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Little Dog, Lost

Page 4

by Marion Dane Bauer


  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,

  she was lost.

  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,

 

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