscle in his jaw twitches its twitch. Even when he’s petting a dog, he is hot.
Laney speaks down at me from atop her dogless high horse. “I doubt you’d want to go where we’re going.”
Carver looks confused. “Oh. Thought we were just taking a walk.”
“We are.” She’s not telling him the whole truth.
“Come with us,” Carver says. I love that he wants me to go. I am so in, too. This is my moment to cross over, to meet Laney where she is. I might have lost some face by backing out of the boob ordeal and buckling under her jabs the past few years, but not this time. I’m playing this game. There’s too much to lose if I walk away.
“Okay. I’ll just take the dogs in.” Laney looks disgusted, like she’s just gotten a whiff of bad cheese. Actually, she may have smelled the poop in the plastic bag I’m holding.
I whistle and the dogs file into order.
Once in the house, I dispose of the poop bag, wash my hands, and rush past the den, where Grandma is reading a thick unauthorized biography of the president. Gossip has no boundaries.
“Hi, Grandma.” I kiss her cheek as she keeps reading.
The water is running in the bathroom. Mom’s in the shower. I dash upstairs, relieved I won’t have to look her in the eye. I open the door to the steam-saturated bathroom. “Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Kirby stopped by. Can I go over to Nina’s with him to do homework?” Two lies remaining!
The shower curtain slides open and Mom pops out her lathered head, her eyes squeezed shut. “Okay, but be home by nine.”
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